[BRIEF NOTE] The Question of Coriana 6
Jan. 11th, 2006 09:09 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
rfmcdonaldCoriana 6 is a planet that features heavily in the Babylon 5 episode "Into the Fire", early in the fourth season. Do not read what follows if you want to avoid massive series-spoiling spoilers.
Coriana 6 is a planet, inhabited by six billion people, that had the decided misfortune of being slated for destruction by the Vorlon planetkiller since its surface housed a Shadow base. The planet was low-tech, unable to do anything to the approximately God-like Shadows. Apparently it was not so low-tech as to support a population numbering in the billions, though, or to lack any sort of planet-wide demographic register and correspondingly complex communications and transportation systems. In light of the realities that "low-tech" was applied to a world by the denizens of civilizations capable of building functioning O'Neill colonies in otherwise uninhabited systems, that Coriana 6 was apparently advanced enough to support a complex population capable of basic modern feats, and that (in the mid-1990s) Coriana 6 had a population approaching Earth's six billions, it doesn't seem altogether impossible that JMS intended Coriana 6 as a dummy for Earth.
In light of the apparent technological sophistication of the people of Coriana 6--not enough to do anything about the Shadows, enough to know their doom--how would they have reacted to the massive battle featured in "Into the Fire," which included a Vorlon planetkiller exploding in low orbit with the apparent luminosity of a small star and a rather massive amount of messy carnage? Assume an approximately human psychology, for the convenience of argument if nothing else.
Coriana 6 is a planet, inhabited by six billion people, that had the decided misfortune of being slated for destruction by the Vorlon planetkiller since its surface housed a Shadow base. The planet was low-tech, unable to do anything to the approximately God-like Shadows. Apparently it was not so low-tech as to support a population numbering in the billions, though, or to lack any sort of planet-wide demographic register and correspondingly complex communications and transportation systems. In light of the realities that "low-tech" was applied to a world by the denizens of civilizations capable of building functioning O'Neill colonies in otherwise uninhabited systems, that Coriana 6 was apparently advanced enough to support a complex population capable of basic modern feats, and that (in the mid-1990s) Coriana 6 had a population approaching Earth's six billions, it doesn't seem altogether impossible that JMS intended Coriana 6 as a dummy for Earth.
In light of the apparent technological sophistication of the people of Coriana 6--not enough to do anything about the Shadows, enough to know their doom--how would they have reacted to the massive battle featured in "Into the Fire," which included a Vorlon planetkiller exploding in low orbit with the apparent luminosity of a small star and a rather massive amount of messy carnage? Assume an approximately human psychology, for the convenience of argument if nothing else.
