Death Ball

[AndyThomas]

Here's one for you. Consider that Dai X standing is about the same height as the Death Ball. Being fairly ball-like, the Death Ball is as wide as it is high.If Dai X could only get into Makara's cruiser by diving in head first, how could the Death Ball get out of Makara's cruiser?A few options - the Death Ball was assembled on site, outside of Makara's ship, using parts on board which were loaded on its last "pit stop" at the Imperial Fortress.Or, there's a much bigger cargo bay type door on Makara's ship.Or, as the Alliance has beaming technology, the Death Ball was assembled inside Makara's ship and beamed out when needed.And there you have it - first on-topic post for quite some time! (Incidentally, all of the above probably applies to the Death Planetoid as well but I think it was smaller than the Death Ball).

[Crash]

Good point - if the Dai X came flat-packed, why not the Death Ball as well? Caliban was supposed to have studied the Dai X after all.Has anyone ever seen Lexx? maybe like on there the alien ships didn't just look like insects after all but were infact critters that need growing and not assembling. I guess you'd have to add a few strap-on missile pods and guns and things but apart from that - Bob's your uncle.

[AndyThomas]

Why strap on missile pods? Good old Talyn (Talon?) in Farscape was born as a bouncing baby leviathan complete with a kick-ass cannon. It's an interesting idea, given that the Alliance are cyborgs which implies a degree of biotech knowledge, but there's no suggestion in the series that the ships themselves are biological aside from borrowing some design concepts from nature.As an aside, one thing B5 never showed which I was interested in was - how did the Vorlons make their ships? Were they "grown"? In the Night's Dawn Trilogy from Peter Hamilton, there're some very nice descriptions of the way the bitek ships reproduce in a very ritualistic fashion.

[felice]

Yes, the Death Ball was one of the images that stuck in my mind for 20 years. I think it's likely that it was beamed out of the Cruiser, myself. Either that, or make different choices in estimating scale - in some shots, the X-Bomber itself is small enough to fly in to the Cruiser's hanger, and the Dai-X inside the cruiser seemed more in keeping with that scale.Lexx rocks... but I don't think the Imperial ships seemed organic.Talyn seemed rather implausible to me. I'm willing to accept the idea of organic stardrives and weapons, but he looked far too mechanical for that.And yes, I'd guess the Vorlon ships were indeed grown as complete entities. I can't imagine them being put together like Frankenstein's monsters. Well, not in the official cannon, anyway... I think that would fit in A Dark Distorted Mirror, which is well worth reading (http://www.b5-dark-mirror.demon.co.uk/).