| In the Shadows of Madness A Lovecraftian Look into the Babylon 5 Universe By Mark W. Chase "I have seen the dark universe yawning Where the black planets roll without aim- Where they roll in their horror unheeded, Without knowledge or luster or name." This brief poem named merely "Nemesis" was the opening for the terrifying story, "The Haunter of the Dark", by Howard Philips Lovecraft. It was a tale of a universe turned upside down, as were all the "Mythos" stories of this young, New England writer. The very essence of Lovecraft's mythos was that our universe was only a twisted delusion of a great, vast, inescapable darkness, of which mankind was nothing but the merest speck of insignificant matter. Rarely ever did the tragic hero of a story survive with his sanity, if he survived at all. Great, ancient beings, from the stars and beyond,prowl this universe their nature and motives far beyond anything our feeble minds could hope to fathom. Fragments of the unspeakable darkness would float almost by accident to our world. By chance, some hapless mortal would stumble across it and his frail perception of reality would be shattered forever. The ultimate irony of it all was that mankind did in fact make a difference in the universe despite our apparent infinitesimal worth. The Great Old Ones did take notice of humans and had tried, and failed, to swat us from existence. Individuals, though driven mad, did affect the course of the dark fate within the mocking universe. Men fought against the darkness and won. Great Old One cults were defeated, Deep One outposts were destroyed, and unspeakable summonings were subverted. In possibly one brief glimmer of hope, mankind reached out and contacted the Elder Gods. They were a distant, but benevolent collection of entities who opposed the great darkness. They alone stood between our feeble world and the onslaught of unthinkable horrors. In the years of H.P. Lovecraft's mythos cycles from 1919-1937 a great darkness swept through the universe. In the years 2257-2262, it may have returned. * * * Already in its third season, Babylon 5 has taken on a mythos of its own. As the Babylon 5 saga moves into the Shadow War, the story has grown darker and more ominous. Or, as Susan Ivanova puts it in the third season introduction, "The Babylon Project was our last, best hope for peace. It failed." But, she goes on to assure, "In the year of the Shadow War, it became something greater. Our last, best hope for victory." Against all odds, hope is always present unlike Lovecraft's writing where there is no hope at all. There are many parallels between Babylon 5 and Lovecraft's works. These parallels may be intentional, some many have be unconscious, or, they may all be simply coincidence. Whatever the case may be, I give you the relationships which I have uncovered. The most obvious parallel is between the Shadows and Outer Gods or Great Old Ones. In the Cthulhu Mythos, the Outer Gods were the demonic pantheon of ultimate, unspeakable darkness. However, the Outer Gods themselves were the epitome of chaos and madness, without soul or mind. They twisted and wallowed in the eternal night, playing horribly mocking sounds with their demonic flutes, and orbited the ultimate nuclear chaos, Azathoth, who resides at the center of the universe. The Outer Gods have been stripped of reasoning and ordered thought (as we perceive it anyway) so they may not be a perfect parallel with the Shadows. However, as we shall see, some of the Outer Gods are not at all mindless. If not the ultimate Outer Gods, certainly the Shadows are mirrored by the Great Old Ones H.P. Lovecraft wrote about. Not nearly as powerful as the Outer Gods, the Great Old Ones do have ordered reasoning (though still vastly alien to human reasoning). Cthulhu is the foremost well know Great Old One, but there are others, such as Hastur, Dagon, and possibly Shub- Niggurath and Yog-Sothoth. Some Lovecraftian authorities believe that Shub-Niggurath and Yog- Sothoth were not Great Old Ones, but were in fact Outer Gods. If this is the case, it would mean that not all Outer Gods are mindless. In Lovecraft's stories, both of these god-like beings acted in logical, if not humanly comprehensible, way. It is important to note that these Outer Gods still exist as cognitive entities. It is possible that the Shadows are drawn from this surviving group of hideous gods. The Great Old Ones are described by Lovecraft as having come to Earth from the stars. They used technology, as did many other minor races, such as the Mi-Go, the Elder Things, and the Great Race. They were masters of all the technologies and sciences, to the point of it being ultimate magic. Dark, black, sinister magic. The Shadows of Z'ha'dum are certainly masters of dark technology, as seen by their unholy Shadow ships. They dominate forbidden areas of space with godlike powers. Revelations in Babylon 5 episodes such as "Voices of Authority" tell us that the Shadows can see into souls, but they are apart from the energy which binds all life together. The Shadows are in our universe, but forever separated from it. Dark, cold, and ancient, the Shadows have slept for a thousand years, and are now awakening to renew the war against the First Ones. To express this parallel, I will give your a brief quote from the "Encyclopedia Cthulhiana": "The Great Old Ones were at a time members of a company of beings titled the Elder Gods. Because they practiced black magic, or they stole certain of the Elder God's sacred records, or even that they had the temerity to attack the homes of the Elder Gods themselves, the Great Old Ones were cast out by their brethren and imprisoned in various places in the stars, and even other dimensions. Having done this, the Elder Gods returned to their homes near the star Glyu'Uho, leaving the Great Old Ones within their prisons. There will come a time, though, when the Great Old Ones will break free of the strictures imposed by the Elder Gods, and they will come forth from their jails to challenge the supremacy of their captors once again." This almost sounds like something Delenn might say! Replace Great Old Ones with Shadows and Elder Gods with the First Ones, and you have it. In Lovecraft's mythos, the Elder Gods are not se, these flying polyps can become invisible, just like the Shadows. In contrast, the Vorlons were not wiped out by the Shadows, the Vorlons helped to defeat the Shadows. It must also be put forward that Morden could very well be the equivalent of Nyarlathotep. In Babylon 5, Morden appears to be nothing more than a Shadow/Centauri (and Earth Alliance!) go between. In H.P. Lovecraft's works, Nyarlathotep was the messenger of the Outer Gods. In Lovecrafts poem "Nyarlathotep", this dark messenger was a man; a man who brought final destruction to the human race. In many stories Nyarlathotep was in the form of a man, though he also had many monsterous forms as well. In all appearance this "man" was mortal, but he had sinister, dark powers at his command. If Morden ever becomes some hideous flying monster as black as the night itself, this parallel will be complete. Could the Book of G'Quon be the Babylon 5 equivalent to the Necronomicon? On several occasions, G'Kar has pointed out references to the Shadows, even pictures of their ships, all with terrifying revelations behind them. He even gave the book to Garibaldi, telling him that it would be helpful. I doubt the Book of G'Quon is a forbidden tome written by a mad Narn named G'abkul G'alkazard; and, as Babylon 5 appears to be much more optimistic than Lovecraft's tales, I will propose that the book of G'Quon is a "holy analogue" to the Necronomicon. As I have stated earlier, these speculations are my own, and in no way do they express the views of J. Michael Straczynski, Doug Netter, or anyone working in the production of Babylon 5. These ideas are my own and should not be taken out of context. Babylon 5 is a unique and completely innovative universe of possiblities. Like the universe of H.P. Lovecraft, the Babylon 5 universe has its own dark secrets secrets which man was not be meant to know, and of things which should not be. And so, I will leave you with a quote from the classic story "The Call of Cthulhu". The tale which started it all. "We live on a placid island of ignorance in the midst of black seas of infinity, and it was not meant that we should voyage far. The sciences, each straining in its own direction, have hitherto harmed us little; but some day the piecing together of dissociated knowledge will open up such terrifying vistas of reality, and of our frightful position therein, that we shall either go mad from the revelation or flee from the deadly light into the peace and safety of a new dark age." Bibliography Harms, Daniel - "Encyclopedia Cthulhiana" (1994) Lovecraft, H.P. - "At the Mountains of Madness" (1936), "The Case of Charles Dexter Ward" (1941), "The Call of Cthulhu" (1928), "Dagon" (1919), "The Dream-Quest of Unknown Kadath" (1948), "The Haunter of the Dark" (1936), "Nyarlathotep" (1920), "The Other Gods" (1933), "The Shadow Over Innsmouth" (1936), "The Shadow Out of Time" (1936), "The Whisperer in Darkness" (1931) Straczynski, J. Michael - the "Babylon 5" series (1993-1996), through Warner Bros. Television. Special thanks to Jon Fuller and Mathias Russ who assisted in the editing of this essey. If you have questions or comments to make, complaints or suggestions, please contact me at: mchase@cdc.net or log on to my web page at: http://www.cdc.net/~mchase/mearth.html | |
|
