@@deborahswart1718 To some, death is oblivion, no more consciousness or existence. In the absence of evidence id say there is nothing after death. Personally I don't follow logic so I'd like to think each of our songs echo through the universe for those who are listening to hear
The Shadows are not an insect species and they do not pilot their ships. They like the Vorlons are transcended beyond a physical form. They use "encounter suits" like the Vorlons to interact with physical biological species but their form is never revealed. The Shadow ships are piloted by individuals that are from other species, like humans. These pilots undergo an advanced type of nanotech brain reconstruction that enables them to merge with the Shadow technology.
Utopian Broadcast 4.12K subscribers "It was jet-black. A shade of black so deep, your eye just kind of slides off it. And it shimmered when you looked at it. A spider, big as death and twice as ugly. When it flies past, it's like you hear a scream in your mind." - Warren Keffer describing the appearance and sheer terror of the Shadow Vessels (From "Babylon 5" Season 2 Episode 22 "The Fall of Night")
Michael J Straczynski sent many scripts into Star Trek they turned all his ideas down then ripped off the stories he has sent in he eventually sued them and won a huge settlement
@@Aivottaja All we know for sure is that the Babylon 5 "bible", containing almost all of the major arcs for the entire series, setting, characters, etc was shown and *given* to executives at Paramount who were looking to make a new sci-fi show, but they turned it down and *did not* return the bible for a year, then started working on a new Star Trek show with an extremely similar premise, story arcs, and characters; including several characters with the same names! And that it deviated a lot from established Star Trek canon and tone. It's almost like there was a Star Trek skin on top of something else; similar to how JJ Trek 1 was Star Wars with a Trek skin. As for the lawsuit, Patricia Tallman recently (2017) stated that it occurred and it was quickly settled out of court. She played Lyta on Babylon 5; lots of small roles on TNG/DS9/VOY, and most importantly, was the romantic and business partner of the guy who created Babylon 5. If anyone other than him knows, it would be her. Edited to add that the document was not returned for a full year.
Agree. Star Trek is renowned to rip off ideas. Discovery ripped off tartigrades from a game, Picard ripped off original Mass Effect idea I.e. synthetics are evil, but we're controlled by dark evil sentient machines .I.e Mass Effect Reapers controlling geth.
Intellectual property rights are a slippery slope, JMS cannot copyright the idea of biological ships in space, Star Trek did that decades before Babylon 5 aired.
the main question for me is that if 8472 were alone in their space, then why did they have all that firepower? Just in case? Or perhaps they were in Civil War or something and then Borg united them🙃 I see others questioning the same thing
I agree. If they were alone they would have had only theirselves to fight until one side prevailed over the other. At some point in their future they would eventually give up on warfare and creating weapons because they would have been the only species that they would have encountered until the Borg. They wouldn't have had these capabilities even then. But I'm sure that they would've eventually created them. One more thing how would they have a superiority doctrine when there was noone else to be superior to. In conclusion they more than likely killed off all of the other species in their relm.
@@warrenreid6109 I recently knew Centauri exterminated a different species living on the same planet with them thus becoming the only species. So yeah that seems to be a common practice and logical explanation. Also it should be noted they may have a completely different mindset that would dictate such decisions and actions
A Vorlon ship accidentally discovered the Undine. After negotiations (which included warnings about the Shadows) an agreement was reached whereby the Undine would buy a massive fleet of old Vorlon ships. This is why they are so militarily prepared. ;-) :-)
I have to agree, it makes no sense why they would create such weapons. History shows that weapons are built for a purpose, not just because. Who, or what, are they building to fight against? Is there another non-sentient life form which is hard to kill, or do other dimensions frequently invade their space?
If the Undine are isolationist and in total control of their realm, then why would they develop all those super advanced military capabilities? It's much more likely that they would stagnate. And besides, the Undine ships are just Vorlon rip-offs.
Maybe the way they gained control is by changing everything about themselves to ensure victory. Once they are genetically, technologically, socially engineered for war, it would be hard to go back. Sure stagnation would ensue but no other species on either series has gained total control of their universe, so their starting point is far beyond most others.
The Shadow's inter fluidic space and the presence was seen as a invasion by the Undine so when they destroyed most of the Shadow vessel's but realize that one vessel got away so they went on the offensive stand of the defensive
Z'ha'dum was not the Shadow's homeworld. They only established a colony there, because that's where Lorian has resided. The location of the Shadow homeworld was unknown, even to the Vorlons.
In the last war the Shadows had barely prepared themselves for war, but we're still a formidable force. Imagine how powerful they would be if they had time to prepare and build their fleet.
You fail to account for the Shadows allies which are numerous. Without them they could not possibly have infiltrated the Psi Corps and Earth Gov so quickly given that Morden and Anna Sheridan's expedition to Z'Ha'Dum was decades at least after the rise of telepaths on Earth - and unless they were lying the Shadows were still 'hibernating' at that time when the expedition got there.
The gap in power between Trek and Babylon 5 is pretty straightforward. Nuclear weapons are considered a joke in Trek. In Babylon 5 Sheridan used one to defeat the shadow at kazzadum. Its just really lopsided.
It would be absolutely awesome to see a full scale battle between the board and shadow fleet. I’ve watch the short video several times and it makes my mouth water for more!
The Undine wouldn't be able to destroy or even attack a Cloaked Shadow Ship. Mostly since Shadow Cloaks work differently than a Star Trek Cloak. Shadow CLoaks work by phasing the ship partially into Hyperspace so it exists between both Hyperspace and Normal Space. Effectively making it invulnerable until it chooses to reveal itself. You've honestly underestimated the shadows a great deal. Their primary beam weapon on a fully operational shadow vessel never misses and nothing has been shown to be able to withstand it. It goes through everything like a hot knife through butter. As much as I like 8472, their ships would be instantly cut in half by a Battlecrab. Especially since they'd be unaware of the Shadows weakness to Telepaths, not to mention at least from what I've seen 8472 Telepathy can just transmit thoughts. Star Trek telepathy in general seems below even a P5 Telepath from the Earth Alliance.
Hmmmm.. You bring up great points here. At least if the Shadows invaded Fluidic Space (as it stands to reason that the physical laws there are different), I may still give the Undine the benefit of the doubt. In fact, briefly looking up some extended (be it non-canon) source from Star Trek Armada 2, warp travel isn't possible in Fluidic Space. Hyperspace travel in B5 works differently than warp travel, but it's an interesting note either way. It would be more difficult for a Undine invasion for sure. Military Intelligence will have to come into play. I can't say for sure who would win that area, as the Undine have shown incredible intelligence capabilities in that episode where they recreated Starfleet Academy to near perfection. In addition, they have shape shifting tech (or ability, forgot exactly with one). But of course, The Shadows can't live up to that name unless it's partially due to their intelligence network (and obvious stealth tech and abilities), so both Species may be close to a tie in this area. I'm not sure if the Undine telepathic abilities are irrelevant. I remember one major battle in the third or forth season of B5 where the younger races (mainly Sheridan and his White star fleet, the Minbari, and the League) used any and all the telepaths they had against the Shadows. Lyta or any other super strong telepaths weren't identified for certain to have partaken in the battle, so it's not too much of a stretch to assume that the telepaths whom participated were not higher that P5. Yet, the younger races did have some success during the battle. Thus it is plausible that the telepathic abilities of the Undine, in sufficient numbers, can aid them against the Shadows.
@@ThatZillaGuy2 The Undine might have a fighting chance in their Fluidic Space, but after following the Shadows to normal space, the Shadows will have an insane advantage. The Shadows can hide an entire fleet in hyperspace and launch it to a designated point. Regarding telepathy, Lyta is about p500 and had problems in stopping a shadow ship for a long while.
Star Trek's warp drive yields very fast real space speed, hence effectively making it invulnerable against non-warp speed-capable opponents. The fastest real space FTL is Voth Transwarp or The Traveller's Transwarp.
@@valenrn8657 subspace in thery would be alot faster, and deeper you g ointo subspace the shorter the distnce you have to trevel. theres no telling how the shadows use subspace since they can phase in, out and in the middle, they may beable to phase in other ways too. i believe the Shadows would defeat the Undine. we only ever saw small things from the shadows but being billions of years old they would have learned many things about the Universe. theres no telling what else they could have done. using the voth for exsample there technology was very powerful but this is explained by the fact they are a older race then humans and other species, the Shadows are MUCH older then the Voth and have transended beyond the physical form stated by the first one "the reason the shadows could kill kosh is because they are the same, you have never seen a Vorlon enraged thay are very powerful, this will be much harder for you"
This should be "Thirdspace Aliens (AKA Harbingers) versus Species 8472". The Shadows are god-like and on par with the Vorlons and other First Ones. But even they were not enough alone against the Thirdspace Aliens. A coalition of First Ones was needed to fight against them and even then it wasn't a complete victory. They just managed to hold them off enough and seal the entrance to their universe. They are without a doubt the most powerful race shown in Babylon 5. Also, if The Shadows "survival of the fittest" ideology sounds like superiority, it's tame compared to the Harbingers. The Harbingers didn't believe in aiding evolution. They believed they were the only race in the whole multiverse with the privilege to exist. The Shadows had a semi-benevolent motive to their brutal view. They wanted to "help" the younger races by creating war. The Harbingers are only interested in the annihilation of everyone else anywhere. "They are anti-life itself" - The Vorlons about the Harbingers
The trouble with writing aliens like those of Third Space or Species 8472 is that they are a bit like Mary Sues; far too powerful and without weaknesses. The Shadows and the Vorlons had weaknesses, and could be negotiated with once you got their attention by triggering a massive battle.
They didn't seal them off though. The alliance of first ones was ready to make the final assault on the doorway and the Vorlons the Harbingers had taken over stole it away into hyperspace so they could have a chance to try again at some future point. It was fucking comical levels of plot armor that let B5 take them out.
@@UteChewb I'm sure that IF you were powerful enough the 3rd space aliens would have weaknesses. The gotcha is nothing was powerful enough to take advantage of such a weakness.
@@UteChewb During "Operation Skorpion" the Borg and the Voyager crew managed to alter the Borg nanotech to be effective against the Undine. They also destroyed 17 Undine ships in one battle - a fact the Undine aknowledged. They also admited, they are afraid of it, when the Voyager crew met them a year later! So they are by far not without weaknesses!
It's 5 AM, and I can't sleep, so pardon me for nerd-barfing all over the comments: First off- Shadow ships don't cloak. What looks like cloaking is actually them phasing into hyperspace, as they are able to move between realspace and hyperspace without the use of jump points. Sorry, had to get that out of my system. 2 - I really think you're underselling the Shadows here. Even the Vorlons (who were on roughly the same level as the Shadows, if not the Undine), needed to get the help of the other Old Ones and/or the Younger Races to take on the Shadows, and the one time we see Shadow and Vorlon vessels fight directly, the Vorlons only won because they ambushed the Shadows. I can't help but feel that the Undine would have more trouble with the Shadows (especially if there was a prolonged conflict and the Shadows had time to "wake up" more of their ships) than you're letting on. 3 - Even if we do run with the assumption that the Undine would overpower the Shadows, given their philosophy of causing chaos to weed out the weak among the younger races, I don't think the Shadows would have closed the portal. If anything, they'd have started opening MORE portals in the younger races' territories and watched how the younger races reacted to these new invaders, as well as studying the Undine themselves so they could possibly take them on eventually. This goes perfectly with the Shadows' M.O. of "stir things up behind the scenes and then see who wins", and (if it works) thins the Undines' numbers without the Shadows having to risk their own resources directly. 4 - You're forgetting something, and this goes back to my first pedantic nit-pick: the Shadows use hyperspace. That doesn't seem to exist in the Trek universe(s), and we never see the Undine use it at any point, so it's likely that if things got bad enough, the Shadows could just go to hyperspace and "hide" from the Undine, if not f**k-off to some other galaxy completely and just let the younger races/Vorlons deal with the fall out, figuring that whoever wins would show up beyond the Rim in a few years themselves, and then be worth talking to. 5 - But ultimately... there's actually a lot of similarities between the Shadows and the Undine. A lot of people have already called the Undine out on being "Vorlon rip-offs", and they do seem to just be a spin on Vorlons but with the Shadows' personality attached. If anything... seems to me like the two races would have at least talked, if they were to make contact. The Shadows would talk because the Undine are so similar to them technologically/mentally, and the Undine would talk for the same reason, as well the Shadows (in this scenario) being the first race they'd been in contact with in who-knows-how-long. And remember, the Undine went after the Borg because the Borg attacked them FIRST. In this scenario, the Shadows are just observing the Undine when they make first contact. That lack of immediate hostility would provide a chance for curiosity to take over, on both sides. Yes, the Undine are isolationist, but they're also capable of diplomacy (as seen when Voyager discovered the fake "Starfleet Command" the Undine were using to train spies). And yes, the Shadows love chaos, but they're also, for lack of a better term, lonely (see their comments to Lorien/the other Old Ones at the Battle of Corianna 6. They seem genuinely happy that the other Old Ones would leave the galaxy alongside them). Seems to me like if they could both get over the initial urge to just start blastin', they'd most likely end up as allies. And then, whichever universe they popped out in (either B5 or Trek Prime) would be _screwed_. ------------------------------ But then, I guess them becoming friends would kind of go against the point of the video.
He also completely disregarded the massive power difference between the two IPs. Everyone knows just how underpowered Star Trek is compared to most other Sci-Fi IPs, so that should have been taken into account somehow.
@@Ishlacorrin He seems to have taken the approach of adjusting them to being at the same power level, in the same way that Spacedock & Resurrected Starships do in their vs. battles, which is good. I've gotten tired of how many fans (especially Trek vs. Star Wars) don't do that & end up sounding like a bunch of grade school kids on the playground...
@@seanmcgrath3826 See I could get behind that if the narrative he is pushing was not so out there. I mean for that narrative to take place, even if the power levels were the same, then you need to completely re-write the Shadows main ideals and behaviour. That to me, more than anything else, invalidates the entire thing.
This is where my issues were, too. Without any opposition to hone your knife against, you stagnate. If Fluidic Space only contains the Undine, then they've reached that plateau in technological development. Whereas the Shadows literally have millions of years of development. The RPG book explains they have all the equal technological advances that the Vorlons and others have, they just choose to continue to be biological to continue their belief about chaos. The Undineay have superior technology, but I don't think it has near the same range as technological dev as the Shadows or any of the other First Ones.
The Undine are not lesser beings if their curbstomped the Borg almost too easily. The Borg can attest since they saw the Undine as biological perfection.
Unfortunately 8472 is not a lesser being. As the Doctor put it; they are the most advanced biological species they've ever encountered. Or as the Borg put it; Perfect. They're also telepathic far beyond that of a P12 as they can communicate over light years with other telepaths.
All sci-fi writers are inspired by each other’s ideas and build off them in different ways. Isaac Asimov invented the concept of Androids/AI and now everybody and their mother is doing it. That is to say that a highly-evolved species and organic technology are concepts that have existed for some time. Though the interpretation of Species 8472’s ships in particular is very similar to what we see in Babylon 5.
The last time, I forgot to mention the Undeen, would more than telepathically detect the intrusion, but also physically. So naturally without eyes-on contact, the intruders are too easily detected, found, and eliminated.?.shortly after brief analysis of the intruders.
@@LeChevalierduLys I am falling into the trope of commenting on a comment to try to change an unchangeable opinion of some one else. Hilarious for me! B5 spoilers ahead! But...... The ships piloted by the Shadows are not affected by telepaths. It is the ships controlled by human telepaths that get jammed as they serve as the CPU. This was because there where too few of the Shadows awakened and they had to come up with a quick solution. That is why they used the PsiCorps to get telepaths to run their ships in the early days of the Shadow War. By the time they were all awakened and the war reached its apex the use of telepaths ended to "jam" their ships because they could run their ships on their own. Incidentally, the Shadow phasing tech to go in and out of normal space to avoid attacks is way to powerful than ST. But I agree that Undine would win against the Shadows. But for sure the Third Space aliens in B5 would easily annihilate the Undine. The Thirdspace aliens always have thousands of ships available for combat. In ST they maybe can come up with a hundreds at best. Za'hadum is Lorien's home planet and resting place. He said, "That is why they come back here, because I'm here. They think they are showing respect. But, the don't understand." We are not really given their actual home planet. It was just appropriated by the Shadows. I don't think Lorien would stand by while his planet was going to be destroyed. Especially with him in it.
@@vorpal120 Well actually the Shadows had problems with the telepaths since the first shadow war. The Shadows Exterminated the Narn Telepath population and is the reason that the Telepath gene is too weak in the Narn and they can't produce significant Telepaths, According to G'kar(And thebook of G'quan. This one of the reasons why G'kar want's to Breed with Lyta in the Pilot (Could be with Talia in season 1, i'm not sure). The use of the Psycore was to have ''operating Systems'' resistant to such attacks. Al in all it's only speculation. I don't stand ''Resolute'' on this since they don't have the same Metrics and as in depth knowledge of Species 8472. As far as i know at least.
@@LeChevalierduLys This is not so easy. The vorlons cheated - modifying the younger races creating telepaths to gain an advantage against the shadows in their ideological conflict. Shadows themselves are resistant to telepathy. If anyone tries telepathy against them they experience a terrible feedback and suffer a psychic injury. The reason the vorlons created telepaths is to fuck with the shadow ships. In the ideological conflict shadows normally use pilots taken from other races and these can be telepathically jammed. That's why they tried to get telepath pilots in the last war, to counter this weakness. Ships piloted by shadows are not affected. Also the ships used in this conflict are weak and shitty, which is by design, since the goal is not to win the conflict, but to create it so the younger races could improve. Shadow ideology is based on evolution and the survival of the fittest - what does not kill me makes me stronger. They spark wars every 1000 years and through conflict some races rise others fall. But in the end of the war the shadows always loose, because the fighting must end at some point or the process is meaningless. If the shadows ever decide to get serious, then they could bring in their real ships piloted by shadow pilots with an infrastructure hidden away deep in pockets of hyperspace phased and inaccessible by the Undine. The can open gateways to other universes, same as the vorlons and their mastery of nanotech is far above the borg, so they could devise a Nano plague that would decompose the undine, and it would be delivered by out of phase ships that are impervious to harm. Remember in the ancient times these fuckers were older and more advanced then most and in their wars multiple races had to band together against them to make things even.
The shadows have many weapons that you really don't see in Babylon 5 they kind of touch and talk about them but they don't demonstrate their true power. But one of the weapons you see a younger race that are allies to the shadow use is a virus a plague that adopts and changes this would more than likely wipe out the species of 8472 as it would travel through fluid space eliminating everything. We are fully aware that species 8472 has problems with microscopic weapons. And we are aware that the shadows use microscopic techno organic viruses too as they did with the telepath.
Come across Star Trek Online and there was info about Undine ☺ The Undine (known to the Borg as Species 8472) are a non-humanoid species indigenous to fluidic space, a parallel universe filled with organic fluid rather than vacuum. They are referred to by the Klingons as "qa'meH quv", meaning "replacers of honor with dishonor."
Just thought I'd mention that in the Bacon Phonetic System, a memorization technique for numbers in which numerals have consonant equivalents, 8472 spells "Vorgon." 8452 would be "Vorlon."
It's also pretty much like asking who would win, one of the technomages or Gandalf... Comparing two _very_ different universes, with obviously different physics (no shields in B5, no hyperspace in Trek, ...) may be fun to some degree, but it's not even like comparing apples and oranges, but more like comparing apples and suspension bridges...
This analysis does not take into account the Shadow‘s allies like the Drakh, the invisible soldiers of the Shadows or their potentially most powerful weapon, the Techno-Mages. While the latter have been discontinued, the tech is still available. Considering one Techno Mage without knowing their full tactical potential easily took down a Shadow Battlecruiser, they are not to be underestimated. There is also the question if the Shadow technology to take over sentient scan not be applied. True, it has to be implanted, but a if the technology is effective, a single seeker torpedo could take over a bioship. Not to mention, that the Shadows can use any information they gain about a bioship and implement it into their own ships. Considering the other First Ones there is the question how much technological development the Shadows have ignored simply because they didn’t need it. This is after all a species that is millions of not billions of years old. Also, the Speed the Shadows move in and out of Hyperspace is not to be underestimated. Especially as the Warp Drive is a completely different method of FTL. While Warp is probably faster than Hyperspace the Shadows can simply wait in Hyperspace, strike and fade back. They just did not do that this much, because everyone in the B5 Universe can do that. Which begs the question if fluidic space or Star Trek in general even has a Hyperspace. That’s why I don’t like such comparisons. They can go on and on without a clear resolution. P.S. I don’t think the Death Cloud is the Shadow‘s extend in planetary destruction. Like many weapons of the Shadows it is as much a weapon of terror as it is of destruction.
Technology aside: Sheridan's 500Mt nukes from "Into the Fire" took shadow capital ships out without needing direct contact. I.E. a solid spread of photon torpedoes could do the same. The same attack would slow an early borg cube, but couldn't stop it. Even past adaption a good hit from an undine weapon takes a cube out. It seems to leave more debris then an accident with a coronal mass ejection though. And the borg should be familiar with and adapted to the latter, it's a common occurrence around stars. Reminds us that nothing beats raw energy output! :)
True. Also a shadow vessel couldn’t escape the gravity well of and was crushed in Jupiter’s atmosphere. Meanwhile the Borg and enterprise had a battle in the suns lower atmosphere where there is magnitudes more gravity.
@@y0uCantHandle lol. Was more just meaning that was the one that had some random human wander inside of it so the ship kind of went insane. If I'm recalling the episode right.
I liked a lot of this but there were 2 main points wrong. 1 Shadow vessels don't cloak they phase out of normal space and into Hyperspace so it's not a cloak and 2 the Shadows don't confront anyone directly, they prefer to make others do their fighting directly.
I absolutely loved this video and subbed. I caught myself thinking, 'man, I wish this guy would write some fan fiction novels.' Well thought out and very interesting while also being fun and provoking the imagination. Thank you, Cheers!
The shadow's possessed cloaking technology (supposedly they gave the drahk invisibility cloaks) but never demonstrated it on a vessel. Not in the either Babylon 5 or Crusade anyways. However their jump technology operates differently than the vorlon based jump-point with the shadow vessel phasing in and out of hyperspace and really advanced navigational understanding of hyper space allowing for pin point accuracy.
Actually we see Shadow vessels in the show appear out of nothing when they ambush the Narn. The Assumption is made that they are using their method of 'jumping in' but it's fully possible that they just decloked in some way.
@@Ishlacorrin Well Shadow Cloaks actually operate as a function of their Hyperspace drives. THey phase into Hyperspace instead of forming jump points, but they can also only partially phase themselves. Rendering themselves cloaked and undetected until they choose to either fully enter Hyperspace or Realspace.
Also here's something to think about. The victory class is a bigger white star with a hint of humanity. How come the white stars couldn't scan the death cloud but the victories could?
After the earth civil war, the earth alliance kept on using some shadow technology in their new ships. I wouldn't be surprised if the victory class ship as some shadow technology. That would explain why they could sense the cloud.
Fantastic and thought provoking episode, I really liked it. I think the telepathic angle of species 8472 can not be underestimated. The shadows proved vulnerable to telepaths (so the vorlons seeded younger races with telepath genes) and mimbari telepaths were able to disrupt the "CPU" of shadow ships making them vulnerable. Strong telepath like Lita was able to stop the shadow capital ships briefly. If 8472 telepathy is on par with Lita, they would disrupt the shadow CPU and 8472 capital ships could inflict heavy damage. The shadows might have to innovate strategies and use the jump gate de-stablaizer tech to interfere with 8472 ships moving in and out of fluidic space... or to drop them into another realm such as "3rdspace" and maroon them.
Star Trek Telepathy has consistently been shown to be weaker than even a P5 Telepath from Babylon 5, only person that comes to mind from ST that counters that is older Kes and honestly I'm not sure if her abilities at that point were telepathic or considered something else in Trek. I really doubt 8472 Telepathy would be the game changer people think it would be since it seems to be pure communication for them and nothing else.
@@nierahsescapades673 I'm not sure if the Undine telepathic abilities are irrelevant. I remember one major battle in the third or forth season of B5 where the younger races (mainly Sheridan and his White star fleet, the Minbari, and the League) used any and all the telepaths they had against the Shadows. Lyta or any other super strong telepaths weren't identified for certain to have partaken in the battle, so it's not too much of a stretch to assume that the telepaths whom participated were not higher that P5. Yet, the younger races did have some success during the battle. Thus it is plausible that the telepathic abilities of the Undine, in sufficient numbers, can aid them against the Shadows.
@@ThatZillaGuy2 First off i'm no expert on the Undine i'm working off information gained in the comment section here even if it seems heavily bias in favour of the Trek corner. Tho i am very familiar with B5 & older Trek. The problem is that it took the entire attention of all the telepaths involved, generally 3 per ship, to counter the Shadows to the extent they managed. In a 1-1 ship to ship the chances of affecting the shadow vessel for a significant time was unreliable at best. They were unable to do anything else & the strain of doing this frequently resulted in casualties for the telepaths involved. If the Undine telepathy isn't as strong as a human P5 (keeping in mind the majority of the telepaths used were Minbari & much better telepaths than P5 the average Minbari is rated P7 or P8) then their telepathic abilities are already a non-factor. So considering the requirements for telepthic combat against a Shadowship the Undine would not be able to both fly their ship & use their telepathy effectively at the same time. They'd have to build bigger ships with a bigger crew complement in order to try to replicate the tactic most likely needing double the telepaths to make up for their lack of relative power & the casualty rate would be much higher probably close to 100% in each encounter simply to temporarily stun a Shadow vessel for a few seconds. The Undine would simply brain hemorrhage themselves to defeat. They'd be better off just going for a straight up shooting war & even that wouldn't be guarenteed as the shadow cutting beam is probably the most effective standard battle weapon of any of the B5 races. The Vorlon lightning cannon not far behind it.
А может тени намеренно оставили дыры в обороне своих кораблей, или скорее создали эту уязвимость от телепатов, иначе теряется весь смысл их стратегии, если корабли нельзя повредить и уничтожить, то и война теряет смысл. А если тени намеренно оставили эту уязвимость в корабле, то и устранить они её могут легко. Плюс у них есть облако, которое не только уничтожает планеты, но и обездвиживает всё корабли.
Species 8472 are considered to be almost unrivaled in the Star Trek universe. While B5 has some really powerful races but I've always felt it was a few paces behind Trek. The Undine are designed to be unstoppable even to species more advanced than the most advanced species in Trek.
I completely agree Star Trek technology is so far Advanced compared to anything's Babylon 5 has not even the old one are a match for anything in star trek. Cool video
MAJOR ERROR HERE. THe 8472 were the only major speices in the ST universe that made use of true biotech.. Whereas both Shadows and Vorlons had had Biotech for A million years or more. THe younger races didnty use the super advanced tech, other than the Minbari, who got a leg up form the Vorlons. The Shadow's biggeest boost seems to have been tothe Drakh.
That statement is rediculos their the first ones idiot. That means they were the first beings to achieved intelligence billions of years ago. They litteraly ruled the galaxy for millions of years got bored with it and left. The level of technology seen in the show is not the peak of their tech it's just the level they need to dominate the younger races and species 8472 is just another younger race. Another in a long line of unrealistic overpowered baddies in the Star Trek that if they existed in B5 the Shadows would just talk them into coming to Z'ha'dum make them land and then use them to pilot their ships.
If combining power to enhance weaponry is a facility of bio ships then I'm sure the Shadows could have quickly developed it in their ships. The fact that Shadow ships can "phase" into hyperspace whereas 8472 can only travel at warp is another advantage the Shadows have, they would easily detect an energy build up in an 8472 ship and simply phase into HS before the blast was released. 8472 have powerful ships to be sure but I wouldn't write the shadows off so easily.
Shadows would have an advantage in an ambush, but in a standup fight the Undine would wipe the floor with them. Undine ships are able to take on borg cubes and win. For comparison, we see USS Voyager survive a small supernova. Voyager is a light cruiser in its era. We see Shadows doing orbital strikes, it doesnt kill the planet, but we've seen a planetary bombardment in trek when the joint Obsidian Order/TalShiar force tries to hit the founders, their normal shots hit like super nukes, leaving huge explosions visable on the planet from a good distance. This leads one to believe B5 ships can take far less damage than trek shields.
I agree with you except on one point... ... is there even hyperspace on Fluidic Space? If I remember correctly Shadow cloaking system was more of moving into a layer of jumpspace subtly than a cloaking device like Klingons or Romulans. If jumpspace indeed exists in Fluidic space I am unsure about how the First Contact would go - moving into realspace would mean suddenly occupying the space some heavily-pressurized fluid is occupying at the same time. It may be possible the Shadows cannot uncloak so in order to scan these new species they would need to go uncloaked, since their scans on hyperspace are actually very limited, and even if they resorted to staying on hyperspace all time the 8472 would detect them becaue of the telepathic imprint and jumpspace. But yes, the final outcome would be the same you stated.
I like that you made this video. It would be interesting to see how a war between these two species would play out. But, I don’t think it would have been as easy as you predicted for the Undine to defeat the Shadows. The Shadows and their allies would be more than a match for Species 8472 although it would be a very brutal war. If Voyager with modified Borg nanoprobes could defeat the Undine, I’m sure the Shadows would have a lot easier time defeating them.
With none of them using any sort of apparent shielding the only question is can they damage each others hulls. That wasnt really answered and is basically impossible to answer. So Id say its a draw by lack of information.
They are the only species in their realm / universe. They are highly evolved. So probably millions of years of evolution. They might not be million years old but that's not important in terms of advancement
Dude earth is only a few million years old as well and we can’t even go past our solar system our planet has developed for a considerable amount of time and space travel is still relatively “new” for us
Also the undene starting place is not entirely known in trek lore they come from fluidic space which the preservers or ancient ones had no part in the creation of this species. So little is know of the age of the species. And how long they’ve been developing for
@@goku546686 that is very inaccurate interpretation of evolution. Human beings have only been around for maybe 10-30,000 years total not the same as earth development your talking about civilization all development and there are plenty of differences. Civilizations even long ones have varying points of advancements and stagnation your also talking about the differences in military development and civilization development.
@@808INFantry11X evolution goes beyond when we were human everything evolved from microorganisms fish and so on. Life evolved on earth from what it was to what it is and life itself took what billions of years to develop to what it is now? The inaccuracy you claim isn’t inaccurate we as a species evolved from multiple different stages
the vorlons and the undine are the 2 most likely species to make an alliance. both super advanced , both slow to go to war. any others combination but these and maybe a war , but not these 2
Do the shadow capital ships cloak? If they do why didn't they send a cloaked vessel in when the white star under command of Commander Ivonova? The shadows just sent a scout. I always thought the shadows are able to phase in and out of Hyperspace. Instead of a hyperspace portal used in most races drive.
I have Star Trek Voyager The Full Journey box here in my apartment, which I bought on the net for 8-9 years ago ☺ I have season 1-4 of Babylon 5 that I bought in a shop here in my hometown Aalesund ☺ I have other SciFi series on DVD such as Stargate SG-1, STA and STU ☺
The official vorlon and shadow sourcebook for the rpg game gives a lot of information that is not in the b5 series or movies. The original shadow homeworld was lost millions of years ago. They could be the oldest of the first ones. In fact , maybe made by an earlier race. They were at least 7 mayor shadow wars.
Very entertaining narrative. Love scifi versus compilations. I always wondered why the Shadows were not more powerful. My guess is that their technology stagnated. Serves them right
I like the analysis; pretty good overall. However, I don't really think some of the things would play out as you mentioned, and there was an error or two in the descriptions of their ships and abilities. While there might only be one Shadow commanding a ship, their ships are basically completely dependent on another, typically "lower", lifeform being used as an organic brain, and they are extremely susceptible to telepathic attacks that completely disable their ships. The Undine act as pilots/commanders on their ship, but their ships, as far as what was shown on screen, do not rely on telepathic anything, they are basically just advanced organic tech. The Undine themselves are extremely strong telepaths; one of them was able to reach out to Kes across the quadrant; I believe this is far beyond what was shown in Babylon 5 but I could be mistaken. They were also, somehow, unexplained but presumably via telepathy, able to home in on Voyager multiple times and open rifts to where they were and attack - seemingly *across dimensions*. I don't think the Young Race telepaths would have any effect whatsoever on the Undine other than communication, whereas you said the Young Race's tactics that were successful against the Shadows would be successful against them as well. Also, those telepathic tactics to instantly disable Shadow ships, the Undine would probably figure that out immediately simply by reaching out with their minds or scanning the Shadow ships initially, and... yea they're done. Undine ships also seem to have stronger weaponry (debatable), but, more importantly, significantly better armor / regeneration; it's also unclear if a Shadow ship could survive more than 1 shot from Species 8472, but it's very likely that the reverse is true based on their tanking similar Borg beams. If at any point it becomes a hand-to-handle battle, it's no contest, 8472 ruins them; Shadows were easily killed; Undine were more or less invulnerable, invisible to scans, and strong enough to rip through the Voyager's *hull* with its bare hands. Hell, if they board a Shadow ship, some stray cells could apparently infect and consume the whole thing. I also think the Undine would be able to directly portal to and home in on the Shadows home world; given the on screen feats doing exactly that to the Borg and, more impressively, to Voyager. If they did randomly portal in and engaged the Younger Races, I also kinda disagree that they'd be able to convince the Undine to stop slaughtering them and point them at the Shadows; Voyager tried exactly that, and the Undine attempted to slaughter them in response telepathically screaming that they were weak and that "the weak will perish". I also don't think the Young Races could stop the Undine at all. Maybe the Undine would get tired of all the slaughter and stop to try and figure out where the Shadows were, lol. I also lol'd hard at how the Borg invasion of Species 8472's space mirrors the Babylon 5's Thirdspace plot; I barely remembered the latter and had to read up on it. Also worth noting I'm basing this on Voyager screen feats only, Star Trek Online isn't canon I don't think and I really don't have hours to spend researching all of that nonsense up anyways.
Here’s the thing: in Voyager, the 8472 are defeated by using nanoprobes to destroy their ships from the inside. Guess what the Drakh plague, which was created by the Shadows, consists of? The Shadows are masters of nanotech. They’d be able to develop an anti-8472 nanotech weapon. On the other hand, the natural 8472 psychic abilities would allow them to stun Shadow pilots like the telepaths of the younger races. In the end, I’m not sure who would prevail
8472 haven't shown any offensive telepathic abilities beyond basic communication. Star Trek telepaths generally tend to be far below B5 telepaths in terms of capabilities. B5 telepaths were literally created to be weapons which is why they are so effective against the shadows
@@onyx081 Not all telepaths were used as weapons in B5. The most common ones, ranked P5, were used in trade and diplomatic deals. Lyta and Bester were not the norm, with Lyta being quite a rarity due to Vorlon enhancement. There was a battle between the younger races and the Shadows were Sheridan used all the telepaths at hand (which since Lyta wasn't there at the particular time, it is plausible that the telepaths that were there weren't stronger than P5). Yet, the younger races still had some success. With sufficient numbers, the telepathic abilities of the Undine can still be an advantage against the Shadows.
@@ThatZillaGuy2 it is VERY unlikely that the minbari telepaths that were used were lower than P11 or 12. Anything less would be like sending out a kid with a plastic sword against a raging bull. It was an experiment, and they would be mad to send weak telepaths to test their theory, as a failure would mean the death and destruction of several ships, the White Star included.
@@ertymexx i must disagree to an extent. Like I said, super strong telepaths are a bit rare with humans. And to be honest we know nothing about Minbari telepaths and how they compare to their human counterparts. Hell, there was one episode where they used a least five Minbari telepaths to prevent Bester from reading their minds. Not a good start when comparing the telepaths of these two species. And despite Delenn's fragile position with the Grey Council, she was still conflicting with the Warrior caste, so it stands to reason that she did not have all the resources at her disposal to obtain all the strong Minbari telepaths she would need for the Shadow war.
Shadow ships are only subject to jamming because they didn't have enough telepaths to use as the central CPUs of their ships. If the shadow ship has a telepath as the CPU, it either can't be jammed or is resistent to jamming. The Shadows were in the process of addressing the jamming issue, but their shipments of telepaths were intercepted early on and they had to go with what they had available. For what its worth, the modified telepaths Sheridan used against Clark's ships in Mars orbit were originally intended to be used to prevent shadow capital ships from being vulnerable to jamming.
Not necessarily. They are strong telepaths in the ST universe, but that means very little, as telepaths in Star Trek are really not that strong compared to B5 telepaths. They can read minds, emotions, sometimes "scan" a feeling of an area, but not much more than that. That would be like putting a commercial teep against a shadow vessel, not very effective. It takes stronger telepaths that can influence the minds of others to mess with shadow vessels. If the undine were that strong, Voyager would have ended veeery differently.
The similarities between the Undine and the Vorlons is uncanny. I would say since the B5 "production bible" was in the hands of the same network that produced DS9 for such a long time, they were copying the Vorlon design when they created the Undine for VOY.
I rather like your conclusion, and feel that you are probably right about how it would go. I remember Cess, not being able to handle the Undeen -(sorry, but, Ididn't see it written down), intrusion in her tiny pretty head, but then..she was still new to combating alien telepathic attacks. As such she still as a novice, held her own rather well. Sooo... In the BABLON 5 universe, telepaths, typically trained in abundance, to defend themselves, would likely adapt soon enough to do what you suggested, turning attention to the primary threat...the SHADOWS..and their allies. Quite possibly, as isolationists, when sent packing, by the combined forces of the FIRST ONES, they likely would consider returning...a greater threat..or rather, too much trouble.
When the Borg attacked 8472, they reacted by deciding everything in the Milky Way Galaxy had to die. They might similarly try to obliterate the B5 universe, UNLESS the Shadows invade them AFTER they had already dealt with Voyager. Whenever Janeway came across their fake Starfleet Headquarters replica species 8472 turned out to be surprisingly reasonable. So if the Shadows visit them after those events, then I think they would have laser-focused the Shadows and not messed with other groups in the B5 universe, unless those groups first messed with them.
8472 tech is living like the vorlons, but their ships do not possess a cosciousness or bond with their pilot. Federation crew boarded an 8472 ship without problem is why I say this. 8472 tech is not powerful either, just based on breaking molecular bonds of matter. That is how they could vaporize planets and Borg ships with just 9 linked vessels. Borg ships and planets aren't quick at maneuvering either. In a battle, I believe the superior handling of the Shadow vessels, their thought fast control of their ships, the ability to phase from real space, and guerilla tactics would make them the odds on favorite in war. Some say the Shadows were weak when it came to psychics. True, but only until the point that they started putting psychics captured from other races into their ships. This nullified the ability to freeze the Shadow vessels flight.
Here's the thing though; whether we like it or not B5 tech ancient or not is far less advanced than that of Star Trek's. Comparing the feats that both ships have been shown doing the edge by a far margin belongs to 8472. We've seen Shadow ships destroyed by coordinated fire by ships from the league of non aligned worlds. Those ships are the crappiest in B5 using lasers and missiles. Weapons that wouldn't even get passed a Galaxy class' navigational shielding. We've even seen that a shadow vessel be destroyed by entering a gas giant. Bioships have shrugged off blasts from both borg and federation ships like they were nothing. They also come from a universe that is constantly under pressure. So I doubt Jupiter's atmosphere would crush a bioship. Also the telepathic counter the shadows employ won't work in this scenario as 8472's telepathy is far beyond that of a P12. And those jamming scenarios become a contest between telepaths as outlined by the book of G'Qwan and what we've seen on screen. The only way I can see the Shadows winning a war with 8472 is by using their nano tech, which they are masters of. It's the whole premise of B5 Excalibur. So it goes down to, can they modify their nano-virus to infect a perfect biological being. And I would have to say yes. If Voyager's Doctor figured it out, why not a million year old Cranky First One.
@@Doublebarreledsimian I had this big long thing ready to talk about how Star Trek is so full of fantastic and B5 is the more realistic future. But I decided to just let this argument just fade. Everyone is entitled to an opinion and I state for the record that I respect yours. Keep the faith and defend your position to the end. Right or wrong. Because in the end, that is who we are. The sum of our convictions.
@@archibaldarcher1876 I salute you sir and your stance. I am rather late to this particular party, but It is fun to talk about these though and I know far too few people who even know B5 and how fantastic it was. In any case this is a don't cross the streams kind of discussion, as these two IP's were never meant to interact with each other.
AHH , 2 of my favourite bad ass alien species in 1 handy dandy video ! and I don't remember what show it was that I first saw an organic living ship , either Babylon 5 or farscape I think but it was a real WOW mind expanding moment when I started thinking about the possibility,s
Interesting scenario! I would argue that species 8472 would win against the Shadows as their ships are (understatedly) immensely powerful. The short version of this is that it only took the combined firepower of only 9 of Species 8472's ships to destroy an entire planet in the same way the Vorlon planet killer did, with a significant difference: 8472's ships are 200 meters in length, and the Vorlon planet killers are 42(or more, based on references) kilometers long! And, for reference, the Shadows planet killer relied on thousands of missiles to bombard a planet apart over the span of hours... hours! Species 8472's puny 200m long ships took a few seconds to obliterate a planet, and it only took nine of them; imagine what a fleet of thousands of 8472's ships could do, and that doesn't even mention their telepathic abilities. I'm a huge fan of both franchises, but being objective here, Species 8472 would obliterate the Shadows.
It's a tough matchup, as the Undine/Species 8472 have only small ships, but those same small ships can combine their firepower to destroy a much bigger foe in one blast, and may have superior telepathy, and no indications however old they might be. The Shadows are used to fighting very powerful foes like the Vorlons, and also have both small scout ships and larger capital-type ships available as well. A battle between the Undine & the Shadows would be both ship firepower and mental telepathic combat in an encounter. If the Undine can get the Shadows to fight in their realms, as noted, the Shadows have zero ability to cloak, and even so, the Undine should have superior numbers with millions/billions/trillions of Undine in their realm. In normal space, the Shadows may have the advantage if they can evade the Undine when cloaked, unless the telepathy of the Undine overcomes that stealth ability the Shadows normally enjoy over other races. The Undine could use their telepathy to aim their particle beam weaponry individually, or collectively against the Shadows ships. The bigger question is if the Undine ships can evade the beam weapons of the Shadows, or take many/sustained hits by a Shadow ship before being destroyed.
In Fandom for Star Trek, Babylon 5 and other SciFi series etc we can read about everything from bioligy to a species, what ship they have, diet, lifespan etc ☺
Species 8472 are tough outside their realm. The Borg learned how scary they were in fluidic space. Species 8472 did something nobody else has, make the Borg negotiate. The Borg briefly allowed Janeway to dictate terms. The Shadow are so different from anything in Trek outside of the Tholians. Interesting matchup
The name for Species 8472, The Undine, where did that name come from? I've seen all the Voyager episodes that had Species 8472 and the name Undine was never used in any of the episodes. So, where did it come from?
One thing you forgot to mention is species 8472 wouldn't need psychic powers to detect the shadow in fluidic space cause the arrival of the shadows would cause wakes in the liquid and they could find them and follow them that way.
If you are talking about the first races, then the Sigma-957 race, the most advanced in knowledge of how the Universe works, judging by the lore, was also in the third space and had contacts with them in other places, and in this is the liquid Universe, theoretically Same. only no one fought them, and in fact they couldn't even follow him because they don't create hyperpath points. Well, fighting him is not that easy. Straczynski, as a truly competent screenwriter, prescribed this ability to pump energy out of space. And energy is the most mysterious entity in physics, perhaps we will never know what it is, perhaps the Vorlons don’t know either..
One thing that should be pointed out. While The Shadows are First Ones, they like The Vorlons are the youngest of them. Which led to that hissy fit between the two that turned into two Shadow Wars
Undine would lose because if Voyager could defeat them, and we know how much of a bunch of goody two-shoes the Federation is, hence the shadows would wipe them out of existence..
This doesn't seem to be a viable theory .. The Undine were able to be destroyed by the Hirogen and Voyager so I think the Shadows would be able to hold their own and defeat the Undine
You definitely got this wrong. The Shadow are at best at par with 8472. The sole purpose of the Shadow is to lead the galaxy into their next evolutions so there is no scenario where they are meddling outside of that. If it does not concern advancing the younger races through cutthroat survival of the fittest then it would never concern them. Add to that, the Shadows, along with the Vorlons, are the youngest of the oldest races left behind which is why they drew the short straw in shepherding the galaxy after the great exodus beyond the rim. The quote about ants is specifically regarding the Walkers of Sigma-957 who are above even the Shadows and Vorlons, and definitely far, far more advanced than 8472. The Thirdspace aliens, who are superficially similar to 8472, are almost Lovecraftian levels of advancement and so terrifying the Vorlons abandoned engaging them altogether. While 8472 could decimate the younger races of the Babylon 5 universe with ease, they would not win a protracted war against either the Shadows or Vorlons and if all the remaining great old powers were united species 8472 would be at best exiled with catastrophic losses.
I would have considered 8472 to be on par with, or slightly more powerful than the Minbari. I interpreted the Shadows and Vorlons to be 'old ones,' level of power. Species 8472 could be defeated with nanobots, or at least scared. Vorlons didn't seem to get scared too often. Mind you Lando Molari did take out a few with some energy weapons, but I do think the Shadows would be more powerful. Frightful thought would be if they find things in common and team up... Good times at that point.
Odd that Species 8472 is called Undine, when I have read on websites about Species in Babylon 5, Star Trek etc, that the name of some species is unknown, but later they got a name.
Rediculos if Species 8472 ever came to Z'ha'dum the Shadows would just talk them into landing then use them as organic components to pilot their ships in their next big war.
@@tzu-chihsu1330 No it really doesn't. The Undine are vulnerable to nano technology. The Shadows are masters of nanotechnology. Voyager literally used modified borg nano probes to destroy the Undine in their own realm. The Shadows would do the same, since they have developed nano viruses that can adapt to and destroy any species
@@onyx081 a white star and a Narn cruiser were enough to destroy a Shadow ship. And Undine military intelligence is not to be underestimated. They can find out about Shadow nanotech and adapt. And that comment about them taking out the Undine in their own dimension is pure fanboy crap. The Voyager crew barely had enough nanoprobes to destroy 6 Undine ships, and Voyager didn't stay in fluidic space long enough to see their full numbers. Yet you go hyperbole and make it sound like they wiped most of their population. If they were THAT powerful with their nanotech, the Shadows wouldn't have lost to anyone. Period. PS: even if it's not onscreen, they DID find a cure for the Shadow/Drakt plague. Their nanotech is not infallible.
The undine would not win by technological strenght. For all i know, the two are evenly matched, but in the shadows original dimension, the undine would have an impressive disadvantage: they don't knos the territory and cannot detect how the hyperspace work. The undine would only have the advantage of numbers in my opinion
Don't underestimate Undine Intelligence. There was that one episode where they shapeshifted (through some kind of genetics tech The Doctor said) into human Starfleet officers, as well as recreate Starfleet academy to near perfection for infiltration training, even though the Undine were THOUSANDS of lightyears from Federation space.
I think there were a lot of assumptions made in this video, and not a lot of explanations to back up those assumptions. Additionally, I don't buy the idea that the Undine/8472 would instantly detect Shadow vessels in Fluidic Space. Why? Because Fluidic Space is portrayed very similarly to B5's Hyperspace - though Hyperspace is a bit cloud-like than liquid-like. The Shadows' technology allowed them to phase shift between Space and Hyperspace but to also stop mid-phase and be in neither location but able to observe both. We see the White Stars attempt something similar while inside Hyperspace at one point, where they create a pocket of Hyperspace to hide in and be almost undetectable while inside this pocket. This pocket was vastly inferior to Shadow Phase Shifting technology. I'd say it's far more likely that a Shadow vessel would enter Fluidic Space and then be able to immediately Phase Shift into its half-present state. The Undine would undoubtedly detect the portal and initial entry, but I don't recall any information regarding any Undine ability to scan between dimensions, all their scans that I can recall were done while inside one dimension or the other. I don't think there's any evidence the Undine would quickly detect the Shadows while Phase Shifted between dimensions, especially since the Undine are unaware of what they should be looking for. There's also the problem of assuming the Shadow's organic armor and other defenses were obviously inferior to the Undine's, and incapable of mounting any real defense. We're talking about two extremely ancient species both using organic defenses that share more in common with each other than with Federation or Borg technologies. We've seen in Babylon 5 that Shadow vessels had the same ability to adapt to incoming weapons that the Vorlons had. So, there's reason to believe that the Shadows could resist the Undine for a considerable amount of time if the Undine did not discover the weakness to telepaths. If the Undine did actually discover the telepath weakness, or were otherwise told about it, then the war would change considerably for a time, but the Shadows have not managed to survive for billions of years on a philosophy of "War breeds Evolution" without having some resilience to defeats. Remember that the Shadows of the Shadow War Cycle were not using their full strength as they didn't want to eradicate the younger races but instead wanted to strengthen their (the younger races) defenses over time. I'd also like to point out that you didn't seem to analyze what a Shadow Slicer Beam could do to Undine bio-armor. That's an undecided factor in this equation and shouldn't be ignored as it could make or break your entire scenario. A lot of people like to rant about Star Trek tech being obviously superior to B5 tech so "obviously" the Star Trek species would win, when in reality both universes have developed different technologies in different ways. Just because Starfleet has energy shields and artificial gravity doesn't mean they can automatically withstand energy blasts from foreign technologies (like a Minbari Neutron beam for example). So, we can't assume that the Shadows could only rely on their massive planet killer Clouds to fight the Undine, since we haven't analyzed the possible effects of the Shadow Slicer Beam. The Undine resistance to Borg Nano-tech could be an advantage against the Shadows or it could not be since Shadow Nano-tech is organic in nature, much like the Undine tech. Anyways, I'll stop ranting now - I'm just really tired of everyone putting Star Trek species strength on an unexplained pedestal and expect Star Trek to wipe the floor with even the most powerful species in Babylon 5.
Star Trek ripped off the idea of the 8472 aliens directly from Babylon 5 anyway like so many other other ideas so the Shadows hands down since Star Trek ripped off his ideas anyway they're basically fighting themselves just in a different sci-fi franchise LOL
You need to do an update of this war. This version, the Undine defeated the first ones, driving the Shadows to the rim also and the few first ones who survived and escaped , sought help from another another species from another dimension to save the Shadow Universe. But this new species now wants to be master of all, so the first ones called the Shadows for help and resurrected Zhadum, a third time, as enticement to help drive this new specie to the pits at Zhadum. You can fill in the rest as an update....
9 Undine Bio ships destroyed a planet in a matter of seconds. Has a Shadow Battle crab ever shown to have that level of firepower? If they did, why did they bother to build the death cloud. Even the Vorlon planet killer was a 5 mile long ship that needed a heavy escort. To have the firepower that the Undine possess with the ability to move it quickly from location to location they could destroy solar systems in a day. You don't want to poke that bear.
