Great idea for an episode; I found it fascinating to watch events unfold through the eyes of a Psi Corps newbie.
Interesting to see the brochure for Babylon Five, too:
And whoa, is this what all telepaths “see” when watching two telepaths in a mental battle?
Laura, the young girl telepath, was the creepiest, I thought — she seemed SO naive and idealistic in her sincere believe that “mundanes” were inferior. And then she even attempts to flirt with Bester:
To Bester’s credit, he didn’t take advantage of her though he could have.
The “OBEY” signs all around Psi Corps are disturbing as well.
This is the first time we’ve heard the term “mind shredder”, isn’t it?
During the scene when Bester was talking to the rogue telepath’s image in the mirror, was he really talking to the rogue telepath’s mind or just imagining this conversation?
Ick. I guess this was an example of “mind shredding”?
The bartender starts telling Chen, “I saw a naked Pachmora (sp?) once. You know that hump on their back? It’s not a hump at all. It’s –” but then Chen breaks away because he sees the rogue telepath. So of course, now I’m curious…do we ever get to find out what that hump really is??
Too bad for Chen, though — in addition to not finding out what the hump is, he gets killed off. I kind of suspected this would happen, though; he had sort of a red shirt look about him, didn’t he?
As much as I despise Bester, I couldn’t help but notice that he honestly seems to care about other telepaths. He risks his own life to save Laura, and he tells B5 security not to hurt the rogue telepath.
Interesting conversation between Franklin and Bester, where Bester is forced to admit that Franklin would not kill Bester if he had the chance.
“You’re an optimist,” Bester says to Franklin. “I’d forgotten what one of your kind looks like.”
Then on the way back to Psi Corps, Laura begs Bester to let her take care of the Mundane. What’s especially chilling is that she pleads like a little girl asking for more candy, but what she’s really asking for is permission to be the one to dump a living, sentient being out the airlock to die.
Yikes.
Good thing Lyta and the other telepaths don’t feel this way about non-telepaths.
(I hope)
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I love this episode because Bester fascinates me so much…of course, I’m just odd and was almost a criminal psychology major at one point so yeah
It was great to see an ep entirely focusing on life in the Corps from their point of view rather than that of the people on B5 who are all quite opposed to it.
You don’t get to find out what it is, but I googled it, and the hump on their back is actually their mate. Thank you, google, for telling me all I need (or didn’t…) need to know about the Pak’ma’ra.
ooooh I did find this episode creepy…you’re totally right though, Chen was a goner from the start
oh noes, you only have ten more episodes until THE LAST ONE!
That’s the thing about most of the psi-corps people we see (not the rogues, of course, but the rest): they really, truly believe that the corps is mother, the corps is father, and that mundanes aren’t really people. To Bester, he really, truly, believes that bringing the rogue telepaths back into the fold is in their best interest and they’ll eventually thank him for it. On a fundamental level he does not understand why they might not love psi-corps.
He cares about other telepaths…and only about other telepaths. If you’re a telepath, you call it loyalty. If you’re not, it has another name.
I refused to be endeared to Bester because of this, despite his admittedly good qualities. Thus, this episode bothered me right till the end, when the world turned right way up again.
On the other hand, Zack’s rather flip attitude upon being told about a Corps telepath being murdered shows that the problem exists on both sides.
Once you’re done, you have to look up the Psi Corps Trilogy of books - if you liked this episode, then you’ll enjoy those.
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