The Telepath War and the Fate of Bester Explained | Babylon 5 

Lyta wasn't treated well by Sheridan at the end. She's a good example of the good person who got pushed too far and became evil.

agree, considering how the rest of the Babylon 5 crew treated each other like family and literally put their lives on the line to protect each other. They helped each other to overcome personal demons yet for some reason, they acted out of character by treating Lyta badly considering what she did for them. Think Sheridan and the others would have been more than willing to help her undermine Bester as they would have found more and more what his agenda was, so think I will just blame the writers on that, they drove Lyta down that route that was more plot driven that character driven.

Once Sheridan was a politician he had to tread carefully when it came to interfering in Earth affairs and the Psi Corps. But kicking Lyta out of her apartment seemed a little ungrateful. She deserved some kind of stipend for helping them save the freaking galaxy!

Yes I was wondering why Lyta was not used to control Bester. She could have removed all his PSI ability or at least Blocked him from ever using them again. Then having her do it while Face to face with Bester & he could NOT do anything about it! ;-)

Sheridan was a terrible politician, and the way he handled Lyta is one example of this. He leaves the most powerful telepath in the universe to sink or swim on her own, which creates an opening for Bester woo her back to the Corps. Sheridan should have made sure Lyta's loyalties were to him, instead of yielding them to most evil PsiCop in existence.

That he does, its too bad he sold the rights to WB.

@@scotttild AFAIK WB only owns the rights to a television series, while JMS still own the rights to movies.

To me it seems that some of the personalities and side interests of the actors were brought up in the show - and Walter Koenig he has also written some stories so that means that he was into literature. Utilize the side parts of the characters. Garibaldi had his episodes of alcohol problems. And Jerry Doyle who played Garibaldi passed from alcohol related problems a few years ago. I wouldn't be surprised if he actually did have some alcohol issues already when it was filmed and those episodes were at least a way to shake up that for a while. Andreas Katsulas passed from cancer and he did smoke a lot - but was a great actor nonetheless.

I'd have watched it.

JMS introduced us to the tip of the iceberg. He or others could spend a lifetime on the rest of it.

You are very welcome!

All thanks to idiots cancelling the show prematurely. JMS did the best he could since there was no advance notice about TNT swooping in at the very last minute as the series finale had already been shot by that point.

You have to remember that they were not sure they were getting a season five so they wrote it in case it ended in season four…

JMS thought he wouldn't get a S05 so he had to wrap it in S04 just in case. Also, the reason behind his rise were the shadows, since Morden was talking to him in the call intercepted by The Great Machine.

The mismanagement of the Clarke arc was due to the unstable hands at the studio initially saying 'wrap it up, season four is the end' then changing their mind well in to the fourth season when it was too late to walk back some of the situations (e.g. Sheridan was already in custody). This is why the pacing in season 4 feels 'too fast' and we get things like Bester monologueing to Garibaldi about his evil schemes (when normally we'd get to see Garibaldi work it out himself over several episodes). It's also why season five rehashes old ground with new faces - the mad centuari emperor is now the mad centauri regent. The evil shadows are now the evil shadows of the shadows (Drakh), and why the telepath storyline came out of nowhere and used several episodes to clumsily wander around. As for Crusade, I tried watching it last month and oh wow it was a let down. There, the production was plagued by issues such as 1) The studio somehow alienated the company or key staff that did the prosthetics so there were basically zero B5 alien species until mid season (we saw the BACK of two minbari and one halloween costume quality looking Gaim in episode six...) 2) The company that did the CGI went under and the originals were lost so all the special effects looked really weird and even worse than what they had several years earlier until after mid season plus 3) The studio managed to misfile some paperwork that resulted in the sets being shredded so the one time they finally visited babylon 5 it was just cheap walls thrown up in a warehouse and obviously slapped together compared to the original sets. Add to this an awkward story start to the season, ultimately only having 3 or 4 episodes of good solid sci fi in there and it was painful. You can safely not watch Crusade and won't miss anything from the B5 universe. I wish they had got a chance to stretch their legs, but the start was sabotaged by the studio, circumstance, and weak initial scripts.

The Psi Corp were never the power behind Clarke's throne. That was established when they found all the telepaths being shipped to be shadow pilots in season 3. Earth had multiple factions vying for power and control.

I’d like to know the title.

@@Rgoid The Starshatter book series.

Just had a look, will try these books out. I'm looking for books with the depth of Peter F Hamilton (which, for me are the sci fi equivalents of Steven Erikson's Malazan books). Thanks for mentioning this.

@@tobyclayton2597 I read The Reality Dysfunction the week it was released. The wait for the 2 following books felt like an eternity.

@@tobyclayton2597 Thank you :) If you enjoy short stories, you can try one of my two anthologies. Both have big glossaries included to ease any new reader into the universe.

Yes, we’d all seen that statue outside PsiCorps since B5. The fact that it’s Bester but nobody knows was a great twist,

That was the section that stayed with me - both the mindwipe, and the moment in the court. Also, given the timeline, Bester was in his 60s during season one of the show, so Garibaldi was fighting an octagenarian in the final book.

@@weejas Bester was born in 2189 so he was 69 when he came looking for Jason Ironheart. I always thought that it was an interesting choice to make the character that old, about 10 years older than Walter Koenig was at the time.

Bester assumes Sheridan would come and speak at his trial, even, and probably in his defence. Setting it after Sleeping in Light is an inspired choice because, honestly, I think Bester is right. I think Sheridan would be the kind of guy to get up there and do a Lee Adama on the stand.

Sheridan didn't die he went to beyond the rim with the others they assumed He never got the last laugh.

@@scotttild How different from death that is may be anyone's guess.

@@scotttild Yes, but basically nobody knows that, everyone assumes he died.

There is one story where Bester is dead and Burried. Garibaldi shows up that night, in the rain (of course), and stabs a knife into the grave.

He drives a stake through it right?

@@ianwright4255 Yeah. I always thought that was weird.

@@cugamer8862 He was treating Bester like a vampire. Gotta make sure he doesn't come back!

You're very welcome!

The Technomage Trilogy following Galen was brilliant as well, and helped to weave the B5 story more, considering their beginnings and leaving the shadows behind.

@@JonBowe I got that too. But I somehow am not able to finish it. It just cant keep my attention. Which is sad. :(

Glad you liked it!

If you dig around a bit you'll find them floating around on the internet. Try googling 'Babylon 5 Psi Corp books pdf' and you might find them on the Internet Archive site.

@@Phintasmo Thank you, found those one!

I am very sad that these books are all out of print now. I didn't get to read them all back in the day.

Enjoy!

@@martincoiner971 they are well woth the Read

That's absolutely the way to adapt it!

Walter Koenig is on record preferring B5.

So glad you liked the video! I re-read the books for the first time in years for this video. They are fun reads! Garibaldi and Bester feel very authentic and the author knows how to keep things moving. Book one is a good back story of how Earth reacts to the emergence of Telepaths. Book two reads like a series of interlinked short stories marking key moments in Bester’s life up until his first visit to B5. The third book is the best - it takes us beyond the events of the series and deals with a tighter, more contained narrative. All well worth a read!

I would second reading the books. Each one tells a self-contained story, and together they span about two centuries. We get to meet Lyta's maternal line, too. If you like B5 backstory, there's also a trilogy around Galen - "The passing of the techno-mages". It covers their origins, why they left, and why Galen stayed around to help. It's a bit grim in places, but still entertaining. If you're familiar with the Wheel of Time, there's a decent overlap in that in both series, those wielding this awesome power have very little idea how to do so, and are barely tapping the surface until they learn it properly.

Is that the Psicorp founder guy? He was Bester’s secret grandfather. He didn’t exactly manipulate Bester’s life, but he was responsible for the whole situation of Psicops hunting down rogues.

And the Technomage Trilogy please. For completeness 😊

Definitely plan to do these at some point.

A potential Bester TV series/miniseries feels a bit like the follow-up "Kessler", to the BBC's seminal "The Secret Army" TV series from the late 1970s. In the follow-up we meet again the original series' main villain, Ludwig Kessler, now living in exile in Argentina or maybe some other south american country (I don't quite remember, this was a very long time ago now.) He has built himself a new life, he has a family who know nothing of his past, and as the episodes progress the past starts to catch up with him. Bester was a phenomenal villain, so expertly written by JMS, and played, by Walter Koenig. The Gods of Sci-Fi demand, I think, that this incredible character be given the sendoff he so well deserves.

It's a twisted version of The Fugitive. When I heard about JMS's plans for Bester's future I can't help but think of the Nazies that escaped to Argentina. I doubt that's a coincidence.

Very plausible. It felt like they were going to fold the old B5 characters back in to the story if Crusade had continued.

Agreed, the books are really fun reads.

Just curious where you found good bab5 fanfic. I found most underwhelming.

That'd be the dream scenario. If Koenig was up to it you could even have old Bester in jail as a framing device/narration.

@@Phintasmo - Exactly as I envisioned it.

Like a Sci-fi Better Call Saul

Thanks! I really went down the rabbit hole with this one - had a lot of fun doing it! The trickiest/most time consuming part was figuring out how to tell it visually. I wanted it to feel like you’d kind of seen this Bester movie that never existed.

You are very welcome!