Babylon 5 questin - Bureau 13

[Phily B]

I know that name wasn't mentioned again cause of some legal issues, but did it ever turn into anything else? Was it just a "Section 31" of the PsiCops?

 

[OmahaStar]

I know that name wasn't mentioned again cause of some legal issues, but did it ever turn into anything else? Was it just a "Section 31" of the PsiCops?

Nope. There had been plans, but when the game turned up, that plotline went kapootsky and was never referenced again.

 

[Phily B]

Thanks, every time I re-watch the show I always mean to ask about it. I'll just assume that it was some little cell set up by PsiCorps for one mission or some crap!

 

[JoeD80]

Larry DiTillio mentioned that his plans were Bureau 13 being another secret organization that was working against Psi Corps; that's why there were rogue Psi Cops involved (that's paraphrasing from memory, I don't have the quote in front of me). But he was gone from the show after season 2 so any further plans were lost at that point.

jms said later:

Bureau 13 changed it's name and was absorbed into the whole Psi Corps covert operation.

So the way I follow from that is that it started as a rogue group, and then Psi Corps sent their own operatives in and took it back over.

 

[Reverend]

I answered a similar question in a different thead quite recently, so I'll just paste my response here as it appears to be relevant.

Actually, I rather think Bureau 13 was going to re-emerge in Crusade. Not in name of course and not necessarily involving that officially dead Psi Cop, rather it was a facet of a larger conspiracy in the Earth Alliance that survived after Clark's downfall and was behind the Shadow Hybrid that destroyed Gideon's ship, probably the Advanced Omega Destroyers as well as the digs on Mars & Ganymede too.

Remember that the whole Drakh Plague bit wasn't going to be the crux of the series any more than the Narns acting increasingly aggressive wasn't the main crux of B5 - though you may have been left with the impression it was about half way into season one. Crusade seems as though it was going to be about the left over First One tech, what was being done with it and what it's connection was to the Technomages. The connection to 13 comes from one of the Psi Corp novels; though I haven't read them (yet) I gather there's supposed to be a connection between that facility in the San Diago wastes and some Vorlon tech from around the time the Corps was formed.

 

[Mr Light]

Come to think of it, wasn't the X-Files Pilot Alien Bounty Hunter episode about a secret EarthGov military conspiracy in cyber-tech where the subjects where declared dead and whisked away? Isn't that exactly happened with the Psi Cop Lady Leader of Bureau 13 and Abel Horn?

 

[Reverend]

That's right, Black was an ex-Gropo who survived the Battle of the Line, though the experiments were more "black-ops" than "conspiracy". The difference being that Black-ops tends to have some degree of official sanction. Still, given that the planet they were on was also home to the last of Dureena's people, I imagine they'd have gotten back to them at some point down the road.

As for the "deceased" Psi Cop, I don't think she was a cyborg like Black or Able Horn, that was probably just a cover that allowed her to "disappear".

 

[Phily B]

I always found it weird that San Diego was still in ruins too, wasn't it nuked in like 2050 or something?

 

[Mr Light]

Ah yes, Horn was "killed" and "resurrected" with cyborg stuff, while the Psi Cop Lady just faked her death.

 

[Reverend]

I always found it weird that San Diego was still in ruins too, wasn't it nuked in like 2050 or something?

2150. Still, the area would still be hot for several centuries at least and going in and cleaning up a wasteland in which nobody (officially) lives is expensive, so I imagine it'd be hard to get the funding for it out of the Earth Senate. Plus of course having a shadowy organisation's secret base there may have something to do with said funding being delayed, tied up, promised and then cut from the budget...

Actually, if memory serves there were a few 'Universe Today' headlines glimpsed at that said something to the effect of "San Diego reclamation ready to begin" and/or "San Diego reclamation halted due to budget cuts". Jan probably knows one way or the other.

 

[Jan]

I know that there were Universe Today stories about the San Dieg ruins shown onscreen but I don't remember any of the specific ones at the moment.

Jan