Babylon 5

[Jan]

Being born a psychic in B5 is just.. Crap. Well for humans.
You either go into a .. Well Nazi type of group or put on meds that put you in depression ... Or run. .. Not the best of choices.
And if your a P10 or better your life is completely screwed.

And what Byron was probably thinking.. Got delt this shitty hand at birth, then more crap layered on.. Then oh find out your made by the vorlons for giggles. ..
No wonder he went loopy.

Anybody who's read the Psi Corps trilogy has an idea of just how much abuse the kids brought up by the Corps were subjected to. Brainwashing, gaslighting, constantly scared and pitted up against each other. No wonder he lost all common sense.
One sad thing I noticed when comparing the scripts to the episodes was that a number of small scenes were cut where Byron spent time communing with his people. I think people might have seen him in at least a slightly better light if those hadn't been cut.

 

[Gov Kodos]

Anybody who's read the Psi Corps trilogy has an idea of just how much abuse the kids brought up by the Corps were subjected to. Brainwashing, gaslighting, constantly scared and pitted up against each other. No wonder he lost all common sense.
One sad thing I noticed when comparing the scripts to the episodes was that a number of small scenes were cut where Byron spent time communing with his people. I think people might have seen him in at least a slightly better light if those hadn't been cut.

Something that threw off my patience for the telepath arc was the way Lyta was handled. She's kept at a distance by the human command staff because of the basic distrust of telepaths but that prejudice was left to the audience to remember. However, the show has Lyta seen being a great help, in fact telepaths as a whole were indispensable to winning the Shadow War but many of them were alien telepaths. The human telepaths were just cannon fodder for the war against Clark but it's almost easy to forget because Lyta is in the forefront and mostly very sympathetic. I could never help wondering why the crew keeps throwing Lyta under the bus. The prejudice against telepaths is why but it's never shown a fault in the command staff sufficiently to feel the distrust of telepaths is much more than a plot device to justify narrative turns when needed. None of them feel especially inherently distrustful of telepaths other than Ivanova in s1 and she had justifiable reasons for her distrust of the Corp.

 

[DonIago]

Hmm. I never read it as an active distrust of the telepaths so much as a passive distrust/disinterest in their plight. Which is to say, I don't think they're jerks to Lyta on purpose, I think they don't even realize they're being jerks to begin with. Like, the whole thing with Lyta being bumped into smaller quarters was just dickish, but do we even know whether Our Heroes other than Zack(?) knew it had occurred?

To be fair, the human telepaths used in the civil war were ones hooked into Shadow tech that Franklin couldn't remove, so while I won't argue they were used by Sheridan, it's unclear if or when they ever would have been healed.

Yes, Lyta should have been treated better, but she also made some bad choices on her own (did she intentionally blow up Z'had'dum?)...in the end I just don't feel we have enough context to say whether Our Heroes were intentionally or unintentionally cold-shouldering her.

TL;DR As a gay man, I have a lot of friends who support my rights but would balk if I asked them to march in a Pride Parade with me, and I feel like Our Heroes may have felt the same way toward teeps. Happy to say they support Telepath Rights, less eager to get involved in the fight. But Sheridan did grant them a colony and they did essentially abuse his hospitality in the end.

 

[Farscape One]

They did abuse his hospitality.

I think there is a reflexive distrust of telepaths by humans. And I can't say I blame them. They have no idea if telepaths are randomly probing them, and a number of telepaths have shown to be untrustworthy. Bester, the Psi Cops, Byron's people with their blackmailing, his followers who took hostages... they really made telepaths look bad.

 

[Gov Kodos]

They did abuse his hospitality.

I think there is a reflexive distrust of telepaths by humans. And I can't say I blame them. They have no idea if telepaths are randomly probing them, and a number of telepaths have shown to be untrustworthy. Bester, the Psi Cops, Byron's people with their blackmailing, his followers who took hostages... they really made telepaths look bad.

Yeah, I thought the human distrust of telepaths made perfect sense for just that reason. It's what made me cringe at Star Trek's Betazoids because their cavalier rifling through people's minds was unspeakably objectifying to the point I couldn't believe they'd ever be trusted by humans, at any rate. B5 earth didn't handle their telepaths well, set up a civil war by putting them in a ghetto and treating them like pariahs but it was not an unlikely human response, especially when it popped up so abruptly.

 

[Kamen Rider Blade]

I wouldn't be surprised if Psionic Jammers were a standard thing.

 

[David cgc]

My headcanon for why the alien races didn't have the same issues as humans with their telepaths is that their telepaths all dated back to the prior Shadow War, if not earlier, so the telepath gene had had time to disperse throughout the population. It's a lot easier to deal with the concept that someone could read someone else's mind at any time if entire population is a P1 or P2 on the Earth scale at a minimum, so anyone who was scanned would know it was being done to them.

As for Lyta, she was dealt a bad hand, but she didn't do much to improve it. When she first came back to the station, she was under the thumb of Kosh and Ulkesh and wouldn't have been doing much socializing with the main crew. That started to change during season 4, but then she blew up a planet without cluing anyone else in. Indeed, she hoped to get away with it without anyone realizing she was responsible. That's the kind of thing that gets you frozen out of the decision-making process and not included on lists of essential station personnel who get their rent comp'd. She probably would've been kicked off the station altogether if Sheridan wasn't worried about what she could do where he couldn't keep an eye on her.

 

[DonIago]

That's a sad but possibly accurate analysis. :/

Honestly, until it became clear that Lyta was funding terrorism in late-S5 I was pretty sympathetic to her. Franklin summed up her reasons for being upset pretty well at one point. But the way she coped with it went over the line for me. That G'kar and Garibaldi were willing to aid and abet her left a bad taste in my mouth as well, though Garibaldi's character flaws were pretty legendary in any case. Late series G'kar though...that surprised me.

 

[Gov Kodos]

My headcanon for why the alien races didn't have the same issues as humans with their telepaths is that their telepaths all dated back to the prior Shadow War, if not earlier, so the telepath gene had had time to disperse throughout the population. It's a lot easier to deal with the concept that someone could read someone else's mind at any time if entire population is a P1 or P2 on the Earth scale at a minimum, so anyone who was scanned would know it was being done to them.

As for Lyta, she was dealt a bad hand, but she didn't do much to improve it. When she first came back to the station, she was under the thumb of Kosh and Ulkesh and wouldn't have been doing much socializing with the main crew. That started to change during season 4, but then she blew up a planet without cluing anyone else in. Indeed, she hoped to get away with it without anyone realizing she was responsible. That's the kind of thing that gets you frozen out of the decision-making process and not included on lists of essential station personnel who get their rent comp'd. She probably would've been kicked off the station altogether if Sheridan wasn't worried about what she could do where he couldn't keep an eye on her.

When I watch Sheridan's conversation with Lyta it seems like he's giving her every chance to own up to the responsibility for blowing up Zahadum but she keeps trying to make it a hypothetical that absolves her of her responsibility, she was doing it for a higher purpose which Sheridan saw as her making excuses for herself to be judge jury and executioner. Had she just said I did it and I'd do it again the same way he still wouldn't have liked or approved but he'd have had more trust in her.

 

[David cgc]

That G'kar and Garibaldi were willing to aid and abet her left a bad taste in my mouth as well, though Garibaldi's character flaws were pretty legendary in any case. Late series G'kar though...that surprised me.

Well, as he said, G'kar saw who he was five years earlier inside of who Lyta was after Byron died. Pissed off, righteous, and willing do to anything to hurt the people who hurt her. Back in the first season, G'kar was collaborating with assassins and war criminals, invading small planets, back-stabbing to get ahead in his own government, and barely had a spark of the person he'd become.

 

[Jan]

I always saw the command staff's treatment of Lyta as mostly an unconscious prejudice. Not for just the one reason of her being a telepath, though. Remember how Ivanova had issues with how to get along with Marcus because he wasn't part of the structure she was comfortable with? I think that's part of the issue with Lyta as well.

I wish we knew more about the telepath conflict. We know that Sheridan was wrong about there being a war between telepaths and normals, it was a conflict between 'blips' and the Corps. We know that Bester was convicted as a war criminal and that Lyta and Lennier both died in the conflict (per the Crusade bible and orignal draft of "The Path of Sorrows"). But that's pretty much it. I'd love to know how Lennier got involved, particularly.

 

[JD]

The West Nile virus is endemic in the US, it's the most common disease transmitted by mosquitoes there, according to the CDC, humans have caught it in the following states:

Alabama Arizona, Arkansas, California, Colorado, Connecticut, Florida, Georgia, Idaho, Illinois, Indiana, Iowa, Kansas, Louisiana, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, Michigan, Mississippi, Missouri, Montana, Nebraska, Nevada, New Jersey, New Mexico, New York, North Carolina, North Dakota, Ohio, Oklahoma, Oregon, Pennsylvania, South Carolina, South Dakota, Texas, Utah, Virginia, Washington, Wisconsin, and Wyoming.

Source: CDC

Wow, I didn't realize it was that common here. I know it has popped up before, but I thought it was very rare, and you usually got it in South America or somewhere like that.

 

[valkyrie013]

Lyta was treated reasonably well by Kosh, but Ulkesh just used her like the Disposable Fodder the Vorlons made her to be. Or just general disgust at a lower lifeform.
As for The Teeps in Human culture, how long has it been since they were discovered? Hundred Years?? And then back then they were thrown into the Psy Corps, to mundanes, problem dealt with, out of sight out of mind. So Hundred years later, there's just a general Blah about the whole thing, there over there doing there own thing, again out of sight, out of mind.
The Psy Corps didn't help by fostering a general conceded mentality of "Were Better, Homo Superior"
Like X-Men, people are afraid of differences. Think of if Telepathy was discovered now, would they be able to live a normal life? or be treated as guinea pigs, or weapons by various governments, used, and tossed away. Horrible life.

Lyta went the Malcom X route of violence being okay to get the changes. And sometimes, thats all that's left. And maybe thats what Garabaldi and G'Kar seen was that no amount of peaceful talk would change it, so a limited violence maybe needed.

 

[Reverend]

But that's pretty much it. I'd love to know how Lennier got involved, particularly.

I'd always assumed it would have been because it was something he felt Marcus would do. A cause worth dying for and all that.
As for the war itself, I get the feeling that it wasn't just blips vs. the Corp so much as the Corp vs. literally everyone else. Like, they made a real play for power and control of the EA, which then massively backfired.

ETA: one thing I've often wondered about is the role of Mars post season 5. We know it's an independent state, but does that mean it's entirely it's own thing now, or a full and equal member of the EA, with Senate seats in EarthGov and all that? If it's the former then it raises questions about how Mars handles it's telepaths. Would they have kicked Psi-Corps out? Founded one all their own? Invited them to stay because who else knows what the hell to do with rogue teeps?

 

[Kraig]

Wow, I didn't realize it was that common here. I know it has popped up before, but I thought it was very rare, and you usually got it in South America or somewhere like that.

West Nile has been in California since 2004. It has wiped out the Magpies completely where I live. I haven't seen a Magpie in my area of the state in over ten years. I used to hear them fight with the blue jays over territory, but not anymore. Thanks to climate change we even have the tropical species of mosquito that bites in the daytime and carries Zika virus.

 

[Cap.T]

The show is now available in HD on iTunes US, UK and Canada. It read somewhere it's also coming to HBO Max in the next few days, no idea if that's going to be the HD version though.

 

[Kraig]

I'd always assumed it would have been because it was something he felt Marcus would do. A cause worth dying for and all that.
As for the war itself, I get the feeling that it wasn't just blips vs. the Corp so much as the Corp vs. literally everyone else. Like, they made a real play for power and control of the EA, which then massively backfired.

ETA: one thing I've often wondered about is the role of Mars post season 5. We know it's an independent state, but does that mean it's entirely it's own thing now, or a full and equal member of the EA, with Senate seats in EarthGov and all that? If it's the former then it raises questions about how Mars handles it's telepaths. Would they have kicked Psi-Corps out? Founded one all their own? Invited them to stay because who else knows what the hell to do with rogue teeps?

Spoiler

In the fifth season, President Sheridan allowed Mars to set up a diplomatic mission on Minbar with the Interstellar Alliance to get Mars out from under the EA bureaucracy. So I would say entirely its own thing with the Interstellar Alliance and not part of the the EA.

 

[Reverend]

I did wonder about that, but it could be no different than say France or Australia opening an embassy on Minbar. The EA is after all made up of sovereign nations. Also, there seemed to be a fairly heavy EA military presence on Mars during Crusade...

 

[Ithekro]

Mars would be a nation now, rather than a colony. Something that would be very difficult in an interstellar setting since Mars is in the same solar system as Earth. Most would think of Mars as a part of Earth's territory if one is generally on the level of, one system equals one nation. Mars would generally be considers a state of the Earth government, but Mars wanted to be a nation that was not governed by Earth. Thus Mars independence. Is Mars a nation in alliance with Earth under the Earth Alliance post 2261, or are they Mars, a sovereign and separate power that happens to share the same solar system as the capital planet of the Earth Alliance?

 

[David cgc]

In "War Zone," a caption identified Mars as an "Independent Member of the Earth Alliance." I'd interpret that as meaning that not every iceball and spacestation run by humans under the auspices of the EA is a "member" of the Earth Alliance, like Proxima III or Orion VII or Earth itself, and those members can encompass more than one planet (so, for instance, the Senator from Proxima III would also represent the Proxima IIIa moonbase, and the space stations in orbit of the planet, and the mining outpost one jump away with a crew of thirty), so up until the end of Season 4, Mars was directly governed by Earth, or, less likely, the Earth Alliance as a whole (similar to how Babylon 5 had an Earth-appointed EA officer as military governor), but post-independence, they had sovereignty over their own planetary government and could hold elections for their leadership (or, I don't know, appoint a king, if they wanted).

Or, to be more topical, Mars had been like Puerto Rico or Washington, D.C., but after Sheridan strong-armed the EA, it became a regular state.