G'Kar and Dust

[RoJoHen]

After "Dust to Dust" in Season 3, I was kind of hoping there would be some follow up to G'Kar's use of the drug. After all, he has been trying since the pilot to find a way to create Narn telepaths.

I would have preferred to deal with G'Kar's dust addiction than Franklin's stim addiction. Granted, Franklin is my least favorite character of the whole show, so I would have been okay with as little focus on him as possible....

 

[Jan]

It's an interesting notion but G'Kar becoming addicted to Dust wouldn't have led to the eventual freedom of Narn from the Centauri. Given the enlightenment that G'Kar experienced from his use of Dust, I doubt that he ever used it again and that he also dropped his plan to use the drug as a weapon. He pretty much would have had to, considering his arrest for assaulting Vir and Londo.

I liked the way the Franklin addiction was handled. It brought some real depth to a character that had been portrayed as arrogant and mostly superficial and used mostly for exposition purposes to the story.

Jan

 

[RoJoHen]

I'm almost certain that he didn't use it again, but the way the episode ends with Bester walking off, "at least it didn't end up in the hands of any aliens" or whatever he says, it seemed like they were setting something up for later.

 

[Harvey]

I liked the way the Franklin addiction was handled. It brought some real depth to a character that had been portrayed as arrogant and mostly superficial and used mostly for exposition purposes to the story.

I liked everything about Franklin's stimulant addiction...except for the big episode around it, Walkabout. It's just so...routine. I felt Franklin's problem was handled in a much more interesting and mature way in Shadow Dancing. Walkabout could have been an episode of Star Trek: Voyager, and although I enjoy much of that series, I'm not drawing the comparison in a complementary way.

 

[Jan]

I'm almost certain that he didn't use it again, but the way the episode ends with Bester walking off, "at least it didn't end up in the hands of any aliens" or whatever he says, it seemed like they were setting something up for later.

What Bester said was:

You know, I always said this whole

Dust idea wasn't going to work. We
spent five years developing the
stuff, tying it in to latent genes,
and it hasn't produced one telepath
of acceptable strength in the normal
population. Ah, well...at least we
got it out of the hands of aliens
and back among the humans were it
belongs.​

I think it was mainly to remind us again how far the Corps would go to develop more, and stronger, telepaths. If I have a complaint about the various Psi Corps episodes at all, it's that so many episodes concentrated on the Corps experimenting on its members and not enough on the other means they used to repress and control them. I thought more could have been made of the kinds of stories that Talia was told when she was captured in "A Race through Dark Places". Trouble was, when Talia was gone, we got Lyta back and she'd already gone rogue.

Jan

 

[Neroon]

Perhaps some of those Psi Corps story elements you allude to are being held back for B5 movie of some kind? I know.... not terribly likely these days, but it's a start.

 

[Ryan Thomas Riddle]

After "Dust to Dust" in Season 3, I was kind of hoping there would be some follow up to G'Kar's use of the drug. After all, he has been trying since the pilot to find a way to create Narn telepaths.

I would have preferred to deal with G'Kar's dust addiction than Franklin's stim addiction. Granted, Franklin is my least favorite character of the whole show, so I would have been okay with as little focus on him as possible....

Trying a drug once does not necessarily lead to addiction. In the case of G'Kar, the drug allowed him to have a spiritual revelation (with a little Kosh helping hand) and it started him down the path of going from warrior to priest. It would've been beyond, as JMS says, the truth line to have G'Kar develop a drug addiction after that experiance with his father.

Whereas with Franklin, his stim addiction felt natural and organic to the character. I've met several people who are control freaks and workaholics that turn to stimulants such as cocaine and methamphetimines to help them get through the day. In fact, I could just look in the mirror. Having gone through a similar situation, I felt that Franklin's story was well done.

 

[RoJoHen]

^Okay, maybe G'Kar having an addiction after one use would have been a stretch.

But he has made a big deal about Narn telepaths, so it seems out of character to me for him to have a telepathic experience without trying to reproduce it.

 

[Jan]

But he has made a big deal about Narn telepaths, so it seems out of character to me for him to have a telepathic experience without trying to reproduce it.

If your first telepathic experience was with Vir and Londo's minds would you want to repeat it any time soon?? That doesn't mean that he gave up on his quest to try to get his people the advantages that having Narn teeps would give them, just that he abandoned the idea that Dust would be a viable way to accomplish it.

Jan

 

[Neroon]

^ Well, there's always a certain red-headed telepath, lovely of eyes and marvelous of ... pleasure thresholds.

 

[Reverend]

Yeah as I recall Lyta's band of merry Blips sold G'Kar all the genetic material they could want for piles of cash and a bunch of long range starships, so the Narn telepath thread wasn't forgotten. I wonder if the rogue teeps ever did get a homeworld of their own. I've yet to read the psi-corp trilogy (almost done with city of sorrows) so I don't know how much of the telepath war is covered in there.

 

[Neroon]

Wasn't it just Lyta herself who sold G'Kar the material? Whether she was conscious or unconscious is another matter entirely.

 

[Hermiod]

This is a guess based on nothing but speculation, but in a war between normals and telepaths (specifically the Psi Corp) I would imagine that such rogue telepaths would be extremely useful as a means of defence.

 

[Neroon]

But could you convince them to be on your side? I'm not so sure, after the way that either side has treated them. Psi Corps or normal.

 

[Hermiod]

^You could if you said "here's a planet, get rid of the Psi-Corps and it's yours."

 

[Jan]

Wasn't it just Lyta herself who sold G'Kar the material? Whether she was conscious or unconscious is another matter entirely.

No, that was the original deal. When she went back to him in "Darkness Ascending" she said:

In exchange for certain
considerations, you'll get not only
my DNA sequence, you'll get the DNA
from as many telepaths as you want,
until you find the sequence that
will combine well enough with your
DNA to let you start breeding Narn
telepaths. The more of us you have,
the better the odds of one of us
working out.​

The problem in a war between telepaths and normals is that there's no way to tell them apart if the telepaths don't conveniently wear the symbol and the gloves.

Jan​

 

[Anwar]

She "sold" him her genetic material? I thought the implication was that she would mate with him and give him a narn/human telepath hybrid or something.

 

[Jan]

She "sold" him her genetic material? I thought the implication was that she would mate with him and give him a narn/human telepath hybrid or something.

That was G'Kar's original er...proposition to her. Later on, it was a business transaction.

That we know of, that is. There's all sorts of speculation about what went on when they went off together. Now that would've been a great spinoff series - The Adventures of Lyta and G'Kar.

Jan

 

[Neroon]

That we know of, that is. There's all sorts of speculation about what went on when they went off together. Now that would've been a great spinoff series - The Adventures of Lyta and G'Kar.

That interest is one reason why "Genius Loci" appealed to me. I'm not sure who all has read it or what their impressions were, but I really enjoyed seeing the two of them again.

 

[Anthony Sabre]

Now that would've been a great spinoff series - The Adventures of Lyta and G'Kar.

Jan

No thanks. I was glad to see Lyta go. The punch that Lochley hit her with was pretty gratifying to me. Her powers were spiraling out of control, towards infinity, and her personality along with it. I felt she was in danger of becoming Bester-like in her treatment of non telepaths.

But I appreciated the way B5 made me really think about how I'd feel towards telepaths if they actually existed, assuming I wasn't one myself.