Byron and the Telepaths on B5 --- your comments?

[KoshN]

Jan, you do not need the missiles to open the point, just launch the missiles in Hyperspace and send them through jump points opened the "old fashioned way".

Agreed.

The Centauri were not very serious about their asteroids, meaning they were not very big and not going very fast.

The Centauri didn't want to destroy the planet, killing everybody there; they wanted to conquer the Narn population.

Lastly the Markab home world might be littered with tasty snacks for some races. Alternatively, yeah its a horrible job, but there is a furnished planet there and it is likely worth hiring a few hundred thousand Pak'Ma'Ra for a decade or two to tidy the place up.

Weren't the Pak'Ma'Ra semi-vulnerable to the Markab Plague? IIRC, Dr. Franklin was working on a Pak'Ma'Ra who'd gotten sick from it, when it crossed species. That was one of the concerns. I doubt that the Pak'Ma'Ra would have wanted to do that job.

[Andrew_Swallow]

I always thought Sheridan should have had the telepaths resettled on the Markab homeworld It was isolated without a jump gate and probably had enough infrastructure in place to make a colony viable.

Byron did not give Sheridan sufficient time to transfer the ex-Markab homeworld. Byron wanted the new planet
NOW

Consequently he got nothing.

[Marsden]

Wouldn't they (the Marcab) all be rotted away to bones after a few months, assuming they have bones and there is a "normal" bactirial prescence on that world.

[Macbeth]

Weren't the Pak'Ma'Ra semi-vulnerable to the Markab Plague? IIRC, Dr. Franklin was working on a Pak'Ma'Ra who'd gotten sick from it, when it crossed species. That was one of the concerns. I doubt that the Pak'Ma'Ra would have wanted to do that job.

Good point, I forgot that detail. Not necessarily the PMR's to make my point - I recall them as carrion eaters so I assumed they would not be too "grossed out" by some dead bodies. If not them then some other race who might be happy with a few billion(?) bodies to "clean up".

This was/is a world with an interstellar society. They might even have flying cars and jetpacks, just lying around. Lot's of already precreated wealth. I would think IPX would be happy to plant a flag.

[Trollheart]

Come on, we all want to say it, so I will!
Sheridan should have settled the telepaths on some world, then a quick Babcom to Bester anonymously, hey ho! Black Omega prep for departure --- problem solved!

And Sheridan would also get the satisfaction of driving the Psi Cop crazy as he tried to work out why the captain had helped him, when in fact it would just have been a choice between who was the bigger pain the the a$$ --- my vote would always go to Byron. Hey, Bester was in Star Trek, wasn't he? That's gotta count for something!

[Jan]

Come on, we all want to say it, so I will!

No, we really don't. C'mon, I know you're just fooling around, but really! Do recall that it's Sheridan you're talking about!

Jan

[KoshN]

No, we really don't. C'mon, I know you're just fooling around, but really! Do recall that it's Sheridan you're talking about!

Jan

What she said!

[Dan Dassow]

Sounds like a rock band, doesn't it? ...
Interested to know your thoughts...

Every time I seen this thread I hear in my head ...
Josie and the Pussycats (2001).

[Marsden]

Do you think Sheridan was prejudiced against telepaths? It just occured to me last night watching Thirdspace, he really didn't care about what happened to Lyta very much at all. Maybe he just didn't realize what a powerful being she was, but would it have been so bad to get her a good appartment? B5 was an independent entity, couldn't he hired her as "resident telepath" even if he could only pay her room and board? This is something that always confounded me, which in of itself isn't a bad thing, if nothing confounded me it would be too simplistic, I think

Well, maybe he felt obliged to help them and didn't want to actually give into his prejudices and treat them as fairly as possible but at the same time something else could have come up and so on. I don't know.

[Trollheart]

It's a good point. Sheridan had had issues with EarthGov over them wanting he and Ivanova to move to smaller quarters, or pay rent, and he solved it by setting aside money from the Babylon 5 budget as "combat-readiness", to pay their rent. Now, when he tells (or sends Zack to tell) Lyta that she has to move to smaller quarters, he says it's because they need every credit to keep the station going, since EarthForce isn't paying for anythng anymore, since they seceded.

So, in that time period, who was paying for his quarters? If he ignored that issue, why then did he have to come down on Lyta? So no-one was paying for her digs? Big deal! No-one was paying for ANY digs, far as I can see.

Smacks of the sort of petty-minded bureaucracy that Sheridan always said he hated.

Maybe he was jealous that Kosh had spent so much time in Lyta's head and so little in his?

He definitely didn't trust telepaths, though the only justification for that I can see is Talia's betrayal of them in season 2. Other than that, what had telepaths ever done to him? Yes he hated Bester, but Lyta was Bester's enemy, so the enemy of my enemy... huh? Huh?

Didn't seem to work that way.

I do feel sorry for Lyta. She always did what she was asked, often putting herself in great danger, and seldom got any thanks. So much so that when Sheridan thanked her for alerting them, through Byron, to the trap they were going into in dealing with the Emfeeli in "The paragon of animals", she looks genuinely surprised!

[Andrew_Swallow]

When Sheridan arrived on Babylon 5 part of his mission was to check to see if the officers were free of Psi Corps influence. The telepaths did little to reduce his suspicions.

The military and security personnel did not pay rent but that is normal on board a ship.

As for not giving Lyta a job there are plenty she could have done for instance verifying cargoes going to Earth after Sheridan had blockaded it did not contain weapons.

[Trollheart]

I beg to differ. I can't recall which ep it was, but Sheridan was locked out of his quarters by order of Earthdome, until he (and Ivanova) either moved to smaller quarters or agreed to pay rent. He sorted this problem out as already mentioned above.

As for using Psi Corps as a reason for why he distrusted telepaths, Lyta was not Corps (at least, for most of the series), in fact she was on the run as a "blip" and was actively working against Bester. Also, it was she who helped uncover the control personality in Talia that would otherwise have led to everyone in the "conspiracy" standing before a court-martial.

He may hate and distrust the Corps, but there are many teeps who are not affiliated with that organisation, and to use it as the basis for judging ALL telepaths does not sound like the sort of thing John Sheridan would do. Consider how he differentiated between the crews who fired on civilians and those who didn't in the Civil War: he didn't just lump them all together and say well they'e all part of Clark's forces so they must all be bad.

[babylonlurker]

I beg to differ. I can't recall which ep it was, but Sheridan was locked out of his quarters by order of Earthdome, until he (and Ivanova) either moved to smaller quarters or agreed to pay rent. He sorted this problem out as already mentioned above.



He may hate and distrust the Corps, but there are many teeps who are not affiliated with that organisation, and to use it as the basis for judging ALL telepaths does not sound like the sort of thing John Sheridan would do. Consider how he differentiated between the crews who fired on civilians and those who didn't in the Civil War: he didn't just lump them all together and say well they'e all part of Clark's forces so they must all be bad.

To quote Sheridan " I trust individuals, not organisations "

[Jonas]

Sheridan was definitely completely unfair to Lyta, and that's part of what caused the whole telepath mess in the end. She did so much for the cause, suffered pains that are hard to imagine, and got nothing. Not even gratitude.

It was his biggest mistake.

[phazedout]

reviving this thread before i start a new one.
following a recent chat with our lovely Jan i am asking, why *is* Byron such a disliked character. after giving the matter some thought I honestly cannot pin down my own reasons, I know I cannot stand him but I cannot quantify why, aside from the hair, which, let's face it, isn't really a proper reason.

So, why do you love/hate Byron, discuss.
Phaze
on the "Patricia Tallman responded to my wall post about Belfast, she is made of win and awesome" ID
[edited for spelling]