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Just rewatched "The Corps is mother, the Corps is father". What a brilliantly-written episode! In some ways a little similar to "A view from the gallery", in that we get to see Babylon 5 from another perspective. JMS takes us behind the walls of the Psi Corps's headquarters, shows us Bester training in two new interns, and through their eyes, and his, we're shown not the dark, oppressive chamber of horrors we have been led to expect resides beyond those forbidding doors, but a well-run and functioning department, whose hierarchy (seem to) genuinely care about their members, even the "blips".
JMS treats us to a masterclass in misdirection, showing us how hard it is for poor Bester, who's always blamed for anythng bad that happens when he visits B5. Witness Zack's comment when the second body turns up, and Bester asks him how he knows that the Corps are responsible. "Just a hunch" he growls. Also, later, in medlab Lauren tells Bester that Zack doesn't like "their type", and Franklin leaps to Zack's defence, asking how she knows that. "He told me so," she says simply.
And so, we are led to sympathise with Bester and the Corps, quite against our will, and maybe even harbour a feeling of guilt about how the command staff of Babylon 5 have treated Bester in the past. Is he really a bad guy? Maybe all he was doing was, as he always said, trying to protect his people.
Maybe, just maybe, he's not the black villian he's been painted as up to now.
And then, the final scene, where Lauren excitedly asks to be allowed to "deal with the mundane" and Bester agrees, and she spaces him, brings us to our senses and slams us back to reality as we see that Bester, indeed any Psi Cop, thinks as little of mundanes as we perhaps do of the odd insect we may find ourselves swatting in the summer.
Chilling.
And you wonder then what sort of world Bester would live in? If the teeps took over, if a war broke out, and inevitably the telepaths would win, how would normals be treated? Can't you just see everyone not known to be, or registered as a telepath being marched into Psi Corps Testing Centres ("We're everywhere, for your convenience") and if they're found not to have any psychic ability, being either shipped off to "relocation centres", being perhaps "disappeared" or even executed en masse.
Bester would probably rationalise it as "Look what they've done to us over the years, how they've treated us: with contempt. With fear. With mistrust. Well. they were right to fear us!" Perhaps he would consider keeping some number of mundanes alive to perform the menial tasks that would be deemed beneath his teeps, but which have to be carried out nonetheless. But in general, I think there would be a fairly comprehensive cull of mundanes.
Would you want to live in THAT world?
JMS treats us to a masterclass in misdirection, showing us how hard it is for poor Bester, who's always blamed for anythng bad that happens when he visits B5. Witness Zack's comment when the second body turns up, and Bester asks him how he knows that the Corps are responsible. "Just a hunch" he growls. Also, later, in medlab Lauren tells Bester that Zack doesn't like "their type", and Franklin leaps to Zack's defence, asking how she knows that. "He told me so," she says simply.
And so, we are led to sympathise with Bester and the Corps, quite against our will, and maybe even harbour a feeling of guilt about how the command staff of Babylon 5 have treated Bester in the past. Is he really a bad guy? Maybe all he was doing was, as he always said, trying to protect his people.
Maybe, just maybe, he's not the black villian he's been painted as up to now.
And then, the final scene, where Lauren excitedly asks to be allowed to "deal with the mundane" and Bester agrees, and she spaces him, brings us to our senses and slams us back to reality as we see that Bester, indeed any Psi Cop, thinks as little of mundanes as we perhaps do of the odd insect we may find ourselves swatting in the summer.
Chilling.
And you wonder then what sort of world Bester would live in? If the teeps took over, if a war broke out, and inevitably the telepaths would win, how would normals be treated? Can't you just see everyone not known to be, or registered as a telepath being marched into Psi Corps Testing Centres ("We're everywhere, for your convenience") and if they're found not to have any psychic ability, being either shipped off to "relocation centres", being perhaps "disappeared" or even executed en masse.
Bester would probably rationalise it as "Look what they've done to us over the years, how they've treated us: with contempt. With fear. With mistrust. Well. they were right to fear us!" Perhaps he would consider keeping some number of mundanes alive to perform the menial tasks that would be deemed beneath his teeps, but which have to be carried out nonetheless. But in general, I think there would be a fairly comprehensive cull of mundanes.
Would you want to live in THAT world?
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