Bester shows off his people skills, the Corps shows off its facilities, and the show turns into an episode of Law and Order. Welcome my family. This is the story of the Psi-Corps. The year is 2262. The place: Babylon 5.
Spoilers ahead.
1. Perspective, Schmerschmective
Going into “The Corps is Mother, The Corps is Father,” I knew we’d be focusing quite a bit on the Telepath side of things. What I didn’t expect was to follow Bester the entire time nor did I anticipate it being entirely from the Psi-Corps’ perspective. Top to bottom, they are the heroes and the episode is structured as if that was always the case; as such, our A-plot focuses on Bester’s investigation, the B-plot on “the mind shredder’s” attempts to escape, and the C-plot on Lauren and Chen learning the ropes.
Normally these are my favorite episodes. I should be all in on this but I didn’t love the episode as much as the others. I suspect it’s because the episode doesn’t commit as hard as I wanted it to, or possibly because my frame of reference is so detached from the era that what was once a pretty spot on genre pastiche now scans as generic because of its proliferation since. It’s not that I wanted the episode to be more self-aware, per say; I think I just would have liked it to ham things up a little more instead of going for subtlety.
That said, I really appreciate the ways Straczynski blends the usual B5 tone with the “Cop Show,” structuring things like the season premiere Law and Order: SVU or Criminal Minds. It successfully uses the ways we interact with the genre to create an ironic distance between the way the characters see themselves & their actions and the way we see them. Yet at the same time, the show’s insistence on playing things as earnestly as possible means there’s little subversion within the episode barring what we bring into it, which is a deep distrust of Bester and Psi-Corps.
There’s no overt critique of Psi-Corps, its practices, or worldview nor of the trappings of the Cop Show and its effects on viewers i.e. the creation of a sensationalized version of reality that reinforces a specific image of the institution as necessary as it is and absolves it of its very real, very deadly systemic failings. In Clinton’s America, I can see why this didn’t come up.
I do think on some level JMS understood this. By having Bester be the “hero,” we see all the failings of the genre, of the institutions, and of the people it enables via the dissonance between our understanding of Psi-Corps and the episode’s deliberately positive to neutral framing.
2. Psi-Corps: It Does a Mind Good
It’s such a small moment but I have to talk about the hilarious example of propaganda we start to see early in the episode. Bester, Chen and Lauren are sitting in a theater, watching what amounts to a 1980s anti-drug PSA. I’m both glad we didn’t see more than we got and also really mad we didn’t. What I wouldn’t give for them to have created an entire PSA that could have been released as a bonus on the VHS/DVD/Blu-ray. I know it doesn’t exist, nor, I suspect, will a Blu-ray of the series ever exist considering what Discovery is doing to Warner Bros., but I can dream.
Did you see Clean Cut Chris’ “blip” form? Just say no, kids.
3. The Art of Getting Rejected
Was anyone else kinda uncomfortable with Lauren’s subplot of wanting to bone Bester? I get the hero worship from her and Chen, and I even get the character having a crush, but the whole thing felt really uncomfortable. She’s really pushing hard throughout the episode, sharing secret jokes with him and then full on asking him out in his quarters after hours. Thankfully Bester shuts her down, in part because of his cryogenically frozen, shadow modified wife and in part because it’s just skeevy on his part. Don’t love how he leaves the door open though, even if it did read as a way to soften the blow rather than a true expression of interest.
Continued belowWhere I sit with this is: I’m not sure if Lauren’s puppy love came about because JMS thought it was a good idea or if it’s because that’s a trope of the genre. I suspect it was a mixture, with JMS wanting an arc for Lauren that fits within expected parameters. The reason I think this is it, like most of the actual plot beats in the episode, felt predictable in a generic way. Not necessarily paint-by-numbers but familiar and iterative rather than novel, done for the structure rather than the content
Still, not my favorite and I could’ve done without it.
4. Mundanes He Murdered
I was tempted to orient each of these thoughts around a different Cop Show archetype or trope explored in “The Corps is Mother, The Corps is Father.” I started to but then I realized I’d just be talking about the same things and wouldn’t get a chance to talk about the ridiculous propaganda video above.
Like, I don’t really need to talk about Bester’s doctrine of Telepathic Supremacy again or his absolute disregard for non-telepaths. We’ve seen enough of that in “Phoenix Rising”. I do want to still talk about Jonathan the Mind Shredder, though. Mostly because I love his Terror Eyes.
Putting aside the treatment of Jonathan’s mental illness, which is handled about as well as your average episode of a mid-90s “Law and Order,” I found him to be a ton of fun as an antagonist to Bester. He’s threatening, he’s kinda silly, and his befriending the skeezball Bryce made for a great third act complication. He’s also sympathetic enough but clearly dangerous in a way that puts us somewhat with Bester.
In some ways, this episode is reminiscent of season 1’s “Mind War” but told from the other side. Had we been with Bester then, it’s likely this is the lens through which we would have seen Jason Ironheart, though maybe with fewer dead bodies. I like that paralleling, even if unintentional. It adds to this season’s finality and to the cyclical nature of its subtitle: Wheel of Fire.
5. Mentoring is Hard Work. That’s Why Bester Outsources
Poor Chen. He didn’t deserve to go out the way he did, like a discount Maes Hughes. I liked Chen and his overeager antics. I was hoping he’d make it through the episode. I should have figured at least one of Bester’s proteges would bite the bullet, or take the knife to the chest as the case may be. That, ultimately, was his purpose and it’s kinda sad.
One of JMS’ great strengths as a writer has always been imbuing his side character with enough personality and memorability that even when they’re only here for half an episode, I’m invested enough to complain about them getting merced. He constructs enough of a narrative for it to not feel out of place and for it to still have a meaningful effect on the characters. and the plot.
Chen’s death is a result of his own failings as an impulsive newbie and of Bester’s failure to properly train them. While we don’t explore that second half, mostly because Bester doesn’t do self-reflection, it’s there in the text and it adds to the tapestry of the episode. Bester may forget you after taking Lauren in under his wing by having her toss Bryce out an airlock but I certainly won’t.
5.5. Fare Thee Well
Before I go, I do want to take this opportunity to say a fond farewell to Walter Koenig as this is the final episode in the show that featured Bester in person. I don’t know why, mostly because I’m trying my hardest to avoid spoilers for the rest of the series. It’s possible this is the best place to leave him. It’s possible his schedule didn’t line up. It’s possible it was a confluence of events or just no good place to have him come back. Whatever the case, this is his final appearance.
In doing some digging for this episode, I found out that Walter Koeing was originally in the running to play Knight Two from season 1’s “And the Sky Full of Stars” but couldn’t due to him having to finish recovering from a heart attack. As such, Straczynski wrote an entirely new character so he could still appear in the series: Alfred Bester. Additionally, Bester has only appeared in 12 episodes.
Continued below12! Can you believe it’s that few? It feels like more. That, I believe, is the power of Walter Koenig’s acting and the presence he brought to Bester. He was a character I loved to hate and it’s bittersweet to know this is his final appearance. Thank you Walter for bringing Bester to life in all his smug, annoying, self-righteous, arrogant, self-important delusions of godhood glory.
That about does it for now. Join me again in a week for what was once the mid-season premiere, the return of our two favorite former attachés, and secret investigations into the Centauri on the station where, cryptically, you are the one who was.
This is Elias. Signing out.
Best Line of the Night:
Bester: “Reports of our depression are vastly exaggerated.”
