Story: Strange Relations
Written By: J. Michael Straczynski
Season: 5
Bester comes to the station in order to arrest Byron and all his fellow rogues living on the station. When Garibaldi finds out the man who brainwashed and ruined his life has come back, he of course goes to attack, but is stopped by Lochley who has him thrown in the brig. This does lead to one interesting plot point, as Lochley shares with Garibaldi what her relationship with Sheridan actually is...she is his ex-wife. Apparently they were in training together, fell hard for each other, got married, and after three months fell hard out of love with one another. Sheridan picked her because he knows he can trust her, despite fighting for the other side during the Earth Civil War, because he knows her well enough to back him up when he is right and to call him out when he is wrong. So she is his first wife, before Anna.
Bester is then given the chance to find his rogues, which Lyta stops...but unfortunately not for long. Bester is working on Earth authority, therefore this is an internal Earth Matter, which means Sheridan can’t stop it...because the alliance promised not to interfere in internal matters.
Meanwhile, ships aren’t able to dock with Babylon 5 for one reason or another, and the ship originally meant to take Londo home decides it can’t wait any longer heads for home and explodes. Delenn then comes up with the idea that G’Kar should become Londo’s bodyguard to avoid losing Centauri in the alliance.
Delenn is full of good ideas this episode, as she and G’Kar also suggest that Franklin dial back his MedLab duties in order to create a new medical handbook for the Alliance which catalogs all diseases of all species, so members of the alliance can better treat one another. Lochley uses this idea to stop Bester from taking the telepaths, by instituting a 60-day quarantine to “protect” Earth from any diseases the telepaths may have contracted in their many travels. Bester is irritated, but he accepts it and promises to return in 60 days.
This episode was, again, okay, but I found myself drifting a bit. I think it is Byron and his band of rogue telepaths that just bore me to tears. Byron is lame, he seems like he is supposed to be the kind of attractive new male with the long hair to kind of replace Marcus, but he isn’t nearly as cool or fun as Marcus. He is pretty much (so far) devoid of personality. He is like Fabio-light. Hell his whole group look like Fabio wannabes...I guess it was the 90s, why shouldn’t a whole group of folks have long hair and look a little too much like male models or new age musicians. I like the Bester character, he is creepy and you love to hate him, but I really thought that the lack of any real confrontation between he and Garibaldi (despite the cut-short fight Garibaldi tried to act out) was a bit of a letdown. Maybe they will get to that later. I just think Byron is hard to tolerate, but this telepath war thing seems to be a major component of the season...so I guess I am stuck with him.
NEXT TIME: Byron Jailed
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