lurkers-guide/guide/101

<!-- TITLE The Corps is Mother, The Corps is Father -->

<h2><a name="OV">Overview</a></h2>

<blockquote><cite>
Bester pursues a murderous telepath, using the pursuit to train two rookie
Psi Cops in the finer points of their new jobs.
</cite>

<a href="http://us.imdb.com/M/person-exact?+Koenig,+Walter">Walter Koenig</a> as Bester.
</blockquote>

<pre><a href="/lurk/p5/intro.html">P5 Rating</a>: <a href="/lurk/p5/101">8.42</a>

Production number: 514
Original air date: April 15, 1998
<a href="http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/B00019071C/thelurkersguidet">DVD release date</a>: April 13, 2004

Written by J. Michael Straczynski
Directed by Stephen Furst
</pre>

<p>
<hr size=3>

<h2><a name="BP">Plot Points</a></h2>
<ul>

   <li>@@@892694760 Very high on the Corps' list of priorities is that
	mundanes believe that nothing ever goes wrong within the Corps.  To
	that end, and because they justifiably don't believe mundane security
	forces would be of much use in capturing rogue telepaths, they use
	the Psi Cops to track down rogues with a minimum of publicity.

   <li>@@@892694760 The Psi Corps maintains a fleet of large transport ships
	in hyperspace, where they're used to ferry shuttles back and forth
	between jump points.  Eventually they'll be used for some other
	unspecified purpose.  Nobody outside the Corps is supposed to know
	the ships exist.

   <li>@@@892694760 Psi Corps field operatives must be able to maintain a
	mental block against a telepathic probe for at least one hour to
	ensure that they're safe against attack by untrained rogues.  Even the
	most powerful rogues, according to Bester, can't sustain a psi attack
	for more than 30 or 40 minutes.

   <li>@@@892694760 Bester's parents were killed in an accident when he was
	barely a month old.  The Corps found him thanks to a random DNA
	screening, and raised him from childhood.

   <li>@@@893010614 The Corps is training some of its members in offensive
	skills known as "mind shredding."  A P10-rated shredder is a danger
	even to a P12-rated telepath, and a P12-rated shredder can kill a
	mundane telepathically in a matter of seconds.

   <li>@@@892694760 If a telepath has multiple personalities, each of the
	personalities can exhibit different levels of psi ability.  The
	Corps' screening program doesn't detect multiple personalities.

   <li>@@@892694760 Even new Corps trainees are willing to act as judge, jury,
	and executioner for mundanes who kill telepaths.

</ul>

<h2><a name="UQ">Unanswered Questions</a></h2>
<ul>

   <li>@@@892694760 What are the Corps motherships for, aside from ferrying
	shuttles?

   <li>@@@892695282 What were the circumstances of Bester's parents' deaths?

   <li>@@@892855690 What <em>is</em> a Pak'ma'ra's hump?

</ul>

<h2><a name="AN">Analysis</a></h2>
<ul>

<p>
   <li>@@@892694760 According to the Corps propaganda film, 42.5% of
	telepaths who leave the Corps commit suicide within nine months of
	leaving the Corps.  How many of those
	"suicides" are thanks to the Psi Cops?  Even if the Cops don't
	kill a significant number of rogues directly, the very fact that a
	rogue is being relentlessly pursued might make suicide or an accident
	more likely.

	<p>@@@893010973 
	And of course, Gordon only said that the suicides were committed by
	people who'd left the Corps, not rogues; how many of the suicides were
	telepaths forced to take sleeper drugs like Ivanova's mother?

<p>
   <li>@@@892694760 Why didn't anyone in the Corps communicate
	telepathically within their own walls?  As Bester told Sinclair
	(<a href="006.html">"Mind War,"</a>)
	telepathic communication saves time.  It's perhaps understandable that
	the Corps would want its members to speak to each other verbally while
	in public, to avoid appearing needlessly strange to mundanes, but that
	consideration wouldn't apply within the walls of a Corps training
	academy.  Perhaps telepathic communication requires more effort than
	speech.

<p>
   <li>@@@892717633 Bester believes that to be a telepath is to be something
	special, and that telepaths have to stick together and protect one
	another, even more so than mundanes.  That's very similar to Byron's
	philosophy
	(<a href="091.html">"The Paragon of Animals."</a>)

<p>
   <li>@@@892751325 What was Bester doing with the mirror just before his
	departure for Babylon 5?  Since he didn't glean any useful information
	from his vision of Harris, it was most likely just an exercise in
	intuition, a moment of deep concentration to try to figure out some
	reason why Harris might have committed the murder.

<p>
   <li>@@@892751552 The Corps motherships are perhaps not as well-kept a
	secret as Bester would like to think.  There are probably lots of
	rogue telepaths who learned of them before leaving the Corps.  For
	example, Byron would almost certainly have known about them (he had
	gone out on missions with Bester) and thus it's plausible that some
	or all of the other members of his group know as well.  Since they
	have no particular stake in keeping the ships' existence secret,
	information about them might well have already leaked out.

<p>
   <li>@@@892717633 When Lauren mentioned to Bester that she wished there
	were a way to record thoughts, he said, "Give us time."  Is the Corps
	working on such a capability?  Does that imply that they've discovered
	a technological means for reading other people's thoughts?  If so, the
	implications could be far-reaching, not least the possibility that
	mundanes could be equipped with simulated telepathy.

	<p>
	Abbut's recording of Talia's thoughts
	(<a href="009.html">"Deathwalker"</a>)
	indicates that the process is possible, though perhaps not without
	the involvement of a living brain.

<p>
   <li>@@@892694760 The Corps' inability to detect multiple personalities
	is consistent with Talia's hidden personality
	(<a href="041.html">"Divided Loyalties."</a>)
	Talia was in close contact, even linked briefly, with a group of
	telepaths
	(<a href="030.html">"A Race Through Dark Places"</a>)
	who failed to detect her alternate personality.  

<p>
   <li>@@@892847338 If different personalities can have different psi
	abilities, the Corps might not have gotten anything useful out of
	their examination of Talia after she returned to them
	(<a href="050.html">"Dust to Dust."</a>)
	Her Ironheart-enhanced psi abilities
	(<a href="006.html">"Mind War"</a>)
	might have been destroyed along with her original personality.

<p>
   <li>@@@892752034 Lauren's visualization of the attack/block exercise had
	a subtext she probably didn't recognize: the attacker was probing with
	spikes not dissimilar to the spines on a Shadow vessel, while the
	attacker was encased in what looked like shards of ice, not unlike the
	ice surrounding Sheridan's vision of the Vorlon in
	<a href="072.html">"Into the Fire."</a>
	Vorlons created human telepaths and the Shadows wanted to destroy or
	undermine them, which is consistent with that imagery.

</ul>

<h2><a name="NO">Notes</a></h2>
<ul>

   <li>@@@892694760 The love of Bester's life is Carolyn Sanderson, who is
	most likely still in stasis awaiting removal of her Shadow implants
	(<a href="059.html">"Ship of Tears."</a>)
	Whether or not she's still on Babylon 5 isn't clear; Sheridan mentioned
	transferring her to Earth for further medical study
	(<a href="087.html">"Rising Star"</a>)
	but that might not have happened yet.

<p>
   <li>@@@892752340 "Prisoner"esque signs on the walls at the Corps academy
	(not a complete list yet):
	<ul>
	   <li> The Corps is Mother, the Corps is Father
	   <li> Protect the Family.
	   <li> Obey
	   <li> Trust the Corps
	   <li> Maternis, Paternis (this also appears on the Psi Corps logo
		during the training film)
	</ul>

<p>
   <li>@@@892752340 Babylon 5 uses its sword and shield logo even on its
	commercial sales literature.

<p>
   <li>@@@892950054 Text of the cover of the Babcom brochure:
	<blockquote>
	Stay in touch with<br>
	family and business<br>
	alike with state of the<br>
	art communications and<br>
	delivery services.  Let<br>
	us be your new partner.

	<p>
	BABYLON 5<br>
	FOR THE<br>
	BUSINESS<br>
	OF TODAY<br>
	AND THE<br>
	HOPE OF<br>
	TOMORROW
	</blockquote>

<p>
   <li>@@@895442513 <a name="NO.2264">One of Harris' documents,</a>
	visible when Bester examines
	them, is dated 2264, even though the episode takes place in 2262.  (See
	<a href="#JS.2264">jms speaks.</a>)

<p>
   <li>@@@892695183 Bester's childhood was recounted differently in comic
	<a href="/lurk/comic/011.html">"The Psi Corps and You."</a>
	The official Corps propaganda about Bester is that he entered its
	ranks at age 10.

<p>
   <li>@@@892752034 Bester keeps his disabled hand gloved even when he's
	home by himself.

<p>
   <li>@@@892798144 The rogue's name was Jonathan Harris.  That name might
	be familiar to some fans; another
	<a href="http://us.imdb.com/Name?Harris,+Jonathan+(I)">Jonathan
	Harris</a>
	played Dr. Smith on the original "Lost in Space" TV series, which
	also starred Bill Mumy (Lennier) as Will Robinson.  However, that's
	not the reference here.  By coincidence, Jonathan Harris was the name
	of the winner of a raffle run by the B5 Fan Club at a convention (the
	1997 Worldcon in San Antonio.)  The raffle's grand prize was the
	winner's name appearing in an episode.

<p>
   <li>@@@892752168 One of the interns, Chen Hikaru, shares a name with
	Hikaru Sulu of the original "Star Trek."  Sulu was a colleague and
	friend of Chekov, played by Walter Koenig (Bester.)

<p>
   <li>@@@892717873 This is the third episode directed by Stephen Furst, who
	also plays Vir.  All three of his episodes (this one,
	<a href="074.html">"The Illusion of Truth,"</a>
	and
	<a href="088.html">"The Deconstruction of Falling Stars"</a>)
	are told from the points of view of people other than the series' main
	characters.

<p>
   <li>@@@892694848 The title sequence was changed for this episode: instead
	of the "Babylon 5" title, a Psi Corps logo with the words "Trust the
	Corps" was substituted.  The B5 logo was moved to the back of the
	station in the closing FX shot, and JMS's name was displayed as a
	normal credit.

</ul>

<h2><a name="JS">jms speaks</a></h2>
<ul>

   <li>@@@885925487 <em>About TNT's decision to postpone the episodes
	the ones following this one until the fall of 1998</em><br>
	Re: the schedule...it was brought to our attention that the NBA
	coverage would lead to episodes being shunted around and pre-empted for
	a number of weeks.  Obviously this concerned us, and would concern
	viewers, so we discussed it with TNT, and they came back to us with the
	notion that we would continue new episodes until hitting #100, break
	for the NBA games, then come back (starting with another possible
	half-hour special) afterward at the same time to finish the season.

	<p>
	It was either this, or get shuffled around the schedule due to
	the NBA, and the former is infinitely preferable.

<p>
   <li>@@@887319407 Bester is NOT a nice guy...but not everyone sees him in
	that light, which is why I did one episode from inside the Psi Corps
	this season, to show how others in the PC see him....

	<p>
	Even Hitler painted roses.

<p>
   <li>@@@893095748 <em>Shouldn't the other Psi Cops have been afraid of
	Bester?</em><br>
	I don't consider it a mistake at all...you never heard much of
	other Psi Cops talking about Bester, and they would have more knowledge
	of him than anyone else.  As with Dirty Harry, some of the other
	officers above and below him liked him...and he scared the crap out of
	others.  Same here.

<p>
   <li>@@@893270106 <em>What</em> is <em>a Pak'ma'ra's hump?</em><br>
	I was thinking that the hump is where their mates are...they're
	symbiotically bonded, and the female is much smaller than the male,
	reflecting similar disparities in the insect kingdom.  

<p>
   <li>@@@895442513 <em><a href="#NO.2264">About the oddly-dated
	document</a></em><br>
	One of his personalities was a Time Lord.

<p>
   <li>@@@895442513 And let us also remember, about this guy getting the date wrong on
	what he was writing....

	<p>
	HE WAS A NUT.

	<p>
	thankyew

</ul>