Babylon 5 Telepaths and Their Terrible Mother

Babylon 5 has the distinction of being a five-year-long television show that maintains one arc and, to some extent, one plot line. As a result, analyses can be done with the show as a whole, rather like one could do with a film (or series of films), that would be difficult with most television series. The show is a very rich text, so there are probably an infinite number of views and issues one could point out in a critical analysis, ranging from a look at illustrations of Jungian archetypes (Shadows – evil, Vorlons – good, parents, unity of Mankind) to a discussion of the dichotomies involving the "Us" and "Other" paradigms (Vorlons/Shadows again, Mundanes/Telepaths, Human/Alien, etc) to looking at some of the gender issues in the show's mythology. I will attempt to incorporate several threads into my look at the Psi Corps organization and what it has to do with technology myths.

I am very interested in how telepaths are portrayed in the series. The station's head of security, Garibaldi, does not trust them – for good reason, as it turns out – and that sentiment can be seen ranging from the overly paranoid (Commander Ivanova) to a milder wariness around them (Number One). A post to the moderated Babylon 5 newsgroup from a fan said, "nobody's ever trusted telepaths" (Lee 3-6-98). Sheridan remarks in "A Race Through Dark Places" that the Psi Corps, the organization that human telepaths must join or else go to prison, was created out of the fears of everyone else. The non-telepaths, called "normals" or "mundanes" by members of the Corps, collectively think that telepaths are a threat to their privacy and are therefore not worried about whatever rights are taken from the telepaths.

In the fifth-season episode "The Corps is Mother, The Corps is Father," Bester and other Psi Cops say, within the safety of Corps facilities, that they are the best evolution has managed to produce, that high-rated telepaths are the wave of the future. How ironic that is, in the wake of a previous episode from that season, "Secrets of the Soul," in which Lyta tells Byron that it was the ancient Vorlons who created human telepaths, not evolution. The Vorlons created telepaths to fight the Shadows for them, and in an indirect way, to protect the rest of humanity from the threat of chaos and darkness, yet what they actually did was create a Terrible Mother figure in the Psi Corps and an army of Psi Cops, the technological hunters of the 23^rd century.

The Corps tries very hard to provide initiation for its "family." Talia Winters, a commercial telepath stationed on Babylon 5 for two years, speaks of her first days in the Corps as a vulnerable and terrified five-year-old. She says an older woman named Abby spoke calming, soothing words and songs into her mind until she slept. Then she says that she never saw Abby again, after her first days in the Corps. Abby could have provided some early tutorage for Talia, but instead, she found herself with teacher after teacher, none long enough to give her a bond to any one person. Partly the Corps does this on purpose. The phrase "the corps is mother, the corps is father" is repeated almost like a mantra by its members so that they always feel loyalty toward the Corps itself, but never individual members.

Bester is a bit of an anomaly. He is the Psi Cop, a very strong telepath who tracks runaway telepaths, also called Blips or rogues, that finds himself on Babylon 5 rather often, usually to the chagrin of station personnel. He loves all telepaths, though he is very fierce in his protection of members of Psi Corps, and he is ruthless in his treatment of normals if they stand in his way. He believes that initiation into the way of the Corps is the only way to train young telepaths, and in his value system, there is nothing profane about it. To a normal (or even a rogue telepath), everything about the Corps is profane. It engages in covert experiments with telepaths, like those performed on Jason Ironheart, trying to change him from a powerful P-10 telepath into a stable telekinetic, and the rogues who kidnap Talia. The Corps has become an organization that is only interested in making itself more powerful at the expense of the individual.

There is a certain sense in which Psi Corps is a sentient entity by itself. Characters often speak of "the Corps does this" or "the Corps says that." The Corps is a set of parents to all telepaths, even the rogues, as the hidden personality of Talia says when it is discovered in "Divided Loyalties." She says, "the Corps is mother, the Corps is father. The Corps will find you, Lyta Alexander!" speaking to the rogue who finds the personality and destroys her cover. Not Psi Cops, not Bester, but it is the Corps that will find Lyta and, presumably, either kill her or "reeducate" her into a productive, Corps-loving telepath. I will come back to Lyta a little later, as her problem is very interesting and deserves some time in this paper for itself. Now, back to the Corps as an entity. It is as this entity that it takes on the Mother motif, terrible and devouring, not unlike Jaws or Moby Dick (Rushing and Frentz 81), yet the Corps is unique because it is an organization that literally calls itself Mother. It lives to devour and assimilate its children into just an extension of itself. Packwood writes about the "cyber-organic technological motif" that shines through Babylon 5, particularly the telepaths that are implanted with Shadow interfaces so they can link directly to the Shadow space ships (106). I agree that the Shadow implants are terrifying because it renders the telepath completely helpless unless he or she is hooked into a machine of some sort, but I disagree with Packwood's sentiment that they are one of the "most worrying" aspects of technology in the show. I think Psi Corps is much worse.

Sheridan is right that the Corps was created out of fear of telepaths, fear of mindreading by any stranger on the street. J. Michael Straczynski, the creator/executive producer/writer of the series describes normals as the "hysterical majority" against the "ultimate minority" of telepaths – rights of the minority go out the window when the majority demands it be so ("Lurker's Guide," episode 006). As a result, the minority becomes paranoid and very tight-knit. Even family members of telepaths get to spend little time with their children, and indeed, are often frightened by the new powers of their offspring. But because of the Corps's fear and disdain toward normals, the atmosphere makes an easy target for infiltration – all telepaths are welcome and, for the most part trusted, and any alien that promises help for the telepaths is likewise brought into the family. This is exactly what happens to the Corps. The Shadows want telepaths, they find the environment of the Corps very promising, and so they reach in for the taking. The Shadows, perhaps one of the oldest of the Ancient races, devour the devouring mother, and telepaths are trapped.

The savior must be another telepath, for no normal would be accepted since they are not advanced enough to help the pinnacle of human evolution. Will it be Bester? He has the love for telepaths, and the ruthlessness to fight his enemies, but at best, he is a technological hunter, unfamiliar in the ways of initiated men. At worst he is just another savage man living for pleasure (in his case, sadism toward mundanes). To his credit, he recognizes that the Shadows are using Psi Corps against its real original purpose: to fight Shadows in the army of the Vorlons (that detail is only available in a Babylon 5 novel, Dark Genesis). He notifies Sheridan and company when he learns of a ship of telepaths who have been altered with the psionic implants and tells them where to intercept it, and he is rather angry that the Corps has given away its own (granted, they are rogues who have the implants) to an alien race's purposes. He comes to Lyta's rescue when she is about to get kicked out of her quarters, with the agreement that she will leave her body to the Corps when she dies so Bester and the others can learn about her Vorlon modifications. On the other side, though, he is the driving force behind Garibaldi's betrayal of Sheridan in the fourth season (he kidnaps Garibaldi and alters his personality), and though he denies it, he is probably the one behind Talia's secret personality. He protects the group of telepaths, but not the individual.

The other person who presents himself as the telepath savior is Byron. He shows up on the station early in the fifth season with a small but growing number of rogue telepaths in tow. He is a former Psi Cop who cannot abide by the Corps's philosophy anymore, so he sets out to free his "people" through civil disobedience. Sheridan defies the Corps when he grants Byron and his followers asylum on Babylon 5, and he takes the political fall when Bester comes looking for them. Byron continues to advocate a non-violent position, even when Bester and his blood hounds confront him, though some of his followers do not agree and kill to escape. He changes his philosophy after he learns from Lyta the true origins of telepathy, and decided to free the telepaths however he can, especially if it means taking it to the Corps. I think it is at that point that he loses his ability to save anyone. Earlier he was acting as a sacred guide toward those under his tutelage, but later he is only interested in martyrdom, so he loses his effectiveness as a both a leader and a guide.

Sheridan himself has a unique perspective of telepaths. He takes it quite well when Ivanova, his second-in-command, tells him that she is a (very weak) telepath who does not want to be found by the Corps. He already trusts her, so he takes this information in stride and his attitude toward her does not change. However, he consistently treats Lyta like little more than a "tool to be discarded" (Highlander 12-10-98). Highlander points out on the newsgroup that he protects the Rangers, G'kar (a Narn who needs protection when the Centauri government wants to kill him), and others, but not Lyta, and not really any of the telepaths. He was raised with the common mentality that telepaths are different and should be feared, but he also has the added weight of the influence of Kosh, the Vorlon ambassador to the station. The Vorlons created telepaths, and they feel it is perfectly acceptable for them to use them however they like in their war against the Shadows. Sheridan was inhabited by a piece of Kosh for a time, and it is possible that he looks on telepaths the same as Kosh did. He treats Lyta and Byron differently from others who take different actions than he would – he praises Garibaldi and Ivanova when they are innovative, he threatens Lyta when she is (Highlander 12-17-98). It is probably his attitude toward Lyta more than any other factor that drives her to Byron and inadvertently teaches him of their genetic origin. Sheridan is responsible for Byron's desire to destroy Psi Corps, rather than reform it, so he is responsible for destroying the telepath's last hope.

The Terrible Mother that is Psi Corps cannot be destroyed as long as the majority of normals are afraid of telepaths. They will always insist that there is an overlord organization to control them, even if it corrupt and dismal toward its members. Lyta knows this, yet she subscribes to Byron's cause. Why? I think it is because she wants to be appreciated by those she cares about. She cares about Sheridan and the others who run Babylon 5, and even has the possibility of romance with the security agent Zack, but none of them really show her how much they respect her and appreciate her help during the two wars that are fought in the third and fourth seasons. She finds Byron attractive, he listens to her, and he values her opinions, so she stays with him. She does not particularly care how telepathy came about, she only wants to belong.

Lyta was destined to not belong. According to Dark Genesis, the Vorlons chose her grandmother to be one of their servants, should she be alive during the coming war with the Shadows, or her descendent if the war came later. Lyta's encounter with Kosh in the series pilot "The Gathering" leaves her dissatisfied with Psi Corps – she must find the Vorlons! Lyta is the key to communication between normals and telepaths. She has real Corps experience (she was trained and brought up by the Corps) and also rogue experience, better than most rogues get because she is protected by the Vorlons. She fears the Corps and its powers, and she also knows what it is like to be under someone's service such that she can''t get out. However, because she becomes entangled in Byron's cause, she loses her capacity to save the telepaths, and basically becomes a terrorist, alienating herself completely from anyone who does not want to bomb every Psi Corps facility in the galaxy. Thus Lyta also loses her capacity to really help the telepaths. She becomes like the technological "man" that hunts to protect his own ego, never knowing what his actions really mean to others.

The savior of telepaths does not exist, and the series hints toward the Telepath War that will involve the Corps and the remainder of Byron's followers sometime after the linear part of the series ends (not counting the future episodes of "Deconstruction of Falling Stars" and "Sleeping in Light"). The telepaths are too connected to each other to ever connect with the normals, which is unfortunate, but consistent with the worldview in Babylon 5. A telepath is the "ideal tool for keeping people isolated, frightened, and compliant" (Brown 117), though telepathy seems to make its possessors the isolated ones. The Vorlons celebrate order above all else, but their gift to humanity does not result in order, but rather the bloated monster of the Corps and a frightened majority afraid to speak up for the rights of the telepaths. The Corps encourages compliance within itself, but never without, so it assures isolation. The experiments with genetics, telekinesis, reproduction, and personalities foster fright. A telepath is the ultimate paradox.

The normals that work on the station alongside telepaths at least try to understand the telepaths' position. Ivanova hates the Corps deeply because it kept her telepathic mother on psi-suppressing drugs for years, which Ivanova insists sucked her mother's life away. Yet even this harsh individual finds love for Talia within her reach – only Talia is not what she appears. They have one night together before Talia's hidden personality is revealed and the old is destroyed. Garibaldi also fancies Talia, more from a distance than Ivanova, and he constantly tells himself not to trust telepaths. In "Kingdom of the Blind," he reminds himself to "never, ever, ever trust a telepath . . . I'm gonna have that tattooed inside my eyelids," yet he still finds Lyta personable and friendly, when she is not blowing things up. Franklin, the station's head doctor, organizes an underground railroad for rogue telepaths for years before Sheridan finds out and shuts it down. Of all the station personnel, only Sheridan leaves the telepaths to their own devices. I think he does not trust them and is something of a closet telepath-hater. He would never admit it to himself, he seems himself as a fair man of principles, but he thinks telepaths are just tools. He does not hesitate to use the implanted rogues to defeat his enemies in the Earth Civil War of the fourth season, and when others question his actions, he tells them he does not have to explain himself. He is right, he does not, and he does not have to. His actions more than speak for themselves. Lyta, extremely powerful after her Vorlon enhancements, should know this about him, even without a telepathic scan, yet she still yearns for his approval and appreciation. After she is free of the suffocating influence of the Corps and the subduing influence of Kosh and the other Vorlons, she wants to gain a normal life among the normals, but, of course, she cannot.

Another question raised by the series is this: does humanity ever manage to reconcile its "normal" majority with the telepathic minority? The show itself gives no answer to this question, it only indicates that humanity will someday become like the Old Ones, the first races to evolve and find space, in a million years – we will finally "walk among the stars" like Delenn says we have the potential to do. How the telepath situation works itself out is never revealed. The last we see of them, they are either entrenched in Psi Corps or else blowing up everything Psi Corps, but the show does not give any information about the Telepath War either. Can the two be reconciled? That humanity is the most important species portrayed in the series is rather obvious, though Brown finds that strange and uncompelling (128). Events in the series largely take place from the point of view of human officers in a human-controlled space station. Beyond that, however, we see clues that humanity is important in the big picture. Humans are necessary to defeat the Shadows one thousand years in the past, and they are the driving force behind defeating during the show's Shadow War. Delenn is convinced humanity has great potential, though the other Minbari are not convinced. The point is that the other races that are not as important as humans do manage to more fully integrate their telepaths into society (except the Narns, who have no telepaths). The Minbari respect their telepaths, and they become something like wandering seers, given food and housing wherever they find themselves. They are certainly free to do as they please. The Centauri telepaths are not given a lot of room in the series, but they appear to be like mercenaries for hire, available to the highest bidder, but again, not compelled to work this way. Only the humans set up a separate organization to oversee the lives of telepaths and restrict their rights. Perhaps only humans have the capacity for such great evil alongside such wonderful potential.

The Psi Corps, as it exists in the series, will eventually collapse under its own weight. That entity, and its "technological man" members like Bester, will not survive if they continue to project the inferior shadow onto the normal humans. Likewise, humanity as a whole cannot afford to keep those people locked away inside the Corps, and it needs to stop projecting the overdeveloped shadow there. Those two factions have to find some way to live with each other, or they will crumble humanity from within – all the threats from other alien races of annihilation will be meaningless because the humans will do it to themselves.

The series makes it plain that will not happen, so something good must take place. The last we see of Lyta, she is joining G'kar on an explorer ship bound for the great black yonder. If she can learn how to empathize with the normals and set up decent lines of communication between her telepaths and the normals, perhaps she is a hope after all. Or perhaps, somehow, the Corps will wither and die from within, and the other humans will have to decide what else to do with the now-orphaned telepaths. Maybe the next time they will do something better than a monster of assimilation.

The Psi Corps is wrong with its belief that its telepaths are the result of evolution, and that they are the wave of the future. Even rogues, like the leader on Babylon 5 in "A Race Through Dark Places" tells Talia that she is "the future" because of her gift from the unstable telekinetic Ironheart. This is not the case at all. Telepaths are only the result of genetic experiments conducted by another race for their own purposes, they have nothing to do with evolution, and they are no more superior to normals than tall people are. Yet the Corps lives and breathes on the belief that telepaths are advanced. I think the Minbari probably have their telepaths integrated into their everyday life as well as any race could (considering their telepaths were created by the Vorlons too). If the humans could become a more spiritual species, looking inward instead of outward and yearning to understand how all are parts of the same whole, they would have a better chance at surviving and truly walking among the stars.

Works Cited