The Corps is Mother, the Corps is Father
Reviewed by Veronica Grey, P7
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Well. This episode, the third to be directed by Vir--I mean, Stephen Furst--was, as are all his episodes turning out to be, yet another strange, offbeat, quirky little episode. (The other two were "The Illusion of Truth", structured as an ISN broadcast, and "The Deconstruction of Falling Stars", which was a bunch of disconnected vignettes about the future of Humanity, basically.) However, as enjoyable as it was in parts, the end verdict is that it was too little, too late. (Not because of his directing, which was fine as far as I can tell--rather, because of the script.)
The episode had a rather cool idea behind it--it shows us the Psi Corps from THEIR point of view, from the inside, as friends rather than enemies; it shows us how the Psi Cops are really just policeman like anyone else doing their job (with a bit of a twist!). We follow, of all people, BESTER around as he trains two young Psi Corps interns while solving a murder mystery and tracking down a rogue on B5, and see the world through HIS eyes, let HIM be the hero. Hero?! Yes, you heard me correctly, hero. We also get to see more of the inside of the Psi Corps headquarters building (not the one that was destroyed, obviously--the one on Mars, I think. Bester seems to live on Mars so that would make sense) and learn a bit more about the training that Psi Corps members go through. It was all quite interesting and different, and funny in a creepy way. I also liked how even the THEME SONG was changed! After all the "2258", "2259", etc. stuff, instead of saying, "Babylon 5" and the shield logo, it put up the Psi Corps logo and said, "TRUST THE CORPS"! I was rolling on the floor laughing and could not BELIEVE my eyes!
On a more serious note, the actor playing the "blip" did a fairly good job; when he was in his "nice" mode I honestly felt sorry for him--he really didn't KNOW that the other personality had been killing people, and it hurt him when he found out. Also, the idea of a split-personality telepath where one personality is more POWERFUL than the other is intriguing...but I don't know how accurate it is. Bester compared it to "mundanes" with MPD (Multiple Personality Disorder) in which one side is an artist and the other can't draw a straight line, but I dunno... Artistic ability is at least partially trained, but telepathy is GENETIC. So how can one personality be a P10 while the other is a P12? They are, when it comes right down to it, both in the same body, stuck with the same genes!
Oh, and it totally creeps me out to know that the Psi Corps has a huge mama-ship hiding in hyperspace JUST outside Babylon 5, where they have NO idea about it...
That was the GOOD part. The problems, well...
It was a fun episode. The problem is--we have only NINE MORE EPISODES to go before the ENTIRE SHOW IS OVER!!! We don't have TIME for silly little episodes! We've already STOPPED and smelled the daisies already--now is time to get moving and stay that way! While I do like the idea, this would in my opinion have worked better in Season Four, when Bester was the height of his nastiness programming Garibaldi and all, or perhaps in EARLY Season Five. I agree that it did have to be somewhere late in the show; 'cos if it wasn't, we wouldn't have such a large context to draw from about the Corps being evil; we wouldn't HAVE so many preconcieved notions for this episode to challenge. And challenge them it ALMOST does--you think of Lauren as this sweet young girl--until the ending...(she asks Bester for the "honour" of "taking care of" the Mundane who was involved in crimes with the rogue telepath that they caught, and he asks her if she's sure, she says yes. They cut away, and in the next scene he asks her if she's all right, and she says she's fine...while, in the distance, a BODY drifts randomly through hyperspace! YICK!)
BUT...like I said, this is too frivolous to do at this late in the game! I'm always laughing at those hyperactive, anal-retentive B5 fans that HAVE to have EVERY SINGLE EPISODE move the arc along, and if the show DARES to be the slightest bit FUNNY or DIFFERENT they raise holy hell and insult the episode into the ground, but from now on...I hate to say this, but I sorta agree with them. The tenth-from-the-last episode of THE ENTIRE SERIES is a bit late to be fooling around and having a little fun still! From now on, I do expect at least a bit of arc in every episode if not a large chunk.
This episode has NONE. None at all.
Really.
So, that's two of the main things this episode suffered from--frivolousness at the wrong time, a cute little closed-in story--the last thing, and it's another big one, is that there were hardly ANY characters in it. For example, Lochley is mentioned but conveniently never shows up, letting us see only Zack insulting Bester (he does do a pretty good job, I'll warrant...), and I believe the ONLY other person from the main show proper that we ever see is Franklin! That is WAY too few characters for an entire episode. It felt kinda stifled because of that. People were missing that should have been there. They went to the casino respectively--NO LONDO! (Okay, he doesn't do that as much as he used to in Season One, but STILL, it would be a good excuse to have him show up, and they completely blew it!) Not to mention--the ultimate missing character of missing characters--Bester was back on board again and WHERE IN THE WORLD WAS MR. GARIBALDI? Don't you think he might want to give this "revenge" thing just a BIT more of a shot, hmmn? Let me tell you, a confrontation between Garibaldi and Bester RIGHT at the critical moment when they're about to catch the "blip", so that he messes them up, would have improved the episode immensely. Oh, well...
The end verdict? While this was a very clever idea, and a lot of fun, it was not great. It suffered from an extreme lack of cast, and the timing was just wrong.
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