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Alfred Bester (Babylon 5)
Encyclopedia
Alfred Bester is a Babylon 5
character played by Walter Koenig
. He is a senior Psi Cop and a recurring antagonist in the series. J. Michael Straczynski
named the character after the science fiction writer Alfred Bester, since telepathy
is a recurring theme in his work (most notably The Demolished Man
).
Trilogy by Gregory Keyes
, which reveals that the infant Stephen Kevin Dexter had been renamed by his grandfather, Kevin Vacit, in order to conceal his parentage. His chosen assumed name refers to the science fiction author, Alfred Bester
.
His biological parents were Matthew and Fiona Dexter, both leaders in the earliest days of the resistance against the Psi Corps. While director of the Psi Corps, Kevin Vacit arranged for his daughter Fiona to be broken out of a rogue telepath reeducation camp, as a part of his campaign to actually nurture the resistance, believing at the time that the competition between the rogues and the Corps would strengthen the telepaths' gene pool through natural selection. An encounter with the Vorlon
s changed his position on this, leading him to believe that only deliberate experimentation and selective breeding would produce telepaths strong enough to protect humanity from future threats. This led directly to the purges of 2189, a Psi Corps offensive which decimated the resistance and in which Bester's parents were killed. He was found by the Psi Corps, renamed, and placed in Cadre Prime, a training group composed of telepaths whose ESP had manifested during infancy. Bester was told that his parents were members in good standing of the Corps who had been murdered by the resistance, though he was not told their names or shown any photographs. This did not distress him, as he had full confidence in the Corps' slogan, "The Corps is Mother, the Corps is Father."
Being a P-12, the strongest naturally-occurring category of human telepaths, he was able to join the metasensory police and eventually tracked down the resistance's leader, Stephen Walters. He did not yet know that Walters had been his parents' closest friend and ally, or that the man was in fact his godfather and namesake. When Walters revealed Bester's true heritage, Bester went berserk and emptied his PPG
at the man. Bester was left with a tight psychological knot of rage, guilt and denial, resulting in a mental block that left his left hand (with which he'd fired the gun) permanently non-functional. Throughout the TV series, Bester's left fist is always clenched, a predicament that is never explained or even discussed. Only with the appearance of the second novel in the Bester trilogy (which was published in 1999, when the series had already ended), do we get the explanation.
Bester was notorious even among his fellow telepaths of the Corps for his ruthlessness, performing illegal mind scans on Mundanes at need, disregarding privacy laws and due process and heedless of the dangers such "Deep Scans" pose to the subjects' mental and physical safety. He also had a disturbing willingness to perform so-called Deathbed Scans, combing a dying person's mind for vital information up until the very moment of death. Such scans were known to be harmful to the telepath's mental health, with some believing that one lost a piece of one's soul by being in contact with the person as they crossed the threshold. Almost no telepath, having once done so, would willingly do so a second time, with subsequent attempts thought to be very damaging to the psyche. However, Bester repeatedly volunteered for such duty, believing that he could gain some special knowledge from the experience, ultimately performing an unprecedented eight deathbed scans. During the eighth, he follows his subject into the "void" and has a near-death experience in which he is informed that a telepath investigating death only experiences what he brings in his heart; he realized his is empty as he then experiences nothingness before being resuscitated by the hospital staff attending to the dying subject.
During his career as a member of the Psi Corps, he was responsible for retaking the post of director of the Psi Corps from the mundanes by assassinating the director of the Psi Corps.
Bester eventually agreed to work with Captain John Sheridan
at several points during the Shadow War
particularly after the Shadows captured someone very close to Bester. However, after Michael Garibaldi
was captured during an attack by the Shadows
on the station, Bester was able to secretly recover and capture him in turn. Bester had become aware of an anti-telepath conspiracy, and decided to try and use Garibaldi to expose it. Bester subjected him to subtle reprogramming in order to use him as a sleeper agent
. He exploited Garibaldi's inherent traits of paranoia and distrust of authority, correctly believing that the conspiracy would view Garibaldi as a prime recruit once alienated from his friends and work.
The wealthy industrialist William Edgars, the plot's mastermind, believed that a civil war among humanity would be counterproductive no matter how totalitarian the current regime. Edgars insisted that Garibaldi draw out Sheridan before he would bring Garibaldi fully into his confidence. Garibaldi, not suspecting why he was so driven to find out the innermost secrets of the plot, betrayed Sheridan to agents of the corrupt President Clark. Edgars then revealed that his pharmaceutical company, Edgars Industries, had perfected a lethal virus which would attack telepaths' unique genes. Any infected telepath would quickly die without regular doses of the antidote they had also created. This would reduce telepaths to a slave race and avert the war which many normals and telepaths believed loomed on the horizon. After learning this, Garibaldi entered a fugue state
, and alerted Bester and the Psi Corps. The Corps murdered William Edgars and captured the only known samples of both the virus and antidote. Bester came to Garibaldi, still locked in his robotic paralysis, and revealed the details of the brainwashing and the deception. Although tempted to kill Garibaldi, Bester instead removed the commands and left Garibaldi to cope with the realization that he had betrayed everyone he knew on all sides.
It was later revealed that, even with the programming removed, Bester had left in place an 'Asimov' - adapted from the first of Isaac Asimov
's Three Laws of Robotics
(Bester stated that it had been adapted from the first two of Asimov's laws, but his explanation only covered the first law) - knowing that Garibaldi would likely murder him on sight if not prevented from doing so. Lyta Alexander
eventually agreed to remove the Asimov from Garibaldi's mind, once he had helped her destroy the Psi Corps.
, Alfred Bester was wanted for war crimes that he committed. He was planned to appear in the Crusade
episode "Value Judgments", written by Fiona Avery
, on the run from the authorities and being sought by Garibaldi's agents. The episode would have shown him encountering the crew of the Excalibur, who require a powerful telepath to open a lock that responds to powerful telepathy. The episode would have ended with him escaping once again.
He spent several years on the run before moving to Paris, France, where he fell in love with a local businesswoman named Louise. But Michael Garibaldi was relentless in his pursuit, and eventually tracked him down. Bester was brought before the war crimes tribunal, and was tried in France for his crimes. He was sentenced to life in prison and subjected to the Sleeper drugs that deprived him of his telepathic abilities. During that time, a statue was even made of the lost child of Fiona. He then spent the next 10 years in a maximum-security prison, and died shortly after the death of John Sheridan in 2281. The very day before his death, he finally accepted that he was indeed the 'lost child' of Matthew and Fiona Dexter, and his left fist finally reopened as a result. Even in death, Garibaldi pursued him. After Bester's funeral, Garibaldi went to the gravesite and hammered a wooden stake into the ground above Bester's coffin. This quite amused a departing watcher, who was fully aware of what Bester had done and been in life.
Babylon 5
Babylon 5 is an American science fiction television series created, produced and largely written by J. Michael Straczynski. The show centers on a space station named Babylon 5: a focal point for politics, diplomacy, and conflict during the years 2257–2262...
character played by Walter Koenig
Walter Koenig
Walter Marvin Koenig is an American actor, writer, teacher and director, known for his roles as Pavel Chekov in Star Trek and Alfred Bester in Babylon 5. He wrote the script for the 2008 science fiction legal thriller InAlienable.-Early life:...
. He is a senior Psi Cop and a recurring antagonist in the series. J. Michael Straczynski
J. Michael Straczynski
Joseph Michael Straczynski , known professionally as J. Michael Straczynski and informally as Joe Straczynski or JMS, is an American writer and television producer. He works in films, television series, novels, short stories, comic books, and radio dramas. He is a playwright, a former journalist,...
named the character after the science fiction writer Alfred Bester, since telepathy
Telepathy
Telepathy , is the induction of mental states from one mind to another. The term was coined in 1882 by the classical scholar Fredric W. H. Myers, a founder of the Society for Psychical Research, and has remained more popular than the more-correct expression thought-transference...
is a recurring theme in his work (most notably The Demolished Man
The Demolished Man
The Demolished Man, by Alfred Bester, is a science fiction novel that was the first Hugo Award winner in 1953. The story was first serialized in three parts, beginning with the January 1952 issue of Galaxy Science Fiction, followed by publication of the novel in 1953. The novel is dedicated to...
).
Early Life and Career
The birth, life and death of Alfred Bester is chronicled in the Psi CorpsPsi Corps
In the fictional universe of Babylon 5, the Psi Corps is an agency of the Earth Alliance responsible for all humans with telepathic or other para-psychological abilities anywhere within Earth controlled space. All persons with Psi abilities are required to either join the Corps, face lifetime...
Trilogy by Gregory Keyes
Gregory Keyes
Gregory Keyes is an American writer of science fiction and fantasy who has written both original and media-related novels under both the names "J. Gregory Keyes" and "Greg Keyes". He is famous for his quartet The Age of Unreason, a steampunk/alchemical story starring Benjamin Franklin and Isaac...
, which reveals that the infant Stephen Kevin Dexter had been renamed by his grandfather, Kevin Vacit, in order to conceal his parentage. His chosen assumed name refers to the science fiction author, Alfred Bester
Alfred Bester
Alfred Bester was an American science fiction author, TV and radio scriptwriter, magazine editor and scripter for comic strips and comic books...
.
His biological parents were Matthew and Fiona Dexter, both leaders in the earliest days of the resistance against the Psi Corps. While director of the Psi Corps, Kevin Vacit arranged for his daughter Fiona to be broken out of a rogue telepath reeducation camp, as a part of his campaign to actually nurture the resistance, believing at the time that the competition between the rogues and the Corps would strengthen the telepaths' gene pool through natural selection. An encounter with the Vorlon
Vorlon
A Vorlon is a member of a fictional alien species in the Babylon 5 television series and fictional universe. The Vorlon species is a member of the First Ones, a group made up of the earliest species to gain sentience in the galaxy...
s changed his position on this, leading him to believe that only deliberate experimentation and selective breeding would produce telepaths strong enough to protect humanity from future threats. This led directly to the purges of 2189, a Psi Corps offensive which decimated the resistance and in which Bester's parents were killed. He was found by the Psi Corps, renamed, and placed in Cadre Prime, a training group composed of telepaths whose ESP had manifested during infancy. Bester was told that his parents were members in good standing of the Corps who had been murdered by the resistance, though he was not told their names or shown any photographs. This did not distress him, as he had full confidence in the Corps' slogan, "The Corps is Mother, the Corps is Father."
Being a P-12, the strongest naturally-occurring category of human telepaths, he was able to join the metasensory police and eventually tracked down the resistance's leader, Stephen Walters. He did not yet know that Walters had been his parents' closest friend and ally, or that the man was in fact his godfather and namesake. When Walters revealed Bester's true heritage, Bester went berserk and emptied his PPG
Phased plasma gun
The Phased Plasma Gun is a fictional weapon from the television series Babylon 5. It fires a small charge of superheated helium. This gas retains both its shape and small volume via a residual magnetic field. Upon impact with an object, the magnetic field is dissipated and the heat discharged...
at the man. Bester was left with a tight psychological knot of rage, guilt and denial, resulting in a mental block that left his left hand (with which he'd fired the gun) permanently non-functional. Throughout the TV series, Bester's left fist is always clenched, a predicament that is never explained or even discussed. Only with the appearance of the second novel in the Bester trilogy (which was published in 1999, when the series had already ended), do we get the explanation.
Bester was notorious even among his fellow telepaths of the Corps for his ruthlessness, performing illegal mind scans on Mundanes at need, disregarding privacy laws and due process and heedless of the dangers such "Deep Scans" pose to the subjects' mental and physical safety. He also had a disturbing willingness to perform so-called Deathbed Scans, combing a dying person's mind for vital information up until the very moment of death. Such scans were known to be harmful to the telepath's mental health, with some believing that one lost a piece of one's soul by being in contact with the person as they crossed the threshold. Almost no telepath, having once done so, would willingly do so a second time, with subsequent attempts thought to be very damaging to the psyche. However, Bester repeatedly volunteered for such duty, believing that he could gain some special knowledge from the experience, ultimately performing an unprecedented eight deathbed scans. During the eighth, he follows his subject into the "void" and has a near-death experience in which he is informed that a telepath investigating death only experiences what he brings in his heart; he realized his is empty as he then experiences nothingness before being resuscitated by the hospital staff attending to the dying subject.
During his career as a member of the Psi Corps, he was responsible for retaking the post of director of the Psi Corps from the mundanes by assassinating the director of the Psi Corps.
Involvement within the Series
When Bester first appeared in the Babylon 5 series, he was in pursuit of a powerful telepath named Jason Ironheart, who had been the victim of illegal genetic and drug experiments by the Psi Corps in an attempt to create a powerful supertelepath, a P20 or beyond. Bester didn't get along with the command staff, a point which continually occurred throughout the series.Bester eventually agreed to work with Captain John Sheridan
John Sheridan (Babylon 5)
John J. Sheridan is a lead character in the fictional universe of the science-fiction television series Babylon 5, played by Bruce Boxleitner. For most of the series, he is the commander of the Babylon 5 station; during the series' final season he is the President of the Interstellar...
at several points during the Shadow War
Shadow War
The Shadow Wars are a fictional series of wars involving the Shadows in the television science fiction series Babylon 5. There have actually been many Shadow Wars since ancient times in the galaxy. Roughly every thousand years, the Shadows begin a new Shadow War to promote chaos in the universe in...
particularly after the Shadows captured someone very close to Bester. However, after Michael Garibaldi
Michael Garibaldi
Michael Garibaldi is a lead fictional character in the universe of the science fiction television series Babylon 5, played by Jerry Doyle.-Overview:...
was captured during an attack by the Shadows
Shadow (Babylon 5)
The Shadows are a fictional alien species in the science fiction television series Babylon 5. Their homeworld is Z'ha'dum. In contrast to the Vorlons, whose philosophy is represented by the question "Who are you?", that of the Shadows is represented by the question "What do you want?", centering...
on the station, Bester was able to secretly recover and capture him in turn. Bester had become aware of an anti-telepath conspiracy, and decided to try and use Garibaldi to expose it. Bester subjected him to subtle reprogramming in order to use him as a sleeper agent
Sleeper agent
A sleeper agent is a spy who is placed in a target country or organization, not to undertake an immediate mission, but rather to act as a potential asset if activated...
. He exploited Garibaldi's inherent traits of paranoia and distrust of authority, correctly believing that the conspiracy would view Garibaldi as a prime recruit once alienated from his friends and work.
The wealthy industrialist William Edgars, the plot's mastermind, believed that a civil war among humanity would be counterproductive no matter how totalitarian the current regime. Edgars insisted that Garibaldi draw out Sheridan before he would bring Garibaldi fully into his confidence. Garibaldi, not suspecting why he was so driven to find out the innermost secrets of the plot, betrayed Sheridan to agents of the corrupt President Clark. Edgars then revealed that his pharmaceutical company, Edgars Industries, had perfected a lethal virus which would attack telepaths' unique genes. Any infected telepath would quickly die without regular doses of the antidote they had also created. This would reduce telepaths to a slave race and avert the war which many normals and telepaths believed loomed on the horizon. After learning this, Garibaldi entered a fugue state
Fugue state
A fugue state, formally dissociative fugue or psychogenic fugue , is a rare psychiatric disorder characterized by reversible amnesia for personal identity, including the memories, personality and other identifying characteristics of individuality...
, and alerted Bester and the Psi Corps. The Corps murdered William Edgars and captured the only known samples of both the virus and antidote. Bester came to Garibaldi, still locked in his robotic paralysis, and revealed the details of the brainwashing and the deception. Although tempted to kill Garibaldi, Bester instead removed the commands and left Garibaldi to cope with the realization that he had betrayed everyone he knew on all sides.
It was later revealed that, even with the programming removed, Bester had left in place an 'Asimov' - adapted from the first of Isaac Asimov
Isaac Asimov
Isaac Asimov was an American author and professor of biochemistry at Boston University, best known for his works of science fiction and for his popular science books. Asimov was one of the most prolific writers of all time, having written or edited more than 500 books and an estimated 90,000...
's Three Laws of Robotics
Three Laws of Robotics
The Three Laws of Robotics are a set of rules devised by the science fiction author Isaac Asimov and later added to. The rules are introduced in his 1942 short story "Runaround", although they were foreshadowed in a few earlier stories...
(Bester stated that it had been adapted from the first two of Asimov's laws, but his explanation only covered the first law) - knowing that Garibaldi would likely murder him on sight if not prevented from doing so. Lyta Alexander
Lyta Alexander
Lyta Alexander is a character from the fictional universe of the science-fiction television series Babylon 5, played by Patricia Tallman.Lyta was introduced in the pilot episode "The Gathering" as a telepath assigned to the Babylon 5 space station by the Psi Corps, a fictional organization...
eventually agreed to remove the Asimov from Garibaldi's mind, once he had helped her destroy the Psi Corps.
After the series
Following the Telepath WarTelepath War
The Telepath War is a conflict in the fictional Babylon 5 universe. This conflict occurs a few years after the events of the television series, and before the events of the Crusade television series...
, Alfred Bester was wanted for war crimes that he committed. He was planned to appear in the Crusade
Crusade (TV series)
Crusade is a spin-off TV show from J. Michael Straczynski's Babylon 5. Its plot is set in AD 2267, five years after the events of Babylon 5, and just after the movie A Call to Arms. A race called the Drakh have released a nanovirus plague on Earth, which will destroy all life on Earth within five...
episode "Value Judgments", written by Fiona Avery
Fiona Avery
Fiona Kai Avery is a comic book and television writer. Avery was hired as a reference editor for the fifth season of Babylon 5, and later continued in that role for the failed spin-off Crusade...
, on the run from the authorities and being sought by Garibaldi's agents. The episode would have shown him encountering the crew of the Excalibur, who require a powerful telepath to open a lock that responds to powerful telepathy. The episode would have ended with him escaping once again.
He spent several years on the run before moving to Paris, France, where he fell in love with a local businesswoman named Louise. But Michael Garibaldi was relentless in his pursuit, and eventually tracked him down. Bester was brought before the war crimes tribunal, and was tried in France for his crimes. He was sentenced to life in prison and subjected to the Sleeper drugs that deprived him of his telepathic abilities. During that time, a statue was even made of the lost child of Fiona. He then spent the next 10 years in a maximum-security prison, and died shortly after the death of John Sheridan in 2281. The very day before his death, he finally accepted that he was indeed the 'lost child' of Matthew and Fiona Dexter, and his left fist finally reopened as a result. Even in death, Garibaldi pursued him. After Bester's funeral, Garibaldi went to the gravesite and hammered a wooden stake into the ground above Bester's coffin. This quite amused a departing watcher, who was fully aware of what Bester had done and been in life.
Appearance in Babylon 5 novels
- Babylon 5: Book 1 - Voices
- Psi Corps Trilogy:
- Babylon 5: Dark Genesis: The Birth of the Psi Corp (part 1)
- Babylon 5: Deadly Relations: Bester Ascendant (part 2)
- Babylon 5: Final Reckoning: The Fate of Bester (part 3)