Psi Corps
Psi Corps is an organization that featured in Babylon 5.
Contents |
History
The Psi Corps was an organization that governed the use of Telepaths on Earth. In the year 2161, the Corps was officially created to monitor, train and police telepaths. (Episode: The Illusion of Truth)
The Black Omega unit was considered the brain child of Alfred Bester. (Episode: Epiphanies) By 2258, Jason Ironheart had taken part in a secret program to enhance his abilities where he was slowly becoming a force of pure thought. He came to realize the intentions of the Psi Corps and became horrified by it which led to him killing the scientist that made his abilities before going on the run. A Black Omega unit was dispatched to intercept his transport but were destroyed as he made his way to Babylon 5. Afterwards, a pair of Psi Cops that included Alfred Bester and Ms. Kelsey arrived at the station to recover Ironheart. They intended to capture him in order to dissect Ironheart so that they could find a way to recreate his abilities for use as a weapon. (Episode: Mind War)
Alien forces secretly made contact with Vice-President Clark and offered their support in gaining the Presidency. During these negotiations, he learnt that these aliens were interested in the Psi Corps which led to Clark's own focus on the organization as he saw them as an insurance policy against his allies. (Episode: The Exercise of Vital Powers) During the last election, there was a large scandal reported on the news networks of the Corps endorsing Vice-President Clark. (Episode: Revelations) At some point, they were involved in a secret program being conducted at a research centre at Syria Planum on Mars designed to create sleeper agents. These were normal individuals who implanted with a hidden personality that gathered information and waited to be activated at a designated moment through a telepathic command sent into their brains. Such moles had been placed in several government agencies that included Babylon 5 with this being managed by Control. (Episode: Divided Loyalties) It was claimed that this program had been discontinued by the Corps. (Episode: Dust to Dust) Unprecedented authority was given to the Corps under Clark's regime. (Episode: The Exercise of Vital Powers)
In 2260, the Corps was noted to be seeking out Lyta Alexander who had now returned from Vorlon space as the attaché to Ambassador Kosh at Babylon 5. (Episode: Passing through Gethsemane) The Psi Cop Bester returned to Babylon 5 in order to track down the distribution of the telepathic drug known as Dust with this being considered a matter affecting planetary security. This was because it was believed that this distributor intended to sell the drug to foreign governments to be used as a weapon. (Episode: Dust to Dust) The Shadows who were supporting President Clark managed to infiltrate the Psi Corps and had a plan for human telepaths to serve as weapon components for their living vessels. As a result, this saw some Corps members such as Alfred Bester operating secretly in thwarting the Shadows plans. (Episode: Ship of Tears) At some point, Bloodhound units were deployed on Mars to seek out members of the Mars Resistance. (Episode: The Face of the Enemy)
President Clark authorized a new programme in 2261 involving the Psi Corps, Nightwatch and the Ministry of Peace that was tasked with shutting down Babylon 5. This involvement saw a Black Omega squadron being dispatched to destroy an Earthforce patrol in Sector 84 in order to frame Babylon 5 for the attack. (Episode: Epiphanies) During the Earth Civil War, Edgar Industries began a secret campaign of creating a genetically engineered airborne contagious virus to attack the telepath gene that would kill them unless they took regular doses of the cure. This was an attempt to stop the coming threat of telepaths by unleashing this virus in order to cripple the Psi Corps. Unknown to Edgars, his employee Michael Garibaldi had been turned into a sleeper agent by Alfred Bester in order to uncover this threat leading to the Corps elimination of William Edgars as well as the virus. (Episode: The Face of the Enemy) In 2262, a Bloodhound unit headed by Alfred Bester arrived at Babylon 5 in order to try to take the colony of rogue telepaths with them under various criminal charges but Captain Lochley refused to hand them as she stated Byron as well as his followers needed to stay for a 60 day quarantine. (Episode: Strange Relations)
Alfred Bester later returned to Babylon 5 when the telepaths led by Byron created a crisis that threatened the stability of the Interstellar Alliance. Rogue telepaths later attempted to kill Bester but failed in their plan in stopping the capture. (Episode: A Tragedy of Telepaths) As a result, further reinforcements were sent from the Corps to capture the rogue colony. Several Bloodhound units were sent to capture the second rogue group that had dispersed throughout the station and armed with stolen weaponry from the station's armory. Ultimately, the incident ended in tragedy as a deal was struck with President Sheridan whereby the ones responsible for the violence would surrender to the Interstellar Alliance but the rest of the rogue colony was allowed to leave the station peacefully. However, Alfred Bester attempted to take Byron and his followers into custody that saw violence break out that ended with Byron along with those responsible for the violence committing suicide. (Episode: Phoenix Rising) In the aftermath, a wave of attacks were made against the Psi Corps by a well funded organization movement that was being funded by Lyta Alexander with these being from rogue telepaths that left the writing 'Remember Byron' behind following their assaults. (Episode: The Wheel of Fire)
Overview
The ranks of the Psi Corps consisted of telepaths where one in every thousand normal humans displayed telepathic talents. (Episode: Mind War) Members of the Psi Corps were not allowed to engage in unauthorized scans though these rules were sometimes broken by some of their number. (Episode: Dust to Dust) They were trained to block casual thoughts but stronger emotions and feelings burst through these barriers. (Episode: Midnight on the Firing Line) It was contrary to all Psi Corp regulations to interfere in personal matters. (Episode: Born to the Purple) Though there were rules in place, Psi Cops were somewhat afforded greater latitude due to the burdens they had to endure to accomplish their goals in the interest of efficiency. Members of the Corps were required to submit and take part in a deep scan if they had prospective evidence for the Psi Cops. (Episode: Mind War) Despite this range of regulations, secretly the Psi Corps had a singular goal which was control. This ranged from control of telepaths to the economy, courts and over thought itself. (Episode: Mind War)
Advertisements were made by the Earth Alliance Ministry of Public Information and local Psi Corps Recruitment Office that were placed on videos designed to recruit potential telepaths if their talents were manifesting. These stated that local testing centers or mobile ones that travelled the country for ease of convenience to determine if a person was a telepath. The Corps also had offices, schools and even children's hospitals that were operated by their organization. (Episode: And Now for a Word) There was an intern program whereby trainees went through training in different departments such as Psi Cops or commercial. (Episode: Divided Loyalties) Psi Cops were elite personnel in the Corps charged with finding and apprehending rogue telepaths. Trained instructors at the Psi Corps Training Academy were responsible for preparing telepaths from P-5 to P-10 through high level training where they learnt jamming, long range scanning and development of fringe skills. (Episode: Mind War) P-5 among the Psi Cops could only hope for background interviews or conduct authorized witness scans. (Episode: Moments of Transition) Psi Cops were elite telepaths that were rated P-12 and considered the strongest in the Earth Alliance. Theoretically, they were charged with hunting down and apprehending rogue telepaths. (Episode: Dust to Dust) All P-12's were automatically assigned to the Psi Cop division. (Episode: Phoenix Rising) For security reasons, Psi Cops were sometimes required to be on the move to track their targets which meant they were trained to pilot the latest fighter craft. (Episode: Ship of Tears)
- William Edgars and the megacorporations feared that Clark's increasing paranoia of Sheridan would have led to him turning the Psi Corps into a military organization answerable to him thus turning them into a powerful thought police with ultimate authority over the rest of mankind. (Episode: The Exercise of Vital Powers)
Any child tested positive for telepathy was taken by the organization where they were provided a full education, employment and instilled with purpose with all their expenses paid by the Corps for their entire lives. (Episode: And Now for a Word) Children were thus raised by the Corps and helped in the use of their telepathic talents to bring it to the fullest (Episode: Midnight on the Firing Line) Young children inducted into the organization were assigned a senior telepath who was responsible for guiding them in the first years in the program. (Episode: Spider in the Web) Some telepaths were placed as field assistants in order to aid senior member of the corps. (Episode: Epiphanies) Adult telepaths discovered were given three choices; they could either join the Corps, go to prison or take sleeper drugs that inhibited their telepathic abilities. Such treatments saw a person meeting the telepath once a week where they were injected with strong drugs where the person slowly lose themselves and in some cases committed suicide. (Episode: Midnight on the Firing Line) All instructors at Psi Corps were rated P-10 in order to be strong enough to train other telepaths. (Episode: Mind War) Genetic pairings were arranged by the Corps between two of their telepaths in order to produce offspring though these were at times devoid of love. As such, sometimes a married telepath sometimes fell in love with another person despite the pairing. (Episode: Ship of Tears) It took years to train for a P-5 classification with half of those trainees burning out in the process. (Movie: The Gathering) When working for businesses, those organizations contacted the Corps for a reference for the prospective telepath employee. (Episode: Moments of Transition)
Psi Cops learnt to ignore distractions and focus on the goal. Part of their training were scan and countering exercises where one tried to scan the other who attempted to block. The defensive telepath needed to hold of their opponent for no less than 5 minutes whereupon the pair switched with the time increased to 10 minutes where they switched again and increased the time to 15. This was because field agents were expected to block invasive scans and hold for at least an hour. A reason for this was because there were no human telepaths that could sustain a deep scan for longer than 40-45 minutes as the individual burst arteries, had strokes and blacked out. This process was described as being horrible with Psi Corp members getting used to it following constant exposure and repetition. After their training was complete, the amount of harm a rogue was capable of inflicting on them was limited on both a mental level and a physical one. Thus, the Psi Corps ensures that these agents were in peak condition so that they could go into the field as well protected as possible. On some occasions, the training process sometimes caused the recruit to snap and go insane. (Episode: The Corps is Mother, the Corps is Father) Part of their training involved telepaths taking part in the T-K test in order to determine if any of them had telekinetic talents. One in every ten thousand telepaths had telekinetic abilities with half of these being clinically insane with the Corps seeking to find stable ones that could be used during operations. (Episode: Mind War)
Psi Corps regulations made it compulsory for an assigned telepath at a base to log-in with the second-in-command. (Episode: Midnight on the Firing Line) Unauthorized mindscans that did not get permission of a court order was an offense that could see the offending telepath being removed from the Psi Corps. (Movie: The Gathering) Under Corp rules, agents were prohibited from conducting deep scans of individuals. (Episode: Eyes) Highly deep scans were dangerous as they could cause heart attacks, seizures and strokes with numerous deaths caused by such means. (Episode: The Face of the Enemy) Deathbed scans were said to be traumatic for the telepath involved as a part of themselves became lost when the person died. It was said that repeated such scans left the telepath involved cold and devoid of their former selves as a part of it was lost with each dead person they witnessed passing away. (Episode: The Paragon of Animals) Their charter prohibited them from recommending candidates for elections to the Presidential Office. (Episode: Revelations) According to the law, unregistered telepaths needed to be controlled in order to protect the privacy of others and those that did not join the Psi Corps were required to take certain sleeper drugs for the rest of their life that inhibited their powers. (Episode: Midnight on the Firing Line) Unstable telepaths were dangerous and put away for the good of everyone. (Episode: The Corps is Mother, the Corps is Father)
Across the Corps, there were a number of local offices that dealt with issues that emerged but sometimes they were unable to deal with the problem at hand leading to higher ranking operatives being dispatched from headquarters. (Episode: The Corps is Mother, the Corps is Father) Interns were placed at Level 12 investigations where they shadowed a high ranking Psi Cop. Level 12 investigations did not operate solely through telepathic power but rather the personality of the individual as only a certain kind of person was capable of being a Psi Cop. These Corps members had the job of tracking down rogue telepaths who would do anything to avoid capture and even try to kill the pursuing Psi Cop. As such, these operatives needed to be ruthless but only as a last resort as the mandate of the Psi Corps was to bring back the rogues alive as well as intact in order to rehabilitate them. (Episode: The Corps is Mother, the Corps is Father) There was a category for deep cover agents within the Psi Corps. (Episode: Moments of Transition) An elite unit attached to the Corps was Black Omega that maintained their own Starfury fighters. (Episode Ship of Tears) Bloodhound units were telepaths assigned to the military division occupying Mars where resistance fighters suffered deep scans. (Episode: The Face of the Enemy)
They maintained a classified intelligence and training operation at Syria Planum on Mars. (Episode: A Voice in the Wilderness, Part 1) This research center was responsible for the creation of a classified sleeper program. The process involved a combination of drugs and deep scans designed to create a new personality that was suited to the Corps needs that was submerged so deep within the subconscious that it would not appear even on a deep scan. This new implanted personality waited in the mind of the mole where it watched, waited and listened until a telepathic password was transmitted directly into the brain. Once activated, the sleeper's real personality was destroyed and the implanted one took full control permanently. Until that time, the sleeper was completely unaware of the existence of this second artificial personality leading to individuals being the mole and not aware of this fact. The sleeper persona was conditioned for self-preservation to the point that they reacted to anything perceived as a threat and actively engaged in eliminating threats to its existence. It would go through any steps needed to prevent its discovery and included the manipulation of friends or colleagues. (Episode: Divided Loyalties)
Instead of reprogramming, an alternative was creating a sleeper agent where a person's personality traits were enhanced in order to serve the Corps. These conditionings saw regular informational updates to the person with this requiring a complete neural work-up and mapping of the neural landscape in order to avoid detection by telepathic scans. Such agents were completely unaware of their true nature as they secretly worked for their new masters. Release could only be done through an all-clear signal done so telepathically where the person's memories and true realization of events came to mind. (Episode: The Face of the Enemy) Blocks could be put into a persons minds to prevent others from accessing those memories with Level 12 blocks being created by a Psi Cop who were also the only ones that could break them. (Episode: Between the Darkness and the Light) They also developed Asimovs allowed them to implant commands in the minds of others with these telepathic neural blocks capable of preventing a person from accomplishing certain tasks such as killing select individuals. (Episode: Phoenix Rising) On certain occasions, telepathic fail safes were placed within the mind of experimented telepaths where a telepathic command code was inserted into the subject's mind to put them to sleep if they became dangerous. (Episode: Mind War)
The Corps were involved in a number of secret projects such as the creation of drugs that enhanced a telepath's natural abilities. These programs involved the creation of genetic manipulation, mutated strains of serotonin and acetylcholine designed to increase neural processing.(Episode: Mind War) Another experimental program involved the creation of Dust that was designed to link in with the latent gene in humans that controlled telepathy with this project taking five years to complete. This would then empower normal humans with telepathic traits with the Psi Corps seeking to create a telepath of acceptable strength. (Episode: Dust to Dust) At some point, it was discovered that hyperspace amplified the abilities of a telepath allowing ones rated P-12 to track ships in that dimension by focusing on the brain waves of a vessel's crew. This discovery was kept a secret from the rest of the Earth Alliance as it was feared that the military would put telepaths on the frontlines. (Episode: Ship of Tears)
Telepaths that went on the run were referred to as "blips" who were those that refused to join the Corps or take the sleepers that controlled their ability. An identifying feature was a bracelet worn that contained a code that indicated their Psi rating and where they were sent to after being caught. Blips were taken to re-education centers in order to be retrained for use by the Corps. (Episode: Ship of Tears) An in-joke within the Corps referred to telepaths as "teeps" and telekinetics as "teeks". (Episode: Divided Loyalties)
They maintained a number of motherships whose existence were kept secret from the Earth Alliance. These ships rarely left hyperspace where they only did so in order to do repairs where they did so in places that it could not be seen. Otherwise, these vessels remained in hyperspace for months at a time ferrying missions back and forth where it waited until it was needed. (Episode: The Corps is Mother, the Corps is Father)
Members
- Alfred Bester : a high ranking male Psi Cop who believed in the superiority of telepaths over mundane humans. (Episode: Mind War)
- Kelsey : a female Psi Cop partnered with Bester who travelled to Babylon 5 in 2258 with Bester to find Jason Ironheart but was killed by him. (Episode: Mind War)
- Lyta Alexander : Since that time, she was recalled to Earth to learn more about her scan of Ambassador Kosh but revealed she did not know anything more than she reported. However, her superiors were not happy with her report leading to her escaping custody and joining a revolutionary movement on Mars to finance her whilst she sought to go to Vorlon space. During that time, she learnt of a Psi Corps sleeper program operating on Babylon 5 with her presence leading to the discovery of Talia Winters as the mole. (Episode: Divided Loyalties)
- Talia Winters : blond female licensed commercial telepath rated P-5. (Episode: Midnight on the Firing Line) It was later discovered by Lyta Alexander that Ms Winters was a Psi Corps mole that had a second artificial personality in her mind that spied on the station. Upon the activation of this persona, her personality was destroyed and the artificial sleeper mind took control of her. (Episode: Divided Loyalties) According to Mr Bester, she was taken by the Corps for debriefing and possibly dissected. (Episode: Dust to Dust)
- Jason Ironheart : a male former instructor in the Psi Corps who by 2258 had been given drugs to enhance his abilities where he evolved into a being of pure thought. (Episode: Mind War)
- Byron : a former male Psi Cop who was Alfred Bester's protégé but turned against the Corps and became the leader of a rogue telepath movement. (Episode: Phoenix Rising)
- Harriman Gray : a male military specialist who in 2258 was assigned to Earthforce Internal Affairs. (Episode: Eyes)
- Lauren Ashley : female newly assigned intern placed in Level 12 investigations who shadowed Alfred Bester. (Episode: The Corps is Mother, the Corps is Father)
- Chen Hikaru : male newly assigned intern placed in Level 12 investigations who shadowed Alfred Bester. (Episode: The Corps is Mother, the Corps is Father)
Notes
- The Psi Corps was created by J. Michael Straczynski and featured in the setting of the Babylon 5 universe.
- Its founding was shown in the Gregory Keyes novel Babylon 5: Dark Genesis – The Birth of the Psi Corps.
- Mongoose Publishing created a sourcebook called Psi Corps that covered the organization within the setting of the RPG.
Appearances
- Babylon 5: "Legacies"
- Babylon 5: "Revelations"
- Babylon 5: "Dust to Dust"
External Link
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