Alfred Bester (Babylon 5)

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Alfred Bester is a male television character who features in Babylon 5.

Contents

Biography

Alfred Bester

In 2258, he along with his fellow Psi Cop Kelsey were both assigned the task of capturing a powerful rogue telepath named Jason Ironheart. The man was actually a former Psi Corps instructor who underwent illegal genetic and drug experiments in order to create a telepath with a P-20 or beyond rating. A safeguard was implanted in his mind to shut him down but the man managed to escape the Corps with the two Psi Cops charged with bringing him back. They eventually tracked his quarry to the diplomatic station Babylon 5 where his seemingly polite nature led him to convince the senior staff that their target was a dangerous man. Bester was aware of Talia Winters prior relationship with Ironheart and with Kelsey they scanned her mind in a painful manner in order to see if Jason had contacted her. Talia, however, had not made contact with the man and instead the Psi Cops kept a close eye on the situation with them even tracking the movements of the senior staff in an attempt to find a lead. Afterwards, a 'drill' was scheduled with Bester believing that this was an elaborate ploy to allow Ironheart to escape after the renegade came to recruit Talia Winters and Commander Jeffrey Sinclair to his cause. Arriving at the scene, Bester and Kelsey attempted to telepathically shut Ironheart down with the safe word but Alfred was knocked out by Commander Sinclair. Upon regaining consciousness, he had discovered that Kelsey was killed and that Ironheart had escaped but the failure led to Bester having to agree to a false statement about the incident so that he would not have to explain the circumstances to his superior. Bester then bid his farewell to Commander Sinclair where he told him, "be seeing you" as he departed Babylon 5. (Episode: Mind War)

On March 14, 2259 (1015 EST), Bester, through torture of an escaped telepath, became aware that escaped telepaths were using Babylon 5 as a hub to coordinate escape from the Corps. He went to B5 to get cooperation from Sheridan and the staff. He also met with Winters again in order to cultivate a better working relationship and ask her to report back any information about escaped telepaths and any help they might be receiving. Through intel from the staff, he was led to an area in Downbelow where he found a captured Winters with the telepaths. The telepaths, along with Winters, joined hands and combined their telepathic powers to fool even the very powerful Bester into believing that Winters had helped him kill all the telepaths. Satisfied that the situation had been handled, Bester left without question. (Episode: A Race Through Dark Places)

In 2260, Bester traveled to B5 again in order to track down a dust dealer to prevent it from getting into alien hands. At the same time, he wanted to get a read on the command staff. He was surprised to find that Sheridan this time had Minbari telepaths present to prevent him from probing their minds. He agreed to take a telepath suppressant for the sake of the stated mission, and worked with Garibaldi successfully in finding a shipment of dust and dealer Lindstrom. He hoped that his colleagues would arrive in time to help scan the command staff's minds, but they left quickly. (Episode: Dust to Dust)

Around this time, Bester came to notice a conspiracy occurring within EarthGov that surrounded President Clark. He determined that Clark was not the one making decisions and instead was influenced by mysterious aliens. Through him, they came to infiltrate the Psi Corps and had plans to use Earth's telepaths for their own goals. Bester was unable to learn much about the mysterious conspiracy but came to learn that it was tied to a name he heard which were the Shadows. He continued to gather more information about this hidden enemy where he learnt of a convoy of ships travelling through Sector 500 that were transporting weapon components. After some further investigation, he came to learn that these 'weapons' were actually captured telepaths that had been altered by the alien forces for an unknown purpose. (Episode: Ship of Tears)

Bester eventually agreed to work with Captain John Sheridan at several points during the second Shadow war. He learned that his pregnant lover, Carolyn Sanderson, was abducted for use in the Shadows' ships. Bester decided to go outside the Corps and tricked Sheridan into rescuing her and the 99 other telepaths, by telling Sheridan the ship contained Shadow "weapons." Pretending to be stranded in a Stealth Starfury, he drew their attention and allowed them to tow him to the station. As he predicted, he was very distrusted, but was able to convince them to go out to Sector 500 by revealing his suspicions of Shadow interference in Earthgov. He went with them on a White Star and helped locate the transport in hyperspace. Further, he sensed the Shadow vessel and sent it away telepathically (and discretely). Sheridan was able to capture the transport and bring it back to B5. Before leaving the station, he asked the crew to take care of Sanderson. (Episode: Ship of Tears)

The wealthy industrialist William Edgars 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.

Overview

Personality and attributes

Alfred believed that the reason normal did not like telepaths was due to jealousy of their evolution. He believed that normal recognised that they were obsolete and that the future belonged to telepath. As such, he was determined to make sure that future happened with telepaths in charge of human society. (Episode: Ship of Tears)

At a Psi Corps re-education centre for rogue telepaths, he encountered a woman named Carolyn and became infatuated with her. He claimed that seeing her had awakened something deep inside of him that he thought was long dead. During this time, he used every excuse he could find to spend time with her where he helped get her better quarters, get more food and other measures that made her life more bearable. At some point during this time, he came to realise that he had fallen in love with her which was something he did not think was possible as he had never experienced such feelings before. The two became lovers though Bester did not have the authority to move her elsewhere so they had to make do with their secret relationship. In this time, Carolyn became pregnant with their child with Alfred trying to convince her to either take the sleepers or join the Corps but she refused with him attributing this decision as being part of her stubborn streak. (Episode: Ship of Tears)

Officially though, he was married to woman and had a daughter that were part of a Psi Corps genetic pairing though there was no love in that relationship. (Episode: Ship of Tears)

Powers and abilities

Alfred Bester was born a human telepath whereby he had the ability to scan the mind of other beings. (Episode: Mind War)

A lesser known fact was that as a P-12, Bester had the ability to pinpoint a ship's location in the shifting currents of hyperspace. This was achieved by focusing on the thought waves of the crew on-board with the signal being amplified by hyperspace. (Episode: Ship of Tears)

Psi Cops were trained to pilot a Starfury with this related to them having to go off on their own for security reasons. As such, Bester was checked out on all the latest fighters. This led to him being part of the elite Black Omega unit that were attached to Psi Corps. (Episode: Ship of Tears)

Notes

  • Alfred Bester was portrayed by actor Walter Koenig where he made his first appearance in the episode "Mind Games".
  • An unproduced episode for Crusade indicated that Bester was to appear in an episode according to a script for the episode "Value Judgments" written by Fiona Avery. He was to be 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 responded to powerful telepathy. The episode would have ended with him escaping once again.

In other media

Books

  • In the Psi Corps Trilogy, Alfred Bester appeared in the setting of the novels written by Gregory Keyes. Alfred Bester was the biological child of Matthew and Fiona Dexter both whom were 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 re-education 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 Vorlons 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."

Appearances

  • Babylon 5:

External Links

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