Now that Season 3 has provided some breathing room, it is back to the races with an arc heavy episode with everyone’s favorite recurring antagonist, Bester.  I can see why they brought him back since Babylon 5 oddly enough does not really have a central antagonist to focus on.  The enemies on this show are ancient evil forces, and the concept of fascism.  Unlike their contemporary that had Gul Dukat and the Female Changeling, Babylon 5’s main villains arent something that the characters get to bounce off of.  Bester then is a welcome change, a villain that can get under the character’s skin.

The episode opens up with Ivanova, Garibaldi and Franklin discussing the return of ISN, last seen in episode 10 being shot up by the president’s goon squad.  A new anchor comes on and immediately begins to spout a ton of bullshit propaganda, much to the audience’s disgust.  Thankfully Sheridan is not here to watch as he is having some fun in one of the new fighters.  They receive a distress call that they decide to check out and encounter Bester, adrift in his own black fighter.  

Back from the credits, and Sheridan is shocked to find that Bester is the one in distress.  Sheridan is sorely tempted to just destroy Bester, but as Bester points out he is too curious to see what brought the Psi Cop all the way out there so they take him prisoner.  I do enjoy the long delay that seems to unnerve Bester when Sheridan spends a long minute weighing his options though.  When they return to the station, the command staff debate what to do.  Ivanova is of course distrustful, and the others are not any more eager to talk with him, but they eventually decide to hear him out by sending in Ivanova first to test whether he is going to sneak a scan in on someone. 

Elsewhere G’Kar confronts Ivanova about being kept out of the inner circle, despite being promised by Sheridan that he would be let in if he and the Narns agreed to help the station. Sheridan and Delenn discuss the main problem on letting G’Kar in: if he is brought in on the council he will find out that they knew about the Shadows earlier and did nothing when they assisted the Centauri in destroying his world. Sheridan offers to take the lead, but Delenn insists that she do it, as it was her decision to keep him in the dark.

Bester lays out that he has figured out that some unknown to him, alien force is working with the Earth government and that they have plans for the Psi Corps. He objects to this mostly because he has his own plans for the future and the aliens seem to have taken over before he can.  This has brought him to Babylon 5, and he claims to have information that can hurt this unseen enemy.  He lets them know that he can help them find a shipment of weapons going to the enemy because telepaths are greatly strengthened by hyperspace, an ability that they kept to themselves in order to avoid military service. 

Bester joins Sheridan and Ivanova on the White Star to go hunt down the Shadow supply ship.  With the Psi Cop’s assistance they find the ship and quickly fight off the Shadow fighters that are escorting it.  While they are cleaning up, a Shadow battleship arrives, but strangely backs away from the fight and runs off.  The characters are confused, wondering what is different this time, but are happy to escape, though they wonder at what might be aboard the transport they have seized.

Delenn decides to invite G’Kar to her quarters to lay the whole story out. G’Kar listens and it is clear that he is stunned that Delenn knew so much and remained silent.  She tries to convince him that it would not have changed anything, or that it might have made things worse.  G’Kar to his credit understands from a rational perspective, though he points out that if she had told him during the bombing of Narn he would have killed her.

When the crew returns to Babylon 5 they have several mysteries.  The pilot of ship apparently committed suicide via acid (yuck) to avoid capture and obscure what race he is from.  The other more important mystery is that the weapons supplies appear to be over a hundred telepaths that were forced into cryo tubes by the Psi Corps for delivery to the Shadows.  Sheridan quickly realizes that Bester lied, and that he knew what was on the ship.  

Franklin decides to just open up one of the tubes to try and figure out what is going on. The unfrozen telepath immediately begins panicking and screaming causing the med staff to sedate her. They take a bracelet off of her and show it to Bester and he quickly identifies it as a Psi-Corps identifier for a rogue telepath. His smugness at her being captured quickly evaporates once he reads the serial number and he demands to be taken to the telepath.  The group heads down to Medlab to see her, but she has woken up and decided to take over the place while they are gone.

Turns out the Shadows had done something to her that allows her to merge with machinery and she began integrating with the lab as soon as she woke, including having the ability to shoot lighting.  She appears to recognize Bester, calling him “Al” but attacks him on reflex when she sees his badge.  The team manages to fake her out and sedate her again.  They reconvene and Bester is clearly shaken.  He explains that he had a gross exploitative relationship with her when she was his prisoner, though the show seems to come down on the side that it was mutual. They also deduce that the telepaths were bound to be the central component for re-awakened Shadow ships.  He angrily lets the staff know that he is now going to work with them to stop whoever did this to his lover and the rest of the telepaths.  

Delenn shows G’Kar into the war council, now meeting a big fancy war room with a huge galactic map on the wall.  Garibaldi excitedly calls a meeting of the full council after leafing through the book of G’Quan.  Everyone arrives to find a very self satisfied Garibaldi lounging at the war council table.  He walks the rest through his realization that the Shadows were responsible for killing the Narn telepaths 1000 years ago, because they were a threat to the Shadows, even though the Narns were a primitive people back then.  They decided that telepaths might have the ability to jam the Shadow ships due to them having a living person as their central computer, and that the frozen telepaths were an effort to get around that limitation on the part of the Shadows by using something that would be resistant to telepathic jamming.  As everyone excitedly processes the news, they get notified that the Shadows are now attacking races in the open, starting with the Brakiri.  

This is another plot heavy episode that moves some story arcs along their path, but it feels like a fun adventure due to Bester being in the mix. There is also always something fun about having to team up with a recurring villain and Bester is a great one for it as he is able to rub almost each of the main human characters the wrong way in unique ways for each of them.  

Next week we get another huge arc-heavy episode as the characters deal with the immediate aftermath of the Shadows attacking openly.  There are big character moments and surprising battles in the much more tame sounding “Interludes and Examinations”.

As always the series is available to stream on Tubi for free, with ads.    

Where do I know them from?

• Joan McMurtery is here as Bester’s lover, but she also had a guest spot in Psych.  
• Diana Morgan is the chipper new ISN host, and she has had a long career playing reporters in everything from Eraser with Arnold, and Titanic.

The Good

• Bester is back, and now he is poised to be a reluctant ally.  A fun turn of events to be sure!
• The characters now have a feasible way of defeating a Shadow ship.  I like that the show goes out of its way to create a reasonable weakness after spending so much time hyping up the sheer strength of them.
• I like that Garibaldi has been taking his study of the book of G’Quan seriously since he first received it from G’Kar. 

The Bad

• Bester’s relationship with Carolyn is not really examined, but comes off as super gross.  I guess she is a middle aged woman as well, so it is slightly less gross than it could be?

Arc Points (Spoilers Ahead)

• The alliance with Bester is brought up once or twice in Season 4 but it feels like one of those plot points that was cut down a ton when they were forced to merge Season 4 and 5 stories. 
• We will see that while telepathic jamming is a weakness it basically brings their ships down to being twice as strong as the other races’ ships instead of ten times a strong. An advantage to be sure but they are still incredibly dangerous, particularly in groups. 
• G’Kar gets to join the council! From here on out he will have much more interaction with the others and I love it.