EpDis: Conflicts Of Interest

[Looney]

Yes I'd say Jan is on the right track. We know Bester had people above him that kept things from him. We know he was not the pinnacle of the Psi Corps or their plans - he was just the face we knew. That was another great quality of the character. We knew he knew more than he let on, but there were times when he was genuinely surprised by things. We knew he had his own agenda, but that others had their own agendas that he wasn't aware of - even those close to him. I mean we were given those moments when he realized that the Corps was not always in line with what he thought the Corps should be.

 

[LateArrival]

Hard to say what a telepath does and doesn't know or what the original plan might have been, but Bester said later that he didn't expect Garibaldi to quit, although that action allowed him to later join Edgars Industries and learn the specifics of the virus first hand -- which he then passed on to Psi Corps by triggering the signaling device hidden in a tooth (ouch!).

But was that device there all along or perhaps installed after he quit his job on B5, as it might have shown up when Franklin was doing scans to determine if Garibaldi had been placed inside a Shadow vessel?

 

[Springer]

Bester's a Psi Cop. The area that would know about the telepath virus would likely be espionage. While telepaths were rare, I'd think since (theoretically) they had most all telepaths under their control, it's bound to be a large and very complex operation.

My point was, Bester not knowing, but some people in Psi Corps seemingly having some idea, isn't played on at all in the story, so the inclusion of the telepath assassins in Conflicts of Interest seems like a thread that is not followed up. I don't doubt Bester is out of the loop on a lot of things – he admits as much in Ship of Tears.

(Though what he did to Garibaldi sounds like espionage to me, but I get that's not his primary function in the Corps.)

I mean, there's all kinds of conspiracy theories we could go down the road of. Did the Psi Corps want the virus and the cure to eliminate them, or did they intend to use it themselves? Psi Corps have a problem with rogue telepaths, so what better way to keep them in line than to infect them and then make them have to join the Corps to get the cure. If Psi Corps knew about the virus, why didn't they stop Edgars earlier? Did they want it released, but just wanted to have the cure? But this is all just theorising.

I'm just curious if the background of the telepath assassins is one of those plot threads that got dropped for time reasons in season 4, or was maybe meant to be followed up on in a Telepath War movie that was never made, but we'll never know.