Babylon 5: Dust to Dust Review

[phantom000]

It kind of annoyed me that he breezed over the scene where Gariboldi and Bester and questioning the guy. Bester says that the guy is lying and so he tells them what they want to know. After the prisoner is removed Gariboldi turns to Bester and asks how could he read his mind with the drugs in his system.

"I played to his fears. It was probable he was lying about something, so i gave him an excuse. Telepathy is all well and good, Mr. Gariboldi, but to be honest the uniform does the real work"

[RobbyB1982]

It's great to see Chuck finally getting deeper into the meat of B5. I so look forward to the B5 reviews only to see each and inwardly curse "Another First Season Episode!?!?!"

Given that he did so many of them from the start of season 1 including the pilot and prequel movie, and has done them in sequence, I have to imagine someone specifically requested it and may actually be trying to have Chuck do the entire series in sequence... which isn't a bad goal... and this just happened to be a request from someone else that was higher one the queue.

Of course if you count the "Meet John Sheridan" review that covers like 8 episodes, we now have basically all the setup of season 1, have a pretty healthy chunk of season 2 already. So maybe the meat and potatoes of seasons 3 and 4 can be hit in more depth soon.

[Eric]

Bester was one of my favorite non-main characters. Evil but completely confident he's doing the right thing. I can't imagine he came to a good end. Seeing this review reminded me how much I enjoyed the show. It's nice to see characters grow like G'kar who spends the rest of the show settling into his new persona which makes sense. He just needed to hear the right words at the right time

[Fuzzy Necromancer]

I may be in the minority here, but...I didn't like Bester as a villain. It seemed like they were always giving him a new backstory for being evil, and I didn't understand why they didn't just shoot him in the leg as soon as he came on the station on general principles. He seems evil in a smug snake way, yet...curiously bland. Any time he came on screen, I thought "oh dear, another one of THOSE episodes again."

[Beastro]

I may be in the minority here, but...I didn't like Bester as a villain. It seemed like they were always giving him a new backstory for being evil, and I didn't understand why they didn't just shoot him in the leg as soon as he came on the station on general principles. He seems evil in a smug snake way, yet...curiously bland. Any time he came on screen, I thought "oh dear, another one of THOSE episodes again."

Because they can't be as bad as the bad guwys!!!

In the end it's a TV show and that shows, everything done far too clearly and principled even if B5s big contribution to TV Sci-Fi was to thrown some dirt into the mix when Trek tried its best not to.

[FaxModem1]

I may be in the minority here, but...I didn't like Bester as a villain. It seemed like they were always giving him a new backstory for being evil, and I didn't understand why they didn't just shoot him in the leg as soon as he came on the station on general principles. He seems evil in a smug snake way, yet...curiously bland. Any time he came on screen, I thought "oh dear, another one of THOSE episodes again."

I think most governments tends to frown on their military officers when they decide to shoot a government official coming to their base on official business.

"So, Captain Sheridan, it says here that your entire command staff shot Bester in the leg."
"Yes, General. He's been a pain in the ass. If he comes near our station one more time, we'll do it again."
"I see. One moment." (turns to secretary) "Betty, I'm going to need a new stack of court martial forms, the people at our diplomatic station for interstellar peace have gone trigger happy."

[RobbyB1982]

Bester was one of my favorite non-main characters. Evil but completely confident he's doing the right thing. I can't imagine he came to a good end. Seeing this review reminded me how much I enjoyed the show. It's nice to see characters grow like G'kar who spends the rest of the show settling into his new persona which makes sense. He just needed to hear the right words at the right time

We actually do get his full origins, and his ending, in the novels. Including why he can't use his hand.

Following the Telepath War, he's wanted for war crimes and spens several years on the run, but Garibaldi tracks him down. Bester was sentenced to life in prison and subjected to the Sleeper drugs that deprived him of his telepathic abilities. He then spent the next 10 years in a maximum-security prison, and died shortly after the death of Sheridan.

After his funeral, Garibaldi went to the gravesite and hammered a wooden stake into the ground above his coffin.

I may be in the minority here, but...I didn't like Bester as a villain. It seemed like they were always giving him a new backstory for being evil, and I didn't understand why they didn't just shoot him in the leg as soon as he came on the station on general principles.

Less that he was always getting a "new" backstory, and more that they were adding extra layers. Sheridan got a new wife once a season, Franklin was revealed to have a father he didn't talk to, Ivonova was revealed to be slightly telepathic, etc. but that wasn't ever a "new" backstory, just details we didn't have. If he'd been even more of a regular and these reveals were more spaced out it might not have felt that way to you. And some of it can be considered myth and rumor-mongering and maybe not true.

As for not letting him on... They considered blowing him up, tried surrounded him with other telepaths, mindwiped him once, gave him drugs to supress his powers, kept him from taking a whole cluster of telepaths on a technicality, and fucked with him as much as they could get away with. But he was still a government official and outright killing him would have gotten everyone into further trouble, especially Talia and Lyta... especially once they were plotting consipiracies. And then later he was sort of their ally against the Shadows, sort of. If he was dead psicorp would have just sent someone else. Maybe that would have been less issues for Garibaldi that way... but they still would have sent someone else to do the same things.

Also... every time he showed up it generally WAS to help them with the threat of the week, so...

[DanteC]

With Bester, it's also a case of better the devil you know.

[Fuzzy Necromancer]

Alright, that makes sense.

Still always found him annoying and unengaging as a character.

[griffeytrek]

I may be in the minority here, but...I didn't like Bester as a villain. It seemed like they were always giving him a new backstory for being evil, and I didn't understand why they didn't just shoot him in the leg as soon as he came on the station on general principles. He seems evil in a smug snake way, yet...curiously bland. Any time he came on screen, I thought "oh dear, another one of THOSE episodes again."

I think most governments tends to frown on their military officers when they decide to shoot a government official coming to their base on official business.

"So, Captain Sheridan, it says here that your entire command staff shot Bester in the leg."
"Yes, General. He's been a pain in the ass. If he comes near our station one more time, we'll do it again."
"I see. One moment." (turns to secretary) "Betty, I'm going to need a new stack of court martial forms, the people at our diplomatic station for interstellar peace have gone trigger happy."

Actually it is kind of clear that JMS did sort of think through that very scene and have some fun with it. The scene you describe is very very similar to the one right at the end of "Rising Star". At which point Sheridan politely smiles at the General and the Mimbari and Whitestar fleets suddenly appear overhead making the point clear that "No, there will be no need for Court Martial Forms".