B5: Divided Loyalties

[CrypticMirror]

I did a quick google and nothing is mentioned of Talia after her departure, save for a few references. As I remember, she would have essentially have had Lyta's plot points, hadn't her actress not have left. I'd wouldn't have thought the psi-corp would want to potentially destroy a stable and loyal telekinetic, since they're meant to be extremely rare, via a botched vivisection. The guy who makes her telekinetic does mention the assassination possibilities of telekinesis, psi-corp wouldn't want to lose such an asset. It's a shame we'd likely never get the telepath war covered anywhere. Talia vs Lyta would have been interesting.

Was it ever mentioned when the sleeper personality was installed?

The problem with authoritarian and paranoid systems, is that they waste assets if they think they cannot control them. If Talia ended up a bit too powerful then it wouldn't matter how loyal she was, her days would be effectively numbered due to their paranoid fear.

[chaos42]

plus don't forget the original personality was destroyed and the second personality might not have those abilities. In a season 5 episode spoiler warning


they run into a guy who has 2 personalities ones a lower psi value like 9 or 10 but the other personality is a 12 which is on par with a psi cop meaning the second personality might not have the tk abilities and if they don't have the ability to use the powers but the body does they would probably slick and dice her just to see if they can figure it out, many medical discoveries were done by doing just that.

Other than that when the personality was installed is probably before she was posted to B5 simply because when else would she have been grabbed to do it. Plus it makes sense the psi corp is backing clark so even before he killed the president his allies were working to put pawns into place, remember they put that guy in security -2nd in command no less -and he had to work his way in there with Garabalde to be able to help them pull off the assassination jobs set up. Also remember the escape hatch for all this was going to be something from season ones deathwalker episode so i suspect this was planned for quite some time

One thing you can say about clark and the people working with him they are smart enough to know how to plan something and get what they want in the short term. Long term they aren't so bright.

I do like the concept that

[Mickey_Rat15]

I think they insinuated that Talia had her brain carved up by the Psi Corps because of her growing telekinesis so after a certain point she was never going to come back.

Or maybe that was just me missremembering it.

There is a line by Bester in a later episode that suggested that, though how true it was as opposed to Bester just trying to antagonize the crew was a matter of conjecture.

[Beastro]

The stuff between the new personality and Ivanova was just nasty though, and I'm not sure it makes a lot of sense. Wouldn't it be in this agent's interests to try to plant the seeds of sympathy with her, even if it's based on lies, rather than just make absolutely sure the B5 crew hates her guts? I guess there's a danger there of teasing a redemption that would never be, though.

The personality was crafted by PsiCorps. They're not known for being nice even when it can gain them more.

I recall liking Talia more than Lyta in general which probably fed into that, and the abruptness of this turn after her story lines opposing the psi corps up to that point felt pretty bad.

I'm the opposite and was happy to see Lyta back.

[RobbyB1982]

I always wondered what the explanation in the verse was for why they never tried to restore her memory, since correct me if I'm wrong, wasn't Kosh a setup for that?

The in-universe reason is she was locked deep within the psi-core and there was no way to reach her even if they did have a method. At one point Bester let it "slip" that she had been dissected for study, but he let it out in such a way he was either lying to mess with the crew... or he was 100% telling the truth to mess with the crew. Hard to tell.

It's a shame we'd likely never get the telepath war covered anywhere.

The books actually cover that somewhat! The Psi Corps Trilogy covers the founding of the Psi Corps up through what happens to Bester in the end. It doesn't go into full detail, like we don't find out how Lennier dies in it, but we get a chunk of what went down.

[Wargriffin]

The only things We know is Both Lennier and Lyta die during it

[cdrood]

There's a B5 comic that tells the story of how Garibaldi and Sinclair met. Essentially they crashed on Mars and had to walk back. On the way, they found a secret Psi-Corps experimental facility. In the stinger for the last part, you see Talia is one of the telepaths being experimented on with the implication that is where/when the personality was implanted.

The thing I liked about this episode is all the references to the pilot. I hadn't seen it by that point due to picking up the show in season 1 and the pilot having aired a full year before S1. It's a great example of JMS making lemonade. Lose three actors from the pilot? It just happens to be the two who saw the Vorlon and the one who was originally supposed to have the implanted personality. It's a great way to use real life towards the conspiracy going on in the background.

The abrupt departure of Talia and the fact that it was never satisfactorily resolved is a minus. I get that real life does that. It's just a bit disappointing. It's also stuff like in this episode that makes later treatment of Lita so annoying. She saves their butts time and again and they force her to make a deal with Bester to keep her apartment.

[cdrood]

I do wish more showrunners of continuing arc stories actually planned like JMS. He knew how long he needed for the whole story, the minimum he needed for the important bits, and had characters and backup characters for each storyline and none was just a 1-1 replacement. For example, Lita's power boost came in a different fashion from Talia's. Laurel Takeshima's arc was split between at least three characters (Ivanova, Talia, and Garibaldi's season one assistant).

Everything fits together when writers establish mysteries but don't know the actual answers ahead of time. You get things like the half assed Cylon numbering where you have to retcon in another model to make it fit.

[Captain Crimson]

I do wish more showrunners of continuing arc stories actually planned like JMS. He knew how long he needed for the whole story, the minimum he needed for the important bits, and had characters and backup characters for each storyline and none was just a 1-1 replacement. For example, Lita's power boost came in a different fashion from Talia's. Laurel Takeshima's arc was split between at least three characters (Ivanova, Talia, and Garibaldi's season one assistant).

Everything fits together when writers establish mysteries but don't know the actual answers ahead of time. You get things like the half assed Cylon numbering where you have to retcon in another model to make it fit.

He said it best himself. He didn't want excess waste. And I think ST and SW could have learned a thing or two from him. I think his model should be the gold standard for visual SF that is not tailored to movie casuals, since they number far more of us by now, I'm afraid.