Alfred Bester (Babylon 5)

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Babylon 5 character
Alfred Bester
Affiliated with	Psi Corps
Race	Human
Home planet	Mars
First appearance	Mind War
Last appearance	The Corps is Mother, the Corps is Father
Portrayed by	Walter Koenig

Alfred Bester is the name of a fictional character in the television series Babylon 5, played by Walter Koenig. The character was named in honor of science-fiction author Alfred Bester.

Bester is a senior Psi Corps agent ("Psi Cop"), and acts as a recurring antagonist for the crew. At one time he appeared to be linked to the sinister alien race called The Shadows and the conspiracy which led to the assassination of Earth President Luis Santiago.

The similarity of Bester's name to that of the science fiction writer is no coincidence. Psi powers were a recurring theme in the real Bester's work, and Babylon 5 creator J. Michael Straczynski named the character in his honor.

The birth, life and death of Alfred Bester is chronicled in the Psi Corps Trilogy by Gregory Keyes. In this, we learn that the fictional Alfred Bester was named after the real science fiction author by his grandfather, Kevin Vacit, in the context of the Babylon 5 universe.

His parents were Matthew and Fiona Dexter, who were both leaders of the first resistance against the Psi Corps and had been killed by the Psi Corps whose director, Kevin Vacit, was father to Fiona. Following their deaths, he was raised as a member of the Psi Corps in cadre prime, where the Corps became both mother and father. Bester was not aware of his heritage.

Being a P-12, the strongest naturally-occurring category of human telepaths, he was able to join the metasensory police and soon after was able to apprehend and kill Stephen Walters, an associate of his parents and his godfather. When Walters revealed Bester's true heritage, Bester went berserk and emptied his PPG at the man. Bester was left with a tight psychological knot of rage, guilt and denial, resulting in a mental block that left his left hand (with which he'd fired the gun) permanently non-functional.

During his career as a member of the Psi Corps, he was responsible for retaking the post of director of the Psi Corps from the mundanes by assassinating the director of the Psi Corps.

He first appeared in the Babylon 5 series, pursuing a powerful telepath named Jason Ironheart. He didn't get along with the command staff.

Bester initially agreed to work with Captain John Sheridan in the Shadow War. As the war progressed, Michael Garibaldi vanished when fighting the Shadows, who had surrounded the station.

Eventually Bester turned against Sheridan, and subjected Michael Garibaldi to intense reprogramming. He then used Garibaldi as a sleeper agent to uncover a plot to enslave telepaths, and also to capture Sheridan. Garibaldi betrayed Sheridan to his new employers on Mars. Shortly afterwards, Garibaldi was released from his programming. Bester revealed that the programming was subtle, simply amplifying Garibaldi's suspicious nature, rather than completely rewriting his mind. Even after Bester removed the programming, an 'Asimov' - adapted from the first two of Isaac Asimov's Three Laws of Robotics - remained, to prevent Garibaldi from harming Bester or allowing him to come to harm. It is said in a subsequent episode that Lyta Alexander would later remove the Asimov from Garibaldi's mind.

[edit] After the series

Following the Telepath War, Alfred Bester was wanted for war crimes that he committed. He was planned to appear in the Crusade episode "Value Judgments", written by Fiona Avery, 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 responds to powerful telepathy. The episode would have ended with him escaping once again.

He spent several years on the run before moving to Paris, France. He fell in love with a local businesswoman named Louise. But Michael Garibaldi eventually tracked him down. Bester was brought before the war crimes trial, and was tried in France for his crimes. He was sentenced to life in prison and subjected to the Sleeper drugs that deprived him of his telepathic abilities. During that time, a statue was even made of the lost child of Fiona. He then spent the next 10 years in a maximum-security prison, and died shortly after the death of John Sheridan in 2281.

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