Babylon 5 - "I am the machine" (Season 3 - Ship of Tears)

[@alexakaa.charlesross8919]

This scene seemed like something straight out of a horror movie.

[@skipperg4436]

This episode scared me a lot when I was a kid...

[@Ruosteinenknight]

It's even made worse in Babylon 5 tie-in novels that go more in-length of the whole integration between pilot and shadow vessel. Any alterations made to subject's personality by the procedure is permanent: even the Shadows themselves cannot reverse the process. When they realized that they Anna Sheridan hooked up as one of the CPU's, they had to basically reprogram her with a new personality based on what they had on hand when Icarus's crew was captured and what they knew about human behavior in general. It's not at all different what Psi-corps did to Talia by installing an sleeper agent personality within her psyche that destroyed her original character (Kosh was preparing to undo it by "recording" Talia's personality and then supplanting Psi-corps programmed Talia, but the corps pulled a fast one and recalled Talia after she was outed as "Control").

[@daanvos194]

Reality is sometimes worse

[@robertmandl9326]

This is practically the only time on the entire show where I felt sympathy for Bester - and it made this character so much more interesting. Walter Koenig performed greatly in this role, such a far cry away from Chekov. Chekov was a little odd but mostly harmless; Bester however put genuine thrills in me. You rarely knew what he is up to and in what he is involved. A man so dark and dangerous... it was unimaginable that he could even have a shred of compassion in him. And this was the same guy playing both of those roles. Incredible.

[@Ruosteinenknight]

Koenig has gone on the record saying that he still can't believe how lucky he was that he could play both so different characters as Bester and Chekov.

[@sandal_thong8631]

Despite being a telepath, he doesn't seem to understand the genuine goodness in Sheridan and his command staff. While supposedly allied with B5, alerting them to Black Omega Squadron, he simultaneously makes things difficult for Lyta and uses Garibaldi. Of course Lyta hates him and Psi Corps, so sabotages his mission to Za'ha'dum, causing problems for the new alliance and Centauri with Drakh and others who fled its destruction. When B5 uses the telepaths to interface with "enemy" ships around Mars to disable them, Bester demands to know if his girlfriend was one of those used, to which Sheridan says he wouldn't do that even to him. Instead of supporting a telepath colony, what Sheridan should have done was put Lyta in charge of Psi Corps to reform it and make sure it was under civilian control, so people like Bester couldn't use it for nefarious purposes.

[@matthewcaughey8898]

@@sandal_thong8631 in that episode where they used shadow modified telepaths he stated “ they used only the most hopeless cases, people who retained none of their personalities or had any chance “

[@Archie2c]

When there was good television.

[@alexmelik4030]

By all means Shadows should have been cheesy... But JMS managed to make them and anything associated with them a top quality horror.

[@user-co8uy5rb2s]

They were like Lovecraft.

[@redshirt5126]

Nuclear devices activated, and the machine keeps pushing time through the cogs, like paste into strings into paste again, and only the machine keeps using time to make time to make time. And when the machine stops, time was an illusion that we created free will. Twelve battles, three stars, and yet we are countless as the bodies in which we dwell, are both parent and infinite children in perfect copies. No degradation.

[@exposingproxystalkingorgan4164]

Bester is an interesting character.

[@mikejohnson8391]

Weird looks like multiple connections between Babylon 5 and Star Trek deep space nine and not just guest stars.

[@Phil-D83]

A lot was borrowed from the 80s captain power show