Alfred Bester (Babylon 5)
| Alfred Bester | |
|---|---|
| Babylon 5 character | |
 |
|
| First appearance | Mind War |
| Last appearance | The Corps Is Mother, the Corps Is Father |
| Portrayed by | Walter Koenig |
| Home planet | Mars |
| Affiliated with | Psi Corps |
| Information | |
| Species | Human |
| Occupation | Psi Cop |
Alfred Bester is a Babylon 5 character played by Walter Koenig. He is a senior Psi Cop and a recurring antagonist in the series. J. Michael Straczynski named the character after the science fiction writer Alfred Bester, since telepathy is a recurring theme in his work (most notably The Demolished Man, which partly may have inspired the Psi corps and the "death of personality" legal punishment in the Babylon 5 universe).
The birth, life and death of Alfred Bester is chronicled in the Psi Corps Trilogy by Gregory Keyes, which reveals that the infant Stephen Kevin Dexter had been renamed by his grandfather, Kevin Vacit, in order to conceal his parentage. His chosen assumed name refers to the science fiction author, Alfred Bester.
His biological parents were Matthew and Fiona Dexter, both leaders in the earliest days of the resistance against the Psi Corps. While director of the Psi Corps, Kevin Vacit arranged for his daughter Fiona to be broken out of a rogue telepath reeducation camp, as a part of his campaign to actually nurture the resistance, believing at the time that the competition between the rogues and the Corps would strengthen the telepaths' gene pool through natural selection. An encounter with the Vorlons changed his position on this, leading him to believe that only deliberate experimentation and selective breeding would produce telepaths strong enough to protect humanity from future threats. This led directly to the purges of 2189, a Psi Corps offensive which decimated the resistance and in which Bester's parents were killed. He was found by the Psi Corps, renamed, and placed in Cadre Prime, a training group composed of telepaths whose ESP had manifested during infancy. Bester was told that his parents were members in good standing of the Corps who had been murdered by the resistance, though he was not told their names or shown any photographs. This did not distress him, as he had full confidence in the Corps' slogan, "The Corps is Mother, the Corps is Father."
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