Column Babylon 5 Rewatch Babylon 5 Rewatch: “Phoenix Rising” The conflict with the violent faction of Byron’s followers intensifies… By Keith R.A. DeCandido | Published on May 11, 2026 Credit: Warner Bros. Television Comment 0 Share New Share Credit: Warner Bros. Television “Phoenix Rising”Written by J. Michael StraczynskiDirected by David J. EagleSeason 5, Episode 11Production episode 512Original air date: April 1, 1998 It was the dawn of the third age… Another batch of bloodhounds arrive on the station and are briefed by Bester, which also brings the viewers up to speed. Bester wants as few casualties as possible, and also wants the bloodhounds to focus on the armed ones roaming the station. The ones locked in downbelow on a hunger strike aren’t going anywhere, and they can probably just wait them out. Lochley comes in at the end of the briefing and Bester assures her that everything will be fine. They enter a lift only to find a Psi Cop’s corpse nailed to the wall with “FREE BYRON” graffiti’d on the wall over the cop’s head. Lochley allows as how Bester may be optimistic. Sheridan and Lochley talk to Byron, trying to convince him to surrender. However, Byron will not surrender to the Psi Corps and won’t leave until Bester is gone. Bester then interrupts and says that Byron never keeps his promises and Byron cuts off the communication in a snit. Sheridan rebukes Bester for spoiling what had been a potentially productive negotiation, and Bester tells him not to worry, as this will all be resolved by morning. Bester then goes to his quarters to find Garibaldi pointing a PPG at him. Garibaldi demands that Bester make a full confession to what he did to Garibaldi. Bester refuses. When Garibaldi tries to pull the trigger on the PPG, he finds that he can’t. Bester smugly reveals that part of Garibaldi’s conditioning is that he cannot possibly bring harm to Bester. After Bester leaves, Garibaldi angrily shoots the computer, just to prove he can still use the PPG elsewise… Credit: Warner Bros. Television In downbelow, Alexander demands to know how Bester knows Byron, at which point he admits that he was a Psi Cop. During a mission, they captured some rogue telepaths. Once they were safe, Bester ordered Byron to shoot down the transport that taken on the rogues as passengers. Byron only did so reluctantly and because Bester ordered him to (“they’re just mundanes”). He filed a report, but nobody seemed to care. So he quit the Corps. The rogue telepaths who are out and about are struggling. “Southey” tells Thomas that they’re in trouble, so Thomas suggests they fall back to medlab. They take the occupants hostage—among them, Garibaldi, who was there trying to find out from Franklin if a telepathic neural block can be reversed. Thomas demands that Byron be freed and orders Peter to guard the entrance to medlab with his telekinesis, which he uses to batter Allan and his people with random bits of debris. Byron is devastated by what has happened and asks Alexander to find a way out of downbelow without cutting through the barricades. She uses her super-duper telepathy to find one, and they head to medlab. Sheridan and Lochley discuss the situation. Bester still has jurisdiction, though Lochley has put in a request to EarthGov to let Lochley take command of the situation, since her people have been hurt. They agree not to give in to Thomas’ demands, and Sheridan contacts medlab to inform them of this. In medlab, Garibaldi has been trying and failing to convince the telepaths to surrender. Once Sheridan rejects their terms, Thomas raises his PPG and points it at Garibaldi—but Byron arrives and shoots Thomas before he can kill Garibaldi. Byron then contacts Sheridan and Lochley and offers new terms. He and the telepaths who committed acts of violence will surrender—but only to the military, not to Psi Corps. The other telepaths must be allowed to go free. He also asks to speak to his people in downbelow before surrendering, again with no interference from Psi Corps. Sheridan and Lochley agree. Bester does not, but Lochley informs him that she just got word from Earth that she now has jurisdiction, so there, nyah nyah. Byron even goes so far as to turn in the identicards of all those who are surrendering, and also provide written confessions. Credit: Warner Bros. Television Bester goes to downbelow and tries to telepathically plead with Byron to surrender to him. Byron refuses. Byron, Southey, Peter, and the rest of the gang go to surrender, and Lochley and Allan are about to take them into custody when Bester and his Psi Cops show up. Someone fires a weapon and all hell breaks loose. And then there’s a chemical spill, at which point everyone stops firing for fear of going boom. After telling Alexander to walk away and exchanging some incredibly clichéd dialogue with her on the subject of love and loyalty and other nonsense, Byron shoots at the chemical spill, killing him and the other telepaths. Bester is gobsmacked, as telepaths should all be on the same side. Alexander gives each of the surviving telepaths information from Byron that will help them get to safety. Franklin expresses concern about Garibaldi to Sheridan, and they pass by “REMEMBER BYRON” graffiti on the bulkhead. In his cabin, Garibaldi, listening to a news story about the bombing of Psi Corps HQ on Earth, pours himself a drink. Get the hell out of our galaxy! Sheridan gets to give his first-ever “we don’t negotiate with terrorists” speech as president. Never work with your ex. Lochley is able to talk EarthGov into giving her jurisdiction back from Bester. Because she’s just that awesome. The household god of frustration. As if Garibaldi didn’t have enough reason to hate Bester, now he finds out that the conditioning extends even further to the point that he can’t get vengeance. This, and being beaten up and taken hostage, leads him back to the bottle. Credit: Warner Bros. Television The Corps is mother, the Corps is father. We find out that Byron was a Psi Cop. Also Bester genuinely thought that the telepaths would understand that Bester is on their side and won’t harm them, all the way to the end, a level of self-delusion that is, frankly, sad. No sex, please, we’re EarthForce. Byron and Alexander have one final longing glance and awful dialogue before Byron blows himself and his friends up. Looking ahead. The end of this episode was obviously meant to be a tipping point for the start of the oft-predicted and oft-referred-to Telepath War that has yet to be chronicled in any form. Garibaldi falling off the wagon will continue to be a plot point this season. Welcome aboard. We have the final appearances of the following telepaths: Robin Atkin Downes as Byron and Leigh J. McCloskey as Thomas, both back from “A Tragedy of Telepaths”; Jack Hannibal as Peter, back from “Secrets of the Soul”; and Victor Love as “Southey,” back from “In the Kingdom of the Blind.” Walter Koenig, also back from “A Tragedy of Telepaths,” makes his penultimate appearance as Bester; he’ll be back in “The Corps is Mother, the Corps is Father.” Trivial matters. Footage from “The Deconstruction of Falling Stars” of Garibaldi as the injured prisoner of renegade telepaths (and of Sheridan delivering his terms over the communication system) in a trashed medlab is used, and intercut with new footage expanding the events (including revealing who fired the weapon at the end of the footage in the older episode). The song Byron sings before he blows himself up is the same one he and the gang sang at the end of “Strange Relations.” The full story of what Bester did to Garibaldi was told in “The Face of the Enemy.” We get a few flashbacks to that episode. Bester refers to the neural block he put on Garibaldi as an “Asimov,” as it’s based on the first of the Three Laws of Robotics that science fiction writer Dr. Isaac Asimov created in his robot fiction. That first law (which Bester mistakenly refers to as the first two laws) is “A robot may not injure a human being or, through inaction, allow a human being to come to harm.” The echoes of all of our conversations. “Every race to develop telepaths has had to find some way to control them, through laws, religion, drugs, or extermination. We may not be pretty, but we’re a hell of a lot better than the alternatives.” —Bester, engaging in human-centric propaganda. Credit: Warner Bros. Television The name of the place is Babylon 5. “We are what we have become.” As I indicated last time, the rogue telepath story coming to a conclusion mostly just engenders relief that this tiresome plotline is coming to a merciful end. One scene does stand out, and it’s Garibaldi’s confrontation with Bester, which is something we’ve been waiting for since “The Face of the Enemy,” after being denied it by Lochley tossing Garibaldi in jail when Bester was here last in “Strange Relations.” Jerry Doyle perfectly plays Garibaldi’s frustration, and Walter Koenig is magnificently smug as Bester asks Garibaldi if he thinks he’s an idiot. It’s a beautiful scene that has the unfortunate side effect of showing up just how awful the rest of the episode is. The revelation that Byron was a Psi Cop is something that probably should’ve come up sooner—like when Bester was last on the station or when Byron and Alexander had hot telepathic monkey sex—and the plot points are dutifully checked off in a manner that is long on perfunctory and short on excitement. The absolute worst is the climax when we have a whole bunch of armed people facing off against each other, and the entire thing grinds to a halt so that Byron and Alexander can have their cliché-drenched final conversation. Which is then followed by the explosion in an enclosed space that somehow only kills Byron and his people and doesn’t hurt anyone else. Sure. I buy that. Once again, it’s left to Koenig to salvage the episode. Bester has spent most of his time on the station coming out ahead, and even when he loses, he doesn’t lose badly, or gets some manner of consolation. Here, though, he completely loses, and it’s obvious that a big part of why is that he was never able to get his arms around the notion of telepaths not being his people. He never saw Byron and his people as the enemy, but as prodigal children he was just waiting to welcome back. Overall, this episode mostly makes me glad I won’t be subjected to the character of Byron or to Robin Atkin Downes’ inability to vary his facial expression hardly ever. Next week: “The Ragged Edge.”[end-mark] The post <i>Babylon 5</i> Rewatch: “Phoenix Rising” appeared first on Reactor.