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Marcus???

This leads me to wonder whether Byron would have been less annoying if he had only been in a few episodes. Secondly, how would his lines have changed if he had been talking to Ivonova rather than Lyta? I really cannot imagine Ivonova putting up with any "willow tree" crap.

Byron would have been less annoying if played by a different actor. I can't stand Robin Atkin Downes as Morann (In the Beginning) or Grey Council #1 (Atonement), either.

If JMS was trying to cast and write the most annoying character imaginable, with Byron, he succeeded.
 
I thought RAD was quite good as Morann, and I even thought he did quite well with Byron, and some of the writing for the character was quite good. I think the problem was that he was a character who could have been ok in small doses, but we just got too damn much of him.
 
Byron never bothered me much... but I'll confess that with my spotty coverage of Season 5, I still haven't actually heard the telepath song. (Or seen Rebo and Zooty, for that matter.) That might be a factor.
 
I think it's mostly the men who have such a huge problem with the character Byron.

Most of the female fans of the show that I know around where I am seemed to key to Byron's part in the plot easier than the guys.
 
RW7427 said:
I just can't see Susan with Byron.

That's part of the point of it all; Byron wasn't the kind of guy that Ivanova could thoroughly be with, but with the death of Marcus and her regret over having never expressed her feelings to him, she would swing the pendulum too far in the opposite direction and end up in a relationship that wasn't right for her.
 
I think it's mostly the men who have such a huge problem with the character Byron.

Most of the female fans of the show that I know around where I am seemed to key to Byron's part in the plot easier than the guys.

I can see his part in the plot (in a general sense), but I think the telepath arc in S5 feels a little laboured and stretched out, and he muscles his way into episodes that aren't really about that arc too. Those are symptoms of the whole S4/S5/Claudia Christian leaving debacle, I'm sure.

Also, at the end of the day, even excepting his place in the story, Byron is someone I just wouldn't like in real life - I'm like Zack I guess. :)
 
Yeah, I felt rather sympathetic to Zack too. I did find some of Byron's lines interesting though since I had just finished reading Hamlet in English lit when he appeared so I was picking up on many of his references. That was kind of cool but the whole willow tree and BCFMO stuff annoyed me to no end...to say nothing of the singing telepaths.

Out of curiousity, has JMS ever addressed the rather widespread unpopularity of Byron (at least among male viewers)? I am just curious if he was surprised by it or if he understood how the drawn out telepath arc might have left that part of the story a bit thin...

Just for fun, imagine Byron going on walkabout. I would love to hear what he would have to say to himself as I imagine the second Byron to be about 100 times as critical as the second Dr. Franklin.
 
I imagine that in a way, Byron did go on walkabout, but back in his Psi Cop days. The critical side of him took over, forced him to quit the Corps, and started lashing out at others as well.
 
I thought RAD was quite good as Morann,
He was easier to take as Morann, but then again that character was supposed to be annoying. RAD as Byron grates on my nerves.


...and I even thought he did quite well with Byron, and some of the writing for the character was quite good.
He, the character and the actor, was too effeminate for me to stand. I couldn't see either Ivanova or Lyta going for a guy like him in a million years. Marcus, yeah, but not Byron! :p


...I think the problem was that he was a character who could have been ok in small doses, but we just got too damn much of him.
That was part of the problem. Other parts were his long, wavy blonde hair, the passivity, and the whole bohemian. longhaired group.
 
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raw_bean said:
...Byron is someone I just wouldn't like in real life....

I think that's intended. Byron holds the position of rebel telepath leader, and I think that we all are conditioned due to knowing how horrible the Psi Corps is to look at that position and think that someone in that position has gotta be a hero type that we should easily like. So we develop this kind of dissonance of opinion over him. But I don't think we were ever meant to like Byron as if he could be a friend. He was still a product of Psi Corps and Bester: he thought telepaths were superior to non-telepaths, and he could never truly be the leader telepaths needed to fight back against Psi Corps.
 
i cant see any reason why he would be opposed but were he to it would be a fairly odd story were Claudia Christian not involved in some way

I'm sure Jason would be thrilled to get the chance to do an episode of TLT, since he isn't do much acting these days. But why do you think it would be odd without Claudia? Marcus was a legitimate character in his own right, distinct from storylines that intersected with Ivanova. How about seeing him during his Ranger training days? That would even give Michael O'Hare a chance to come back, too. And, no Ivanova necessary (or possible, in fact).

Amy
 
Hasn't Michael O'Hare been the most elusive of all the actors?

Marcus' Ranger training was pretty well covered in "To Dream in the City of Sorrows," but he's a Ranger -- surely he had plenty of adventures we didn't see.
 
I think that's intended. Byron holds the position of rebel telepath leader, and I think that we all are conditioned due to knowing how horrible the Psi Corps is to look at that position and think that someone in that position has gotta be a hero type that we should easily like. So we develop this kind of dissonance of opinion over him. But I don't think we were ever meant to like Byron as if he could be a friend. He was still a product of Psi Corps and Bester: he thought telepaths were superior to non-telepaths, and he could never truly be the leader telepaths needed to fight back against Psi Corps.


That is a good point; I would add that Byron probably retained the same personality that he would have had if Ivanova had remained for the 5th season. As JMS intended to show that he was not the right one for her, I think it makes sense that there would be elements of his personality that fans would see and react against. If he had a character with which more fans idenified and felt sympathy for, then it would be harder to portray him as a failed relationship for Ivanova.
 
That's one thing I never quite understood about some fans' vehement hatred of a character who was meant to be basically exactly as he came across.

Keep in mind, folks, that JMS had high hopes back then of being offered an opportunity to do a theatrical movie based on the Telepath Wars. Can't you see that the kind of attitude-duality we see in Byron makes a lot of sense?

He's been corrupted, and was carefully molded to be basically a dangerous bully, like all the Psi cops. He madly throws himself into an attempt to reverse things, and to win the fight by bringing out the better part of his nature.

I also find it rather humorous that a culture that professes to worship Jesus Christ as a savior really, really tend to hate people who actually live as Jesus supposedly lived. :)

In any event, so now you have a man who was, quite truthfully, exceptionally good at what he was being trained to do. He quite bravely made a huge effort to escape that fate, and then to correct some of the horrible damage done by Psi Corps.

But he's still, fundamentally, an angry, powerful, dangerous man. He can keep his anger under control, but his followers can't. Hmmm, sound familiar? ;)

But everyone seems to be so understanding of Lyta's anger. Of course, we get to see more of her story from a personal level, so it's more natural to sympathize with her. But I've heard many people discussing the truth behind the assertion made in the series that Lyta (and other telepaths who have helped them like Talia) tend to get screwed over by us "normals".

I think the sad truth is that most of us just can't relate to someone making such a major change that he'd risk his own life to try to find a better option for his people. Of course he was out to help his people, and his people only. What do you expect? His people are the ones getting screwed whether they cooperate with the Psi Corps or they cooperate with their enemies. They are never going to find ANY group that will actually give a hoot about their lives and their fates.

Considering how fans (male fans in particular) responded to Marcus, I'd say it's a good thing he had some cool lines and some great fighting scenes. I wonder how much of that is the reason he's so relatively popular while Byron is so often ranted against.

But of course, there is also the fact that most of us probably wouldn't or couldn't do what he did. Let's face it, folks, your choices were pretty much to cooperate, and slaughter "mundanes" at the slightest whim, or to be hunted down and eventually probably killed by Psi Corps. I think sometimes we have trouble admitting that Byron's forced attempt to find some kind of other solution is a task too great for most of us to even attempt.

If JMS had written Byron to be the fighting-messiah type (Barabas instead of Jesus), perhaps he'd be more generally well liked. He'd have had some cool fight scenes at least, eh? ;)

Since people love to rant on and on about how horrible Byron is, I have to pop in every now and then and offer another perspective on the situation. You may continue the Byron-bashing any time his name comes up again, now. :)
 
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Every now and then I can surprise people. :D

The one-sentence version is: "you're supposed to hate Byron". :LOL:

;)
 
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