• The new B5TV.COM is here. We've replaced our 16 year old software with flashy new XenForo install. Registration is open again. Password resets will work again. More info here.

Question about Eilerson spoiler

Raw Shark

Regular
I believe it was before Crusade even aired, that the Spoiler Junkies Page had a tidbit that Max Eilerson was a Psi Cop. Well, more likely an ex-Psi Cop, since Psi Corps had been defeated in the Telepath War, and dismantled afterward. Did anyone ever find out if this particular spoiler was true? Where did it come from? I have no idea if anyone responsible for the Spoiler Junkies Page is on here or not. Or David Allen Brooks himself, for that matter. Come out, come out, wherever you are...

Suppose it was true, just for a few paragraphs. That would mean that Max's life and career, as depicted on-screen, are lies, or at least largely lies. The whole identity as a corporate man (or is this a subtle allusion to the Corps?) at IPX, the ex-wife, even the cat, are lies, elements of an elaborate cover identity constructed to hide a probable war criminal and keep him safe from justice. In the aftermath of the Telepath War and Psi Corps' reign of terror and mass murder on Earth, any Psi Cops would presumably be highly wanted individuals. The Psi Corps trilogy includes a scene in which Kevin Vacit, Director of the Corps, discovers some wrongdoing by IPX in the mid-2100s, in which they tried to cover up the death of a telepath. He uses the incident to strong-arm IPX into a much closer cooperation with the Corps. This would include sharing exotic alien tech, obviously, but what else? Who better to help facilitate the Corps' covert activities, especially in alien territory, or in the vast no man's lands of the galaxy, than Interplanetary Expeditions? This might mean joint missions in pursuit of shared objectives, and it might involve sending powerful telepath operatives, like Psi Cops, on deep-range xeno-archeological digs, or other missions. Such an operative would learn a lot along the way, perhaps resulting in an individual like Max Eilerson, who could then pass for an IPX man. And once the Corps was toppled from power on Earth, IPX could provide an excellent conduit by which Psi Corps personnel could flee Earth's authorities. The important thing, in the words of Dr. Franklin, would be to get them away from Earth, although he meant it in a partially different way. The Telepath War turned things upside-down, after all.

It would also mean that we would have to rethink Eilerson's glib explanation for how he learned the Drakh language so quickly, "Call it a knack." Uh huh. War Zone is so silly in many ways, but there's a lot of good stuff in it, too. It's kind of half and half in terms of episode quality. What if he learned their language by working alongside the Drakh on Earth's Shadow tech project, perhaps on Z'ha'dum itself? Or the Shadows' other base world from the Technomage Trilogy, Thenoth'k, I believe it's called. What if the Drakh know him? What if they didn't attack the planet he was on in 'War Zone' by accident, but went there to kill him for past misdeeds? EAS Persephone may not have forced the Drakh warship out of hyperspace, but rather followed it to its target. The dedication of Persephone's crew aside, they were taking heavy fire, their people were being killed, and they might have misread the situation they were in, which killed them all either way.

And then we would have to re-consider why Eilerson was on that world to begin with, investigating a huge, hidden, underground alien city. Was this a standard IPX dig project, or was he looking for a new hiding place for the survivors of Psi Corps? The mission could look the same either way, even to the other IPX people like Trace, who wouldn't need to know anything about the latter mission. The telepaths can't live on ships in deep space and hyperspace forever, it's impractical, expensive, there are supply issues, and ships get old and wear out. People go crazy living in cramped quarters for too long, and I imagine it would be worse if they can telepathically scan one another. Plus, EarthForce and the Rangers are probably hunting for them. They're certainly still looking for Bester after the war, and the books describe him as the worst of the fugitive Psi Corps war criminals. An underground city on a forgotten world would be a perfect place to set down, especially if Eilerson wrote a phony report stating that it was abandoned due to contamination, and would be too difficult and expensive to clean up, case closed. Move in, fix the place up, and establish a secret new telepath colony. It would be ironic if Psi Corps got their own homeworld before Lyta's faction. The other irony being that some of her people were probably installed in the new Bureau of Telepath Integration, which seems to operate as Psi Corps-lite. At any rate, I am not convinced that the underground city is just a one-off plot device, meant to be discarded completely after 'War Zone.'

War Zone is worth another look. I miss Crusade, and want more in any form.

Raw Shark

"It is the mark of an educated mind to be able to consider a thought without accepting it."
- Aristotle
 
Last edited:
Never heard that supposition about Eilerson at all. Really can't go along with it, though. I'm fine with the arc we were starting to see where his ego took a major hit and he became less a 'corporate guy' and more loyal to his crewmates on Excalibur.
 
Never heard that supposition about Eilerson at all. Really can't go along with it, though. I'm fine with the arc we were starting to see where his ego took a major hit and he became less a 'corporate guy' and more loyal to his crewmates on Excalibur.

Totally agree. I just don't think it would have fit because of the wife and the way the character's arc was unfolding. He was clearly too tied to IPX for that to be true. It wasn't like he was a newbie just starting out with them. And if IPX knew they likely wouldn't risk putting him in the field; even if he was caught off Earth when the attack happened. I like the creativity behind your supposition though. I am sure we would have gotten a similar story about someone down the line. Not likely a main cast member, but someone would have been an Ex-Psi Cop. And I'm sure they also would have run into more Telepaths who were in hiding. Maybe not War Criminals, but people on the run for being who they were.
 
I hardly think Eilerson's increasing commitment to the crew of the Excalibur and their mission would preclude him having an interesting backstory. Should we accept that Ivanova is just as she is depicted at the beginning of Babylon 5, and for most of the first two seasons? Or do we need to take into account that she revealed to Sheridan that she was an unregistered telepath in 'Divided Loyalties'? She had a secret, and she told it, and it changed the nature of her character, greatly increased the risks she faced going forward, and almost certainly changed how her future would unfold. Taking our characters at face value is not always accurate, and gradual revelations about Ivanova and other characters was always a part of how B5 stories progressed. It would be pretty dull if no one harbored any secrets. And after a conflict like the Telepath War, and event like no other, and the destruction of Psi Corps, there would be plenty of secrets to keep. Delenn talked about life and peace for years, and then we learned that she cast the deciding vote on the Grey Council to make total war on Earth. She was not as innocent as portrayed at the beginning of Babylon 5, so why would Eilerson or anyone else be so cut and dry in Crusade? In keeping with the patterns of storytelling in the B5 universe, they wouldn't.

As I stated, I got the possibility of Eilerson being a Psi Cop from the Spoiler Junkies Page, which sadly no longer exists. I think some of their other spoilers were accurate, but there's no way to check it now. Actually, that site stated that the Narn would bombard Centauri Prime in season five, and that happened. Of course I considered that Eilerson’s ex-wife would be a factor in maintaining such a lie, and pointed out that everything about her could be fake. She did just happen to be on Babylon 5 when the Excalibur was there, just in time to corroborate his backstory. And Psi Corps has been shown to have the capability to manipulate people's personalities, and they have done so with some of our main characters, like Garibaldi, and Talia Winters' artificial 'control' personality in 'Divided Loyalties.' There's no reason to think we would not see more evidence of Psi Corps personality meddling in Crusade, a story partly dealing with the highly imperfect aftermath of the horrible Telepath War. And there's no reason to think it couldn't happen to one or more of the main characters, as it did in Babylon 5. In fact, it's more interesting if it does involve main characters, otherwise we would have a story about some guy who got reprogrammed by Psi Corps, oh, that's a shame. Or a blip who's on the run, but the character is portrayed by an extra, and they're not allowed to talk. That would not make for hard-hitting stories. One of the recurring themes in the rather messy B5 universe is that human telepaths in particular live their lives in a terrifying grey area, caught between a rock and a hard place. They either join the Corps and give up all their freedoms, or stay in prison, or live as fugitives on the run. Talia wrestled with her loyalty to the Corps, as did Lyta, as did Ironheart, as did all the blips in 'A Race Through Dark Places.' As did Matheson in Crusade, whose own actions during the destruction of the Psi Corps base, where their leaders had gathered, may catch up with him one day. The one telepath whose loyalty to Psi Corps (or at least what he believed the Corps should be) never wavered was Bester, and during Crusade, he is a fugitive wanted for war crimes, running and hiding from Earth authorities, as well as Garibaldi's hunt team. For human telepaths, there are no right answers, they will eventually be subject to the shifting political winds no matter what they do, and the consequences are often terrible. These are not anomalies, but rather threads sewn into the overall story, with each telepath having his or her own story about what they have been through and what they have done in order to survive, and of course this would continue. Life is even more unfair if you're a telepath, and that's something Byron and Lyta wanted to change. Bester accepted it as their lot in life, and spent his career cracking down on telepaths and the normals who mistreated them. JMS even stated that while the Bureau of Telepath Integration is the new telepath authority on Earth, that could yet change, and Psi Corps could come back into power. Given what they put Earth through, such a return to an accepted status would have to be earned in a very big way. Given the Corps' unforgiving nature, Matheson might one day find himself named as a wanted war criminal for his role in killing perhaps thousands of telepaths.

I never said Eilerson was the new guy at IPX, I suggested that he had spent a great deal of time working with them, maybe years, probably visiting alien worlds, which would help him fit in seamlessly when the time came to pretend he was just a normal human xeno-archeologist who had been with the company for years, who should be of no interest to Earth authorities. And I haven't even gotten into the possibility that Eilerson could also have been the subject of telepathic reprogramming, and might not know his own past, in order to better shield him from justice. If he is or has an artificial personality, it might not have any telepathic abilities. We saw a blip in 'The Corps is Mother, the Corps is Father' who had two personalities, each with its own different rating on the Psi scale. So it's hardly impossible.

Anyway, it was an interesting piece of information from about 19 years ago that I thought worth considering. I can't see any harm in revealing the answer now, since JMS has said he is not interested in reviving Crusade as anything other than a tv series. B5historyman, do you know anything about this matter?

Raw Shark

"I've never stopped thinking about Crusade."
- JMS, Phoenix, May 2013
 
Veering off of Eilserson, I've wondered about something Matheson said in "The Path of Sorrows". After his flashback of helping the captured telepath escape and blow up headquarters, he said he was 'so ashamed'. I've never understood that entirely. Was it that he originally gave the sleepers to the prisoner or something else? So if he were planned to be a sleeper (so to speak) agent, that would have been interesting.
 
Veering off of Eilserson, I've wondered about something Matheson said in "The Path of Sorrows". After his flashback of helping the captured telepath escape and blow up headquarters, he said he was 'so ashamed'. I've never understood that entirely. Was it that he originally gave the sleepers to the prisoner or something else? So if he were planned to be a sleeper (so to speak) agent, that would have been interesting.

I don't see how it would have been plausible to have him be a sleeper. With Talia you would say she is the obvious choice, but for the fact she wasn't directly a member of Earth Force and Lyta's info seemed to suggest it was someone in Earth Force. We know Matheson was under A LOT of scrutiny, so that makes him less likely. I think any sleeper agent would have had to be completely under the radar, like the Doctor or maybe even Giddeon. It think this particular episode, however, is very telling with regard to any sleeper agents. Obviously the Dark Tower Alien is very telepathic. So I think JMS would have had to show us more of a hint that Matheson or Giddeon were sleeper agents because this Dark Tower Alien would have likely found that out. I don't know. My money was on the Doctor. LOL :LOL:

I think the reason Matheson is so ashamed is because his actions led to the death of so many who trusted him. I had to go back and watch the episode just to be sure. So Alison, the rebel leader, lures Matheson to her side by convincing him to check to see if the side he has chosen is murdering everyone. After he learns that they are doing just that Matheson doesn't give Alison the injection, which leads to her being able to notify her fellow rebels where the base is located. He doesn't know that this is Alison's intention when he fakes giving her the injection. At this point he has been so used by both sides that all he can do is get out as quickly as possible, like she told him to do. He is ashamed for being a party to an organization that was murdering people and then for being used as a tool in the deaths of so many.

Now an interesting aspect of this is that Alison is described as a powerful P12. So now that she is off the sleepers maybe she just used her influence to get Matheson to leave? Honestly I am a bit confused by the end of the segment. I feel like he should be more angry about being used by Alison, but maybe we're just supposed to accept that he knows there is nothing he can do but escape and feel guilty about being an aid to so much destruction and being a member of a group that was murdering people. I think the scene is meant to suggest that this was a major turning point in the war and Matheson knows he was used as an instrument of destruction.

So here is a big aspect of Path of Sorrows that makes no sense to me - why was the tower so difficult to get into? My guess would be that the D.T.A. upset so many people they locked it in there. :LOL: But what is the real answer? The Alien itself seems like it would want people to have easy access to it. Maybe it thrived on forgiveness, but it couldn't handle a steady stream of those seeking it. ;) Idk, it just seems odd that they had to solve a riddle and go through impenetrable doors to get to the Alien once we are exposed to what the Alien was about. :wtf: I do know that this is a part of this episode I have probably mentioned before, so maybe I should go looking for answers in old posts. :guffaw:
 
As far as I know, no, Eilerson wasn't an ex Psi Cop or a sleeper agent certainly never mentioned in any official source at least. While it would be an interesting idea, as we see him on screen it wouldn't fly, plus it's been done already with Talia.

David Allen Brooks put together a little biography for Max that is reproduced in one of the script books. His language skills come from him being a child prodigy.
 
Last edited:
So this is a bit off topic for the moment, but this is the only really active thread people are posting in so I am going to bring it up. I reported some Spam yesterday and I was just wondering if anyone could explain how it gets in here? It seems like I had so much difficulty getting the ability to post again that Spammers wouldn't stand a chance, but I've seen a few sneak in. How does that happen?
 
I'm not sure, since I don't have much behind-the-scenes access. But my guess is that there are simply so many attempts, that some get through via brute force and sheer numbers.
 

Latest posts

Members online

No members online now.
Back
Top