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We all hate Byron, but...

Mind you, I didn't mind the character, I can understand the hatred for him, but anyway, the topic:

I really liked this quote, which IMO summed him up...

Byron and the new arrivals are heading for home when they encounter a hostile gang of lurkers. They taunt the teeps and try to pick a fight. Byron tries to pass, but the thugs block the way. The leader feels the teeps walk around like they own the place -- getting free room and board and acting like they are better than everyone else. Byron tries to pass again, but the leader shoves him, causing one of the teeps to react. Byron holds him back and tells the thug to hit him instead. The leader is only to happy to oblige. He hits Byron, who then asks to be hit again, and again for a third time.
Byron: Was one the same as three? Was three the same as one and two?
Thug: What?
Byron: Was there any difference between one, two and three?
Thug:I -- I -- I --
Byron: And what would you expect to get out of four, five and six that you did not get out of one, two and three?​
The thug is confused. He is obviously not used to using his brain. Byron stands close to the thug and whispers in his ear.
Byron:Your anger has nothing to do with me. What will satisfy your anger will never come from me or anyone else here. I'm afraid you must look for it elsewhere.

I sure wish I knew that one in high school! Who else likes this quote?
 
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I like the quote, and while I don't like Byron in the sense that I'd like him for a friend, I like him as a character, and a representative/advocate for his people. I sympathize with him, and his people's plight. I don't understand why people hate him. To me, that makes as much sense as non-Germans hating Jews during the Nazi era.

It was this scene that made it clear to me that Byron was going to die during the season. It did much to establish Byron's character as non-violent, determined, and determined to help/protect his people at all cost.
 
Actually, "we" don't all hate Byron. The episode where they convinced Bester that they were all dead was outstanding in my book. For many, the character suffered from Sinclair-itis - being too calm to be exciting.
 
Mutai Sho-Rin said:
The episode where they convinced Bester that they were all dead was outstanding in my book.

Are you accidentally mistaking Byron's episodes for the season two episode "A Race Through Dark Places", in which Talia assists some rogue telepaths in telepathically making Bester think he had killed them all?
 
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I liked Byron..he did annoy me at times though..as for the quote, there are a few people IRL that I can think of that need to hear it..if they could comprehend the meaning...
 
Well, his dialogue in that scene was certainly a lot better than rambling about willow branches. :-\

Although in my own experience of people that want to hit someone, it wouldn't have any effect.
 
With all my dislike of Byron, that was an excellent scene. As someone that has been beaten up at random by strangers - not even to be mugged - I certainly appreciated the sentiment. Also if I can't see how it would have worked for me.

I like the quote, and while I don't like Byron in the sense that I'd like him for a friend, I like him as a character, and a representative/advocate for his people. I sympathize with him, and his people's plight. I don't understand why people hate him. To me, that makes as much sense as non-Germans hating Jews during the Nazi era.

We have had this discussion before, and frankly, it's getting boring :D .. but I don't think any of us Byron-haters hate him due to lacking sympathy for his cause. Quite the contrary.

I hate him for any of the following reasons:

* His hair (Hey, who am I kidding? I'd be mighty dishonest to skip that one :p)

* The BAD, BAD dialogue he was given. Such utterly horrid pseudo-shakespearean tripe. The willow tree. I mean, seriously, WHISKEY TANGO FOXTROT? What was JMS thinking?

* Self-created cult of personality. Never appealing.

* He is supposed to be working for the best interest of the group he represents. From the very beginning, though, he operates his group in a way that can ONLY get it alienated. Which, obviously, bad idea.

* His complete hypocrisy. Assuming the worst of others at every possible opportunity, sprouting off holier-than-thou platitiudes at every opportunity he got .. was a bit rich considering his own actions as a psi cop.

* His inability to direct his anger at deserving targets. Like, for example, when one of his guys was brutally attacked in down below, and was being brought into medlab .. and he attacks FRANKLIN, verbally, on how "your people did this to him!", as if it in some way was Franklin's fault. You know, the same Franklin that had been risking his career, if not his life, to run an underground railway for escaped telepaths at a time where Byron was still hunting down rogues. Franklin, unlike Byron actually being an enlightened being, overlooked Byron's attack. Nevertheless, though, you don't increase your chances of making friends by being such a dick.

* The way in which he kept pretending to be guided by love, when he was so obviously guided by hate and anger. No matter how justified the hate and the anger are - very, in this case .. yeck.

* The way he ran his group, which should have been purely about representing the interests of an opressed minority, like some kind of loony stoner cult.

.. I do not see how ANY of these points make me hating Byron comparable to people hating Jews in the Nazi era.

The only comparison I can think of there that in any way makes sense is one that I have made before - comparing Byron with individuals like Efraim Zuroff of the Jerusalem branch of the Simon Wiesenthal center, who regularly makes logically flawed ultra-judgmental statements about modern European nations from Norway to Austria (which, while it deserves contempt for many reasons, past and present, deserves no contempt for the reason he has given - a topic for another time and another forum) which have caused some knee-jerk reactions against Jews and Jewry that were *completely* unnecessary. As such, many big European Jewish names, including Simon Wiesenthal, have spent a lot of time trying to get him to just SHUT UP ALREADY, as such people don't help a cause - quite the contrary.

It was this scene that made it clear to me that Byron was going to die during the season. It did much to establish Byron's character as non-violent, determined, and determined to help/protect his people at all cost.
To me, it made it obvious that he WANTED to die. I have little patience for egomaniacs on martyr trips.
 
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We have had this discussion before, and frankly, it's getting boring :D .. but I don't think any of us Byron-haters hate him due to lacking sympathy for his cause. Quite the contrary.
Yes, we have.


I hate him for any of the following reasons:

* His hair (Hey, who am I kidding? I'd be mighty dishonest to skip that one :p)
Of all the stupid reasons for hating Byron, that is the one that pisses me off the most. I have long hair, over my shoulders. I had long hair in High School, and college. I was beaten up by strangers, in both, not at "random," because I have long hair. So, I assume you have short hair. Should I hate you for that?


* The BAD, BAD dialogue he was given. Such utterly horrid pseudo-shakespearean tripe. The willow tree. I mean, seriously, WHISKEY TANGO FOXTROT? What was JMS thinking?
I don't think the dialog was bad at all, it suited Byron's character.


* Self-created cult of personality. Never appealing.
No more than Sheridan, G'Kar, many strong leaders, in time of adversity. To use the standard expression, he was a shepherd to his flock, but he was no Jim Jones, just the opposite.


* He is supposed to be working for the best interest of the group he represents. From the very beginning, though, he operates his group in a way that can ONLY get it alienated. Which, obviously, bad idea.
Now, that's just wacky. He did try to keep his group separate from the mundanes, and for very good reasons. If you don't realize that IF they had tried to "mix in," (a bunch of rogue teeps amongst the mundanes) that the rest of the people on the station would be far more alienated, you just don't appreciate the situation.

* His complete hypocrisy. Assuming the worst of others at every possible opportunity, sprouting off holier-than-thou platitiudes at every opportunity he got .. was a bit rich considering his own actions as a psi cop.
It would only be hypocrisy if he were still behaving as a psi cop. Besides, this is typical human behavior. The converted are often more rabidly opposed to what they converted from, than the average person.


* His inability to direct his anger at deserving targets. Like, for example, when one of his guys was brutally attacked in down below, and was being brought into medlab .. and he attacks FRANKLIN, verbally, on how "your people did this to him!", as if it in some way was Franklin's fault. You know, the same Franklin that had been risking his career, if not his life, to run an underground railway for escaped telepaths at a time where Byron was still hunting down rogues. Franklin, unlike Byron actually being an enlightened being, overlooked Byron's attack. Nevertheless, though, you don't increase your chances of making friends by being such a dick.
Byron didn't know about Franklin helping the rogue teeps in the past. He also didn't know about Franklin's part in using the teepsicles as weapons of war, which most would consider a war crime. Had Byron known that, his reaction would obviously be justified. He DID know Franklin was a mundane, and how the mundanes had treated, and used teeps, and that was enough.

The Nazi analogy works quite well here. I am sure there were some people in Nazi uniforms, or at least working gov jobs, under the Nazi regime, who had compassion for jews, but felt they had to go along with their gov, for various reasons. If a Nazi MD with such feelings helped an injured jew, they might well point out that the regime they were involved with was responsible. An emotional response, to be sure, but a human one.



* The way in which he kept pretending to be guided by love, when he was so obviously guided by hate and anger. No matter how justified the hate and the anger are - very, in this case .. yeck.
He was trying to be guided by love, especially for his people. But, with human emotions, he has lots of anger, which he is trying to suppress. So, are you mad at him for not being perfect, more christ-like?


* The way he ran his group, which should have been purely about representing the interests of an opressed minority, like some kind of loony stoner cult.
Again, you are judging solely because you don't like their appearance.


To me, it made it obvious that he WANTED to die. I have little patience for egomaniacs on martyr trips.
I don't think he wanted to die at all. He was afraid of what would happen to his people. But, he was willing to die, if it would save the lives of others. This is of course, part of Byron as an allusion to Christ that JMS was using throughout.
 
I think the thing that got me about the long hair wasn't that Byron had it but that so so so many of his followers did. I'm just the kind of person that enjoys variety though, and they felt a bit too one-note in the hair department. But then, they were a cult.

I think what happens with Byron's character is that we see him as a leader of a telepath resistance movement and want to like him solely because of that, but cognitive dissonance occurs when we actually experience his character and find that we don't. And I don't think we actually are supposed to like him, at least definitely not in the same way that we like our main characters. In the end, he's not supposed to be the telepath resistance leader that we like; Lyta is.
 
Long hair??? :eek: But Marcus had long hair too!!! And Marcus was a great character.

The main reason I hated Byron was because he was very soppy and very bland. Many of my favourite characters died before Season 5; Marcus and Kosh, and I felt that in a way, this strange man named Byron with really bad dialogue, was out to replace those characters. (well, maybe not entirely, but kind of...)

As for the scene with the thug, yeah it was a good line, but it only had me thinking that if I were the thug, I would have enjoyed punching him as many times as I could! :D

... and I still think Bester should have owned him! :p
 
Long hair??? :eek: But Marcus had long hair too!!! And Marcus was a great character.

Which was part of the point in the original plans of Byron being a romantic interest for Ivanova. She would've found herself too afraid of losing another opportunity in the wake of having lost Marcus and having kept him at an emotional distance all the time. She would've jumped into the relationship with Byron, seeing in him some of the same things she saw in Marcus, only to be hurt yet again by having yet another person she loved die.
 
Well, I have long hair in a pony tail, and I hate Byron and his weird, singing cult. I tend to agree with Chilli, about everything except the hair. :-\

As for whether Byron wanted to die or was just willing, I think the (completely avoidable) manner of his death answers that one. He was always a wanna-be martyr, at the end he got to be one, and took all his deluded singing victims with him. Though she definitely goes a bit screwy near the end, Lyta was a far better prospect for leading the telepaths to freedom.
 
Interesting that some people seem to hate the character directly or for some superficial reasons.

I hate Byron, but more for his creation and integration into B5. It thought the whole teep story was boring, slow, draw-out and generally... crap. So I hate Byron for his existence, than the character or the actor himself. His actions were weak. His strategies unsound and on the whole he was an unconvincing character in an inconvincing environment. I'm sure there was some budget issue attached to the whole story too.

Did the whole Byron story represent the telepath war that was mention in S4? If so, man that was crap.

Yet we could've had more with the Psi-Corps and the Shadow influence. We could've had an all out telepath war. We could've had an all out Drakh war. We could've had more realistic political bickering, or issues with the new alliance. We could've had a war over the race for left over first one tech. We could've had stories centered on other worlds. etc. etc. etc.

Instead we got Byron. That's why I hate 'him'. :(
 
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Of all the stupid reasons for hating Byron, that is the one that pisses me off the most. I have long hair, over my shoulders. I had long hair in High School, and college. I was beaten up by strangers, in both, not at "random," because I have long hair. So, I assume you have short hair. Should I hate you for that?

Hey, cool it. I've had short hair, I've had long hair, and I've been beaten up for having long hair.

That comment was, actually, tongue in cheek - of course I don't actually hate people for their haircuts. But some looks, for some people, just are NOT a good idea.

I don't think the dialog was bad at all, it suited Byron's character.

Yes, it did suit his character.

No more than Sheridan, G'Kar, many strong leaders, in time of adversity. To use the standard expression, he was a shepherd to his flock, but he was no Jim Jones, just the opposite.

G'Kar actively tried to fight the cult of personality forming around him. It was hardly self-created.

Sheridan's cult of personality was created by Sheridan coming back from the dead and saving the universe, which is, kind of impressive.

Byron's cult of personality came from .. Byron.

Now, that's just wacky. He did try to keep his group separate from the mundanes, and for very good reasons. If you don't realize that IF they had tried to "mix in," (a bunch of rogue teeps amongst the mundanes) that the rest of the people on the station would be far more alienated, you just don't appreciate the situation.

Well, yes, I do appreciate that situation. But this is completely not what I was talking about.

I was talking about the way he openly attacked people who are not firmly allied with his group .. that COULD have been valuable allies for his cause. Like, for example, Frankin. Or the Interstellar Alliance in general - Delenn could have been one hell of an ally for his cause if he had handled his cause as anything but "the universe owes us, boo hoo hoo", attacking people quite the opposite of responsible for his people's situation.


It would only be hypocrisy if he were still behaving as a psi cop. Besides, this is typical human behavior. The converted are often more rabidly opposed to what they converted from, than the average person.

Yes, it is typical human behavior. Since when is "typical human behavior" a good thing, though? :D

Byron was PERFECTLY justified in his anger, even when it was irrational, as it was in things like this. Him not being able to bottle it made him a rubbish leader of his interest group, though.

Byron didn't know about Franklin helping the rogue teeps in the past. He also didn't know about Franklin's part in using the teepsicles as weapons of war, which most would consider a war crime. Had Byron known that, his reaction would obviously be justified. He DID know Franklin was a mundane, and how the mundanes had treated, and used teeps, and that was enough.

You are right, he did not know about Franklin's actions - the good actions, or the bad ones.

He just assumed.

Where I come from, that is called "prejudice", and is not generally the mark of a great man.

The Nazi analogy works quite well here. I am sure there were some people in Nazi uniforms, or at least working gov jobs, under the Nazi regime, who had compassion for jews, but felt they had to go along with their gov, for various reasons. If a Nazi MD with such feelings helped an injured jew, they might well point out that the regime they were involved with was responsible. An emotional response, to be sure, but a human one.

I'm sorry, but this juts doesn't make ANY sense. I cannot think of any leaders of German Jews in exile that started blackmailing the governments that had taken them up as exiles, and making the acts others had committed on them, that their "hosts" were protecting them from, THEIR fault. This analogy would make sense if Jews had attempted to blackmail Oskar Schindler. Alas, they did not.

Well .. I *sort of* can, very sloppily. The establishment of Israel in 1948, which, for all my sympathy with the Jewish sufferings of the time, I consider a episode of history that was both immoral (punishing Arabs for the crimes of Germans - woo!) and bound to go awry.

I guess you can make some bandwagon nazis comparisons for Lochley and Zack - while no fans of Bester and the Psi Cops, they did play along. But hey, it's not like I'm saying that they were right when I'm saying that Byron was acting like a complete moron.

He was trying to be guided by love, especially for his people. But, with human emotions, he has lots of anger, which he is trying to suppress. So, are you mad at him for not being perfect, more christ-like?

I do not blame him for not bottling his anger.

I do blame him for unbottling it randomly, at people that do not deserve it. That does NOT make him a likable man, OR a good representative for his group.

Again, you are judging solely because you don't like their appearance.

I am judging them for having (extremely creepy) norms among a society that should be all about the abolition of norms.

I don't think he wanted to die at all. He was afraid of what would happen to his people. But, he was willing to die, if it would save the lives of others. This is of course, part of Byron as an allusion to Christ that JMS was using throughout.

I do not think, that Byron arrived on Babylon 5 expecting to die. He was, however, from the very beginning the kind of guy that walks into a room, and is the victim before anyone even says a word. See his first conversation with Sheridan in No Compromises. See his conversation when Garibaldi comes to him with a morally dirty, abusive, but yet honest offer to use telepaths as spies. Et cetera. Et cetera.

Yes, the allusions to Christ are quite strong.

I never much cared for that guy either. :p
 
I think the thing that got me about the long hair wasn't that Byron had it but that so so so many of his followers did. I'm just the kind of person that enjoys variety though, and they felt a bit too one-note in the hair department. But then, they were a cult.

I think what happens with Byron's character is that we see him as a leader of a telepath resistance movement and want to like him solely because of that, but cognitive dissonance occurs when we actually experience his character and find that we don't. And I don't think we actually are supposed to like him, at least definitely not in the same way that we like our main characters. In the end, he's not supposed to be the telepath resistance leader that we like; Lyta is.

Thank you .. this pretty much summarizes my feelings for him.

It's not that I hate his long hair - I just think it makes him look daft. What I hated, though, was the way they ALL had it .. and how he seemed to be perfectly fine with being emulated like this.

This completely distinguishes him from people like G'Kar and Sheridan.

But as much as (most of us) hate Byron's guts, it makes perfect sense that Lyta, who has been used as a tool, discared and picked up again at will, falls for him, and his cause .. and eventually carries it on. With so much less whining, so much less hypocracy, and so much more ass-kicking.

Mmm, Lyta...
 
punishing Arabs for the crimes of Germans - woo!

It's even worse. It's punishing Arabs because of a crime the whole world had a (smaller) share in, because they did non want to accept the jews even in the face of their mistreatment. That policy did not change after the war and comes down to something as inhuman as immigration quotas.

For easy reference, the Wikipedia article:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Évian_Conference

Perhaps, after all, the creation of Israel is something of an apology for failure to render assistance during the jews' time of need.
 
Yeah, my big gripe about Byron is that he played his political cards so, so poorly. Nobody takes well to being threatened, let alone the perpetually paranoid League/Alliance ambassadors... whereas Delenn would have championed Byron to the end of time, if he'd calmed down long enough to go to her. Heck, the Minbari were so rich and so advanced, they might have had a spare planet of their own (or, more likely, knew of such a place) that Delenn could have offered them!

Delenn also could have introduced Byron to some of the Minbari telepaths who fought for the Army of Light voluntarily. That would have been an interesting encounter. But no, Byron went off like a loose nuke, and he paid for it.

I'm enough of a romantic that the "willow" dialogue never bothered me, and I'll confess that due to missing bits and pieces of Season 5 I've never heard the telepath song. As such, my tolerance for Byron is that much higher.
 
Yeah, my big gripe about Byron is that he played his political cards so, so poorly. Nobody takes well to being threatened, let alone the perpetually paranoid League/Alliance ambassadors... whereas Delenn would have championed Byron to the end of time, if he'd calmed down long enough to go to her. Heck, the Minbari were so rich and so advanced, they might have had a spare planet of their own (or, more likely, knew of such a place) that Delenn could have offered them!

Delenn also could have introduced Byron to some of the Minbari telepaths who fought for the Army of Light voluntarily. That would have been an interesting encounter. But no, Byron went off like a loose nuke, and he paid for it.

And let's all remember that of all the races in the B5 universe, the race to treat its telepaths the poorest, for all we know, are humans.

Very much sense it made, then, to blackmail the alliance members under the moral justification that "they owe us". With all of their species actually treating telepaths like living beings, how did he expect his stunt would come over?

It's a great testament to JMS and B5, though, that we can still be calling eachother names over B5 when it's been off the air for a decade now - even about the bad parts of the show!

Either that, or it's a testament to me needing to get out more :p
 
...I'm sure there was some budget issue attached to the whole story too.

In a way. After that fateful convention weekend in England when Claudia Christian chose to not sign the contract for the fifth season and the hotel at which jms was staying threw out a bunch of his years-old notes for the fifth season that he had taken with him to begin writing some scripts while he was there, jms ended up scrambling not just to hold the show together but to get beginning of the season scripts written to include the introduction of a new character with the beginning of production date breathing down his neck. Having had the hotel throw out his notes left him without the material he needed to easily write the beginning of the season because those notes contained things too detailed for him to remember on his own, thus part of the reason to create such notes, and he was left having to write the beginning of season five in a way he had never planned for. In the scriptbooks, he talks about how he latched onto the one thing he could remember well enough to try to keep the show afloat storywise, and that was the telepath colony.

Did the whole Byron story represent the telepath war that was mention in S4?

No, it didn't. The Telepath War is a story still untold.
 

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