On Sep 28, 8:16 am, Graham Smith  wrote:
> In this volume, jms addresses the negative fan reaction to Byron in
> season 5 and comes up with some pretty good reasoning, but I think he
> left something thing out.
>
> I think that many people were still unhappy with Marcus being 'killed
> off' and saw Byron as an attempt to replace him with a 'similar'
> character.  Add to that the fact that while Marcus was often brash and
> egotistical, he still had a rather self-effacing manner.  Byron, on
> the other hand, was basically rather annoying and self-righteous.
>
> Put that together with Joe's comments and a fairly clear picture of a
> unlikable character emerges.  The bigger pity is that this tended to
> overshadow the underlying telepath story which never got a chance to
> properly grab peoples attention.

I agree, Byron was representing a minority we had seen persecuted
pretty bad before his arc, and pretty bad during - one of the big
shockers being that even in the "New" B5, Bester got the upper hand
and so forth.... not to mention that some of the themes brought in had
been handled deftly in prior episodes like "Passing through
Gethsemane." I guess it is ironic looking back, maybe something just
twigged people a certain way.
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