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I recall thinking it cheesy that they introduced the Ivanova/Winters thing in the last episode that Talia was around, and that it wasn't something that was really hinted at in Ivanova's character previously.
I saw it earlier than that. In the episode where Talia stumbles into the telepath "underground railroad," she goes to Ivanova's quarters at the end, and as she's standing there talking she starts taking off her gloves - a very significant and intimate act for a telepath to do - and I remember thinking, "What, are they going to start making out?" And that was long before I'd heard of subtext or Willow & Tara or any of that.
The thing about the telepaths is that JMS created a human culture where discriminating against them was socially acceptable, and I thought that was a very daring thing of him to do. You'd never see anything like it in Gene Roddenberry's future. The Psi Corps badges always reminded me of the Stars of David that Jews had to wear in Nazi Germany. And this was never really addressed - it was just there. B5 had the now-traditional diverse cast, depicting a society where, for example, a black man and a white man could go undercover as a newlywed couple and no one would bat an eye - but just when you thought this was Trek-style non-judgmental utopia, there were the telepaths. It was a burr under the saddle that fascinated me.
And Season 5 brought that aspect of the telepath story to the front. There was an entire episode told from Bester's point of view. Sure, he's an evil guy - but
why is he that way? What made him that way? And wasn't it interesting when Captain Lockley called him to the station in what was essentially a "good guy" role of helping to deal with Byron's uprising?
And as for Byron, yeah he was kind of a flake, but if there'd been no Byron we wouldn't have gotten the kick-butt Lyta we got at the end of the season, so as far as I'm concerned the flakiness was worth it.
"The stories we tell - that's us explaining how we think the world works. Once we speak it, once we say it aloud, that makes it real for us - and real for everyone else who hears it too. When we tell a story, we invite people to visit our reality. We invite them to move in. Our stories are the reality we live in." - David Gerrold, The Martian Child