Crusade: People: Lt. John Matheson
Lt. John Matheson is the first officer on the Excalibur, and the first telepath in Earth Force. He’s a beacon of hope to teeps everywhere who wanted to have a “normal” job, instead of working for the Psi Corps.
If you were to meet Matheson in a bar, he’d be the creepy guy staring at people. His deep stare would be a turn off to all the chicks, but he’d still do it anyway. Secretly he’d be analyzing the women to try to think up the best pick-up line. But chances are his he’d just think up something technical, exact and more to the point not funny.
Like my Dune reviews! From as early as he can remember, Matheson wanted to be in Earth Force. He wanted to be one of those hot shot fighter pilots, and live a life of excitement. No one told him that a pilot’s life is 99% boring ’till he was older. But as a telepath he was forced to join the Psi Corps, or take suppressant drugs that would ultimately turn him into a vegetable. It’s unknown what level telepath he is. All we know is that he’s less then a P12 (psi cop) but more then a P1 or P2. This sadgeezer guesses he’s about a P7. The only thing we have to go by is when one of his corp commanders tell him that “Most of our [medical] staff are P1’s or P2’s so I wanted someone a bit stronger to administer the sleepers”.
Interpret that however you will. But Matheson secretly backstabbed his commander a few days after that conversation. His job was to administer sleepers to a rouge P12, one of the commanders in the resistance in the Telepath War. After realizing her inevitable fate, he stopped giving her the drugs, which allowed her to be more psychically active. She triggered a beacon which alerted the resistance to the corp base. The base and most of the top brass were soon destroyed in an attack.
With most of the corp leaders dead, the resistance one the War. This allowed Matheson to join the normals in Earth Force. He was a very determined officer and rose quickly through the ranks. He became Gideon’s first officer, exploring new territory out on “the rim”. With the advent of the Drahk Plague, he remained Gideon’s first officer on the Excalibur searching for a cure for the plague.
Of ocurse there was some obvious resistance for paranoid Earth leaders, who didn’t want some teep messing up the mission, but Gideon saw to the that. Matheson is nothing if not thorough. He’s a great first officer, and a leader in general. He does everything by the book and then returns it to the library on time. But this is also one of his flaws. He’s so concerned about procedure and his unsteady position as a telepath aboard the ship that he’ll always follow procedure even when it’s not the right thing to do. For instance in “The Need of Earth” he knew that Natchok will be killed immediately after he’s leaves the ship, but refrained from acting because it would have hinted that he illegally scanned someone’s mind.
Matheson is played by Daniel Dae Kim.
Discuss this character in the Babylon 5 & Crusade Forum
The Crusade biographies are © 2004 Ryan Bechtel.
Not for reproduction without the authors express permission
The BABYLON 5 names, characters and everything else associated with the series are the property of J. Michael Straczynski, TNT and Warner Brothers, a division of Time Warner Entertainment Company. All rights reserved.
