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English
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Part 169 of Behind the Gloves
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Published:
2022-03-02
Completed:
2022-03-13
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2,676
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2/2
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On Donne's Missing Backstory

Summary:

Oh look, there's another missing novel!

Ms. Donne is a Psi Cop who worked closely with Bester. She appears in the Deadly Relations and The Shadow Within. In the former work, she assists Bester in his efforts to thwart Shadow control of the Corps and EarthGov - but her role in these efforts, like most of Bester's, is omitted. The writers will give the Corps credit for nothing.

In the second work, Donne is treated worse - she's a one-dimensional "villain" whose "evil plot" as given isn't evil, so they have to hide her true intentions and omit key information from the book until immediately after the world's biggest Kick The Dog - otherwise readers would quickly realize the Strawman Has A Point and the premise only "makes sense" because the writers do not consider telepaths to be actual people (who deserve not to be murdered). Since she has no actual villainous role in the story (and never did), they make crap up about her.

I'm fixing her story, both before and during the Icarus expedition.

Chapter 1

Notes:

(See the end of the chapter for notes.)

Chapter Text

Donne had a much bigger role in helping to thwart the Shadow conspiracy in EarthGov than I realized when I read The Shadow Within.

(I'm now going to call it "The Dead Dove Within" because honestly, the authors of the book go "mass murder of telepaths - meh, that's not really a problem... it was done by Our Hero! after all. Trying to prevent a much greater mass murder of telepaths, now that would be truly evil, amirite?" And that's pretty Dead Dovey.)

Donne's role in the Icarus story - the mass casuality attack in Geneva, how she got on the ship, her mission, and how it finally ended - is actually quite straightforward. That much could be written and finished in a few weeks. But of course, on closer inspection, the story got a lot bigger. The Icarus story actually takes place at the end, chronologically, of a much larger story of how she worked closely with Bester to thwart the Shadow infiltration of the government.

So now we have a book that starts with the mass casualty attack in Geneva, but at least half the book takes place in flashback and covers the events leading up to that point. These are all the stories that Deadly Relations mentions in passing with absolutely no explanation, like the book also references so many other things with absolutely no explanation. We see Bester assassinating the director out of the clear blue, telling Johnston that he's been planning this for twenty years, but we never see that planning... and the few references to it are intentionally extremely vague. (He mentions once that "one day, he and the director would have a meeting, of that he was certain," he asks Donne if his "appointment" is arranged, and so on.)

I feel like an astronomer with a high-powered telescope. You think there's a "blank patch of sky" and point your telescope at it, and discover, oh, a few thousand new galaxies.

That's what this book is doing. The writers are very carefully not telling you most of what Bester, and those working with him, were doing to fight the Shadows, and it's not an accident. This has all been cut out because giving him (and his faction of the Corps) any credit at all for "saving the world" goes directly against the propaganda narrative of the show. And every time I look at a corner of the book I see another story they never told you - "oh, and there was also that."

When Brett tried to warn Bester about the Shadow conspiracy, Bester didn't want to know about it or get involved in it. But then he saw the Shadow ship on Mars (and took out the berserk McDwyer who had tried to scan it), and everything clicked - what Vacit had warned him about as a child, Johnston's treachery going back to his first days as director (if not to before that), the rogue (possessed) Psi Cop in Brasilia who had spiders in her mind, the miner on Mars who had excavated the Shadow ship and who also had spiders in her mind (even though a Psi Cop had tried to cut out the memories), and other things.

This is when he realized the matter was urgent, and started setting up his own team to gather intelligence on the conspiracy - who was involved? what were they doing? who were these aliens who made the ship? - and started finalizing his plans to kill Johnston. They had to operate very carefully and in complete secrecy, because the leadership of the Corps, like the leadership everywhere else in the halls of power (EarthGov, EarthForce, private industry, etc.), had been infiltrated by the Shadow conspiracy.

It's missing from the book, but Bester does learn that one of the "goals" of this conspiracy is the elimination of telepaths, and that telepaths are being "sold out" to the aliens in exchange for... something. It's all terribly serious and terribly dangerous.

At first, it's "the government, industry and the military are conspiring with some unknown terrifying aliens to exterminate my people." Then it becomes clear (later on) that the aliens are using everybody and plan to exterminate everyone on Earth, telepath or normal, but for the moment, he doesn't know if it really goes that far... but they do sure intend to rid the planet of telepaths.

And the normals are all too happy about this - the aliens are going to help them get rid of the "telepath problem" and give them advanced technology in exchange! A win-win!

Donne is one of the Psi Cops working with Bester during this period. She seems to be operating out of one of the Corps precincts in Geneva, and acting as a "spy" for Bester and the team as to what's going on there. She arranges for the off-world "rendition" of Timothy Jackson, a telepath who was roped into working tangentially for the Conspiracy in Geneva, and whose knowledge of the key players would be helpful later to the counter-Conspiracy movement. (No one wanted to kidnap and scan him, but grabbing a teep witness from his vacation, and scanning him, would be the only way to gain intelligence on the Conspiracy without tipping off the normals.)

What they learn from Jackson gives them more information about the IPX role in this whole affair. He is the one who tells Bester and Donne (and another Psi Cop working with them, a man named Ts'ai) the following about the Shadow ship:

          "Interplanetary Expeditions tracked their ship out to the rim, a planet called Alpha Omega 3. They plan to send an archaeological team to investigate."

So Bester assigns Donne to gather intelligence on IPX. He tells her they need someone on that ship, and so later on it makes sense that she would be the one.

She gets back to Earth to begin her digging into the Icarus, and she's barely back in Geneva when the mouse goes off (and Bester succeeds in killing Johnston).

Donne was also involved in the assassination plot - she was monitoring Johnston's connections to the Shadow conspiracy, and she tracked his movements to help Bester assassinate him. She helped "arrange" the assassination of Johnston by giving Bester the critical intelligence that Johnston would be on Ganymede at that time, for a secret meeting. That secret meeting, it turns out, was with the representative for the EarthForce New Technologies Division (the folks who found the ship) - Mr. Morden.

IPX wasn't planning to send their mission to the rim for several more weeks when the "mouse" incident happened. It's actually not even clear that the Icarus even was really an IPX ship - there's a piece that implies it was actually EarthForce. I think they were working together - we have Morden on the ship, and there are some other people on the ship whose roles are never explained. That needs to be explained.

Once the "mouse" incident happened, Donne wanted to take Anna Sheridan into custody, but the Corps blocked all investigation into IPX. Such an investigation would require the director's approval, she was told, and the director just died... and the senate oversight committee had ordered the Corps not to proceed until a new director was appointed... in some number of weeks, of course. (And Johnston would never have approved an investigation into IPX anyway.) And in Geneva, the Corps leadership is in total disarray between the "mouse" incident and the director's death (and suspected murder). Publicly they would blame rogues, of course, but internally it had to be an "inside job," so who did it? He was killed on a joint Psi Corps/EarthForce base, so which side killed him?

IPX, meanwhile, scrambled to get the mission launched within days, adding Anna Sheridan and Chang to the list of people on the mission. Anna Sheridan would be useful - she would be her own "tracking device" for the Corps out to the rim, to help them find whatever more dangerous technology existed there. And while Bester had already been planning to get Donne on the mission, now he had to scramble to get her there immediately - if there were more of these devices on that planet, she had to stop those weapons from ever getting back to Earth.

Her reports back to Bester about the nature of the Shadow technology were very helpful, and of course, one way or another, her mission is "successful" in that no more Shadow weapons make it back to Earth, to the normals who are all too eager to play with their new toys (and eliminate telepaths with alien technology... as someone else tries to do a little later on, also with Shadowtech).

The more fragments of Donne's story I find in Deadly Relations the more I see why it was so important to the authors to write her story out, background what remained with no explanation, and make up Kick The Dog horror stories to defame both her and the Corps - especially any and all telepaths who were taking an active role, themselves, to defend Earth - telepaths and normals - against the Shadows. Yes, her role on that mission was to stop weapons of mass destruction from reaching Earth and killing millions of telepaths, but her work before that mission was aimed at stopping the Shadow infiltration of the Corps (a critical part of the overall conspiracy). Just because they weren't effective at stopping it all doesn't mean they didn't try.

From Bester's trial at the end of Final Reckoning:

          "You blame me for continuing to fight the war that started in 2115? You blame me for defending my people? I suppose you do. Psi Corps was developed to keep telepaths in their place. An act of war, of suppression. You want to know who the real telepathic Resistance was? It was us. Protecting ourselves against you. Sure, along the way we protected you, too, whether you knew it or not, and more than you will ever know."

"More than you will ever know" - because in that world so much remains classified, or just politically untouchable, and in this world, because the writers never wanted you to know.

JMS was trying to get "cute" with you all again.

Notes:

There is one more wrinkle in this story I'm not sure how to best address - differences in the culture of the readers (you all) and the culture of the Corps around what we call "sexual orientation." Whatever culture you're coming from reading this, it's not like the Corps.

Critically, in the Corps (and in general throughout much of the Earth Alliance dominant culture), this isn't an axis of human experience that people pay much attention to - people are attracted to who they are attracted to, and that's it.

On the other hand, the materials written here - the shows and the books - do intentionally background same-sex relationships, and that came about because of "this world" issues (e.g. actors, television networks, etc.).

So how to write a lesbian canon character whose relationships are never shown in canon?

Same-sex relationships and opposite sex-relationships should be treated the same narratively. I only write relationships when their overt presence in canon forces me to discuss it, or when I'm writing something that is in large part autobiographical (and I do so rarely). When I have to write a relationship, I also write it as minimally as possible, because I am no good at writing "romance" and I know that. I try to say only what needs to be said.

So while on one hand I want (if I can) to correct for canon's intentional backgrounding of same-sex relationships between telepaths, I also don't feel the right way to do that is by inventing a non-canonical relationship, or by diverting narrative focus in the story to an identity axis that is important for readers in this world but unimportant to the relevant characters in that one.

The solution, I think, needs to be a more subtle, nuanced approach, with the facts included in the story, but not in a way that is culturally inaccurate - and ironically what's emerging is the tolerant attitude within the Corps in contrast with Anna Sheridan's immediate judgment of Donne based on her appearance and how she dresses (too butch). Sad but true.

Chapter 2

Chapter Text

Here's the rough sketch I have of the backstory so far, missing a few key pieces I want to keep as surprises (assuming I use them). The general story isn't a surprise, though, because that would be like SPOILER ALERT: THE TITANIC SANK. (We know what happened to the Icarus. We know about the "mouse." We know about the Shadow conspiracy. Etc.)

During the Earth-Minbari War, EarthForce and Psi Corps teamed up to defeat the Minbari, as I already described here. And this makes sense, since both are branches of EarthGov (even if there is mutual distrust and even hate among some on both sides). This is how the secret base on Ganymede was built, and they kept it going after the war. When Earth captured Minbari prisoners (another story JMS never told you), the prisoners were brought to this secret base for rendition. (The humans didn't speak Minbari languages, and the Minbari didn't speak human languages, so EarthGov planned to scan the prisoners.)

Telepaths were brought in from the director's new "intelligence" unit - a new unit of the Corps created by the director to gather intelligence on the Minbari "and other threats to Earth." Donne, a young psi Cop (mid-twenties) was in this unit, and sent to Ganymede. But she and the others weren't having much luck getting useful intelligence out of the Minbari prisoners, so the director - as much as he hated it - had to bring in Bester, who he of course has always hated, and wants dead. But Bester is much older than the others, much more experienced, and the most decorated Psi Cop ever, so there it is.

This is how they first meet.

In 2156, she is still in this unit, but the director has changed its purpose. "Threats to Earth" now means "personal enemies of the director," telepaths in the Corps who he wants eliminated. Natasha Alexander has been assassinated. And now the director is obsessed with killing Bester, who he says is plotting against him.

Then there is the Shadow ship. Donne, through her contacts, finds out about the ship, and the second ship that dug it out and flew off with it. She learns that the director, with the help of this mysterious race, somehow plans to kill all the telepaths in the Earth Alliance, or sell them to the aliens as slaves. So she volunteers to be the one Johnston sends to Mars to kill Bester, to give her an excuse to go to Mars and join forces with Bester instead. She and Bester work out a way to accomplish this without Johnston figuring it out, and she goes back to Earth to be a spy against the director - to really work against the "threats to Earth" posed by him and the Shadows, even as Johnston thinks she's loyal to him personally.

Since absolutely no one suspects her of working with Bester, she is able to set up the rendition of Timothy Jackson and gain intelligence on IPX's role in the conspiracy, and she assists Bester in arranging the assassination of Johnston. But her need to keep her true goals secret also complicates her efforts to hold IPX accountable for the "mouse" incident.

The story that emerges in all of this is of Donne as a "gray" character - in some ways more "gray" than Bester is - but in which she ultimately prevails in doing The Right Thing in a very difficult circumstance. Even in her death she is trying to deny the Shadows more of a "win." Her character has some really dark elements, but she is also someone who, in the end, gives her life to protect her people and stop the Shadows.

I think the "moral" of this, if there can be said to be one, is "in the end, you don't have to be 'good', you just have to do the right thing." She commits suicide rather than let the Shadows take her (and tries to stop them from taking Anna and Morden in the same scene, though they survive the rock-fall) - a "redemptive death" ending, but one also in line with the values of the Corps.

I have not yet used the "Mature" rating for a fic - there were a few close calls, but since they were "essays discussing canon" and not actual fics, I went with Teen and warning tags. With this story, I might end up using "Mature," because so many people die in this fic. The Icarus story is mass death. The "mouse" story is mass death. We have assassinations and torture. And the plot in between the mass death is about "preventing more mass death." This one's pretty dark.

And all of that is canon, except one piece I am considering adding that's not in there, but which is based on canon from another place, so not really an "invention" of mine except in the placement.

(And this is after taking out the stupid "she's a serial killer who killed her own father and has a fetish for the body parts of her victims" crap they actually published!)

To write her backstory properly, honestly, I need to know her answers to "who are you?" "who do you serve?" and "what do you want?" What did the Shadows offer her, and why did she kill herself instead of taking their offer? Morden has his "horror backstory" - what is hers?

She is the only one who chose suicide over "service to the Shadows" or "being used by the Shadows in their ships, or to make tech." No one else was telepathically strong enough to even have that choice - everyone else was a normal. (And she had a gun on her when they came for her.) If Carolyn even wanted to make that choice, she was never given that option - I assume her captors simply drugged her (and the others), and sent her off.

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