Season 5 · Episode 0

What came between Season 3 and Season 5. Three years separate the Chief Ranger who left the Hegemony's review chamber from the Line Captain who opens Season 5, and in them Shepherd crosses the hinge rank into command, where nothing can be examined and the Corps assigns a mentor instead. The officer it assigns her is the one who came to command from the other side, and who had been reading her silences for years before anyone made it a duty.

• S05E00C01 Not AskedA fold-approach post on the outward frontier, the record does not name which — Shepherd's first command — and Wender's line officeThe prologue to Season 5. Shepherd is promoted to Starwarden, answering for a post of her own, and above Chief there is no examination, so the Corps assigns a mentor instead, formally and as a duty. The order names Karla Wender, who was her Chief Pilot when she was a cadet, and who has been reading her silences for three years without anyone asking her to. The first meeting is short. Shepherd starts to say what she is carrying, and Wender asks whether it is in the file and whether it changes the order, and when the answer to both is no, says that it is hers. Both of Shepherd's standing relationships begin here: the one that can order her, and the one that cannot.