1.02
Soul Hunter
Matters of the soul are discussed within. How do you get that kick ass jewel in your forehead? Please don’t tell me a giant cranium has to come with it? Is there a way that I can possibly not wear something in a brown? How about not going crazy and smuggling a big clunky machine onto the station to kill people and take their souls? No, I have to do all of this, well, do I still get the jewel?
Written By: J. Michael Straczynski
Directed By: Jim Johnston
Bare Essentials:
A Plot - A damaged and unknown ship hurtles through the jump gate prepared to crash into Babylon 5. Commander Sinclair manages to halt the ship and bring its lone occupant, a Soul Hunter, aboard the station. The Soul Hunter quickly begins spouting off about death and the soul. He escapes from the Medlab and decides that killing Ambassador Delenn and stealing her soul is a great idea. A second Soul Hunter arrives and helps Sinclair to stop the Soul Hunter, but in the process Sinclair turns the Soul Hunters soul machine around on him and traps the Soul Hunter himself within a soul globe.
More Arc, Less Arch:
Delenn claims that Minbari souls are born over and over again into each new generation. The removal of any souls from the whole of the Minbari results in each generation being lesser than the previous one. This will be brought up again in the second season episode Revelations and yet again in the third season in War Without End, Part Two.
Soul Hunter #1 identifies Delenn as Satai, a member of the Grey Council, the ruling body of the Minbari. Later he tells Sinclair that “She is Satai” and this leads to Sinclair discovering the meaning of Satai at the end of the episode.
Soul Hunter #1 tells Delenn, “You would plan such a thing? You would do such a thing?” This is in reference to her actions later on in the first season and into the second season in the episodes Chrysalis and Revelations.
Soul Hunter #1 tells Sinclair, “They’re using you.” This is a reference to the missing twenty four hours of his life from the Battle Of The Line. This will be broached again in the movie In The Beginning and in the episodes And The Sky Full Of Stars and Points Of Departure.
Delenn tells Sinclair, “I knew you would come.” This will resurface in the second season episode, Confessions And Lamentations where she tells the story of Valen coming to rescue her when she was lost in a temple as a youth. She also tells Sinclair, “We were right about you.” This deals with the Battle Of The Line again and the Minbari’s discovery about Sinclair’s soul during that battle.
Who Are You? What Do Yo… Hey, I’m Asking The Questions Here!:
Under what charges is Sinclair holding Soul Hunter #1 in Medlab? He hasn’t committed any crimes, so why is he holding him against his will?
Why in the future have they designed doors that function so that you can’t see who is on the other side? For that matter why doesn’t anyone in the B5 universe bother to ask who is on the other side of the door before inviting them in?
Soul Hunter #2 calls the Hunters an order, this may imply that they are not a race themselves, but rather a part of a larger race. If that is the case then what race are they a part of?
How did Soul Hunter #1 get something as big and bulky as his machine onto the station without being detected?
What happened to the globe that now contained Soul Hunter #1’s soul? Did Delenn destroy it with the rest or did she leave it be?
Idiosyncratic Musings:
The biggest issue in the episode is obviously the idea of the soul. Unfortunately I believe this is an episode where the main theme it tries to put forth ends up jumbled and is therefore tied very directly into the rating, so check The Ombuds Have Decided for my thoughts on the way the soul issue was handled.
I See What You Did There:
Dr. Stephen Franklin arrives on station to replace Dr. Benjamin Kyle who has returned to Earth to be on the Presidential staff.
Because the damaged vessel is from a race unknown to the Earth Alliance it falls under first contact protocol. Attempts must be made to either save it or make contact with it before any extreme measures are taken to stop it. This is of course is as long as it does not represent a clear and present danger to the station.
The phrase five by five is used in this episode. It refers to the fact that a signal is coming in with perfect clarity. Most fantasy & sci-fi fans should know this as the catchphrase of the rogue Slayer Faith from Buffy the Vampire Slayer.
This episode is the first glimpse we get of Down Below, the B5 equivalent of a slum.
The Soul Hunters, or at least Soul Hunter #1, have been to Earth at some point.
The Soul Hunters were on hand to try and collect the soul of the Minbari leader Dukhat when he died at the onset of the Earth-Minbari War, but the Minbari formed a wall of bodies to stop them.
Denizens of Babylon 5 that pass away and can not afford to shipped back to their homeworld are launched into the nearest sun.
The typical human lifespan is 100 years.
This is the first appearance of N’grath, an insectoid alien that happens to be the defacto crime boss on B5. Those of you that are Buffy fans should recognize N’grath as Ms. French from Buffy’s season one episode, “Teacher’s Pet.”
An unseen ship leaves the station bearing the name of Epsilon 3, this is also the name of the planet that is nearest B5.
Soul Hunter #1 has developed a machine that kills someone and then extracts their soul, but the less said about this the better.
Soul Hunters can specifically point to a location on a map where someone is dying.
Soul Hunter #1’s captured souls rebel against him, this will be seen again in the movie River Of Souls.
Sinclair declares Babylon 5 as off limits to the Soul Hunters at the end of the episode.
Delenn breaks open the globes in Hunter #1’s collection and as she does so a blue light escapes from them. This suggests that there was definitely something inside of them.
Say It Again Mac:
Susan Ivanova, “This is not a clear and present danger? I must read the rule book again.”
Ivanova again, “I am Russian doctor. We understand these things.”
Lost In Translation:
Delenn, “You Don’t Know? You don’t know what that thing is?” This is thirty seconds after Sinclair finished telling her that they had no idea who their mystery guest was and Delenn offered to help them identify said guest.
Yes, I Am A Fleet Junkie:
A severely damaged Soul Hunter Gatherer Class Scout comes through the jump gate as well as another perfectly fine Gatherer later in the show. Not much is known about the Gatherers, but Soul Hunter #2 relates that they had tracked the first Soul Hunter down and damaged his ship. They carry an armament of eight anti-proton cannons. We don’t get to see those in action, but the Gatherers are believed to be very strong, strong enough to stand up to a Minbari capital vessel.
The Aurora Class Starfury Heavy Fighter is able to show off its grappling hook thanks to the damaged Gatherer. Sinclair takes out his Starfury and is able to match the trajectory of the damaged Gatherer and successfully lock on to it with his grappling hook in order to stop it from hitting the station.
It’s Your Cultural Imperative:
The Minbari name for the Soul Hunters is, Shak Tot. According to Minbari legend they are immortal.
The Soul Hunters are a biped humanoid race with an enlarged cranium and a jewel embedded in their foreheads. They have the ability to breathe freely in both a non-oxygen atmosphere and an oxygen atmosphere. The Soul Hunters can sense death as it happens and to this end they seek out important people of all races that are about to die in order to collect their souls. They believe in the idea of the soul and they also believe that the soul dies when the body dies if they are not present to preserve it. To this end they somehow manage to transport the “soul” upon death into a small glowing glass globe.
Aliens are leaving the station en masse while the rest are hiding in their quarters because of the presence of the Soul Hunter.
I Think This Might Be Based On Something:
The starliner Asimov is shown at the beginning of the episode, and this is obviously a reference to famed sci-fi author Isaac Asimov.
The character of the Soul Hunter is very similar to Marvel Comics character, Adam Warlock. Warlock had a gem in the center of his forehead that would allow him to extract souls from people, preserving their consciousness.
You Look Mighty Familiar:
W. Morgan Sheppard, Soul Hunter #1, has made appearances in the Star Trek: Voyager episode Bliss as Qatai and the Star Trek: The Next Generation episode The Schizoid Man as Dr. Ira Graves. The American Gothic episode To Hell And Back as Mr. Emmett. Multiple episodes of SeaQuest DSV as The Professor. and Biker Mice From Mars as the voice of Lawrence Limburger, along with the recurring role of Blank Reg in Max Headroom. Interestingly enough Sheppard was almost cast as G’Kar but in the end was beat out by Andreas Kastulas, but not by much. He is also the father of Mark Sheppard, an actor everyone should know from his portrayal of Badger on Firefly and Romo Lampkin on the new Battlestar Galactica.
Richard Biggs, Dr. Stephen Franklin, had a long stint on Strong Medicine as Dr. Milo Morton and played a major part in the actors teaching project, The Biggs And Carter Experience.
Casting Ahead:
Richard Biggs joins the cast as Dr. Stephen Franklin in this episode., and he will remain with the show through its entirety and even have a one off appearance on the spin off series Crusade.
That Wasn’t Supposed To Happen:
Sinclair approaches the Gatherer and his sensors can’t detect whether the Hunter is alive or dead. This contradicts a later episode, Confessions And Lamentations, where a Starfury is able to distinguish whether the Markab on board are alive or dead.
Delenn claims that the Soul Hunters take their collection with them everywhere they go, and the Hunter agrees. This contradicts with the movie River Of Souls where we see that the Hunters have built massive Whisper Galleries to house their collections on a single planet.
In the first close-up we get of the glass jar that is holding Delenn’s blood the shot has obviously been reversed. Instead of flowing down into the jar her blood is dripping out of the jar and back up into her body.
The Ombuds Have Decided:
Soul Hunter manages to raise a great philosophical and metaphysical debate. It does this for the first thirty or so minutes and it never lets up. Unfortunately those last fifteen minutes of the show ruin a lot of the allure. The Soul Hunter is revealed to be crazy, thus casting a pall on his actions and everything he has told us before hand. The machine he uses at the end of the episode to try and extract Delenn’s soul is far too hokey to actually be believable, but that isn’t its worse function. That machine takes this from a purely meta physical and philosophical debate and tries to make it tangible.
The idea of the soul is one that should be treated as a “what is the truth” scenario. The first three quarters of Soul Hunter do this, but the last quarter tries to make the soul physical and provide an answer to the questions raised without actually answering them. This episode would have fared much better had the machine and physicality of the soul never been introduced. Kept as an abstract concept the viewer doesn’t know which way to go, the issue is truly up for grabs. However by giving the soul a physical form and showing that there is a physical way to extract it whatever options the viewer had of belief or disbelief have been removed.
There are also a couple of noticeable mistakes in this episode, Delenn’s blood and the tech’s uniform, and that drops the episode a bit more. Not so much a mistake but there is also a deal of difference between the Soul Hunters get-up and that of N’grath. The Soul Hunters look real and believable, whereas N’grath looks very, very fake.
Christopher Franke will spend the majority of his time in the Babylon 5 universe delivering tremendous score after tremendous score, but this is not one of those times. His attempts at creating a tense atmosphere in the preceding moments to the final showdown between Sinclair and the Hunter fall flat. Instead of creating a connection the music he chose for those scenes feels weird and out of place.
There is also a problem with the CGI in the scene where Franklin & Ivanova launch the body from the shuttle and into the sun. The CGI on the shuttle and the casket looks far too clean and computer like, not real looking at all.
The dialogue isn’t as crisp in this episode as all the talk of souls and death leads to quite a bit of hyperbole and a bit too much exposition. We even get our first taste of some truly cringe worthy dialogue in Soul Hunter.
The interactions between the various characters is still on the plus side. W. Morgan Shepperd does a tremendous job of portraying the Soul Hunter and of making sure that he seems in control yet out of control all at the same time. There is a bit of a disconnect between the Garibaldi and Sinclair characters in this episode and that doesn’t mix with the rest of the show.
Overall Soul Hunter is an episode that has a great feel to it but too much gets lost in the little cracks along the way for that feel to become reality. A little tightening here and there would have helped this episode, but as it is it’s still not a bad episode, merely a decent one.
Rating:
67/100
C
That’s all I’ve got this time, but check in next time as we delve into Born To The Purple.
Cheers,
Bill