Babylon 5 — S1E02: Soul Hunter

Having just watched a review of the latest Star Trek: Academy shitshow, I needed something to clear out my brain before I go to bed tonight. So I opted to continue my ongoing review of Babylon 5, one of the best sci-fi shows ever made. Tonight’s episode is Season 1, Episode 2 — “Soul Hunter”.

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“Soul Hunter”, in my opinion, is among the very best of the early Babylon 5 episodes. While Season 1 generally starts of a bit slow, as we are introduced to the station and the overarching plot is gathering pace, this one is an early banger. It’s a standalone, classic science fiction episode, concerned with such classic questions as: Does the soul exist? Do we even want to know? Can it be manipulated with technology? What would be the consequences of trying to do so?

The whole episode lives and dies by the interplay between Mira Furlan’s Delenn and the Soul Hunter, played by guest star W. Morgan Sheppard. Sheppard was one of the great character actors of all time. With a voice for the ages. His Star Trek roles are all legendary, and he once again overdelivers here. As a side note: He also did the best narration in a Civilization game, ever. Beating, in my opinion, both Leonard Nimoy and Sean Bean. I’m so glad he will be back in another role, later in the show.

Sheppard just plays off beautifully against Furlan, who hates Soul Hunters (shag toth, as they are termed in Minbari) and ends up being this particular Soul Hunter’s victim. At its core, this is a horror episode, and most of the creepiness — aside from the lighting and sound design — is the result of Sheppard’s exquisite acting. I still remember that, when I saw this the first time, I was utterly creeped out.

I’m usually not a fan of sci-fi that veers into the supernatural. Things like psi phenomena, mind reading, genetic memory and the transfer of the soul usually turns me off. I watch science fiction for the science part, not the supernatural crap. It is utterly to Babylon 5’s credit, that these topics don’t turn me off the show. That J. Michael Straczynski writes the Psi Corps and episodes like this in the way he does is what allows me to retain suspension of disbelief. At the end of this episode, we aren’t quite sure if all of it was real. When Franklin asks Sinclair what he saw, Sinclair says he doesn’t know if he wants to be sure. Franklin, who is mirroring my own scientific curiosity in this scene, thinks it’s all bullshit and he never gets a satisfactory answer. And that is exactly what makes this show so great. Had they made the mistake to try and provide answers, this would have been a much worse episode.

Speaking of Franklin: At the beginning of the episode, we get introduced to our new station doctor, Stephen Franklin. A character that has one of the most interesting character arcs in the series. There will be some very interesting Franklin episodes coming down the pike later on. For now, it is interesting to note that in his introduction, he mentions having run into Dr. Kyle, the station’s previous doctor, who we know from “The Gathering”. Franklin and Kyle met at the transfer point off of Io. Kyle is now apparently working with the newly re-elected Earth President Luis Santiago (see “Midnight on the Firing Line”) directly on alien immigration on Earth. Makes sense, seeing as he’s one of only two humans who’ve seen what a Vorlon actually looks like.

Aside from his obvious thoroughness and rigorously scientific mindset, what I like about Franklin most in this episode, is his scene with Ivanova in the observation dome. Their task is to conduct a space burial of a lowlife stabbing victim from “Down Below”, the shabby part of the station where the undesirables live, and Ivanova says some words for the poor bastard in a very quiet and dignified way, obviously surprising Franklin. As a hardened physician, who’s obviously seen a lot of death, even at his age, he hadn’t given the burial a second thought. He and Ivanova then have a short discussion of the futility of life and the inevitability of death, which serves as a nice character piece for both of them.

Franklin: “You’re a pessimist?”
Ivanova: “I’m Russian, doctor.”

This episode also introduces one of my favourite side characters of early B5, the praying mantis-like alien N’Grath. He is a criminal kingpin and fixer who operates out of his quarters in Down Below. I’ve always liked when B5 went out of its way to make the aliens a bit more alien. It’s a nice departure from Star Trek, where everyone is just an actor with some stuff glued to their forehead. Even the Centauri, essentially just actors in flamboyant 19th century clothes with funny hair, feel so much more alien than a lot of the races we meet in Star Trek. JMS really did a great job on this front. And to me, characters like N’Grath are an important part of this. He always reminded me of the first Alien movie. Maybe they should have taken a clue from that and filmed him in more darker surroundings, to make him look a bit more real. In any case, I really enjoyed his introduction here.

“Soul Hunter” is pretty much self-contained, but we do get some more foreshadowing about Sinclair and what seems to be a special relationship between him and Delenn. Or rather an obvious interest Delenn, or the Minbari in general, have in Sinclair. This was hinted at in the previous episode, but it still remains vague. Delenn almost slips up and tells Sinclair, when she’s recovering from her near-death experience, but all we learn is that, apparently, the Minbari “were right about” him.

Earlier, the villainous Soul Hunter, shortly before being soul hunted himself, had told Sinclair: “They are USING you!!!” Meaning the Minbari. Which recalls the pilot and the Minbari assassin telling Sinclair that he “has a hole in [his] mind”. What’s going on there, you ask? We’ll figure that out in time …

The other thing to note is that we learn that the Soul Hunter knows Delenn, because she was there when the Minbari’s “great leader” Dukhat¹ died in the Earth-Minbari War. Apparently Dukhat was killed by the humans somehow. The Soul Hunter also calls the ambassador Satai Delenn, something that Sinclair picks up on immediately. When he later asks the computer in his quarters to look up what “satai” means, he learns that its an honorific, a title the members of the Grey Council use. The Grey Council are the leading body of the Minbari government. Sinclair pointedly asks the computer, or himself, why one of the great leaders of the Minbari would be assigned as an ambassador to Babylon 5, which doesn’t seem logical. We are left to wonder as well.

The way this episode switched things up, with classic sci-fi horror after the political drama last week and the alien (almost) murder mystery in the pilot, is well done. Again: a strong early episode that is a lot of fun to watch!

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Background on this episode from JMS back in the day:

“Well, I just saw a cut of the episode that’s going to air second, the one guest-starring Morgan Shepherd. Oh, man … on the question of Did you learn anything from the pilot … this thing moves like a sumbitch. It’s a very unusual, very creepy episode in many ways. And filled with character stuff … and a good bit of background about some of our characters rendered in active ways. I’m really dying to see what people think of this one when it airs. It manages to take what would normally be considered a science fantasy issue, and deal with it from a science fiction perspective, without compromising on the latter at all. It’s a very, very strong episode.”

“We leave the question open: Is he actually taking souls, or simply encoding the personality matrix and, in essence, creating an artificial version of the individual’s personality?”

“The various characters take their own stands, which vary. Franklin only considers the possibility of cloning someone’s personality matrix, for instance. And again, it depends on how you define soul. The Soul Hunter defines it not as something supernatural, but as the collection of thoughts, personality, feelings and the very essence of the person that dies with the body. That definition is broad enough to encompass just about anything. Then you get into the more specific ideas of what a soul is.”

“One person at a post production house we’ve used has indicated that he has “theological problems” with working on that episode; not because it’s against what he believes — he’s worked on horror movies and stuff with devils and the like — but because it takes a point of view he doesn’t much like … in that he has to sit and defend the whole context of his ideas … meaning, it’s making him think. He can just poo-poo the stuff against what he believes, support what he does believe in … but he isn’t quite sure where this show comes down, or where it makes him come down. I’ve had any number of problems with people on a show before, but this is the first time I’ve run into a theological problem.”

“What the soul was, who’s right, and even whether this is SF or Science Fantasy, was it explained enough to merit one over the other … how can I put this …? I don’t want to spoon-feed stuff to people. What I want is not to hit someone with a MORAL, or a message, or ‘This is what a soul is,’ or ‘This is what makes it an SF series,’ I want to start discussions. Arguments. Preferably a bar fight or two. We present an issue. Here are the sides. Now … what do YOU think about it? I want this show to ask, ‘Who are you? Where are you going?’ That’s half the fun. Some of my favorites pastimes in college were sitting in the commons, or the library, arguing this stuff from every possible angle. You think I’m gonna tell you what to think? What it means? No. The goal is to provoke discussion. Preferably passionate discussion. Otherwise I might as well just start renting billboards and putting up signs.”

Who’s right, the soul hunter or the Minbari?
“Yes.”

“I deeply admired Asimov. Harlan Ellison, this series consultant, was as dear a friend to Asimov as anyone could be. I named the starliner after Asimov shortly after his death, because I will personally miss him, and for Harlan, as his friend.”

“Re: your statement that the headwear of the S.H. is “stolen” from the Ferengi … may I be so bold as to respond to your rather loud note with some volume of my own? To wit: watch something other than Star Trek, and maybe spend a little time learning stuff about your own world. The headware is based upon the kind used in various African and aboriginal tribes. Trek didn’t invent it; we have photos of its use through history, as well as sketches going back further. As it happens, the costume designer has never seen “DS9,” doesn’t watch TNG, has no idea what a Ferengi is. Neither do I intend to not do something, based in real history, just because some other show has done drawn on that same background. You clearly think that if something appeared in ST, then ST must have invented it, and that if it appears anywhere else, it must’ve been influenced by ST. Wrong on both counts. I would suggest that you have been watching too much ST, and not nearly enough of the Discovery Channel.”