s1e2: Soul Hunter

"She is Satai!"

We’re watching the pioneering 90s TV show Babylon 5. If you want to join us, hit subscribe then go to your account and turn on the Let’s Watch notifications.

Some dodgy acting from extras aside, I reckon this is a pretty solid episode of B5.

Let’s get that out the way first, then: the sequence with the downbelow lurkers chasing each other and the ‘magician’ conman being killed, interspersed with the Soul Hunter’s ominous words, is nearly a fantastic scene. Great intercutting, genuinely quite unnerving, and I like the way the two parts of the scene are initially very separate but end up concluding in medlab.

However. The acting from the two lurkers is stunningly atrocious, especially the guy who is being chased. His bizarre gurning entirely undercuts the impact of the scene and renders the whole thing rather silly. It amazes me that this wasn’t caught on set or in the edit - even if they didn’t have time to recast or get better takes, at least tell the guy to not look directly into camera. B5 was shot on a tight budget and schedule, but still.

W Morgan Sheppard wears the make-up well.

Right, then, what else? I love that Dr Franklin is properly introduced at the start of the episode. Ivanova was just sort of ‘there’ in 1.01, but I like the realism of Franklin arriving with his bags, excited to get started, having a prior professional relationship with Sinclair. It creates a convincing sense of a larger world and stuff happening outside of the station.

In fact, that’s the real trick of B5 as a concept for a show. It takes place almost entirely on the station itself, but the plot takes in a much wider scope. That focal point of the station is clever, in that it keeps the story tight and also enables a practical budget for a 90s TV show.

Meanwhile: the thrust of the episode raises a lot of interesting talking points, like all the best sci-fi. There’s the entire notion of ‘souls’, of course, and it’s handled elegantly, with Delenn and the Soul Hunters believing they are real, manipulable things, Franklin being an immediate sceptic, and Sinclair taking a sort of agnostic middle ground. I like that the show’s characters are able to represent those different viewpoints. Of course, the episode itself does indicate that something is going on in those glowing orange orbs, with the strong implication being that the Soul Hunters are indeed capturing something of the dead. I like that Delenn’s ‘freeing’ of the souls at the end is ambiguous, and you’re left not entirely sure if she’s doing the right thing.¹

I’ve been listening to the Origin Story podcasts on eugenics and effective altruism recently (cheery stuff), and the Soul Hunter’s speeches reminded me of some of that, and of the sort of rhetoric you hear from those philosophies. The Soul Hunter isn’t interested in ‘saving’ and caring for souls generally; only those that are worthy. They latch on to arbitrary ranking mechanisms.

“Not all. Only the special ones. Leaders, thinkers, poets, dreamers, blessed lunatics.”

That ranking of worthiness, or creating a hierarchy of character, I find fascinating. How do Soul Hunters decide who qualifies? They seem to focus on those who make a major impact on history, ignoring the more mundane and the ordinary. They have no interest in people who are simply kind and go about their lives. No interest in those who make mistakes or live badly. The Soul Hunters curate a very lopsided record of history and of people; examine a Soul Hunter’s collection hundreds of years later and it would tell only a very limited version of what happened. It reminds me of the crazed plans of the super-rich to go live on Mars or under the sea in ‘perfect’ ‘utopian’ societies, which is usually code for ‘get rid of the people I dislike’.

Something I never picked up on as a younger viewer was the way the human command staff regularly refer to every non-human on the station as ‘aliens’. There’s been a lot of othering of non-humans in the pilot and these first two episodes that feels a bit weird. Given how many species there are on Babylon 5, and how it’s supposed to be a diplomatic waystation, and a joint project with the Minbari, it feels reductive. Maybe that’s the point? I’m not sure. The humans are just as alien to everyone else, so the terminology feels very Earth-centric.

The actor will return to play various roles in the series.

The scene with Franklin and Ivanova in the observation dome watching the body of the lurker be cast into space hits hard these days. If you’re new to the show you might not be aware that an awfully large number of the original cast are no longer with us. Of the main cast that we’ve met so far, Richard Biggs (Franklin), Michael O’Hare (Sinclair), Mira Furlan (Delenn), Andrea Katsulas (G’Kar), Stephen Furst (Vir) and Jerry Doyle (Garibaldi) have all died in the years since the show wrapped. William Morgan Sheppard, the Soul Hunter, passed away in 2019. Their contributions to the show, and to this episode especially, give a story about death all the more resonance.

Lastly, a mention of the visual effects: the blu-ray remasters certainly do a better job than the old DVDs. This episode is very VFX heavy, and it’s far less distracting than it used to be - especially in the finale with the soul gems in every other shot, and the PPG shootout. In particular I wanted to mention the cool grappling sequence at the start with the damaged Soul Hunter ship - it’s a great example of good cinematography and music and editing overcoming the rendering limitations of the time - I found myself quite engrossed in the sequence without being distracted, which is a big step up from the pilot movie.

Much like old, pre-Star Wars movies where you can tell you’re watching miniatures, it doesn’t actually matter as long as it’s in service of a good story.

N’Grath is a cool man-in-suit concept that doesn’t quite work. From the neck up is great, but shoulders down is shonky.

The episode also raises all sorts of mysteries which go largely unsolved: what is the ‘Grey Council’ that Ambassador Delenn is supposedly a part of? What is she planning that caused the Soul Hunter to exclaim “you would do such a thing? Incredible.” Why exactly was Dr Kyle (from the pilot) recalled to Earth? Who was the Minbari leader Dukhat?

Leave comments down below - and remember to write SPOILER in caps if your comment includes anything about upcoming eps.

Next episode is ‘Born to the Purple’. See you next week.

‼️ SPOILER STUFF ‼️

There isn’t a huge amount of spoilery stuff in here, aside of course from the Minbari mystery/conspiracy. In a way this episode is a slight repeat of the hints dropped in the pilot episode, presumably because a lot of viewers won’t have seen the pilot.

Season 1 of B5 is fascinating because it exists in two distinct states: the first watch, where it’s a mystery that you’re trying to work out (at the same time Sinclair is trying to unravel it), and then there’s subsequent watches at which point it plays very differently. Knowing Sinclair’s path changes the season entirely, with everything channelling him towards that destiny. A lot of plot points that seemed isolated to particular episodes become part of the larger narrative.

In my opinion the season becomes a lot stronger in retrospect and on rewatching, not least because you know the pay-off (a long way) down the road is going to be worth it. Everything is leading to ‘War Without End’. Watching B5 with people who haven’t seen it before is always an exciting experience: trying to spot how they react to things that you know are huge deals, but might not be apparent at the time.

A pretty successful episode. It works as a Thing Of The Week standalone, while also working in some plot arc stuff.

1. I’ve just finished reading Norm Konyu’s Downlands, which deals (sort of) with similar themes and even visuals. An interesting counterpoint and highly recommended.