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Five Thoughts on Babylon 5‘s “Soul Hunter”

By | May 30th, 2018
Posted in Television | % Comments

The cast expands, the lore deepens and the MCU somehow sneaks into this 24-year-old series. Whoever knew diplomacy could be this intense? Welcome my friends. The year is 2258. The name of the place is Babylon 5.

Spoilers ahead.

1. The Doctor and the Councilwoman

Last week, I alluded to the presence of a couple more series regulars that hadn’t made an appearance yet. This week we get to meet them in full: Doctor Stephen Franklin and Ambassador Delenn. As befits their place in the cast, the two are the driving factors behind the plot this week. It’s a good way to introduce these two, giving them a purpose within the larger framework of the show, and expanding the lore of this universe.

Their introductions are a bit heavy on the exposition, yes, but that appears to be in an effort to orient us quickly. We needed to know who Dr. Franklin was and why he was here as well as Delenn’s relationship to the captain and others outside of her role as a member of the council of non-aligned worlds.

On a side note, as those of you who are more familiar with the series are aware, I skipped over the pilot movie that came out before the series aired. I did this for two reasons. 1) The summer TV binge is TV oriented and I’m only covering the first season this year. 2) Since the movies do not seem to be migrating over to Prime with the rest of the series, I felt it better to start where any newcomers would. I also still haven’t seen it myself.

2. Quality Woes

By now you’ve probably noticed that the visual quality of this series is…not the greatest. I believe I talked about it last week a bit but, on the whole, the worst looking part of last week’s episode was the CGI and even then, it wasn’t lazily used CGI but simply old CGI. This week, all the remastering and transfer problems are made significantly more noticeable.

Due to the mishandling of the series’ transfer to DVD by WB and the lack of use of the original film negatives, the widescreen release (DVD and now streaming) is filled with visual noise and composite problems. If you’re curious about details and understand the technical better than me, look it up.

For those who are wondering what I mean, there are two big places when this happens, at two ends of the episode. The first is when we first get shown the bowels of the ship, with a man grifting people out of money via the cups game. During that entire scene, there are noticeable, vertical, blue lines across the screen. The other is at the end and is an example of the compositing problems. It is when the soul hunter is being flanked by the soul orbs. The quality of the image plummets, as if a light was turned off. The screen appears to shake as well, although that is just a trick of the eyes.

I only bring this up because to modern viewers, when going back to older shows, we’re expecting a lot more from the transfers. Even if it seems older, we want the stream to be clean. Thus, the varying levels of quality from shot to shot and the graininess can put some viewers off or at the very least get them questioning the quality of their internet connection. To the first, I hope those of you who this might bother can push past the inconsistencies; the show is well worth it.

3. The Scenery is Absolutely Delicious

As a second episode, you could do with much worse than “Soul Hunter.” It’s got a creepy antagonist, a personal motivation/connection for one of the characters, one of the “new” ones even, to said antagonist, and keeps its focus on the central plotline for the entire episode. It’s not quite far enough in for separate threads to begin developing and running simultaneously in any major way. However, the weaknesses of the episode may outweigh its strengths. Namely, the dramatics.

Everything is hyper exaggerated, from Delenn’s warnings against the Soul Hunter, hereafter known as Creepy Vision, to Creepy Vision’s entire performance, to even Commander Sinclair’s reactions near the start of the episode. With Delenn, it feels like another instance of needing to settle into the character a little more. For Creepy Vision, he’s trying to be unsettling and, while he succeeds, he also succeeded at annoying the piss out of me. He was too much and since he was present for much of the episode, it suffers.

Continued below

4. Aluminum. My. Only. Weak. Ness.

The other issue with this episode is that Delenn turns into a damsel in distress. I won’t delve into this point as, well, others have trod the trope better than I ever could. It’s an unfortunate decision as it’s an easy way to manufacture tension while removing the agency of a female character. Thankfully, this is not Gotham and the kidnapping is tied directly to her character and her story, even if it doesn’t sit well nowadays.

Moreover, the Minbari seem to have a weakness to aluminum cuffs. What other explanation could there be for her not being able to rip through them? It must weaken them like kryptonite weakens Superman.

5. Cryptics Galore

We’re diving full force into the cryptic hints and messages this week, aren’t we? Delenn being a member of the Grey Council and Sinclair being manipulated by Delenn & the Minbari are the two big ones but both of those raise a whole host of questions, many of which are vocalized by Sinclair. This is one of the great strengths of the way Babylon 5 was structured. Things could be teased out early on in ways that were misleading while also being true.

At this point, it’s hard to make anything out of Creepy Vision’s comments other than to recognize that they are important somehow. Who are the Grey Council? Why would they place one of their own as an ambassador instead of a dedicated ambassador? Why would they keep it a secret? HOW are they using Sinclair? Why are they doing it? Is it somehow tied to the Earth/Minbari war?

All these questions and more circulate now, giving us something to chew on in subsequent episodes and giving us a reason to watch Delenn closer, to try to see what her game is. It could be nothing. It could be resolved next episode. It could also be something that slowly unfolds via character interactions and flashpoints. The latter is the more interesting one and the one the show seems intent on following. Having come from a myriad of modern day shows that fail to balance the single episode plots with the season-long intrigues and character changes, this episode, despite all its flaws, shows what can be done when in the right hands.

Join me again next week as we journey deeper into the year 2258 and learn more and more about this diplomatic station we’re calling home. Let me know what I missed this week (I barely talked about Franklin or the wonderful, subtle/unsubtle verbal diplomacy) and I’ll try my best to respond. Until then, this is Elias, signing off.


//TAGS | 2018 Summer TV Binge | Babylon 5

Elias Rosner

Elias is a lover of stories who, when he isn't writing reviews for Mulitversity, is hiding in the stacks of his library. Co-host of Make Mine Multiversity, a Marvel podcast, after winning the no-prize from the former hosts, co-editor of The Webcomics Weekly, and writer of the Worthy column, he can be found on Twitter (for mostly comics stuff) here and has finally updated his profile photo again.

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