Soul Hunters 2019

[Nancy Benigar]

The Soul Hunters are capable of sensing the time when a being is about to die and are drawn to this moment in order to capture the soul of the individual. These people are not ordinary people but special ones; the artists, poets and leaders of their race whose achievements are too important to lose.

Soul Hunters capture souls because they believe that once a person dies, their existence ends; there is no heaven or great realm where all the souls of the deceased reside. To them, all that a person is and all they will ever become ends when the body dies. As such, the Soul Hunter order believe that is their duty to preserve the souls of those important individuals. They deny themselves this gift and do not preserve their own souls.

Soul Hunter abilities include sensing the passing of a being, inducing unconsciousness and empathically learning the language of another race quickly. They are also an extremely long-lived species who live for thousands of years.

In the distant past, the Soul Hunters sensed the passing of not an individual but an entire species on the distant planet of Ralga. This was the greatest accomplishment of the Soul Hunters who sent dozens of their order to claim the souls of an entire species and placed it within a large spherical vessel where it was stored within a Whisper Gallery. They would not know though that the souls they collected were not dying but evolving and the act of capturing their souls would drive the species mad.[2]

One of the most noted moments that involve the Soul Hunters was the beginning of the Earth-Minbari War when the Minbari leader Dukhat was killed when his ship met the Humans. Seeing the opportunity to preserve a powerful soul, a Soul Hunter attempted to take the soul of Dukhat but failed as the Minbari had a wall of their warriors protecting the Minbari leader. This was one of the very few moments of a Soul Hunters failure to accomplish his task and the act drove him mad.

The Mongoose Publishing factbook Darkness and Light states that the Soul Hunters are products of First One design, most probably created by the First Ones called the Mindriders, who attempted to capture and preserve the wisdom and power of the younger, mortal generation of Lorien's race, the Speakers. The Soul Hunters are said to have been genetically based on the Speakers as well. The project failed and the Soul Hunters were let loose, whereupon they developed a mission to preserve souls based on their original purpose.

"Soul Hunter" is the second episode of the first season of the science fiction television series, Babylon 5. The episode concerns the arrival of a member of an ancient order, the Soul Hunters, on the Babylon 5 station; and reveals a mystery surrounding Commander Sinclair's missing 24 hours during the Earth-Minbari War. It first aired on 2 February 1994.

An unknown damaged ship appears through the jump gate and hurtles towards the Babylon 5 station. Commander Sinclair grapples the ship onboard the station with his Starfury fighter, and the ship's occupant is taken to MedLab. In MedLab, upon seeing the patient, the Minbari Ambassador, Delenn, suddenly enters a burst of rage, and tries to shoot the patient. She explains to Sinclair that the patient is a "Shak Tot", a Soul Hunter, a member of an ancient alien order who try to collect and preserve the souls of distinguished people at the moment of death. The Minbari despise them, considering them thieves and kidnappers, "ripping away that which is eternal". Delenn urges Sinclair to send the Soul Hunter away while he still can.

The alien population aboard the station has gone into hiding, and several ships have asked to leave the station ahead of schedule. The Soul Hunter explains to Sinclair that his order are not thieves, merely preservers. They had been prevented from "preserving" the soul of the Minbari leader Dukhat at the beginning of the Earth-Minbari War. Sinclair asks the Soul Hunter to leave as soon as his ship is repaired.

A second Soul Hunter arrives on board Babylon 5. He explains to Sinclair that the first Soul Hunter is a disturbed renegade. Having failed to "preserve" Dukhat's soul, he has become increasingly frustrated and unstable; and he has turned to killing people before their natural death in order to capture their souls.

As Delenn recovers in the MedLab, Sinclair in his quarters does a search for the Minbari word "Satai", discovering that Delenn is a member of the Minbari Grey Council. Later, Sinclair escorts the second Soul Hunter off the station, telling him that the Soul Hunters are not welcome aboard the station. The Soul Hunter enquires what became of his brother's collection of soul vessels.

As Babylon 5 was conceived with an overall five-year story arc, the episode was written as both an individual story and with another level, where the hints of the larger story arc were given, such as Delenn's secrecy about her role on the Grey Council. The series' creator, J. Michael Straczynski indicates that the episodes can be watched for the individual stories, the character stories, or the story arc.

Regarding the dilemma posed by the opposing views on the afterlife of the soul hunter and Delenn, Straczynski writes, "If there is no afterlife, then all our experiences, all that we were, dies when we die. In that case, wouldn't it be significantly greater if we could preserve that knowledge somehow, in order to gain from their experiences[...]? Conversely, if there is an afterlife, a selfish desire to keep an important person's essence in order to educate the survivors would be catastrophic for the deceased individual - not to mention messing with the natural order."[3]

Straczynski also singles out the mystery surrounding Delenn. He writes, "[T]hat also ties in with Sinclair's mysteries. Clearly, something suspicious is going on with the Minbari, and it all connects to the war with Earth ten years prior. All very important, and as usual, something that will payoff in the future[...]"[3]

The Starfury fighter, which Commander Sinclair uses to grapple the Soul Hunter ship, was designed by Steve Burg as a function-driven design for a plausible zero-gravity fighter. The positioning of the four engine pods at the extremities of the craft was inspired by Ron Cobb's design for the Gunstar fighter from The Last Starfighter.[7] The basic shape of the Starfury's wings was inspired by an earlier unused design by Burg for a military robot fighting machine, which he had originally designed for Terminator 2. This was merged with the multi-engined configuration to form the Starfury design. Burg points out that the wings/struts were not aerodynamic: they were there to lever the engines away from the center of mass.[8][9]

The Soul Hunter ships were designed by Foundation Imaging co-founder Ron Thornton. He indicated, "I did get away with making the [virtual digital model's textures] out of wood, and bone. As if it used the tusks of some unknown huge beast for parts."[10]

The scene where Sinclair's Starfury grapples the spinning soul hunter ship attempts to show the fighter using thrusters to manoeuvre using realistic physics. Thornton stated that the producers "initially wanted Star Wars, there was also a lot of, '[let's] do something that Star Trek can't!' I said we could make realistic physics more exciting, and make the fans happy. ...[Visual effects supervisor Paul Bryant] and I pushed really hard for realistic physics as we both loved 2001..."[11]

Writer J. Michael Straczynski's original intention was that Sinclair's ship was to use magnetic energy to capture the Soul Hunter's ship.[11] However, Thornton suggested using a grappling arm instead, stating, "I wanted to try something more interesting that hadn't been seen before. It was also a good opportunity to help me solidify to Joe and John how we could make the real physics exciting and make the pilots of the Starfuries seem like Top Guns. But not like Star Wars, as we could have our own distinctive and very different look."[10] The scene was animated by Foundation Imaging artists Tim Wilcox and Mark Kochinski.[11]

Rowan Kaiser, writing in The A.V. Club, draws the parallel between the previous episode, being an exposition for Londo and G'Kar, and this episode, as an exposition for Sinclair and Delenn. Kaiser is intrigued by the philosophical opposition of the views of the soul hunter, who feels he is preserving souls, and those of Delenn, who feels he is keeping souls from their eternal destiny. Kaiser writes, "Soul Hunter" may be an average episode, saddled by a bit too much ambition and a few too many flaws, but that's why, as a critic, I find myself drawn to it. It's trying to say and do big things, and the effort is worth examining."[13]

W. Morgan Sheppard as the Soul Hunter was brilliant in that role: the way he delivered that speech as he sensed the death of that con man coming, bad acting of extras aside, that was epic. The burial scene hit hard for me too; Ivanova's prayer felt very moving.

The usage of "alien" brought to mind the observation from the Klingon Azetbur in "Star Trek VI" around our language. "You talk of 'inalienable' rights. Listen to yourselves." (I'm paraphrasing, but not by much.)

Let\u2019s get that out the way first, then: the sequence with the downbelow lurkers chasing each other and the \u2018magician\u2019 conman being killed, interspersed with the Soul Hunter\u2019s 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\u2019t caught on set or in the edit - even if they didn\u2019t 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.

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