B5rewatch: Soul Hunter
May. 4th, 2015 12:43 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
jedi_of_urthSo I’m expecting to have less to say on this one, but you never know.
1x02: Soul Hunter
Okay, that wasn’t a very good promo either. It did make me realize something that I probably should have put words to ages ago: this is a bad concept for such an early episode. After only a pilot that most people either hadn’t seen or hadn’t seen in a whilem and a politically heavy reintroduction, this plot is quiet awkward. I definitely question how anyone as yet unconvinced is going to persuaded to give it another go seeing that promo.
More people remark on it with Sheridan, but Franklin definitely enters the station all smiles and good cheer, confident and cocky, and all that. And much like Sheridan, it won’t last.
You would think that all command level officers (or really most anyone) in EarthForce would be aware of rules about *not* firing on unknown races’ ships without explicit provocation. One would actually think that rule would have been in place long before the Minbari, but at this point there’s really no reason why it wouldn’t be SOP.
Have to stop and laugh at the giant picture of fruit in the background on the mess hall. It’s silly looking.
But after that, I’d like to question the portrayal of the “aliens’ in this episode. I guess Ivanova’s still pretty new to the station where such a high percentage of the population are non-humans, but in general this episode treats the “aliens” as if they are all from a common culture regarding soul hunters and the humans are the only ones who have no idea what’s going on. Portraying the Minbari that way is one thing, as a race they have had a lot longer experience in galactic matters and a habit of not telling people what they know; but if all the other races know what up how come none of them have mentioned it to their human allies?
It’s probably just a DVD error, but it only shows up during the shots in Downbelow so I’m going to pretend that those shots are security footage since they seem so low quality and have random streaks in them. Probably creates plot holes to even try and imagine such a thing, but it’ll do for now.
After my rant about the Arnassian lady in the pilot I can’t ignore the fact that the soul hunter hasn’t done anything wrong when Sinclair decides to kick him off the station. Did the population at large know about the Arnassian lady and was perfectly okay with her being around but run in fear from the soul hunter? And fear and paranoia are perfectly valid reasons to set station policy in Jeff’s eyes? And he won’t kick G’Kar off the station for actively taking part in efforts to start a war or at least a threat to Jeff’s own life (not to mention what Londo is going to get up to in years to come without getting thrown out) but the soul hunter who hasn’t done anything has to go? (I know in those cases they’re ambassadors, but I think it’s still a valid point.)
You know, I’m starting to think if any of the B5 commanders has Minbari War Syndrome it’s Sinclair. He is way more susceptible to putting the desires of “aliens” above humans than Sheridan; but then Jeff is supposedly a Minbari soul so there’s that.
Wait, there’s a ship called the Epsilon 3? Why JMS, why?
I want to be generous and assume Delenn was expecting someone so she let the person ringing her doorbell in without asking any questions, but then Lennier isn’t around yet and she was either on the comm with someone or dictating notes; if the former and I think she should have waited longer to pay attention to the door, the latter then she should have been able to ask who it was. It’s a clunky bit of scripting.
There are quite a few issues with the big climax scene. Starting with it being really inconsistent how conscious Delenn is (she goes from being almost unconscious to screaming for help, back to basically silent; the screams should have been more like quiet cries for help in between bouts of unconsciousness for it to kind of work), to the restraints not seeming very effective looking (how was she even connected to the blood tubes, and if she’s conscious enough to scream she ought to be with it enough to kick out of those not-at-all-effective ankle “binders”), to how Franklin says a human couldn’t lose that much blood and live when she does not in fact seem to lose very much blood. And then Sinclair arrives, gets mildly knocked to the floor and then for no real reason opens to bag of soul gems (he wouldn’t actually know what was in that bag even if he would have known what a soul globe was and extra no reason to assume it would do any good to look in that bag); he then watches dumbly as the balls do their thing and then elects to turn the soul machine back on the hunter when I don’t think strictly speaking he needed to kill the guy. It’s not good is what I’m saying.
Hehehe, although I’m 99.9% certain it still wasn’t intended, Sinclair’s response to the idea of further investigation into the revelations of the day is “There’s always time” and it makes me laugh. Possibly because of how much this episode gets reused in WWE, my thoughts end up making it funny.
Again I say: Babylon 5, it’s open to all religious and philosophical ideas, unless you’re a dirty soul hunter then we don’t want anything to do with you. Sure, policy should be to keep away the random murderers, but you should be doing that with the random murderers of any race; as long as on B5 they agree to respect the death rituals of other races then why can’t they come back? Actually that puts another spin on Believers come to think of it.
So all told, this is a weird episode. I’m never really sure how to rank it; depending on my mood I either like it ok or I hate it; today I think I’m more on the like it side. The acting is actually better than in MOTF... I think...at least most of the time (Sinclair is fine at contemplation and even handed delivery of maybe not so even handed ideas, but when the script wants him to go bigger he falls bad); and, as noted, the climax doesn’t work very well at all. The directing in other areas isn’t any better, but there are better performances at least.
I still think this is a weird choice for a second episode, even if it is our getting to know Delenn episode. And it’s weird as a getting to know Delenn episode, but taking the long view it seems a good enough way to start. From that long view it’s easy to see why the getting to know Delenn ep also involves a lot of talking about the Earth-Minbari War. From a short view it makes sense too, getting to know the Minbari provides a chance to exposit about the war that’s so defining to the ‘verse backstory; but long view it’s also so very defining to Delenn herself; in my view more than for any other character the war defines her actions, which is partly why it’s so hard to talk about Delenn without talking about the war and why I think a lot of us tend to forget there was ever a time we didn’t know that about her role in it (and because I’m pretty sure JMS always did know it about her).
But as a view into Delenn herself, this episode is far more about giving us questions than answers. It’s about setup and about looking back at things we don’t yet know. Maybe it works as that, or maybe it doesn’t, again, I never watched this episode without knowing the answers.
It does also give me kind of conflicted feelings regarding Sinclair and Delenn’s relationship. On one hand, O’Hare’s performance around her is very...sweet and has an easy vibe to it, although hers is somewhat less natural seeming. On the other, they’re using him. So from some sides I see the setup of what would have been the big relationship, but on the other I don’t see how it could have worked in any good and satisfying way. I certainly doubt I’d still be shipping it all these years later the way I do John and Delenn.
Now let’s talk about the soul hunters in general, besides the fact that Sinclair is kind of a dick to them. I discussed this a lot the last time I reviewed this episode, but I’m not quite sure how the soul hunters fit into the B5 universe. They’re immortal (barring injury or illness one supposes), are they First Ones of did they develop immortality along the line? They’re probably telepathic, possibly some precognition too, and maybe some other mental ability the younger races don’t have a word for yet that allows them to track death; okay, I’ll concede that, want to give us some clue what that would involve besides being tapped into the soul groove network?
A couple of things I will fanwank though. If the soul hunters are telepathic, then the description we get from the main soul hunter when the lurker dies is enough in line with how telepaths react to being connected to someone at death that I’ll allow it. And if they have some precog in there it would explain why they focus on big deaths and not just saving (in their view) all people from the darkness that waits beyond death; they’d be a lot more drawn to big deaths that ripple in the precog-isphere.
What I will not allow is the crappy scrying job that the second soul hunter does. I’m not even sure I believe being drawn to death would allow for scrying (precog might have picked out clues from a vision, tracking might have lead them there, neither works with pointing at that map), but beyond that he points at a nonspecific area that may or may not have been green sector representing a 3D, constantly moving space. Even if, contrary to most external shots, the external beam is rotating along with the station so the map is slightly more useful, the pointing still wouldn’t have done hardly any good.
I understand that this episode had a lot of fans at first, but I don’t feel like time has been good for it. The soul issue became less and less of a thing as time went on, so while this might have endured better in earlier plans for the show it doesn’t quite mix with the long show (not that it actively contradicts future canon, in fact it’s rather interesting to look at and note how well it does work with the ultimate direction they went, but it doesn’t *matter* the way it might have). It raises questions, but the character ones will be answered and the philosophical ones will be treated rather differently down the road. It’s providing different takes on spiritual matters than I think fans were expecting at the time, but the show will provide so much more of that down the road, and sci-fi stories now have different tending answers, that this is unremarkable.
It’s okay on a good day, bad on a cranky one, and mostly just meh. But I still apparently had plenty to say.
Next Time: Born to the Purple
1x02: Soul Hunter
Okay, that wasn’t a very good promo either. It did make me realize something that I probably should have put words to ages ago: this is a bad concept for such an early episode. After only a pilot that most people either hadn’t seen or hadn’t seen in a whilem and a politically heavy reintroduction, this plot is quiet awkward. I definitely question how anyone as yet unconvinced is going to persuaded to give it another go seeing that promo.
More people remark on it with Sheridan, but Franklin definitely enters the station all smiles and good cheer, confident and cocky, and all that. And much like Sheridan, it won’t last.
You would think that all command level officers (or really most anyone) in EarthForce would be aware of rules about *not* firing on unknown races’ ships without explicit provocation. One would actually think that rule would have been in place long before the Minbari, but at this point there’s really no reason why it wouldn’t be SOP.
Have to stop and laugh at the giant picture of fruit in the background on the mess hall. It’s silly looking.
But after that, I’d like to question the portrayal of the “aliens’ in this episode. I guess Ivanova’s still pretty new to the station where such a high percentage of the population are non-humans, but in general this episode treats the “aliens” as if they are all from a common culture regarding soul hunters and the humans are the only ones who have no idea what’s going on. Portraying the Minbari that way is one thing, as a race they have had a lot longer experience in galactic matters and a habit of not telling people what they know; but if all the other races know what up how come none of them have mentioned it to their human allies?
It’s probably just a DVD error, but it only shows up during the shots in Downbelow so I’m going to pretend that those shots are security footage since they seem so low quality and have random streaks in them. Probably creates plot holes to even try and imagine such a thing, but it’ll do for now.
After my rant about the Arnassian lady in the pilot I can’t ignore the fact that the soul hunter hasn’t done anything wrong when Sinclair decides to kick him off the station. Did the population at large know about the Arnassian lady and was perfectly okay with her being around but run in fear from the soul hunter? And fear and paranoia are perfectly valid reasons to set station policy in Jeff’s eyes? And he won’t kick G’Kar off the station for actively taking part in efforts to start a war or at least a threat to Jeff’s own life (not to mention what Londo is going to get up to in years to come without getting thrown out) but the soul hunter who hasn’t done anything has to go? (I know in those cases they’re ambassadors, but I think it’s still a valid point.)
You know, I’m starting to think if any of the B5 commanders has Minbari War Syndrome it’s Sinclair. He is way more susceptible to putting the desires of “aliens” above humans than Sheridan; but then Jeff is supposedly a Minbari soul so there’s that.
Wait, there’s a ship called the Epsilon 3? Why JMS, why?
I want to be generous and assume Delenn was expecting someone so she let the person ringing her doorbell in without asking any questions, but then Lennier isn’t around yet and she was either on the comm with someone or dictating notes; if the former and I think she should have waited longer to pay attention to the door, the latter then she should have been able to ask who it was. It’s a clunky bit of scripting.
There are quite a few issues with the big climax scene. Starting with it being really inconsistent how conscious Delenn is (she goes from being almost unconscious to screaming for help, back to basically silent; the screams should have been more like quiet cries for help in between bouts of unconsciousness for it to kind of work), to the restraints not seeming very effective looking (how was she even connected to the blood tubes, and if she’s conscious enough to scream she ought to be with it enough to kick out of those not-at-all-effective ankle “binders”), to how Franklin says a human couldn’t lose that much blood and live when she does not in fact seem to lose very much blood. And then Sinclair arrives, gets mildly knocked to the floor and then for no real reason opens to bag of soul gems (he wouldn’t actually know what was in that bag even if he would have known what a soul globe was and extra no reason to assume it would do any good to look in that bag); he then watches dumbly as the balls do their thing and then elects to turn the soul machine back on the hunter when I don’t think strictly speaking he needed to kill the guy. It’s not good is what I’m saying.
Hehehe, although I’m 99.9% certain it still wasn’t intended, Sinclair’s response to the idea of further investigation into the revelations of the day is “There’s always time” and it makes me laugh. Possibly because of how much this episode gets reused in WWE, my thoughts end up making it funny.
Again I say: Babylon 5, it’s open to all religious and philosophical ideas, unless you’re a dirty soul hunter then we don’t want anything to do with you. Sure, policy should be to keep away the random murderers, but you should be doing that with the random murderers of any race; as long as on B5 they agree to respect the death rituals of other races then why can’t they come back? Actually that puts another spin on Believers come to think of it.
So all told, this is a weird episode. I’m never really sure how to rank it; depending on my mood I either like it ok or I hate it; today I think I’m more on the like it side. The acting is actually better than in MOTF... I think...at least most of the time (Sinclair is fine at contemplation and even handed delivery of maybe not so even handed ideas, but when the script wants him to go bigger he falls bad); and, as noted, the climax doesn’t work very well at all. The directing in other areas isn’t any better, but there are better performances at least.
I still think this is a weird choice for a second episode, even if it is our getting to know Delenn episode. And it’s weird as a getting to know Delenn episode, but taking the long view it seems a good enough way to start. From that long view it’s easy to see why the getting to know Delenn ep also involves a lot of talking about the Earth-Minbari War. From a short view it makes sense too, getting to know the Minbari provides a chance to exposit about the war that’s so defining to the ‘verse backstory; but long view it’s also so very defining to Delenn herself; in my view more than for any other character the war defines her actions, which is partly why it’s so hard to talk about Delenn without talking about the war and why I think a lot of us tend to forget there was ever a time we didn’t know that about her role in it (and because I’m pretty sure JMS always did know it about her).
But as a view into Delenn herself, this episode is far more about giving us questions than answers. It’s about setup and about looking back at things we don’t yet know. Maybe it works as that, or maybe it doesn’t, again, I never watched this episode without knowing the answers.
It does also give me kind of conflicted feelings regarding Sinclair and Delenn’s relationship. On one hand, O’Hare’s performance around her is very...sweet and has an easy vibe to it, although hers is somewhat less natural seeming. On the other, they’re using him. So from some sides I see the setup of what would have been the big relationship, but on the other I don’t see how it could have worked in any good and satisfying way. I certainly doubt I’d still be shipping it all these years later the way I do John and Delenn.
Now let’s talk about the soul hunters in general, besides the fact that Sinclair is kind of a dick to them. I discussed this a lot the last time I reviewed this episode, but I’m not quite sure how the soul hunters fit into the B5 universe. They’re immortal (barring injury or illness one supposes), are they First Ones of did they develop immortality along the line? They’re probably telepathic, possibly some precognition too, and maybe some other mental ability the younger races don’t have a word for yet that allows them to track death; okay, I’ll concede that, want to give us some clue what that would involve besides being tapped into the soul groove network?
A couple of things I will fanwank though. If the soul hunters are telepathic, then the description we get from the main soul hunter when the lurker dies is enough in line with how telepaths react to being connected to someone at death that I’ll allow it. And if they have some precog in there it would explain why they focus on big deaths and not just saving (in their view) all people from the darkness that waits beyond death; they’d be a lot more drawn to big deaths that ripple in the precog-isphere.
What I will not allow is the crappy scrying job that the second soul hunter does. I’m not even sure I believe being drawn to death would allow for scrying (precog might have picked out clues from a vision, tracking might have lead them there, neither works with pointing at that map), but beyond that he points at a nonspecific area that may or may not have been green sector representing a 3D, constantly moving space. Even if, contrary to most external shots, the external beam is rotating along with the station so the map is slightly more useful, the pointing still wouldn’t have done hardly any good.
I understand that this episode had a lot of fans at first, but I don’t feel like time has been good for it. The soul issue became less and less of a thing as time went on, so while this might have endured better in earlier plans for the show it doesn’t quite mix with the long show (not that it actively contradicts future canon, in fact it’s rather interesting to look at and note how well it does work with the ultimate direction they went, but it doesn’t *matter* the way it might have). It raises questions, but the character ones will be answered and the philosophical ones will be treated rather differently down the road. It’s providing different takes on spiritual matters than I think fans were expecting at the time, but the show will provide so much more of that down the road, and sci-fi stories now have different tending answers, that this is unremarkable.
It’s okay on a good day, bad on a cranky one, and mostly just meh. But I still apparently had plenty to say.
Next Time: Born to the Purple
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Date: 2015-05-06 06:12 pm (UTC)To address what you said in an earlier response to us, we will keep asking permission unless you explicitly give us blanket permission to link. That could be blanket permission just for the B5 posts with us asking about anything else or blanket permission for anything you post that we consider meta. You're under no obligation to give us blanket permission of any sort, and you can withdraw such permission later just by telling us you want to.
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Date: 2015-05-14 07:17 pm (UTC)