BPP – River of Souls

The Babylon Project Podcast

This is the third movie of the Babylon 5 movies (not including The Gathering) and originally aired on November 8, 1998 on TNT. It takes place in the year 2263 between the 5th season of the series and the start of the spin-off series “Crusade”. If you’re a fan of Shakespeare, you probably recognize the title of this episode from Hamlet. Overall, an okay movie, but like many of the others it seems to be an idea that would fuel seasonal episode, stretched out to fill the length of a feature movie.

The movie kicks off with an awkward Indiana Jones type of character (Dr. Bryson), who is nowhere near as cool or polished as Indy. He’s looking for something specific, with a clear indication that something bad is going to happen. We quickly learn this reckless archeologist is after an object called a soul orb. With his prize in hand, it appears to communicate with him, but we don’t know if he understands or perhaps he’s deluded. With protective systems functioning, he has to flee to protect himself and the orb he’s stolen.

Meanwhile, there’s a quiet moment on Babylon 5: or is there? We catch a glimpse of a vendor running a holographic brothel and quickly conclude that the relative calm may become a storm. This is more assured when Michael Garibaldi shows up on the station to deal with a business matter related to something Edgars had begun: a project called Life Eternal that Dr. Bryson belongs to, and the orb he’s stolen has some relationship to this business—now Michael’s business. Michael wants preliminary data on what’s been discovered, while Dr. Bryson continues his deeper analysis. The attempts at deeper analysis follow in some fairly clumsy scenes where the good doctor seems to know all he needs to do is apply high voltage to the orb to discover more and communicate with it.

Picking up the brothel storyline again (making it predictably clear this storyline will intertwine with the orb storyline), there’s some sort of problem with the brothel resulting in Zack being turned loose on the problem, and making an internal business problem a larger one. Seems this business isn’t operating legally. If it is, then it’s just barely legal. In light of the attention this illicit business is receiving, the vendor’s lawyer shows up and begins trying to make trouble for the station.

Then a Soul Hunter arrives, looking for something stolen by Dr. Bryson—the orb. It appears this orb contains souls under the protective custody of the Soul Hunters and Bryson is putting them at risk. Shortly thereafter, we learn that a planet’s worth of souls are contained in the orb. Dr. Bryson is making the argument that they are being held prisoner while the Soul Hunter argues they are being “preserved and continued” rather than allowing them to simply pass from existence. Regardless, the souls are angry. With a Soul Hunter onboard the station attempting to return them to bondage, and no apparent way to elude the Soul Hunter, the angry souls convince Dr. Bryson to destroy the station. In their words, “better to destroy the station and embrace the darkness than to go back with them.”

With some souls having escaped the orb, they begin to wreak havoc in a variety of ways, to include occupying characters in the holo brothel. In an effort to intervene, the brothel is destroyed, Lochley is hurt and in a coma, and is pulled into the orb where she learns the truth about the imprisonment of these souls. The orb is in fact an unintentional prison for a billion souls who were captured by the Soul Hunters through a horrible misunderstanding. Thinking these people were dying and going extinct, they were captured and entombed right at the moment of apparent death. Sadly, they were actually freeing themselves from the constraints of their bodies and evolving beyond the physical (like the Vorlons), but instead ended up captive within the orb. Many had gone mad over time, and all now want to exact revenge or die, or both. Lochley comes out of the coma and informs the crew, and the Soul Hunter, of what she’s learned just as a fleet of Soul Hunters arrive to back up their agent. In great sorrow, the Soul Hunter already onboard the station is convinced of the error and takes the side of the B5 crew and the souls in the orb, now working to correct the thinking of the arriving fleet, and to free the souls.

The story begins to wrap up as Dr. Bryson continues to try and destroy the station by detonating the station’s reactor. Captain Lochley and the Soul Hunter attempt to save the station and free the souls. They find Dr. Bryson with the orb at the reactor, and in an act of sacrifice, the Soul Hunter forfeits his own life to prevent the destruction of the station, saving the orb and the life of Dr. Bryson.

The movie ends on a lighter note when Captain Lochley explains the finer points of why the loss of the holo brothel doesn’t come with a burden of guilt for the station or Lochley.

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