The ability to travel through space visiting beyond our planetary system has fired human imagination since when 100 years ago humans found the way to fly in aero engine planes. We remain limited by the distance which can be travelled unless human life can be placed in abeyance for the journey with the problem that on return everyone and everything known will have changed beyond recognition e.g. Planet of the Apes or the development of the technology to enable space jumping which is the method of travel which Earth was able to use after it made contact with other races in Babylon 5. An even more spectacular form of space and time travel is the subject of the second film shown on Tuesday evening Babylon 5 Thirdspace, originally shown during Season 5 but covers a period during Season 4.
The film is set in the period after the war between the Shadows and the Vorlons and before Sheridan deposed President Clark and formed the new Alliance. His deputy Ivanova is on a mission when she becomes aware of a giant object, apparently drifting through space, and arranges a chain of location and contact points so that the object can be investigated without being lost in space themselves. Seeing that the object is so large and does not respond to external investigation she arranges for it to brought back to Babylon 5 where it immediately attracts the interest of other nations.
The other empires and races involved with the station want to participate in the investigation but Sheridan is anxious to retain control and only agrees to an interplanetary expeditions team investigation on the basis of a willingness to break the earth blockade and reprovision the base as well as make available their findings exclusively to Sheridan so that he can determine what to if there is advanced technology, weaponry or other findings of a commercial significance. This is a weak storyline because needs help he can trust.
After her initial inquiries the head of the unit determines to keep the findings secret until she is sure they will make and her team famous and wealthy. She correctly determines that the object is a different kind of space jump gate, more advanced and able to travel even greater depths into the universe quickly. It was built by the Vorlons over a million years ago.
Lyta, the telepath, enhanced by the Vorlons is able to receive Vorlon communications held within the device but appears to be prevented from revealing the threat by greater force from within device belonging to an race which once threatened everyone else
Although the super jump gate is no activated various people on the station, including Ivanova, Vir and others have come under its power, including the head of the anthropological and archaeology expeditions units, in a way reminiscent of Close Encounters of the Third Kind. This force is disrupting the station working in various way with fights breaking out, individuals endangering the safety of the space station, seeking to reach the device and places which are revealed to them, and pushing those working to uncover its origins and functions to make rapid progress. When the game opens it is evident that craft that appear are hostile and beyond the defences of he station and the device in turn has established a protective force field which makes it immune to attack.
It is only when Sheridan and Delenn break into the quarters of Lyta that she is able to reveal the dreadful truth. The device was created by the Vorlons, one of the First known races, who having advanced beyond present human imagination had attempted to explore beyond their limits. What they managed to do was to open a link with a similar device created by other First ones, but these were even more dark and sinister that the Shadows, in their drive to destroy any beings who were not the same as themselves. While the Vorlons had been successful in defeating the aggressive beings because of their own advanced abilities and technology, hundreds of races and their worlds have destroyed and a group of Vorlons under the telepathic influence had closed down and jettisoned the Vorlon device in hyperspace hoping that one day it would be rediscovered and reawakened, enabling the race to once again set out on their mission to destroy all others different from themselves The Vorlons had continued to search for the device to destroy it, and now one ambitious individualist had enabled all the inhabitants of the Milky Way planetary systems to be destroyed.
The solution, very similar to that in Independence Day, the 1966 released film, is for an individual to secretly enter the device- in Independence day it was the mother ship, with thermo nuclear device and destroy from within, in both cases successfully managing to escape although narrowly doing so.
The film does not resolve gaps in the main storyline. It is said to have been based on a story of that original science fiction writer master mind H P Lovecraft. The film made major use of special effects although not of an order to have enabled the film a stand alone theatre release. But it was a breakthrough in TV film making.
Back in real time Babylon 5 Learning Curve 506 covers three story lines one of which is designed to flesh out live within the life of the space station. Because the station was never fill equipped to provide residential and community provision for everyone there are areas, described as down below, and with 5 miles in length it is perhaps not surprising that there are not a couple of hundred thousand people coming and going with overnight stays even in the expanding universe of races and planetary systems within reach. This has enabled a subterranean criminal community to develop as in any city, using force to provide protection, in unregistered gambling, prostitution, supplying illicit substances and other black market goods and supplying false entry and exit papers.
A new young crime boss arrives having been displaced elsewhere and determine to become the head man through a mixture of bribery and force. In order to make his mark he kills someone who is refusing to pay up, against the advice of one of the existing gang leaders who warns that Security Chief Garibaldi will not tolerate such a threat to his authority. The approach of the new man is set a trap to kill Garibaldi if he refuses to cooperate.
The second storyline involves the development of the Rangers with their training the Anla’shok and the arrival on the station of two recent recruits who are left to explore station on their own. The crime boss has used a woman to provide Garibaldi with information about the killing and when she finds out the intention is to kill the security chief she back out and find herself the next victim only prevented by the intervention of the two trainee Rangers. One of the two rush to help and is badly injured and left for dead. When visiting the young recruit in hospital Delenn explains that this is now a matter for them to deal with, and she has already gained the approval of Sheridan which Captain Lochley expresses surprise given her knowledge of him. This is in turn surprise Delenn and leads to the revelation that Lochley was Sheridan’s first wife. The young man who was beaten gains in strength and faces the crime boss who he defeats and the man is then handed over to the authorities.
Sub stories include Garibaldi’s questions about the choice of station captain, asking Lochley which side was she on under the Clark regime and had she ever questioned or challenged authority in her life.
The Rangers have been open to all races but those from one race have created a problem with everyone else refusing to work with them because of their habits. Delenn’s solution is for them go deep undercover. Lennier is reported as pushing himself too far in his training, with her suspicion he is trying to impress Delenn.
In Strange Relations 507 an attempt is made on the life of Londo Mollari after he is appointed to be the next Emperor after the death of the ailing Regent. Because of this and the need for Londo to visit his home world to attend national functions, Sheridan asks G’Kar to act as the personal body for his former enemy and he agrees in order to see the look on the faces of the Narn’s on his position. This quirky decision explains how G’Kar is on Centauri Prime for the events forecast in World Without End.
The rebellious Telepaths led by Byron are confronted by Bester, who insists in cooperation from Lochley now that Earth has joined the alliance so he can end their independence. Lochley is not unsympathetic to Bester‘s mission as she was stationed on one outpost where a rogue telepath murdered two crew members. Dr Franklin is offered an important job on Earth which he finds it very attractive and with Sheridan planning to leave Babylon with Delenn, he decides to accept.
In Secrets of the Soul there is no major story development. Dr Franklin discovers the secret of one of the minor races who visit Babylon 5, the Hyach who have heath problems and are dying out. They refuse to pass on their historical medical records. Dr Franklin eventually discovers that in the past the Hyach systematically slaughtered the other race on their planet the Hyach-doh because they wanted to preserve their racial purity and had become concerned at the extent of intermarriage and breeding. However was they did not realise is that it was the interbreeding which was progressing the survival of both races and that in the absence of the Hyach-doh they would begin to die out.
The telepaths led by Bryon work out a means to persuade the authorities to find them an uninhabited planet to make their home. Lyta has resolved her situation with Bester by become a special member of the Psi corps and has a relationship with Byron whose authority is being challenged by some of the other independent telepaths who have come to Babylon 5 as a refuge.
Day of the Dead is something of a diversion. Two highly regarded comedians on Earth arrive on Babylon 5. There are those who find them exceptionally funny and those like new station captain and some of the Ambassadors who do not. This is simply device for the main subject of the episode which is the day of the dead, a religious festival for one the races with the power to brings back people lost for one night where there was unfinished business of different kinds. The night when the souls rise only occurs once every 200 years when a comet approaches the homeworld of the race, the Brakiri.
For Londo it is the dancer mistress murdered on her way to stay with him on Babylon 5.
Garibaldi sees again the young fights who stayed with him the night before she went into battle and died.
She recites a poem
Because I could not stop for death
He kindly stopped for me
The carriage held but just Ourselves
And Immortality.
Followed by the rest of A few Figs from Thistles by Edna St Vincent Millay.
The closing lines appear to be a mixture
My life closed twice before its close
It remains to see
If Immorality unveil
A third event to me
So huge, so hopeless to conceive
AS these that twice befell
Parting is all we know of heaven,
And all we need of hell,
With the last two lines from an Emily Dickson poem.
Lennier spends the night with Morden of the Shadows. Morden tells Lennier he will betray the Rangers and die soon. Modern also appears to make reference of Dante’s Inferno from which I select
When things draw near or happen, we perceive
Nothing of them, Except of what others bring us we have no news of those who are alive
So may you understand that all we know
Will be dead forever from that day and hour
When the portal of the Future is swung to.
Captain Lochley is visited by a friends for whose death she had felt responsible and former Ambassador Kosh also visit Lochley with a message for Sheridan.
The message is, “When the long night comes, return to the end of the beginning.”
This is the right moment to insert the film The River of Souls which has two first class TV and cinema actors in major roles, Ian McShane and Martin Sheen.
Garibaldi now living on Mars and heading the corporation previously run by Edgars, having married his widow and the love of Garibaldi life, summons Ian McShane to Babylon 5 playing, an archaeologist who for the previous three years has received £2 million credits for unspecified research. McShane explains that he has been working on a search for immortality. While the average lifespan of humans has increased to 140 years, some races have a normal body life of two to three hundred, while other have evolved into creatures without a defined physical form, and such higher states characters appeared before in episodes of Star Trek, the original and the subsequent.
At the beginning of the film the character is seen taking one of a number of colourful globes from and dark vault like place, pursued and narrowly escaping. He brings the globe with him to Babylon 5. He asks Garibaldi to give him a few days more as he anticipates a breakthrough but Garibaldi insists that he produces a summary of his work over the past three years by the following morning. Instead of working on these McShane establishes communication with the Globe and we begin to learn what it is.
The soul collectors were covered in a previous episode, Soul Hunter. There are a dedicated race who capture the soul at the moment of death and give it immortality living in a globe full of the good memories and experiences and able to communicate with one another. McShane has removed such a globe, one of the great works of the Soul Hunters in that they were able to capture an entire race, one billion souls, the population of China. The people of the planet Ralga just before they became simultaneously extinct. A representative of the soul collectors, Martin Sheen, arrives to demand return of the globe, only to find that McShane having established communication with a soul within the globe has been alerted and makes off to where they are able to hide and counteract. Sheen explains that the souls appear angry and as such can develop their own power if not under the direct control of the Soul’s collectors, and in the form of a lightening bolt they attempt to strike him down but Lochley intervenes and appears to be struck down with death imminent. Her heart stops for a few seconds during which time she is transported in the Globe and their world, with she beings addressed by a spokesperson in the form of Dr Franklin, you only see others you want to see. The representatives explain that far from dying they were at the point of evolving into bodiless beings who would have been able to roam the universe free but have been imprisoned for 10000 years, many going mad with the rest experiencing a great sense of injustice, frustration, sense of loss, sadness and hopelessness.
Lochley lives to report her experience but finds that a fleet of Soul hunters have arrived, and having obtained information as who to stole the globe, capturing and killing McShane’s associates, they demand its return or they will invade the station and take it by force. The Ralga aided by McShane have attached themselves to the station’s core energy threatening to blow themselves and everyone up rather than be returned to their confinement by the Soul collectors.
Lochley persuades Sheen to explain the situation to his colleagues who cannot accept that they made such a significant mistake and give 20 minutes before coming on to the station. Sheen then offers his life and soul to enter the Globe as a means of preventing catastrophe and buying time in which to be able to communicate further with his colleagues and persuade them that it has not been a trick, that they have made a mistake and must find somehow to free those imprisoned to continue their evolution in some form.
There is a sub story which interacts. In the Star Trek series and follow ups we learned of the development the virtual reality experiences to the extent to which some became nearly trapped in the artificially created world while creations in the world are able to break out, at least for a time.
Zak is sent to investigate the alleged setting up of a holographic brothel in which the love object (hetrosexuals only waiting in reception) can be created to look as you wish from a three dimensional photographs and you put yourself into a special suit which can respond to actions which appear to be initiated by the virtual reality creation. When Zak tells the owner to close down he is first confronted by defiance that the accommodation was contracted for six months as an unspecified entertainment facility and then by a smart lawyer who demands compensation against the Station and against Lochley personally. She gets out of this by arranging for the facility to be destroyed when dealing with the Ralga who have used the virtual reality centre as a conduit to gain access to the station’s core. She also threatens a counter claim having discovered that the owner has created a virtual reality model in her likeness said to be very popular with female members of staff on the station. This provides humour as part of a serious subject.
Would people like to live for thousands of years in such a state? How does the work of Soul Collector square with Christianity, Judaism and the Muslim faiths?
The film is set in the period after the war between the Shadows and the Vorlons and before Sheridan deposed President Clark and formed the new Alliance. His deputy Ivanova is on a mission when she becomes aware of a giant object, apparently drifting through space, and arranges a chain of location and contact points so that the object can be investigated without being lost in space themselves. Seeing that the object is so large and does not respond to external investigation she arranges for it to brought back to Babylon 5 where it immediately attracts the interest of other nations.
The other empires and races involved with the station want to participate in the investigation but Sheridan is anxious to retain control and only agrees to an interplanetary expeditions team investigation on the basis of a willingness to break the earth blockade and reprovision the base as well as make available their findings exclusively to Sheridan so that he can determine what to if there is advanced technology, weaponry or other findings of a commercial significance. This is a weak storyline because needs help he can trust.
After her initial inquiries the head of the unit determines to keep the findings secret until she is sure they will make and her team famous and wealthy. She correctly determines that the object is a different kind of space jump gate, more advanced and able to travel even greater depths into the universe quickly. It was built by the Vorlons over a million years ago.
Lyta, the telepath, enhanced by the Vorlons is able to receive Vorlon communications held within the device but appears to be prevented from revealing the threat by greater force from within device belonging to an race which once threatened everyone else
Although the super jump gate is no activated various people on the station, including Ivanova, Vir and others have come under its power, including the head of the anthropological and archaeology expeditions units, in a way reminiscent of Close Encounters of the Third Kind. This force is disrupting the station working in various way with fights breaking out, individuals endangering the safety of the space station, seeking to reach the device and places which are revealed to them, and pushing those working to uncover its origins and functions to make rapid progress. When the game opens it is evident that craft that appear are hostile and beyond the defences of he station and the device in turn has established a protective force field which makes it immune to attack.
It is only when Sheridan and Delenn break into the quarters of Lyta that she is able to reveal the dreadful truth. The device was created by the Vorlons, one of the First known races, who having advanced beyond present human imagination had attempted to explore beyond their limits. What they managed to do was to open a link with a similar device created by other First ones, but these were even more dark and sinister that the Shadows, in their drive to destroy any beings who were not the same as themselves. While the Vorlons had been successful in defeating the aggressive beings because of their own advanced abilities and technology, hundreds of races and their worlds have destroyed and a group of Vorlons under the telepathic influence had closed down and jettisoned the Vorlon device in hyperspace hoping that one day it would be rediscovered and reawakened, enabling the race to once again set out on their mission to destroy all others different from themselves The Vorlons had continued to search for the device to destroy it, and now one ambitious individualist had enabled all the inhabitants of the Milky Way planetary systems to be destroyed.
The solution, very similar to that in Independence Day, the 1966 released film, is for an individual to secretly enter the device- in Independence day it was the mother ship, with thermo nuclear device and destroy from within, in both cases successfully managing to escape although narrowly doing so.
The film does not resolve gaps in the main storyline. It is said to have been based on a story of that original science fiction writer master mind H P Lovecraft. The film made major use of special effects although not of an order to have enabled the film a stand alone theatre release. But it was a breakthrough in TV film making.
Back in real time Babylon 5 Learning Curve 506 covers three story lines one of which is designed to flesh out live within the life of the space station. Because the station was never fill equipped to provide residential and community provision for everyone there are areas, described as down below, and with 5 miles in length it is perhaps not surprising that there are not a couple of hundred thousand people coming and going with overnight stays even in the expanding universe of races and planetary systems within reach. This has enabled a subterranean criminal community to develop as in any city, using force to provide protection, in unregistered gambling, prostitution, supplying illicit substances and other black market goods and supplying false entry and exit papers.
A new young crime boss arrives having been displaced elsewhere and determine to become the head man through a mixture of bribery and force. In order to make his mark he kills someone who is refusing to pay up, against the advice of one of the existing gang leaders who warns that Security Chief Garibaldi will not tolerate such a threat to his authority. The approach of the new man is set a trap to kill Garibaldi if he refuses to cooperate.
The second storyline involves the development of the Rangers with their training the Anla’shok and the arrival on the station of two recent recruits who are left to explore station on their own. The crime boss has used a woman to provide Garibaldi with information about the killing and when she finds out the intention is to kill the security chief she back out and find herself the next victim only prevented by the intervention of the two trainee Rangers. One of the two rush to help and is badly injured and left for dead. When visiting the young recruit in hospital Delenn explains that this is now a matter for them to deal with, and she has already gained the approval of Sheridan which Captain Lochley expresses surprise given her knowledge of him. This is in turn surprise Delenn and leads to the revelation that Lochley was Sheridan’s first wife. The young man who was beaten gains in strength and faces the crime boss who he defeats and the man is then handed over to the authorities.
Sub stories include Garibaldi’s questions about the choice of station captain, asking Lochley which side was she on under the Clark regime and had she ever questioned or challenged authority in her life.
The Rangers have been open to all races but those from one race have created a problem with everyone else refusing to work with them because of their habits. Delenn’s solution is for them go deep undercover. Lennier is reported as pushing himself too far in his training, with her suspicion he is trying to impress Delenn.
In Strange Relations 507 an attempt is made on the life of Londo Mollari after he is appointed to be the next Emperor after the death of the ailing Regent. Because of this and the need for Londo to visit his home world to attend national functions, Sheridan asks G’Kar to act as the personal body for his former enemy and he agrees in order to see the look on the faces of the Narn’s on his position. This quirky decision explains how G’Kar is on Centauri Prime for the events forecast in World Without End.
The rebellious Telepaths led by Byron are confronted by Bester, who insists in cooperation from Lochley now that Earth has joined the alliance so he can end their independence. Lochley is not unsympathetic to Bester‘s mission as she was stationed on one outpost where a rogue telepath murdered two crew members. Dr Franklin is offered an important job on Earth which he finds it very attractive and with Sheridan planning to leave Babylon with Delenn, he decides to accept.
In Secrets of the Soul there is no major story development. Dr Franklin discovers the secret of one of the minor races who visit Babylon 5, the Hyach who have heath problems and are dying out. They refuse to pass on their historical medical records. Dr Franklin eventually discovers that in the past the Hyach systematically slaughtered the other race on their planet the Hyach-doh because they wanted to preserve their racial purity and had become concerned at the extent of intermarriage and breeding. However was they did not realise is that it was the interbreeding which was progressing the survival of both races and that in the absence of the Hyach-doh they would begin to die out.
The telepaths led by Bryon work out a means to persuade the authorities to find them an uninhabited planet to make their home. Lyta has resolved her situation with Bester by become a special member of the Psi corps and has a relationship with Byron whose authority is being challenged by some of the other independent telepaths who have come to Babylon 5 as a refuge.
Day of the Dead is something of a diversion. Two highly regarded comedians on Earth arrive on Babylon 5. There are those who find them exceptionally funny and those like new station captain and some of the Ambassadors who do not. This is simply device for the main subject of the episode which is the day of the dead, a religious festival for one the races with the power to brings back people lost for one night where there was unfinished business of different kinds. The night when the souls rise only occurs once every 200 years when a comet approaches the homeworld of the race, the Brakiri.
For Londo it is the dancer mistress murdered on her way to stay with him on Babylon 5.
Garibaldi sees again the young fights who stayed with him the night before she went into battle and died.
She recites a poem
Because I could not stop for death
He kindly stopped for me
The carriage held but just Ourselves
And Immortality.
Followed by the rest of A few Figs from Thistles by Edna St Vincent Millay.
The closing lines appear to be a mixture
My life closed twice before its close
It remains to see
If Immorality unveil
A third event to me
So huge, so hopeless to conceive
AS these that twice befell
Parting is all we know of heaven,
And all we need of hell,
With the last two lines from an Emily Dickson poem.
Lennier spends the night with Morden of the Shadows. Morden tells Lennier he will betray the Rangers and die soon. Modern also appears to make reference of Dante’s Inferno from which I select
When things draw near or happen, we perceive
Nothing of them, Except of what others bring us we have no news of those who are alive
So may you understand that all we know
Will be dead forever from that day and hour
When the portal of the Future is swung to.
Captain Lochley is visited by a friends for whose death she had felt responsible and former Ambassador Kosh also visit Lochley with a message for Sheridan.
The message is, “When the long night comes, return to the end of the beginning.”
This is the right moment to insert the film The River of Souls which has two first class TV and cinema actors in major roles, Ian McShane and Martin Sheen.
Garibaldi now living on Mars and heading the corporation previously run by Edgars, having married his widow and the love of Garibaldi life, summons Ian McShane to Babylon 5 playing, an archaeologist who for the previous three years has received £2 million credits for unspecified research. McShane explains that he has been working on a search for immortality. While the average lifespan of humans has increased to 140 years, some races have a normal body life of two to three hundred, while other have evolved into creatures without a defined physical form, and such higher states characters appeared before in episodes of Star Trek, the original and the subsequent.
At the beginning of the film the character is seen taking one of a number of colourful globes from and dark vault like place, pursued and narrowly escaping. He brings the globe with him to Babylon 5. He asks Garibaldi to give him a few days more as he anticipates a breakthrough but Garibaldi insists that he produces a summary of his work over the past three years by the following morning. Instead of working on these McShane establishes communication with the Globe and we begin to learn what it is.
The soul collectors were covered in a previous episode, Soul Hunter. There are a dedicated race who capture the soul at the moment of death and give it immortality living in a globe full of the good memories and experiences and able to communicate with one another. McShane has removed such a globe, one of the great works of the Soul Hunters in that they were able to capture an entire race, one billion souls, the population of China. The people of the planet Ralga just before they became simultaneously extinct. A representative of the soul collectors, Martin Sheen, arrives to demand return of the globe, only to find that McShane having established communication with a soul within the globe has been alerted and makes off to where they are able to hide and counteract. Sheen explains that the souls appear angry and as such can develop their own power if not under the direct control of the Soul’s collectors, and in the form of a lightening bolt they attempt to strike him down but Lochley intervenes and appears to be struck down with death imminent. Her heart stops for a few seconds during which time she is transported in the Globe and their world, with she beings addressed by a spokesperson in the form of Dr Franklin, you only see others you want to see. The representatives explain that far from dying they were at the point of evolving into bodiless beings who would have been able to roam the universe free but have been imprisoned for 10000 years, many going mad with the rest experiencing a great sense of injustice, frustration, sense of loss, sadness and hopelessness.
Lochley lives to report her experience but finds that a fleet of Soul hunters have arrived, and having obtained information as who to stole the globe, capturing and killing McShane’s associates, they demand its return or they will invade the station and take it by force. The Ralga aided by McShane have attached themselves to the station’s core energy threatening to blow themselves and everyone up rather than be returned to their confinement by the Soul collectors.
Lochley persuades Sheen to explain the situation to his colleagues who cannot accept that they made such a significant mistake and give 20 minutes before coming on to the station. Sheen then offers his life and soul to enter the Globe as a means of preventing catastrophe and buying time in which to be able to communicate further with his colleagues and persuade them that it has not been a trick, that they have made a mistake and must find somehow to free those imprisoned to continue their evolution in some form.
There is a sub story which interacts. In the Star Trek series and follow ups we learned of the development the virtual reality experiences to the extent to which some became nearly trapped in the artificially created world while creations in the world are able to break out, at least for a time.
Zak is sent to investigate the alleged setting up of a holographic brothel in which the love object (hetrosexuals only waiting in reception) can be created to look as you wish from a three dimensional photographs and you put yourself into a special suit which can respond to actions which appear to be initiated by the virtual reality creation. When Zak tells the owner to close down he is first confronted by defiance that the accommodation was contracted for six months as an unspecified entertainment facility and then by a smart lawyer who demands compensation against the Station and against Lochley personally. She gets out of this by arranging for the facility to be destroyed when dealing with the Ralga who have used the virtual reality centre as a conduit to gain access to the station’s core. She also threatens a counter claim having discovered that the owner has created a virtual reality model in her likeness said to be very popular with female members of staff on the station. This provides humour as part of a serious subject.
Would people like to live for thousands of years in such a state? How does the work of Soul Collector square with Christianity, Judaism and the Muslim faiths?
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