Babylon 5 (TV Series) Secrets of the Soul (1998) User Reviews

Not a very good episode

[InfiniteJesterII · 6/10 · 17 July 2022]

In this episode, we get more of Byron. When he is in downbelow with his telepaths, a person from a gang starts harassing him. Byron tells him to hit him, and again, and again, saying that violence, in the end, accomplishes nothing.

Later, Zack Allan asks why Lyta Alexander is hanging around Byron, and she says that she is with him because he treats her like a person, not a means to an end, a weapon, and how Byron won't use her and actually cares about her. At this point, she has just become annoying and rude. The thing I found to be the most lacking part of this episode would be when Lyta and Byron get intimate (ugh.) and she has visions of telepaths growing in vats. To be honest, at this point, the romance between Byron and Lyta feels rushed, as he just comes onto the station and immediately, she's all over him.

After the realization that the Vorlons made telepaths to fight in the Shadow War (which we, the viewers, already knew), took it to to the ISA, demanding a homeworld.

Also, in the back drop we get a completely unrelated filler plot line that seems like it came from a rejected Star Trek script or something, where Dr. Franklin discovers that an alien race with butts for heads murdered their brother race, who, through intermarrying, were providing longevity or something, I don't remember. Then Franklin gets mad and goes all super moral doctor on them. Completely useless storyline.

In all, this episode is pretty subpar compared to other B5 episodes. 6/10.

AAARRRGGGHHH!!

[ZuniFetishWarrior · 2/10 · 15 March 2021]

Dear God I hate Byron. this story line is putting me to sleep. I'm new to B5 so I'm hoping for his eventual grisly death. I love B5 but at this point I can't wait for S5 to be over with. I miss Ivanova

More dull stuff carried over from the previous dull episode

[planktonrules · 5/10 · 8 June 2007]

Season five for Babylon 5 was, generally speaking, a disappointment. As the Shadows AND the Earth had been defeated, there were no enemies when the season began and the episodes just seemed to be in limbo--probably because originally there wasn't even supposed to be a fifth season.

Once again, a major focus of the episode are the telepaths aboard B-5 and once again, they and their leader are an amazingly dull group. In addition, the doctor learns a shocking truth about a race called the Hyachs. The problem is that none of this really seemed very interesting and it seemed like the show was just spinning it's wheels, so to speak. A real snoozer.

You're a low, pitiful little man, Dr Franklin

[phenomynouss · 1/10 · 8 November 2010]

One of the plots of this episode involves discovering that the Vorlons actually made telepaths over 9000 million years ago or whatever.

The main plot that receives more time involves Dr Franklin prying into a species called the Hyach, shocked that their modern historical records only go back a few hundred years, whereas they have been spacefaring for longer than that.

So because Dr Franklin says he needs ALL possible information about the Hyach in order to help them with a disease and declining birth rates. Because the Hyach are too damn stupid to give him a good reason not to pry, and actively behave suspiciously, he breaks into their records, and discovers via a lone surviving transmission that there was a species on the Hyach planet called Hyach-doh.

The Hyach then, rather than pressing charges against him for breaking and entering or espionage, just admit to him freely that there used to be a species called Hyach-doh on their planet thousands and thousands of years ago, and the Hyach annihilated the entire species, and it turns out OOPS the Hyach-doh were necessary for interbreeding with the Hyach, as the Hyach birth rates begin to rapidly decline over the years, threatening them with extinction.

Leaving aside the incredibly flimsy explanation and shady pretexts and the typical run-of-the-mill sci-fi complete misunderstanding of evolution, they then tell Dr Franklin that this was a shameful period of their history, so much so that they've actually gone to great measures to suppress this part of their history... which begs the question of how exactly these two are so well-versed in it, unless they mean suppress it from outsiders learning of it, which would make sense.

However, Dr Franklin says he CANNOT FORGIVE them... EVEN THOUGH these two Hyach weren't even alive back then and couldn't have done anything and are against genocide and everything else. He says he STILL cannot forgive them.

And he's supposed to be a doctor? A saver and healer of lives? An educated man who learned not to hate the Dilgar after learning that a Dilgar doctor had saved the lives of his father and other Earth soldiers when all the other Dilgar that had captured them wanted to? The same Dilgar doctor then being executed by the other Dilgar for saving them? This coming from a man whose national ancestry (given his American accent) includes the genocide of millions of native tribal peoples, not even expanding upon his entire race, having committed countless vehement, vicious, genocidal acts in their history, including arguably rendering a whole sentient species (Homo neanderthalensis) extinct? You're a low, pitiful little man, Dr Franklin.

Actually the original plan was five seasons

[madcompguru · 5/10 · 11 July 2019]

When fox decided to cancel it after the fourth they compressed the last two planned seasons into the fourth and after it was picked up for a fifth season on a cable channel so rather then turn down the money they made the fifth season.