So, what did happen to Sinclair?

[Elric]

I prefer to avoid making the existence / nature of soul... a central question in any debate. Because such debate would quickly get silly.

I understand that some people have a problem with the whole "Soul thing". Whether you beleive in them or not in real life, in the B5 Universe, they do exist.

Yes, the Triluminary detected DNA, but this does not rule out the existance of Souls!

If Souls do not exist - what was it that Delenn freed in Soul Hunter, and what where all those things in the orbs in River of Souls?

 

[sleepy_shadow]

Whether you beleive in them or not in real life, in the B5 Universe, they do exist.

Are you sure? Did the story of "Babylon 5" present us any central authority, anyone possessing absolute truth... to invalidate and/or resolve the contradictory views of its characters -- presented from multiple viewpoints and levels of experience?

No... the storyteller who told this story did not invest anyone/anything within the story with such authority. Among the reasons why I like this show... was not rushing to close questions which are open.

Nothing in "Babylon 5" actually established the existence (or "correct" definition) of soul. Even the multiple episodes and one telemovie heavily intertwined with this issue.

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What did Soul Hunters capture and keep? One could call them personalities instead of souls. But as mentioned, that would descend into semantics, since I cannot define what another person *considers* a soul.

What a Soul Hunter might call "soul", someone else might consider a fairly complex and dynamic (but hardly inexplicable) data structure.

Those might be mere stored personalities (even incompletely stored ones, given a probable transfer from analog to digital) -- stored in an environment which has detrimental effect on their sanity.

As opposed to natural personalities operating in their native body (or artificial personalities constructed without ever having one, referring to the artificial intellect called Sparky, and "Deconstruction of Falling Stars").

As for the visions seen by Lochley, Garibaldi, Lennier and some others... they might well be the creation of a sufficiently complex hallucinogen -- especially when combined with other technology.

We never learned if the difficult-to-deceive robotic eyes of the station saw what our characters saw -- or whether the even keener eyes of a Vorlon or Shadow would have seen through the entire situation.

 

[vacantlook]

And we can here add what jms himself has said over the issue as quoted on the Lurker's Guide page for "Soul Hunter" under the "jms speaks" section:

We leave the question open: Is he actually taking souls, or simply encoding the personality matrix and, in essence, creating an artificial version of the individual's personality?

The various characters take their own stands, which vary. Franklin only considers the possibility of cloning someone's personality matrix, for instance. And again, it depends on how you *define* soul. The Soul Hunter defines it not as something supernatural, but as the collection of thoughts, personality, feelings and the very essence of the person that dies with the body. That definition is broad enough to encompass just about anything. Then you get into the more specific ideas of what a soul is.

What the soul was, who's right, and even whether this is SF or Science Fantasy, was it explained enough to merit one over the other ... how can I put this...? I don't want to spoon-feed stuff to people. What I want is not to hit someone with a MORAL, or a message, or "This is what a soul is," or "This is what makes it an SF series," I want to start discussions. Arguments. Preferably a bar fight or two.
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We present an issue. Here are the sides. Now...what do YOU think about it? I want this show to ask, "Who are you? Where are you going?" That's half the fun. Some of my favorites pastimes in college were sitting in the commons, or the library, arguing this stuff from every possible angle. You think I'm gonna tell you what to think? What it means? No. The goal is to provoke discussion. Preferably passionate discussion.
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Otherwise I might as well just start renting billboards and putting up signs.

Given these statements, I think it's pretty certain that jms scripted the concept of souls in Babylon 5 to be open to interpretation and did not state directly one way or the other whether souls do or do not exist.

 

[grumbler]

Given these statements, I think it's pretty certain that jms scripted the concept of souls in Babylon 5 to be open to interpretation and did not state directly one way or the other whether souls do or do not exist.

Agreed. And I also agree that JMS himself never says whether or not the Triluminary was detecting only the soul of Valen, valen's DNA and soul, or his DNA alone. Some of the questions assumed the answer to this, but JMS himself never said it that I can find.

So the question is open to speculation, as it should be. How Starfuries get back into the station isn't, and shouldn't be!

 

[KoshN]

I prefer to avoid making the existence / nature of soul... a central question in any debate. Because such debate would quickly get silly.

I understand that some people have a problem with the whole "Soul thing". Whether you beleive in them or not in real life, in the B5 Universe, they do exist.

Yes, the Triluminary detected DNA, but this does not rule out the existance of Souls!

I didn't say that it did.

If Souls do not exist - what was it that Delenn freed in Soul Hunter, and what where all those things in the orbs in River of Souls?

Souls.

It still doesn't have to mean that Sinclair was the reincarnation of Valen's soul. Sinclair could have been born in 2218, lived to 2261 in the Babylon 5 timeframe, changed into Valen via the triluminary and the chrysalis, and lived out the remainder of his years from 1260 to 1360, dying at the ripe old age of 142. That doesn't mean that souls aren't, either partially or in whole, born into other Minbari and/or humans. In 1360, Valen/Sinclair's soul was probably taken beyond the rim by Lorien, taken out of the Minbari/Human soul reincarnation cycle.