Soul hunters

Soul hunter is the name attributed to an alien race featured in the 1994-1998 science fiction television series Babylon 5. They first appeared in the second episode of season one, "Soul Hunter", where two members of the species were represented. They were played by actors W. Morgan Sheppard and John Snyder. A third Soul hunter, played by veteran actor Martin Sheen, was featured in the 1998 telemovie Babylon 5: The River of Souls. A fourth Soul hunter also appeared in the film, played by an uncredited actor.

Description
Soul hunters are a sentient bipedal extraterrestrial race with excedingly long life spans. They earned their name due to their driving ambition to collect the souls of the dead. This practice has garnered a reputation as cosmic "boogey men" among some alien cultures, particularly the Minbari. The hunters themselves do not perceive their vocation as nothing more than an honorable practice, collecting and preserving the souls of the dead after they pass on so that they may worship them. The Soul hunters are quite discriminating regarding which souls they choose to collect, preferring to preserve only the greatest of minds; thinkers, dreamers, artists, visionaries.

History
In 2245, at the onset of the Earth-Minbari War, one particular Soul hunter attempted to retrieve the soul of Minbari Grey Council leader Dukhat. This task was prevented however by the actions of another Grey Council member, Delenn. Failing this endeavor drove the Soul keeper mad and he went rogue. His actions following this incident is largely responsible for the hatred and fear that the Minbari felt towards Soul hunter.

In 2258, this Soul hunter and his ship were passing through the Euphrates Sector when his ship malfunctioned. He was rescued by Babylon 5 space station commander Jeffrey Sinclair and brought on board the station where he was quarantined inside the Isolab. As it happened, Delenn was also on the station serving as an ambassador. When she discovered that the Soul hunter was on board, she grew frantic and tried to kill him. The Soul hunter later escaped and captured Delenn. Determined to compensate for the loss of Dukhat, he tortured Delenn at length, waiting to collect her soul at the point of death. Murder of a living being for the sake of collecting their soul is a high offense in standard Soul hunter culture.

A second Soul hunter, perceiving was what transpiring and sensing that someone was about to die, came to Babylon 5 and warned Commander Sinclair about the actions of his "deeply disturbed" brethren. Sinclair went to the renegade Soul hunter's ship and confiscated his collection of soul globes, all of which had contained the spirits of Minbari who had been murdered for their souls. He then found and fought with the Soul hunter, turning his own extraction devices against him. The hunter's soul was torn from his body and he died immediately thereafter.

Notes & Trivia

 * The concept of the Soul hunters was developed by series creator and screenwriter J. Michael Straczynski and director Jim Johnston.


 * Soul hunters do not appear to use or even have proper names. Soul hunters share an empathic bond with one another however and seem to be able to identify one another on sight.