Column Babylon 5 Rewatch Babylon 5 Rewatch: “Secrets of the Soul” Tensions build as more telepaths arrive at the station… By Keith R.A. DeCandido | Published on April 13, 2026 Credit: Warner Bros. Television Comment 0 Share New Share Credit: Warner Bros. Television “Secrets of the Soul”Written by J. Michael StraczynskiDirected by Tony DowSeason 5, Episode 7Production episode 508Original air date: March 4, 1998 It was the dawn of the third age… Franklin records a log entry discussing his new role as assembler of medical data on all the members of the IA. We also see him talking with a pak’ma’ra, at one point giving him a Barium swallow to track how their digestion works. The pak’ma’ra drinks it very reluctantly and throws it up a few minutes later. (Having done a Barium swallow myself a while back, I sympathize with the pak’ma’ra.) Allan is summoned to customs to deal with a bunch of telepaths who have no ID, no money, no papers, no nothin’, but were told this was the place to join Byron. Byron then shows up with Alexander saying he will provide paperwork for all of them. Allan reluctantly lets them come on board and go off with Byron. One of them is a stuttering young man named Peter, who is apparently a telekinetic. Allan asks to speak to Alexander in private, and he expresses his very loud disapproval of Byron and of Alexander being with him. Alexander tartly points out that she’s helped the crew of B5 on several occasions and got bupkuss for her assistance, forcing her to get into bed with Psi Corps again. Nobody has any right to lecture her on the subject of her life choices at this point. In downbelow, Byron, Peter, and the gang are harassed by Carl and his goons. They, presumably, are trying to fill the vacuum left by Trace’s ouster by the Rangers. They also hate that the telepaths are getting a free ride. Byron then urges Carl to hit him several times, which Carl does, though it becomes less fun for him with each punch to the jaw. (We’ll leave aside that hitting someone in the face that often should have broken Carl’s hand. Skulls are hard. He should’ve punched him in the solar plexus.) Credit: Warner Bros. Television Franklin meets with Ambassador Tal of the Hayach, who reports that the elders have agreed to supply Franklin with the Hayach’s medical data. Tal’s aide, Kirrin, is reluctant and asks some very direct questions regarding confidentiality. Franklin makes it clear that he will respect the Hayachs’ privacy absolutely. After Franklin leaves, Kirrin expresses worry that the doctor will find out things he shouldn’t, but Tal points out that the elders have already made their decision. And if Franklin violates their trust, then they’ll kill him. Alexander goes to see Byron, who looks like someone has used him for a punching bag. For some stupid reason, he has refused to get any kind of rudimentary first aid, never mind proper medical attention, and Alexander at least provides the former. Byron asks her to stay the night with the telepaths, which she has yet to do. She agrees, and is embraced by the whole group of them. Franklin is confused to see that the Hayach’s medical records only go back 800 years, even though the Hayach have been around for more than 7000 years. Kirrin is evasive on the subject of why, and Franklin also realizes that all records they have on the Hayach are no older than eight centuries old. Peter is wandering off on his own, and gets lost. He’s found by Carl and his goons, who start to hassle him. Peter telekinetically throws a pipe at Carl. Carl and the gang retaliate by kicking the shit out of him. Peter is brought to medlab and treated. Byron and Alexander show up and the former is fairly certain he knows who’s responsible. Peter telekinetically throws stuff around the lab and Byron goes off to find the bad guys. Byron comes across some of his fellow telepaths tormenting one of Carl’s goons, making him think he’s on fire. Byron gets them to stop and checks on the goon to see if he’s okay. Allan shows up right at that moment and assumes that Byron assaulted the goon and arrests him. While Byron is stuck in detention, the other telepaths seek out Carl and his other goons and torment them. Byron can feel this happening telepathically, but his pleas to be let out to talk to his people fall on deaf ears. Franklin does more research, and comes across a communiqué from a Drazi captain who reported a rare sighting of a Hyach-do, who asked for a lift, but the Drazi refused. Franklin does further research into the Hyach-do, and then goes to confront Tal—only to be attacked and kidnapped by Kirrin. Credit: Warner Bros. Television When he regains consciousness, Franklin confronts Kirrin: the Haych-do are another sapient species that evolved on their world, but they’re gone now. Tal admits that the Haych hunted the Hyach-do to extinction. But it turned out that the Hyach-do’s genetics were necessary to intermingle with the Hyach for them to survive. Their birthrate is plummeting, and has been for some time. Tal begs Franklin (a) for help, and (b) to keep their secret. But he can’t do A by himself, and B is only possible with the resources of many worlds working on it. Tal agrees to let the secret out. She asks for forgiveness, as no currently living Hyach was involved in this genocide that happened centuries ago. Franklin angrily says that only the Hyach-do can forgive them. Allan lets Byron go. The goon gives a statement that Byron tried to help him. The goon worked for Carl, whose body Allan just found. Byron testily points out that he could have stopped it if he wasn’t imprisoned. Returning to his bunk in downbelow, Byron rants to Alexander about how his people still haven’t embraced his teachings and let go of their anger. Alexander points out that the people they assaulted weren’t exactly innocent, but Byron thinks they need to be better than that. He and Alexander start smooching, and before it can get any hotter and heavier, Alexander warns him that the Vorlons did some shit to her, and it may have an effect on the intensity of the sex. Sure enough, as they’re making whoopee, Alexander’s eyes go black and Byron gets the full story of how she—and many other species—were altered by the Vorlons. This telepathic sex-bonding bleeds out into the rest of Byron’s gaggle, and now they all know about how Vorlons created telepaths. Byron is livid. He can’t ask the Vorlons for any kind of reparation, as they’re long gone, but now he wants telepaths to have their own homeworld, and he will demand it of the IA, or else. The Corps is mother, the Corps is father. Don’t go stomping on a telepath when he has friends. It will end badly for you. The Shadowy Vorlons. We get a flashback to Alexander’s time on the Vorlon homeworld being altered, and we also see infants from different species, all in big tanks. Byron and his people learn that telepaths only exist because the Vorlons created them to help fight the Shadows. No sex, please, we’re EarthForce. As first established in “Mind War,” telepathic sex is very intense, as the minds intermingle even more than the bodies do. We see that for the first time here, as Byron gets deep inside Alexander, mind and body, and learns all about what the Vorlons did to her. Credit: Warner Bros. Television Looking ahead. Byron’s inability to entirely influence the various telepaths toward peace will come to a head in “A Tragedy of Telepaths” and “Phoenix Rising.” Welcome aboard. Jack Hannibal makes the first of two appearances as Peter; he’ll be back in “Phoenix Rising.” Stuart McLean plays Carl, Jana Robbins plays Tal, and Fiona Dwyer plays Kirrin. And back from “Strange Relations” is Robin Atkin Downes as Byron, who will be back in “In the Kingdom of the Blind.” Trivial matters. While this isn’t the episode with the fewest opening-credits regulars appearing—“Intersections in Real Time” has that honor—this is the only episode in which none of the “main” stars (the ones either billed as “Starring” at the top of the credits or “with” or “and” at the end of them) appear. Only Richard Biggs, Patricia Tallman, and Jeff Conaway among the billed stars are in this one. Franklin agreed to compile medical data on all IA species in “Strange Relations.” It was established that the Vorlons engineered several species to develop telepaths in “Z’ha’dum.” Alexander was altered by the Vorlons some time between “Divided Loyalties” and “Passing Through Gethsemane.” She helped our heroes on numerous occasions; she was forced to accept smaller quarters and get back into bed with the Psi Corps in “Moments of Transition.” Apparently, pak’ma’ra won’t eat fish of any kind. The echoes of all of our conversations. “Byron, the Vorlons changed me—more than you could possibly know. I don’t know what it’ll do once you get past my barriers and I get past yours. It could burn you.” “Then let it burn.” —Alexander giving a pre-coital warning, and Byron saying, “Wah-HEY!” Credit: Warner Bros. Television The name of the place is Babylon 5. “We’ll make sure they have no other choice.” This is a perfectly good script, and it says something good about the show that an entire episode can be supported by only three of the opening-credits regulars, two of whom are among the least interesting of those so billed (Franklin and Allan). However, the episode doesn’t work as well as it should, though not because it focuses only on those three. For starters, it has a big role for the ever-bland Robin Atkin Downes. I will give him credit: he’s better in this episode than he has been in any other, specifically his frustrated ranting at Alexander that his people haven’t let go of their anger, which is only the second time his facial expression has changed since he was introduced (the other being the pouty face he had in Bester’s presence in “Strange Relations”). That scene is also scary as hell, because the telepaths are simply brutal here, and it becomes painfully clear that they’d be even more brutal without his influence. My favorite scene in the whole thing is the discussion Allan and Alexander have on the subject of her growing affection for Byron and his gaggle. Allan’s protective big brother act is sweet, but also horrendously misplaced and tone-deaf, something Alexander points out to him in a lengthy, beautifully delivered rant by Patricia Tallman on the subject of the shit Alexander has gone through. You feel for Allan, as he’s pretty much the only one on the station who has treated Alexander like a person instead of a commodity, and he doesn’t deserve her opprobrium. But her rant is 100% justified as well. As for Franklin’s plot with the Hyach, the biggest problem with it is that, well, it’s the Hyach, and who the heck are they? Why couldn’t this plotline have been given to the Brakiri or the Drazi or the Gaim or the Abbai? We’ve had so many species that we’ve seen bits and pieces of, but not given any depth to. Of those I listed, the Drazi are the only ones who’ve had any details provided about their history and culture, but that’s not incompatible with this storyline. Creating a new IA member out of the blue makes it harder to invest in the Hyach when there are so many others floating around we’d love to learn about. Having said that, Jana Robbins and Fiona Dwyer are both quite good, the former as the calm politician navigating difficult waters, the latter as the pain-in-the-ass aide asking the more nasty questions . Next week: “Day of the Dead.”[end-mark] The post <i>Babylon 5</i> Rewatch: “Secrets of the Soul” appeared first on Reactor.