The Deconstruction of Falling Stars

"The Deconstruction of Falling Stars"
Babylon 5 episode
Episode no.	Season 4 Episode 22
Directed by	Stephen Furst
Written by	J. Michael Straczynski
Production code	501
Original air date	27 October 1997
Guest stars
Roy Brocksmith (Brother Alwyn Macomber) Alastair Duncan (Latimere) Eric Pierpoint (Daniel) Neil Roberts (Brother Michael)
Episode chronology
← Previous "Rising Star" Next → "No Compromises"
List of Babylon 5 episodes

"The Deconstruction of Falling Stars" is the final episode of the fourth season of the science-fiction television series Babylon 5. This was the final episode of Babylon 5 to air on PTEN.

Synopsis

This episode takes place after the events of the rest of the series. It shows the effect that the Interstellar Alliance had on history from the point of view of the far future. The episode shows certain pivotal events 100, 500, 1,000, and one million years after the founding of the Alliance.

2262

Almost as soon as President Clark is dead and Earth is liberated, pro-Clark elements who aided his fascist rise to power try to paint Sheridan as a madman trying to take over the government, as they are afraid of losing political standing in the next election. Others view Sheridan as a hero; with the outer colonies and Mars in particular hailing the B5 forces as liberators. A third view also emerges which treats Sheridan in a neutral fashion as just a man who did what needed to be done. As seen in the immediately preceding episode "Rising Star", there were many politicians who secretly hated Clark, but who were powerless to stop him, and ultimately made no real contribution to the downfall of Clark's fascist regime. Out of a mixture of guilt and wounded pride, many (such as now-President Luchenko) have embraced the fantasy that they were capable of overthrowing Clark on their own, and were just biding their time. This causes politicians like Luchenko to criticize Sheridan's liberation of Earth using Babylon 5's allied forces for making a violent mess of their own plans to remove Clark, though in reality those "plans" were aspirational at best. These three viewpoints are debated in an ISN broadcast.

2362

This advances to the point that by 100 years later, we see a live televised debate between several historians whose interpretation of history is grossly inaccurate, as they all mistakenly believe that the role of Sheridan and Babylon 5 in the war against the Shadows and in overthrowing Clark has been exaggerated over time. Their opinions range from generally negative views of Sheridan, to at best, one historian saying that the movement against Clark was due to a broad range of social factors and that saying that one man was responsible for the successful overthrow of Clark was verging on romanticism. She also declares that Sheridan was a megalomaniac. However, an extremely old (over 140) Delenn then makes a surprise entry to the debate, saying that Sheridan was a good, kind, and decent man who cared about the world even when the world didn't care about him, the historians are visibly shamed by her criticism that they are fabricating "facts" to fill in the gaps of their knowledge.

2762

The action then switches to 500 years after the events of the series: the anti-alien, xenophobic sentiment that began after the Earth-Minbari War and which Clark capitalized on and expanded (and which we saw growing in the last segment) has now divided the Earth Alliance to the brink of civil war once again. One side (possibly stemming from Mars and the outer colonies, which were pro-Sheridan, as well as some elements on Earth) believes in co-existing with alien races as part of the Interstellar Alliance (therefore allies of the Rangers; the Rangers are a significant force within the Alliance). Meanwhile, the other side is a neo-Orwellian fascist regime of the kind Clark tried to establish, which is xenophobic, and hates all "alien influences." Human territories are divided, with each side controlling different colony worlds, as well as divided regions on Earth itself. The anti-alien fascist faction is trying to set up forged holographic records to show that the heroes of Babylon 5 were, in fact, war criminals opposed to Earth, i.e., showing a holographic Dr. Franklin horrifically experimenting on human children using alien organs, having Sheridan make a passionate speech saying he and his alien masters will conquer Earth, before shooting human and alien prisoners, etc.

The anti-Alliance faction will use this propaganda to whip its population up into a jingoistic frenzy, so that they will be ready to go to fight the pro-Alliance faction. As the anti-Alliance faction's propaganda-creator Daniel explains, the neo-fascist faction is about to launch a sneak nuclear attack against the pro-alien faction as the opening move of an all-out war, and with the advantage of this sneak attack (directed at civilian population centers, to shock the pro-Alliance faction into submission), the anti-Alliance faction will win the war. However, the computer-generated holographic images of the Babylon 5 crew are based on historical data and recorded memories of the original crew, so they still think and act just like Babylon 5's original crew, who the neo-fascist faction has foolishly underestimated.

Right before Daniel can turn the recreations off, the holographic version of Garibaldi, as characteristically skeptical and mistrustful of others as his true self was, stalls him long enough to figure out his plan: practically from the moment he was recreated, he had, without Daniel noticing it, hacked into the computer network of the military base the propaganda holo-videos are being filmed in, and hence gained information of the general situation and the conflicting factions. The holographic Garibaldi finally tells Daniel that he has sent out a signal warning the pro-Alliance faction of the impending sneak attack, and giving them the drop on Daniel's faction, launching their own nuclear sneak attack first, giving them the advantage in the upcoming war. Garibaldi tells Daniel not to worry, as the pro-Alliance faction is "more humane" than Daniel's, and will probably only target military bases, rather than civilian population centers, as Daniel's faction planned to do. An alarm suddenly goes off, causing Daniel to look wildly about in dawning horror over the implications of his mistake. "This wouldn't happen to be a military installation, would it?", Garibaldi says with a smirk, as Daniel runs away in terror. Garibaldi, heroic even 500 years after his death, looks at the other frozen holograms of his crew, and says, "Rest easy, friends...rest easy," as the entire base is vaporized in a nuclear flash.

3262

The scene then switches to Earth, 1,000 years after the events of the series. The war between pro-Alliance and anti-Alliance factions 500 years previously led to a disastrous nuclear war now referred to as "the Great Burn," which caused massive destruction, and reduced human civilization on Earth, even 500 years after the war, to medieval technological levels. Two monks in an abbey are discussing the state of the Earth, including its now-destroyed cities, when the conversation veers to the half-legendary heroic figures from Babylon 5, and whether they were even real (they have since been stylized in illuminated manuscript images almost as if they were Arthurian figures). However, it is revealed to the audience that in secret, humans on the colony planets survived and human civilization continues off of Earth, where the pro-Alliance faction won.

However, seeing as so many on Earth would be embittered about the destruction wrought on the planet, the pro-Alliance victors felt that if they immediately went back and tried to help rebuild, anti-alien isolationist sentiment would just cause people to turn on them again. Instead, they embarked on a slow, long-term plan to send the Rangers to Earth masquerading as monks, setting up abbeys across Earth which would "rediscover" new technology incrementally, which was actually dropped off by ships from space. 500 years after the Great Burn, Earth has only redeveloped up to the point that the Rangers are just starting to re-introduce gasoline-powered engines. However, the Rangers are convinced that "[This] time, we'll get it right," and are determined to rebuild Earth as slowly as is required, in order to make sure that an anti-alien, anti-technology backlash doesn't occur again, "[Even] if it takes us another 2,000 years."

One million years later

One million years after all these things happen, a man is watching archived footage thereof. He instructs his computer to transmit this footage to a planet identified as "New Earth," and ensure it arrives in time for the "celebrations." The computer acknowledges his instructions, then warns him that the sun will go nova in five hours. The man acknowledges this, and the computer transmits the archived footage. The man takes a moment to reflect upon humanity's accomplishments, and then reveals his true form: an energy-based life-form. He enters an encounter suit similar to the ones used by the Vorlons (except with two glowing "eyes" instead of one), and leaves Earth right before Sol goes nova.

Sol apparently goes nova long before the Sun should naturally grow into a red giant: it is implied by J. Michael Straczynski to indeed not be a natural occurrence. [1] Straczynski has confirmed in later interviews that New Earth is in fact the Vorlon homeworld.^{[citation needed]} According to Straczynski, the Minbari have also evolved into non-corporeal beings. The Narn and Centauri have not done so, however: those races have not died out, but rather simply have not evolved to First One-like status.

Arc significance

• The footage with Garibaldi and the telepaths foreshadows events in Phoenix Rising.
• Delenn is still alive 100 years after the events of Babylon 5, at which time she is extremely old even by Minbari standards.
• 100 years after the formation of the Interstellar Alliance, some events of Sheridan's life and death are often dismissed as legend.
• 500 years after the events of Babylon 5, an expansionist faction of humans attempts to break away from the Alliance, leading to a nuclear holocaust that devastates Earth.
• 1,000 years after the events of Babylon 5, the Rangers are still trying to rebuild a devastated, post-apocalyptic Earth.
• One million years after the events of Babylon 5, humanity is depicted as having finally evolved beyond its "physical" bodies, and into beings similar to the Vorlons. They appear to wear encounter suits almost identical to the Vorlons, except for the head, which instead of being a block-shaped head, is closer to the shape of the human head. Humanity leaves for New Earth, as the Sun goes nova. The encounter suit and ship seen most prominently in this sequence both bear the emblem of the Rangers.

Production details

Episode peculiarities

The episode has an unusual history. During the filming of the fourth season, the show appeared destined for cancellation. As a result, plotlines were shortened and resolved ahead of schedule. After the completion of the final episode, but before its airing, the cable network TNT approached the creators of the show with an offer of cable distribution and funding for a fifth season.

The show's creator, J. Michael Straczynski, insisted that the final episode ("Sleeping in Light") not be seen prematurely. As a result, a new fourth-season finale had to be composed. The episode was filmed as part of the fifth-season production run, and hurriedly composed for airing in its proper place before the switchover from PTEN to TNT. This is the reason that Claudia Christian, who had left the show prior to the fifth season, appears in the series finale.

The form of this episode is substantially different from most episodes of Babylon 5. All other episodes were shot as unified storylines; however, "Deconstruction" exists as a series of vignettes examining society's views of the events of the series from increasingly distant future viewpoints: one year, one hundred years, five hundred years, one thousand years, and eventually one million years in the future.

The episode ends with a dedication:

"DEDICATED TO ALL THE PEOPLE WHO PREDICTED THAT THE BABYLON PROJECT WOULD FAIL IN ITS MISSION. FAITH MANAGES."

On CIS, J. Michael Straczynski described this message thus:

"...for the reviewers and the pundits and the critics and the net-stalkers who have done nothing but rag on this show for five years straight, it is also a giant middle finger composed of red neon fifty stories tall, that will burn forever in the night."

Monastery sequence

The vignette that takes place one thousand years later in a monastery bears some similarities to Walter M. Miller, Jr.'s A Canticle for Leibowitz. While writing the episode, series creator J. Michael Straczynski noted the similarities:

“	It was only when I was about halfway into the act that I thought, "Oh, crud, this is the same area Canticle explored." And for several days I set it aside and strongly considered dropping it, or changing the venue (at one point considered setting it in the ruins of a university, but I couldn't make that work realistically...who'd be supporting a university in the ruins of a major nuclear war? Who'd have the *resources* I needed? The church, or what would at least LOOK like the church. My sense of backstory here is that the Anla-shok moved in and started little "abbeys" all over the place, using the church as cover, but rarely actually a part of it, which was why they had not gotten their recognition, and would never get it. Rome probably didn't even know about them, or knew them only distantly.) Anyway...at the end of the day, I decided to leave it as it was, since I'd gotten there on an independent road, we'd already had a number of monks on B5, and there's been a LOT of theocratic science fiction written beyond Canticle...Gather Darkness, aspects of Foundation, others.	”
	— —The Lurker's Guide

See also

• Great Man theory

External links

• The Deconstruction of Falling Stars at The Lurker's Guide to Babylon 5