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   _Contents:_ [9]Overview - [10]Backplot - [11]Questions - [12]Analysis
   - [13]Notes - [14]JMS
   
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Overview

     Fourth season finale. A look back at the impact of Babylon 5 from
     100, 500, 1000, and 1000000 years in the future.
     
[15]P5 Rating: [16]8.50

Production number: 422 (but see [17]Notes)
Original air week: October 27, 1997

Written by J. Michael Straczynski
Directed by Stephen Furst

   _Warning: This episode contains spoilers for future episodes, as it's
   mostly in the form of retrospectives from future viewpoints._
   
     _________________________________________________________________
                                      
Plot Points

     * Some people on Earth are highly skeptical that the Interstellar
       Alliance will work, and distrust Sheridan's motives and ability.
     * The station will be under the command of a Captain Lochley in
       2262.
     * With Sheridan's permission, a colony of telepaths will be
       established on Babylon 5 sometime in 2262. Eventually they will
       turn against him.
     * Garibaldi will be held hostage, possibly by the telepaths, in
       2262. The hostage situation will end in gunfire.
     * Babylon 5 will be destroyed (though under what circumstances isn't
       clear) in 2282.
     * Sheridan will die in 2282 under mysterious circumstances that will
       still be debated 80 years later. Popular opinion will hold that he
       died on Minbar, but not everyone will agree. Later legend will
       hold that he was carried bodily into heaven.
     * Delenn will live until at least 2362, though she'll spend many of
       the intervening years out of public view, leading some to wonder
       if she's still alive.
     * In 2762, Earth will again be divided into two factions, one in
       favor of breaking away from the Interstellar Alliance and another
       in favor of remaining. The two sides will launch a devastating
       war, rendering the surface of the Earth nearly uninhabitable.
     * In 3262, the survivors of that war, now known as the "Great Burn,"
       will largely have lost all records of the time before the war. At
       least one order of monks, marginally part of the Roman Catholic
       Church, will work to gather and preserve historical records.
       They'll be aided in secret by agents of the Rangers, who will
       slowly "discover" pieces of pre-Burn technology to inch Earth's
       people back toward the stars.
     * The Rangers will still exist in some form a million years hence,
       and will still consider Sheridan and Delenn to be their founders.
       They will be involved in the building of something called "New
       Earth," though what that is isn't clear.
     * One million years in the future, humans will apparently have
       evolved into noncorporeal entities (like Lorien, [18]"Into the
       Fire") and will make use of Vorlon-style encounter suits and
       organic ships.
     * Earth's sun will go nova in a million years.
       
Unanswered Questions

     * Is Garibaldi back on B5 to stay? What about Lise?
     * Who were the people holding Garibaldi hostage? The telepaths?
     * Who, if anyone, did Garibaldi's captor shoot? Or was the shot
       fired by someone else?
     * What was the incident with Sheridan and Delenn's son?
     * What happened to Mars and Earth's other colonies during the Great
       Burn?
     * Why did the sun go nova? As the sun isn't expected to do so
       naturally for billions of years, if at all (according to
       20th-century astrophysics, anyway) did someone or something cause
       it to happen?
       
Analysis

     * Among the crowd greeting Sheridan and Delenn as they returned to
       B5 was a man holding a sign reading, "Sic transit gloria mundis."
       That translates approximately to, "Worldly glory/fame is
       transitory." That could be viewed as a negative comment,
       expressing the opinion that whatever they build will be temporary.
       On the other hand, that's also the Latin phrase spoken to a newly
       elected Pope after the ballots are burned and the ashes dropped
       before him, a reminder that a greater purpose is being served and
       any individual's contribution is small in comparison. In any case,
       it appears at least one human agrees with Londo's opinion that
       marriage celebrations should include somber reflection.
     * Though the implication was that the gunshot at the end of the
       video clip in 2362 was directed at Garibaldi, that's not certain.
       It could as easily have been someone else firing at one of his
       captors to prevent his death.
     * The 2362 historians' interpretation of the outcome of Sheridan
       allowing telepaths to set up a colony of Babylon 5 -- the worst
       mistake of his career, they claimed he as much as said -- may have
       been shaded by their less than cheritable views about Sheridan.
       The actual events may have been much less disastrous than they
       implied.
     * It's possible Delenn's appearance in 2362 wasn't entirely a
       coincidence. The moderator appeared to be sympathetic to her point
       of view (though he could have just been playing devil's advocate
       to spark discussion) and may have warned her of the upcoming
       broadcast and its likely tone.
     * The holographic simulation of Franklin was trying to create
       alien/human hybrids, the same accusation that was leveled against
       B5 by the Clark administration's propagandists ([19]"The Illusion
       of Truth.")
     * The Ranger said he still had time to join "the celebration" before
       the sun went nova. What was being celebrated? The Earth's
       destruction? New Earth's creation?
     * Londo said when he came aboard the station that jubilant
       celebration was how Centauri celebrated a funeral. Perhaps the
       humans of a million years hence took up that custom, and were
       celebrating the death of their homeworld Centauri-style. If so, it
       would provide a subtle symmetry between the beginning of the
       episode and the end.
     * The Ranger's rush to send the records to New Earth would seem to
       imply that the sun going nova wasn't an expected event, which in
       turn implies that it was artificially induced. If the nova were a
       natural event, there would presumably have been years -- more
       likely centuries -- of warning, plenty of time to evacuate people
       and historical records.
     * The Ranger's effort to preserve Earth's history echoes Sinclair's
       comment in [20]"Infection" that all of humanity's accomplishments
       would be lost when the sun died unless people took to the stars.
     * The Ranger's parting line, "This is how the world ends. Swallowed
       in fire, but not in darkness," echoes Kosh's reply to Emperor
       Turhan ([21]"The Coming of Shadows") that the situation would end
       in fire.
     * One other event was predicted to occur in a million years: it's
       when Jason Ironheart said he'd see Sinclair again ([22]"Mind
       War.") Coincidence, or does Ironheart (or Sinclair) play some part
       in whatever is happening in the distant future? The Ranger
       appeared to be noncorporeal, implying perhaps that the rest of
       humanity took a million years to catch up to Ironheart's level of
       development.
       
Notes

     * The 2262 newscast referred to Sheridan's visit to the Dalai Lama
       in Tibet. But the picture shown was of a group of Buddhist monks
       with golden robes, typical of the Golden Triangle area (Vietnam,
       Thailand, Cambodia.) Tibetan Buddhist monks wear maroon robes. Of
       course, it's possible that changed between the 20th and 23rd
       centuries.
     * The first question in the 2362 sequence was asked by someone named
       Ray Winston. This may be a reference to the cartoon "The Real
       Ghostbusters," on which JMS served as producer. Ray and Winston
       were the names of two of the characters.
     * The insignia on Daniel's uniform in 2762 was nearly identical to
       the logo of the Nazi SS organization.
     * Daniel's language (e.g. "realfacts" and "goodfacts") is a
       reference to George Orwell's "1984," which introduced terms such
       as "doublespeak" and dealt heavily with the relation between
       language and propaganda.
     * Daniel also made a brief mention of "psychohistory," which is a
       reference to Isaac Asimov's "Foundation" novels. In the novels,
       psychohistory is a science that can predict large-scale human
       societal behavior.
     * It's possible Garibaldi is responsible for the Great Burn. The war
       between Earth's two factions might have proceeded the same way
       with or without Garibaldi's subterfuge. But it's not inconceivable
       that if Daniel's superiors had made the first strike, the other
       side might have capitulated, or the war might have been over more
       quickly for other reasons. Of course, it's also possible that it
       would have been even worse, perhaps wiping out Earth altogether.
     * The 3262 sequence may be a nod to Walter Miller's novel "A
       Canticle for Leibowitz," about an order of monks trying to
       preserve the knowledge of the past after a devastating war.
     * During the 3262 sequence, the Roman numerals in the lower left
       corner appear to be camera numbers; they corresponded to the
       different angles from which the scene was shown. Presumably the
       cameras were all well-hidden.
     * The caption under the picture of the Ranger in the book Brother
       Stephen is illuminating appears to say, "Rangers eis nomen est,"
       which translates to, "Their name is Rangers."
     * Although this episode is part of the fifth-season production run,
       it's actually the fourth-season finale. The fifth-season finale,
       [23]"Sleeping in Light," was shot during the fourth-season
       production run because it wasn't clear that the show was being
       renewed; once the renewal was announced, another episode had to be
       substituted. For some reason the onscreen credits at the end of
       the episode don't reflect that; they list a production number of
       422 rather than the more accurate 501.
     * The title sequence was changed slightly from the regular season
       four sequence. A clip of the Agamemnon flying through the
       explosion of the defense platform in [24]"Endgame" was inserted
       just before the cast credits, and Claudia Christian's name was
       removed from the cast list.
     * The episode's dedication: "Dedicated to all the people who
       predicted that the Babylon Project would fail in its mission.
       Faith manages." This is probably a dig at pundits on Usenet and
       elsewhere who confidently said every year that B5 wouldn't be
       renewed for another season.
     * Shooting began August 18, 1997.
       
jms speaks

     * _Why was Claudia Christian's name taken out of the credits but
       Jason Carter's left in?_
       We had no choice. Contractually, when we moved "Sleeping in Light"
       into the fifth season, we had to move her credit from
       "Deconstruction" or incur an additional episode's payment. We
       didn't even realize this until WB called and put us on notice
       about this literally 3 days before the episode was uplinked. It
       wasn't a choice we had; they said that it had to be moved. We
       could leave Jason in the credits because he didn't appear in SiL.
     * _Any significance to the Agamemnon clip used to replace her
       credit?_
       It seemed an appropriate placeholder when WB told us we had to
       omit Claudia's credit because she also appears in (the new) 522,
       "Sleeping in Light," to avoid incurring fees.
     * _Since this episode was numbered 422 rather than 501, will the
       production numbers of season 5 episodes be changed too?_
       Yes, the S5 episodes will be renumbered prior to broadcast.
       More Soviet Revisionism in action....
     * _Do you ever get the urge to thumb your nose at people on the net
       who predict B5's demise?_
       Nope...no intentions of doing that.
       I have something MUCH better in mind....
     * It's discreet...but not obscure.
       And best of all...it's eternal...and the whackos who've bugged me
       for five years are not.
     * A few people have interpreted the final card as "meanspirited"
       (when it's on one level a reaction *to* five years of constant
       carping and meanspiritedness from lots of sectors, from the nets
       to the press and elsewhere)...but what it is, is a statement of
       hope. That whenever you try something different, there are going
       to be naysayers, and people who say it can't be done, and
       certainly can't be done by *you*.
       It ain't just B5, it's any dream out there.
       And in the end, they are wrong.
       Faith manages.
       That's the message of the card.
       That, and the truth that in 10 years the naysayers will be
       forgotten, and made irrelevant...but the show, the *show*...goes
       on. And will be around long after they and I have gone to dust.
       And all people will know when they see that card, 50 years from
       now, was that some jerks said it couldn't be done, and they were
       wrong, because they are *always* wrong. If you have the dream, the
       ability and the passion, you can bring your dreams to life despite
       overwhelming opposition. That's the message.
       But for those on the other side, they will never see anything
       other than meanspiritedness because that's all they can *ever*
       see...because that's all they can bring to the table.
       There's an old saying about books, which I'll rephrase to include
       B5: Babylon 5 is like a book, and a book is like a mirror: if an
       ass peers in, you can't exactly expect an apostle to peer out.
     * There will always be short-term setbacks, but as long as we climb
       back a few inches higher than we were before we fell down, we keep
       moving toward the goal of becoming a better people, and getting
       off the planet. Taking our place among the stars. While it's
       vaguely possible that I may *see* a Mars colony sometime within my
       lifetime, I know that I will never live there...but that ain't the
       point, it isn't a victory if *I* do it, and a failure if *I*
       don't, it's if *we* do it or not. Maybe we'll do it today, maybe
       we'll do it tomorrow, the point is to decide to DO it, and then by
       god DO IT.
       And yeah, that little closing card is going to remain on the show
       for its life...which will be long, long after its detractors (and
       admittedly myself) have gone to dust. On the one hand, it is a
       statement of hope to anyone else out there who has a dream, to
       follow it no matter who speaks against you, no matter the odds, no
       matter what they say to or about you, no matter what roadblocks
       they throw in your way. What matters is that you remain true to
       your vision.
       On the other hand, 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.
       In billiards, we call that a bank-shot.
     * _Does the Great Burn mean the B5 crew ultimately failed?_
       It depends on your point of view.
       The fact, as I see it, is that no one and nothing will ever solve
       all of our problems at once, now and forever. People will always
       be people. You can't wave a magic wand and fix it all.
       Yes, there was another war...but had the Shadows not been stopped
       by our characters, there likely wouldn't have been a human race at
       ALL anymore.
       Yes, there was a war, and many died in it...as tends to happen in
       war...but the nominal right side in it came out on top, which
       would not have been the case but for Garibaldi's simulacra giving
       them a leg up on things.
       We have had, continue to have, and will always have wars, and
       grief, and struggle...we will climb up and fall down...but each
       time we climb a little higher, and in the end, we *do* build the
       world that our ancestors would have wanted for us...we *do* leave
       the cradle at last, and we take our place among the stars teaching
       those who follow us.
       For my money, that's as happy an ending as we or anyone can ever
       hope for.
     * _You spoiled the events of season five!_
       As with anything else, B5 (in whatever incarnation) is about
       *process*. You saw Londo being strangled by G'Kar...but you didn't
       know how they got there. You know the result of the Earth/Minbari
       war...but I suspect there will be a lot of surprises in "In the
       Beginning."
       As with all things, the joy is in the going. We all know we're
       going to die, that as the poet said, "we are born astride the
       grave." But knowing that inevitable reality has never stopped
       human endeavor before....
       It's the journey and the doing that matters.
     * Re: speechwriters and others hanging around after the fall...look
       at the remains of the Soviet Union. After the fall of the
       communist party, you'd think they would all have been run out of
       town on a rail. But many of them just shifted over and found
       similar positions, or kept the communist party going, after
       everything they'd done.
       The problem with most people is that they don't hold a grudge near
       long enough.
       I'd have to check, but yeah, I believe we stuck a ranger symbol on
       the encounter suit.
     * _About the 2362 sequence_
       Stephen filmed that sequence by having all of the cast on the set
       at the same time, running multiple film cameras to get each
       version "live."
     * _From a discussion of a 1997 convention featuring Stephen Furst_
       BTW, if you want to flip Stephen out, and you get this before
       leaving the con, give him the following message from me (I don't
       have the hotel info at hand). Tell him Joe says this:
       "Don't worry anymore about using mainly securecam style coverage
       in act 3, I've just come up with another approach where I can
       cover it in dialogue to let you do whatever you want with the
       camera, so you'll have all the flexibility there you want."
       Here's a use of a convention you haven't seen much before....
     * _The "Just Married" label was missing from the shuttle when it
       docked._
       The painted letters were on the *right* side of the shuttle as it
       went in. The CGI inside the bay showed the left side.
       We don't miss these things.
     * _How did Delenn get into the studio?_
       Most TV studios that I've seen have back doors that open out onto
       the back lot or the outside for fire control reasons. You can get
       into any of the 3 B5 stages from the outside in, oh, about 5
       seconds through any of a number of doors. (Note to anyone looking
       on: yes, those stage doors are secured, and there are guards, and
       unless you're a Minbari you're not getting in.) And most of the TV
       studios I've been in have been the same.
     * It was mainly Earth that bore the burden of the great Burn, and
       yes, that was the one Garibaldi got into....
     * _Wouldn't the colonies offer Earth some help?_
       Some probably would offer to help...but if technology is now
       suspect, some might not want that help...other colonies might be
       of the "screw 'em, they got what they deserved"
       perspective...often politics gets in the way of charity.
     * "By any chance, is the post-apocalyptic religious order shown in
       "Deconstruction . ." a direct decendant of Brother Theo's order on
       Babylon 5?"
       It's altogether possible....
       And Theo is only awaiting a story worth bringing him in for.
     * Interesting aside...for the last 6-8 months, I've been doing a
       fair amount of research into medieval England, especially the
       medieval church, for a play I'm writing (which may become a novel
       if I'm not careful). Dumped several hundred dollars on a massive
       order from Amazon.com back a few months ago to fill out what I
       needed. That was what tangentially led me into the post-Burn
       sequence in "Deconstruction." My brain has been full of monks for
       the last 8 months or so, and knowing the role they played in
       maintaining secular knowledge from about 500 AD and for some time
       thereafter, that seemed the perfect route to go that would also
       resonate with the look of the Rangers and the religious caste
       Minbari and the whole feel we were setting up.
       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 future wasn't being transmitted back; we were seeing the
       records of the past from the point of view of the final character,
       one million years hence, who has come to collect them prior to the
       final chapter in Earth's history.
     * "My personal nit is that JMS has the sun going nova in only a
       million years. This seems several orders of magnitude too soon for
       me."
       Actually, the computer voice specifies that it is continuing to
       note atypical solar emissions...atypical meaning something unusual
       is going on.
     * And what if you, say, interfered substantially with the mass of
       the sun by, say, causing a series of jump points to open up
       *inside* the sun across several days?
     * You'd also substantially decrease the mass of Sol, which as I
       understand it, would result in the sun going nova.
     * A lot of folks have found the eventual "going out" of Sol to be
       depressing...but as was stated 'way back in our VERY FIRST
       EPISODE, this is the one thing we can be sure WILL happen, sooner
       or later (probably later). _Ed. note: "Infection" was indeed the
       first episode shot, but aired fourth._
       All the more reason to get off the planet, asap.
     * _Did the future humans leave the galaxy as the Vorlons did?_
       No point in leaving the galaxy; stars go nova, it only affects the
       immediate vicinity (big as that is). By this point, they were in
       the position of the Vorlons, and now have to take their (our)
       place guiding the younger races, the next wave, while not getting
       in the way and remembering the lesson of the shadow/vorlon
       conflict.
     * _[[2/16]]_ _What about the other races?_
       The Minbari eventually make it; the Narn and Centauri do not. They
       don't die out, they just don't hit a state of First One-ishness,
       which is darn close to immortality (barring violence).
     * _Was Sinclair prescient? Did you have the sun's destruction mapped
       out way back in season one?_
       One needn't be prescient...it's *going* to happen one day.
       And to the second half...yeah, Deconstruction (or at least the
       events that would go into it) was mapped out back then.
     * I think it's fair to say that Sinclair has been in large measure
       forgotten by Earth by the time of Deconstruction...but Valen lives
       on in the memories of the Minbari...a reasonable trade-off.
     * _They were speaking English a million years in the future?_
       That's what you heard, that doesn't mean that's what it was; same
       as when you go to Minbar, they're not speaking English, that's
       just our hearing of it.
       _Since when do news anchors quote the Bible?_
       Ted Koppel.
       _Why were Sheridan's childhood photos in black and white?_
       Even now portraits are often done in black and white just for
       artistic merit.
       _NYU is still around in the future?_
       Trinity College is a working college in Ireland that dates back to
       the American Revolution.
     * _Did Lise and Garibaldi get married?_
       No, they're not yet married.
       

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