lurkers-guide/guide/088

<!-- TITLE The Deconstruction of Falling Stars -->

<h2><a name="OV">Overview</a></h2>

<blockquote><cite>
Fourth season finale.  A look back at the impact of Babylon 5 from 100, 500,
1000, and 1000000 years in the future.
</cite>

</blockquote>

<pre><a href="/lurk/p5/intro.html">P5 Rating</a>: <a href="/lurk/p5/088">8.50</a>

Production number: 422 (but see <a href="#NO.prodnum">Notes</a>)
Original air week: October 27, 1997
<a href="http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/B0000DGBEY/thelurkersguidet">DVD release date</a>: January 6, 2004

Written by J. Michael Straczynski
Directed by Stephen Furst
</pre>

<strong>Warning: This episode contains spoilers for future episodes, as
it's mostly in the form of retrospectives from future viewpoints.</strong>

<p>
<hr size=3>

<h2><a name="BP">Plot Points</a></h2>
<ul>

   <li>@@@877891621 Some people on Earth are highly skeptical that the
	Interstellar Alliance will work, and distrust Sheridan's motives and
	ability.

   <li>@@@877891621 The station will be under the command of a Captain
	Lochley in 2262.

   <li>@@@877891621 With Sheridan's permission, a colony of telepaths will be
	established on Babylon 5 sometime in 2262.  Eventually they will turn
	against him.

   <li>@@@878761096 Garibaldi will be held hostage, possibly by the telepaths,
	in 2262.  The hostage situation will end in gunfire.

   <li>@@@877891621 Babylon 5 will be destroyed (though under what
	circumstances isn't clear) in 2282.

   <li>@@@877941253 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.

   <li>@@@877891621 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.

   <li>@@@877891621 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.

   <li>@@@877891621 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.

   <li>@@@877891621 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.

   <li>@@@878548310 One million years in the future, humans will apparently
	have evolved into noncorporeal entities (like Lorien,
	<a href="072.html">"Into the Fire"</a>)
	and will make use of Vorlon-style encounter suits and organic ships.

   <li>@@@877892014 Earth's sun will go nova in a million years.

</ul>

<h2><a name="UQ">Unanswered Questions</a></h2>
<ul>

   <li>@@@878106431 Is Garibaldi back on B5 to stay?  What about Lise?

   <li>@@@877891621 Who were the people holding Garibaldi hostage?  The
	telepaths?

   <li>@@@878109828 Who, if anyone, did Garibaldi's captor shoot?  Or was
	the shot fired by someone else?

   <li>@@@878107064 What was the incident with Sheridan and Delenn's son?

   <li>@@@878760370 What happened to Mars and Earth's other colonies
	during the Great Burn?

   <li>@@@877941253 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?

</ul>

<h2><a name="AN">Analysis</a></h2>
<ul>

   <li>@@@878760738 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.

	<p>@@@898570420 
	The historical origin of the phrase is of note, given Sheridan's
	recent victory against Earth.  Whenever a Roman general returned from a
	successful campaign, a great parade or Triumph would be held for him. 
	The general would ride in a chariot, face painted red and in purple
	robes.  Behind him, a slave would hold a golden crown of laurels and
	whisper the phrase into his ear.

   <li>@@@879106936 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.

   <li>@@@879106936 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 charitable views about Sheridan.
	The actual events may have been much less disastrous than they
	implied.

   <li>@@@879105829 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.

   <li>@@@878760738 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
	(<a href="074.html">"The Illusion of Truth."</a>)

   <li>@@@877892014 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?

   <li>@@@884632135 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.

   <li>@@@877941253 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.

   <li>@@@878761096 The Ranger's effort to preserve Earth's history echoes
	Sinclair's comment in
	<a href="004.html">"Infection"</a>
	that all of humanity's accomplishments would be lost when the sun
	died unless people took to the stars.

   <li>@@@878759526 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
	(<a href="031.html">"The Coming of Shadows"</a>)
	that the situation would end in fire.

   <li>@@@878106388 One other event was predicted to occur in a million years:
	it's when Jason Ironheart said he'd see Sinclair again
	(<a href="006.html">"Mind War."</a>)
	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.

</ul>

<h2><a name="NO">Notes</a></h2>
<ul>

   <li>@@@878938771 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.

   <li>@@@878760018 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.

   <li>@@@878106758 The insignia on Daniel's uniform in 2762 was nearly
	identical to the logo of the Nazi SS organization.

   <li>@@@878761448 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.

   <li>@@@879106565 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.

   <li>@@@878109743 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.

   <li>@@@877971071 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.

   <li>@@@877901477 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.

   <li>@@@879105726 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."

   <li>@@@878326923 <a name="NO.prodnum">Although this episode is part of</a>
	the fifth-season production run, it's actually the fourth-season
	finale.  The fifth-season finale,
	<a href="110.html">"Sleeping in Light,"</a>
	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.

   <li>@@@877892102 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
	<a href="086.html">"Endgame"</a>
	was inserted just before the cast credits, and Claudia Christian's
	name was removed from the cast list.

   <li>@@@877892014 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.

   <li>@@@871238027 Shooting began August 18, 1997.

</ul>

<h2><a name="JS">jms speaks</a></h2>
<ul>

   <li>@@@878151773 <em>Why was Claudia Christian's name taken out of the
	credits but Jason Carter's left in?</em><br>
	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.

<p>
   <li>@@@878760264 <em>Any significance to the Agamemnon clip used to
	replace her credit?</em><br>
	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.

<p>
   <li>@@@878843757 <em>Since this episode was numbered 422 rather than 501,
	will the production numbers of season 5 episodes be changed
	too?</em><br>
	Yes, the S5 episodes will be renumbered prior to broadcast.

	<p>
	More Soviet Revisionism in action....

<p>
   <li>@@@878758482 <em>Do you ever get the urge to thumb your nose at
	people on the net who predict B5's demise?</em><br>
	Nope...no intentions of doing that.

	<p>
	I have something MUCH better in mind....

<p>
   <li>@@@878758482 It's discreet...but not obscure.

	<p>
	And best of all...it's eternal...and the whackos who've bugged me 
	for five years are not.

<p>
   <li>@@@878760264 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*.

	<p>
	It ain't just B5, it's any dream out there.

	<p>
	And in the end, they are wrong.

	<p>
	Faith manages.

	<p>
	That's the message of the card.

	<p>
	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.

	<p>
	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.

	<p>
	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.

<p>
   <li>@@@878843545 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.

	<p>
	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.

	<p>
	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.

	<p>
	In billiards, we call that a bank-shot.

<p>
   <li>@@@878892882 <em>Does the Great Burn mean the B5 crew ultimately
	failed?</em><br>
	It depends on your point of view.

	<p>
	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.

	<p>
	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.

	<p>
	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.

	<p>
	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.

	<p>
	For my money, that's as happy an ending as we or anyone can ever
	hope for.

<p>
   <li>@@@878758392 <em>You spoiled the events of season five!</em><br>
	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."

	<p>
	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....

	<p>
	It's the journey and the doing that matters.

<p>
   <li>@@@879621150 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.

	<p>
	The problem with most people is that they don't hold a grudge
	near long enough.

	<p>
	I'd have to check, but yeah, I believe we stuck a ranger symbol
	on the encounter suit.

<p>
   <li>@@@878761612 <em>About the 2362 sequence</em><br>
	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."

<p>
   <li>@@@879105446 <em>From a discussion of a 1997 convention featuring
	Stephen Furst</em><br>
	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:

	<p>
	"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."

	<p>
	Here's a use of a convention you haven't seen much before....

<p>
   <li>@@@878843545 <em>The "Just Married" label was missing from the
	shuttle when it docked.</em><br>
	The painted letters were on the *right* side of the shuttle as
	it went in.  The CGI inside the bay showed the left side.

	<p>
	We don't miss these things.

<p>
   <li>@@@878761096 <em>How did Delenn get into the studio?</em><br>
	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.

<p>
   <li>@@@878843545 It was mainly Earth that bore the burden of the great
	Burn, and yes, that was the one Garibaldi got into....

<p>
   <li>@@@878956489 <em>Wouldn't the colonies offer Earth some help?</em><br>
	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.

<p>
   <li>@@@878761612 "By any chance, is the post-apocalyptic religious order
	shown in "Deconstruction . ." a direct decendant of Brother Theo's
	order on Babylon 5?"

	<p>
	It's altogether possible....

	<p>
	And Theo is only awaiting a story worth bringing him in for.

<p>
   <li>@@@878956403 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.

	<p>
	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.)

	<p>
	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.

<p>
   <li>@@@878758601 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.

<p>
   <li>@@@877941396 "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."

	<p>
	Actually, the computer voice specifies that it is continuing to
	note atypical solar emissions...atypical meaning something unusual is
	going on.

<p>
   <li>@@@882987516 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?

<p>
   <li>@@@882987516 You'd also substantially decrease the mass of Sol,
	which as I understand it, would result in the sun going nova.

<p>
   <li>@@@878761096 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).  <em>Ed. note: "Infection" was indeed the first
	episode shot, but aired fourth.</em>

	<p>
	All the more reason to get off the planet, asap.

<p>
   <li>@@@879065360 <em>Did the future humans leave the galaxy as the Vorlons
	did?</em><br>
	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.

<p>
   <li>@@@887657681 <em>What about the other races?</em><br>
	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).

<p>
   <li>@@@878920722 <em>Was Sinclair prescient?  Did you have the sun's
	destruction mapped out way back in season one?</em><br>
	One needn't be prescient...it's *going* to happen one day.

	<p>
	And to the second half...yeah, Deconstruction (or at least the
	events that would go into it)  was mapped out back then.  

<p>
   <li>@@@878022324 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.

<p>
   <li>@@@878194707 <em>They were speaking English a million years in the
	future?</em><br>
	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.

	<p>
	<em>Since when do news anchors quote the Bible?</em><br>
	Ted Koppel.

	<p>
	<em>Why were Sheridan's childhood photos in black and white?</em><br>
	Even now portraits are often done in black and white just for artistic
	merit.

	<p>
	<em>NYU is still around in the future?</em><br>
	Trinity College is a working college in Ireland that dates back to the
	American Revolution.  <em>Ed. note: In fact, Trinity College is even
	older than that -- it was founded in 1592.</em>

<p>
   <li>@@@878327742 <em>Did Lise and Garibaldi get married?</em><br>
	No, they're not yet married.

</ul>