The Deconstruction of Falling Stars
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| "The Deconstruction of Falling Stars" (Babylon 5) | |
| Season 4, Episode 22 | |
| Air Date (US): | 27 October 1997 |
| Production No.: | 422/501 |
| Written by: | J. Michael Straczynski |
| Directed by: | Stephen Furst |
| Guest Stars: | Roy Brocksmith (Brother Alwyn Macomber) Alastair Duncan (Latimere) Eric Pierpoint (Daniel) Neil Roberts (Brother Michael) |
| Prev: "Rising Star" | Next: "No Compromises" |
The Deconstruction of Falling Stars is the final episode of the fourth season of the science-fiction television series Babylon 5.
| Contents |
Plot 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 future. The episode shows certain pivotal events 100, 500, 1000 and one million years after the founding of the Alliance.
At the end of the episode, humanity leaves Earth for the last time, and goes to the Vorlon homeworld - which they call New Earth. Humanity destroys the sun, and the resulting explosion destroys Earth and the other planets. Humanity leaves their physical bodies behind, and becomes beings of energy.
Arc significance
Production details
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 syndication and funding for a fifth season.
The show's creator, JMS, insisted that the final episode 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.
As the episode was not originally planned for, its form 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:
"...TO ALL THOSE WHO BELIEVED THAT THE BABYLON PROJECT WOULD FAIL IN ITS MISSION: FAITH MANAGES."
On Usenet, JMS 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."
Trivia
The vignette that takes place one thousand years later in a monastary is almost identical (contextually) to Walter Miller's A Canticle for Leibowitz. While writing the episode, series creator J. Michael Straczynski noted the similiarities:
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.
—Source - the Lurker's Guide (http://www.midwinter.com/lurk/countries/us/guide/088.html#JS)
External link
- Lurker's Guide Episode Page (http://www.midwinter.com/lurk/guide/088.html)