This was a very odd episode. I -really- missed Marcus and Ivanova. I take it from some of your comment and Allison that Ivanova doesn’t come back next season at all. AUGH! Without Marcus and Ivanova, this is going to be a real change.
I was really thrown by the “100 years later” scene. Whoa, talk about major spoilers for the next episode. The two “experts” in the photo below were highly irritating.
But back to spoilers: “…after so many people died in the first year after Sheridan and Delenn arrived back on Babylon Five.” And then the bit about Sheridan creating a community of telepaths on B5 and then regretting it later (!).
And then the following scene:
!!!!!!!!
What the heck?!??? It sure makes it look as if Garibaldi is shot.
Then at the 500 year point…
The computer simulations of Franklin, Garibaldi, Sheridan and Delenn are created to help manipulate the people of that time, recreating a false history. Except that the Garibaldi outsmarts the guy from the future. 
1000 years later…
I liked this section the best, and not just because of Brother Michael’s charisma and accent…such an intriguing storyline.
Fascinating to see Lorien portrayed in illuminated text:
Amusing to hear about the Blessed Sheridan and Ivanova The Destroyer.
I did feel for Brother Michael, yearning for more, fervently hoping that the Rangers would come back and help rebuild.
And yay that it sounds as if Brother Michael is going to get recruited!
Flash forward a million years from the start point, and it looks as if the old Earth is going to get vaporized. The archivist guy sends the historical records to New Earth, saying:
“This is how the world ends.
Swallowed in fire but not in darkness.
You will live on.
The voice of all our ancestors,
the voice of our fathers and our mothers to the last generation.
We created the world we think you would have wished for us,
and now we leave the cradle for the last time.”
Great writing. And then he turns into a ball of light (!!) and heads into a robot-looking dude before escaping what I assume is the exploding sun.
And then we’re back to Delenn and Sheridan, who are talking about whether it matters how history will remember them.
So I’m curious…was THIS really the last episode in the season? Or was the previous episode the last? At what point did the creators know they’d be getting another season?
Next: Season 5!
[For those who comment below: As the title of my blog indicates, I'm watching B5 for the very first time so PLEASE refrain from posting plot/character spoilers/hints about upcoming episodes, or including links to pages with spoilers (unless you warn readers that they contain spoilers). More info about spoilers here. Thanks so much! - Debbie]
8 comments ↓
This was the “suddenly we’re not ending after Season 4″ season ender; the episode shot that you’ll see as the end of Season 5 was originally shot to be shown here.
From what I remember, as the contract negotiations were pulling out, I think they got green-lit for season 5 about a week before all the contracts were required, or the actors - all of them - would have left to pursue other things. so, yeah - a squeaker.
This was my favorite episode of that season. My reaction at the time was, “Even an emulation of Garibaldi kicks butt and takes names!”
I also loved the old Delenn setting things straight for the reporters.
Originally the final episode of this season was supposed to be the final episode of Babylon 5 which would neatly wrap up most of the story threads still dangling. It was actually filmed (or parts of it were, at least) when word came that Season 5 had been commissioned.
JMS quickly cobbled together “Deconstruction” to replace the original final episode. That’s why this is a weird episode. If I remember correctly JMS talks about the spoilerish nature of this episode in the DVD commentary by saying that even though you get a glimpse of WHAT will happen in the future, it’s the HOW, WHY and WHEN that is the interesting bit.
As for Ivanova . . . It’s true that she won’t be in Season 5 (looking at the DVD cover makes that quite clear!). Another JMS quote I heard somewhere was that if he had known there was going to be a 5th season and that Claudia Christian wasn’t going to return for it he probably would have killed her off and kept the Marcus character. Thanks to the bumbling ineptitude of studio executives we missed out on both characters.
The “robot-looking dude” was intended to be something similar to a Vorlon’s encounter suit, but designed by and for what humans have become by that time.
I loved this episode. The “revisionist hologram” section was the weakest, I think, because I can’t see the virtual Garibaldi actually getting access outside his programme parameters, but it’s a nice idea.
They were actually told by WB point blank that there was going to be no fifth year and that everything had to be wrapped up for this season, and then, when JMS had shifted all the furniture and made it all work kinda-sorta, TNT stepped in and suddenly there was a fifth year after all, and he had to tease out some of the loose ends he’d tucked in. So, while they did succeed in their mission and it’s all good, it still wasn’t quite what it should have been. Sometimes that happens.
Buckle up! Season 5 gets even more wild!
When you go back and re-watch episodes, make sure to listen to the commentary tracks where available. There’s some gems in there!!
The implication that I got was that the future humans were deliberately destroying their old home to avoid the (new) younger races getting into the same kind of trouble with their leftovers that they’d had with the Shadow allies’ scavengings from Z’ha’dum.
Yeah, what they all said.
Even though the sacred book really only had the few pages needed for an onscreen view worked up, JMS wanted to end up with that prop.
Yes, the ‘older race’ influence on the rebuilding of Earth was an interesting sequence, including the auto-tracking cameras–you can see the camera number change as the scene goes on. Makes you wonder what on Earth was happening in 1261; about the time of the previous Shadow War. Were the Vorlons or their agents here to push Earth development in the direction they wanted back then?
Funny that no-one has yet mentioned Jason Ironheart in Episode 1×06 (”Mindwar”) - “see you again in a million years”
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