The Deconstruction of Falling Stars

Jeff: Welcome to Babylon 5 for the first time, not a Star Trek podcast. My name is Jeff Akin and I am the one who was

Brent: And I'm Brent Allen and I am the one who will be

Jeff: and we're watching Babylon five for the first time For you, the one who is.

Brent: f and i are two veteran Star Trek podcasters, as he said, watching Babybel on five four the very first time. And in doing so, we are searching for some Star Trek like messages, applying those skills here to a 30 year old show. But we're trying to find out how it's being done in a uniquely Babylon five way.

Jeff: Because this isn't a Star Trek podcast, we play the rule of three, which limits Brent and myself to no more than three references a piece to Star Trek during the episode. That's it. Three. No substitutions. Exchanges a refund. Next week's the week, Brent.

Brent: Oh gosh. Is it already,

Jeff: It is. We've got a lot of work to do between now and next week, but we do a really cool thing.

We have our, our season four wrap up in one week's time, one week's time.

Brent: you know what that means? Next week? There's no Brent watches for the folks at Patreon. There's no Jeff watches. But what that means is, is I get a break. From editing and putting all that together. Although, shout out to Ira, who actually does most of that these days, uh, who is awesome, by the way. Um, you guys, uh, uh, the people that work here behind the scenes are, are amazing.

Um, but, uh, uh, yeah, it's, it's, no, it's a break that it, it's, you know, what always happens is I kind of wind up hating it because I want to move on with the show. I don't know that I'm gonna feel that way at this point. I don't like, I like coming off of this series of, this season's finale of Rising Star, and then today's episode, which we're gonna talk about.

I like, I'm looking at next week kind of going, it might be a welcome,

Jeff: yeah.

Brent: you know, and then just, oh, I guess we'll get into season five. Like,

Jeff: Let's see what

Brent: you know, because you know what, like, it's not like, it's not like this was an awful ending and I need to go cleanse the pallet.

Jeff: No, not at all.

Brent: And it's not, it's not like this is, I got left on a cliffhanger and I gotta go find out what happens next.

Like, no, I feel like the story's done. And then we got some weird, you know, holodeck, versioned, uh, episode. That's not a Star Trek reference. That's what it was. Um, but anyway,

Jeff: Why

don't you tell everybody? 

Brent: next week. That is after the season wrap up during the season four wrap up. I love wrap-ups because we get a chance to do things like we revisit the ranking.

We talk about, you know, how we feel about the arc of where characters have gone and where they're going. The story overall, but probably my favorite part is the part where we get to give back and do a giveaway. And this, this year or this year, this, uh, season

Jeff: a year

Brent: feels like a year. Yeah. Uh, this season we are doing something different, a different kind of giveaway.

Jeff, you've got it this time. What are we giving away?

Jeff: This time we have the Babylon five encyclopedia, the complete hardcover set in one massive paper book. This thing's over 800 or paperback. I'm gonna say that again for the audio feed. Have the Babylon five encyclopedia, the complete hardcover set in one ma,

Brent: Hey, you see this is the blooper reel that we need.

Jeff: Yes. Blah mush mouth. It's a Babylon fi. We,

Brent: Try it again.

Jeff: we've got the Babylon five encyclopedia, the complete hard cover set in one massive paperback. And this thing is seriously massive, over 800 pages of entries and pictures and all kinds of stuff in this thing. And what we're gonna do with this one, Is Brent mentioned earlier, the incredible community that might be, uh, inspired to do something with our videos that are on YouTube, right?

Well, our community extends beyond YouTube, beyond Twitter, beyond Mastodon to Patreon, and our Discord server for people on Patreon. And those communities, like all the others, are full of absolutely amazing people. For all of you that are in those communities, the Patreon and Discord communities, we're literally going to randomly select a patron out of any tier.

Doesn't matter what tier. You can be a lurker, you can be in the council chambers, anywhere in between. We're gonna snag a name and we're gonna send you the Babylon five encyclopedia. All you gotta do is go to patreon.com/babylon five. First, it's the number five and the word first.

Brent: Jeff, that may be one of my favorite things that I ever hear you say.

Jeff: Really,

Brent: It's the number five and the word first, I, I don't know why it just, it flows so well, so well.

Jeff: one of the things I learned a long time ago, right? Is you need to be very clear about URLs. And we've learned that with other URLs that we share sometimes around, uh, the, the, you know, is it uppercase or lowercase? And it's, it's very important

Brent: Mm-hmm. Absolutely. Uh, but a giveaway, super cool giveaway. Uh, kind of jealous that I'm not gonna get one. I may have to try to find one and order it out there. You guys just go become patrons if you haven't, if you already are a patron you're already in, which is awesome. And, uh, those folks,

Jeff: it's gonna be great. Yeah. This was donated by a, a listener who has asked to remain anonymous. And so you are, Listening right now. So hear me saying thank you so much for this. They sent two, uh, one for me and, uh, one to give away, which is, is, uh, extremely generous of them, but hey, I might

Brent: I have my Babylon five from wash from the first season, so that he sent me, and I've got star furries up here, so I can't exactly yell at you a whole lot for that. Hey, Jeff.

Jeff: Hey, Brent,

Brent: You know, one of the things we love on this show,

Jeff: what's that?

Brent: you know, one of the things the folks out there love on this show is when we get to the end of the episode and we try to guess what next week's episode is gonna be about, based on title alone.

Never having read a description, never having seen it before, because hello for the first time. And, uh, really not even looking at thumbnails or anything like that, trying to avoid all spoilers whatsoever. Sometimes we are amazingly spot on. Other times we are hilariously far away and sometimes we literally talk ourself backwards into the episode somehow. this is where we're gonna revisit that from last week to see what you thought this week was gonna be about. So remind the folks what you said the deconstruction of Falling Stars was gonna be about, and I'm gonna tell you how close you were.

Jeff: Yeah, I had really no idea. I thought this had to either be, um, like living Voyager's, living witness, where like there's a retelling of the past from the future, and then they kinda reconcile it. But I think that if I remember right, my official prediction that this was gonna be the kaka thing, where they kind of fast forward ahead and they're like, here's all the cool things that we would've shown you if we had our fifth and final season that we weren't able to squeeze into the fourth season.

Brent: I'm actually gonna give you a little bit of credit for the, uh, living witness thing. Um, because living witness, the premise of that was somebody in the future looking back on what had happened now, they were wildly misinterpreting some stuff. What we actually saw was people in the process of screwing up those interpretations and trying to change what really happened, uh, or people just really misinterpreting what was happening, applying their own, their lens today to what happened in the past. I'm gonna give you a little bit of credit for that because it was that there was a future, a person in the future looking back via video. So I'll, I'll give you, I'm gonna give you a 10th of a point for that part, but I cannot give you anything else because Yeah, you were not right at all.

Jeff: now.

Brent: Not right at all.

Well, I had said, uh, that this episode was gonna be, uh, kind of a coming off of last week. So last week was Rising Star. This week is the deconstruction of a falling star or falling stars. And so we talked about Sheridan getting elevated to the role of the pre, of the, the president of the, uh, federation. I'm sorry, of the alliance.

Jeff: It's not a reference. It's what it is. I'm,

Brent: Fair enough.

Jeff: what it is.

Brent: Fair enough. But basically what I said, Is this was going to be a clip show for the series. It's a clip show. That's what I said this one was gonna be because, because Rising Star really wrapped up everything.

Jeff: It did.

Brent: So this was a clip. That's the only thing you could do with a, a season finale at this point was do a clip show.

Jeff: This was essentially a clips show of clips of, of clips that hadn't happened yet.

Brent: Yes, yes. Earlier in the series we got a clip show that didn't show any clips, and then here we got a clip, show of clips of stuff that hasn't happened yet. I love the creative way that j m s puts together. Clip shows.

Jeff: It's pretty, pretty brilliant,

Brent: I can hear so many people out there who's the clip show?

Jeff: Yeah, it, it was so much EC clips show. Brent, I'm gonna give you full credit

Brent: oh,

Jeff: one. You had full point. You nailed it.

Brent: hit your Oh yes button. I like that.

Jeff: It's been a long time. Here we go. Oh yes. So good. Well, hey, if you're listening to us talk about this episode, deconstruction of Falling Stars, and you're like, what are they talking about?

Clip show. This doesn't make any sense. Brent, can you remind everybody watching and listening what this episode was all about?

Brent: Well buckle in for what is most likely to be the longest part of the entire episode. Hey, do you guys remember last week when we got that really cool voiceover from Dalen telling us what would happen if Babylon five got a fifth season? You know, there's gonna be the Telepath war and there's gonna be the drop war.

And while ultimately the alliance was gonna be tested and would even crack it would hold. Yeah. Well, hold on for this episode.

Can you hear that?

Jeff: Dog?

Brent: Yes. Do you hear her?

Jeff: Just a little

Brent: Just a little bit. Okay. She's sleeping, she's dreaming.

Jeff: it's

the 

Brent: what's happening.

Jeff: She's doing the little, the little thing. Yeah.

Brent: She's out there barking and running and whatever. She's often I, I do not want to disturb that cuz she is cute and adorable and whatever. Okay, here we go. We open on the newly married Sheridan and Dalen, arriving back at Babylon five to much fanfare, confetti jubilation.

We open on the newly married Sheridan and Delin, arriving back on Babylon five to much fanfare, confetti and jubilation. Delin isn't really sure that they should be this celebrated, but Sheridan reassures her, let them have their fun. He says What really matters is the legacy that we have built that's gonna last for an untold number of years to come, even if history doesn't remember us specifically, and that's when we're clued into something.

We really aren't watching that scene unfold. What we were watching was some dude way off in the super far future doing a research project. Watching back the old tapes, we're told that we're gonna see clips from a year in the future, a hundred years in the future, 500 years in the future, even a thousand years into the future post the start of the Interstellar Alliance.

Yeah. Okay. Let's see exactly what kind of legacy, Sharon into Del. Yeah. Okay. Let's see exactly what kind of legacy Sheridan and Lynn really have created, and if anyone remembers their names. Well, first up, it's January, 2262, which is like a week later when all this stuff is still new. We're watching News Talk tv and after a brief review of the history of John j Sheridan, we are told

after a brief review of the history of John j Sheridan, we are told that cementing this new alliance is what's going to be his greatest challenge yet, so, How's he gonna do it? Is he gonna get it done? What's happening? So they do what all news talk TV does, and they bring in pundits to pontificate and discuss cuz that's what they do.

Two of the commentators say that they should be patient and give Sheridan a chance. He's a good man. A third commentator who also happens to be a president of the A third commentator, who also happens to be a supporter of the late President Clark, worked on his campaign, was a speech writer, blah, blah, blah.

He turns every bit of the entire story into a political maneuver to trash talk and degrade President Sheridan. He even goes so far as to vilify him and questions exactly when is Sheridan gonna have to use force to accomplish his goals? Next up is 2362. 100 years into the future. At this point, Sheridan is long dead and dalen.

Well, we're not really sure. But what we now have is a couple of enlightened, educated college professors. You know, the ones who are shaping the minds of the next generation. By this time they're starting to say that what Sheridan created and his fame, eh, it's a little overrated. Like we should probably still respect him.

But you know, he really did make some pretty stupid calls and some pretty questionable morals at best, right? Like he gave permission for a group of rogue Telepaths to stay on Babylon five. What was he thinking? They ultimately turned Violet, and it even resulted in the death of Michael Garabaldi, and it even resulted in the death of Michael Garabaldi.

And of course that's all gonna be Sheridan's fault. And then they go on to criticize how he handled the aftermath of this even. Potentially faking his own death just to drum up more support and well dalen. Well, like, I mean there's no way she's still alive, right? Because she'd be how old? Very says a voice over their shoulder.

Okay. It not really, but a very aged and very old Dalen does enter the studio and tells them they're wrong and they're big dodoo heads. They're the ones who are overrated for professing to be academics without actually doing their homework, resorting to slander without so much as a second thought. They ought to be ashamed of themselves, and they are, and they turn away into shame and guilt.

As we move on to our next time period, it's now 27 62, 500 years after the beginning of the isa, there's a dude who is on a holodeck and he has input all of the data on our beloved characters. So of course, whatever they say here is however they would have actually responded 500 years ago. This is completely accurate and faithful to his work.

Right, right, right. Well turns out by this time in the future, a new group controls Earth called poly division poli division, and they just can't believe how oppressed they are by the isa. What's really happening is, is that resources are becoming scarce on earth, and there's actually like a 50 50 split in public opinion as to whether or not ASA is a good thing.

This guy is clearly on the side of ISA is bad, so he's making these holograms so that he can deconstruct the legend of John j Sheridan and his friends by tweaking these holograms, which are going to respond exactly as he would've back then so that they can falsify the historical record. And tear down the, and tear down the alliance with Isa.

At one point he even turned Sheridan and his friends into their mirror universe, into their, at one point he even turned Sheridan and friends into their mirror, Eunice, ah, Jeff, you, you got me doing this now, man,

Jeff: It's not easy. It's not easy to do this.

Brent: at one point he even turned Sheridan and his friends into their mirror universe, counterparts in com, command, oh, you should have waited for it in command of the war station, Babylon five. The problem is the guy was too good at programming these things, and the hologram Garabaldi figures out what's really going on.

He has become sentient. He records this entire conversation, transmits it to that other group who likes isa. And has somehow initiated a missile strike on Polita Vision's bases, which also is one of the very bases that they're on right now. So it's Zara in 3, 2, 1.

The year is now 32, 62. 1000 years into the future, we see a monk in what looks like a medieval village monastery, but it's a good thing. They have a video camera. Seems kinda weird. This monastery is a special place you see at at some point in the last bit of history, there was a second civil war on Earth.

This one was way worse than the first one, though. This one had the great burn, which basically knocked out the entire world, including all the libraries, all the knowledge, all the learning, all the technology, and sent Earth back into the dark ages. People rejected science. They stopped visiting space and they forgot about the aliens and all of the stuff about John Sheridan and Babylon five and the aliens who visited Earth slipped into legend so much so that people didn't believe it ever happened anymore.

This monastery though, which has not even been accepted by Rome, which apparently is still the capital of monasteries, has tasked its, has tasked itself with preserving as much of the historical record as possible. They read the words of Sheridan and the others, almost like it's scripture, and they even tell tale of a legend of how the Rangers will come again one day and restore their knowledge when the people can trust science as well as their faith.

And maybe just maybe. The Rangers are already here walking among us, just waiting. Of course, as it turns out, one of those bunks actually is a Ranger, which confirms exactly what we've been hearing and explains why he happens to have a video camera when nobody else does. The Ranger has been trying to rea, the Rangers have been trying to rehabilitate human culture slowly and tediously.

They're trying to get us back to a point where we can once again make contact with aliens from outer space. Wow. What a great positive outlook on the future of humanity, wouldn't you say? Well, we get one last shot this time over a million years into the future. This is where that dude who's been watching the tapes is he's been watching the historical records.

He closes them up and he orders them sent to a place called New Earth. Because Earth's sun is about to go Nova, humanity is about to leave its ancestral home for the final time. And that's when this watcher changes into a being of energy enters his own encounter suit, leaving in a ship just as the sun explodes, consuming earth in fire.

And just in case you are wondering for the record, I checked, no, this was not Jason Earhart, we close on a shot of Sheridan and Dalen asking the same question they asked at the beginning, exactly what is their legacy going to be? And with that season four comes to a close. Jeff, what are your impressions of the deconstruction of Falling Stars?

Jeff: I have to make a huge assumption on this, and I wanna be really clear. And Brent, I I'm assuming, because here I am making all these assumptions, I'm assuming that you are gonna make the same ask and might be coming from the same place here. Don't tell us if this assumption is right or not. We asked this last week, wait until we're well into season five before telling us this, but I have to assume that they didn't really know that, uh, this was getting renewed and this was it, right?

They're, we're done. This is the end of the, the series. Like, so they, they, they had to do this with that assumption. I love so many parts of this episode. I love that infection. You remember infection. That episode finally really paid off. That whole organic tech thing that everyone kept telling us was the biggest deal in the world.

Yeah, we really didn't amount too much other than like, oh look, there's organic

Brent: It was the LON stuff. Okay,

Jeff: Okay. There it is. Oh, now, now they have it on the destroyers. Okay, well we blew those up. So whatever. But at the end of

that, 

Brent: matter.

Jeff: at at all

Brent: didn't affect us at all.

Jeff: in any way,

Brent: Yeah.

Jeff: but at the end of that episode, there was this really annoying reporter that we had a lot of fun at her expense, and she finally gotta sit down with Sinclair.

And in that he said that, uh, unless we went to the stars, everything we did on Earth would be for nothing. One day the sun will stop shining and everything will be gone. Marilyn Monroe, Elvis Presley. None of it will matter unless we go to the stars. And what I love about this episode is we went to the stars.

The sun blew up and now our legacy is gonna last well beyond a million years. Sinclair called this an infection. I love that

Brent: I love that you put that together because that completely escaped me, but I will remind people you are the one who was, you have the master memory when it comes to little stuff like that. I'll now be looking for that on the rewatch though.

Jeff: dude. Cause I, I, I always loved that thing that Sinclair said. It was just, it was one of his shining moments I thought. But, uh, I also loved in this episode that there wasn't a magic wand, right? The Interstellar Alliance didn't solve everything. It wasn't like, oh, we've got the ISA and everything's cool and happy and people are digging it.

This showed us that despite the advances we make, people are still the worst and people can still be the best, like aside. And I think it's also cool cause aside from the Civil War, a couple skirmishes around that happened, the telepath war and things like that. In war without End. Dalen said that they created a thousand years of peace and they did for all, you know, for all, all that we can see.

I think it's cool, but two issues that I have that we can dive into if you want to. Um, on my first watch through, I didn't really catch that the sun blew up like it, like he said something about, oh, there's increased solar activity. There was an explosion and then he left and I was like, what happened? And then we're gonna move a million years in the future.

You said this in the recap, moved a million years in the future and it wasn't Jason Iron Hart. So that whole thing was for nothing. That meant nothing.

Brent: Except it showed us that that's where we could go. That that's where we could get to. I've really gotta believe that something happened with the actor, that they couldn't get him back for this

Jeff: Well, they were gonna have

energy, Mr. Clean Guy. They don't need an actor. They could have hired a voice actor. To come in just sound to a sound alike. I, I don't know. I, I don't think this would've been hard to have to have picked up that thread and have

Brent: was. It was literally what, three shots.

Jeff: Yeah.

Brent: Yeah.

Jeff: And literally he could have been out there in the ship waiting for a guy that we saw.

It could have just been that.

Brent: Mm-hmm.

Jeff: But Jason and Iron Earnhart happened, and then nothing,

Brent: Yeah. Oh, it could have like called him over coms or something like that. Yeah.

Jeff: But I think, I think for what this episode needed to do, um, it was good. It answered some questions. It sort of posed some other ones. It set up future content if they wanted to do, say, a fifth season or a spinoff or something like that. I think, like my final kind of thought on the whole thing is that it was a decent series finale for a show that had already spent all of its emotional impact.

Brent: Mm.

Jeff: What about you? What did, uh, what did you think on this one?

Brent: I gotta be honest. I'm glad you are doing the ranking of this one

Jeff: I'm not

Brent: and not me. Uh, I'm going to read you my note exactly as I, as I wrote it.

Jeff: Okay.

Brent: W t f was this episode. Talk about pissing all over the previous episode. So Lynn said that there was still to come, the Telepath war, the Drake war, the alliance would crack, but it would hold.

But then this episode goes to a future and shows, nope, they just come to hate Sheridan and everything about this. They, they just, they just pee all over it. Honestly, Jeff, I don't understand this episode. I didn't reset anything. Um, I, I don't, I don't get it. I just don't get it. I don't get what they're going for.

I don't get what the message was. Maybe I need to go back and do this a few more times before I really get it. Maybe this is one of those that, that sits and comes back to you. But after last week and, and truly last week, really felt like they wrapped everything up. This just felt like a uh, what are you doing now?

That being said, Jeff, I'm sure you, like many of our listeners out there have seen the movie Frozen. Have you ever seen the movie Frozen?

Jeff: More times than I care to care to admit.

Brent: I have watched that movie more times than I can tell you without ever actually seeing a frame on it, we used to have those cars that had the DVD players in them and my kids, my daughter especially, would sit in the backseat and watch it on the DVD player while the sound played through the car.

Now, I'm not watching the movie, I'm just listening. Do you know how much you can pick up from a movie just by listening

Jeff: I can only

Brent: a whole lot, and I watched this movie again and again and there were so many places about this movie that made me go, man, if they would've just connected this point and this point with a single line, it would've made this go so much better.

An example I always say is, um, when, uh, the, the father troll poppy, or whatever his name was, um, he, he said, uh, only love thaw, frozen heart or so, or whatever. He said, uh uh, and, and then the father like, takes her and like, hides her away or something like that. Um, and he goes, yeah, oh, no, no, no. He says, he says, uh, her powers will only grow and they could get worse if you don't, if you, if you instill fear or something in her.

Jeff: Okay.

Brent: And the father takes her and shut her away and basically instills fear in his daughter. And, and he's gotta be like, like, I just want Poppy to sit there and be like, yeah, that's not what I meant. You know, because the father, basically, the, the listen, uh, the father of Frozen is the worst father in the history of Disney animated films.

Just saying, um, Don't at me. I said, what I said, and I stand by it. The little things about this could have made this episode so much more impactful to me.

Jeff: Yeah.

Brent: Specifically if at the end, and I this, if I were to rewrite the episode, this is what I would do. If at the end that dude turns into an energy being, goes into his encounter suit and we hear his name as Kash, he gets into cautious ship and goes back in time to set all of the events in motion.

Jeff: He goes back to Valin.

Brent: what I mean. He goes back, no. Goes back even further and, and it, this closes the cycle.

Jeff: Okay.

Brent: closes the circle and you're like, they started the, this is where the like, like this could have been where the Volans came from.

Jeff: Right. The volans in shadows, like he goes to that

Brent: And, and, and then this goes back and it drops those guys back there, or he goes back to become Lian or something of that nature that, that actually circles this whole thing back around. Like, that would've been really cool as a, as a, as a, as an ending. Like, you know, the circles come, you know, and to where Kosh sits there and says, I've always been here.

Jeff: Always. I am

Brent: I've always been here. Like that. Like that would've just blown. I would've gone through all of these processes and gone mind blown. But they didn't.

Jeff: Nope.

Brent: They just went off. And I think it was really neat to show that humanity eventually gets to that level where we transcend and we, we ascend, um, as we've been saying since we saw Jason Iron Hart, but they didn't, and it's fine.

Like j m s wasn't going for that, that wasn't his plan. And I'm okay with that. I just think it would've been better if he'd done it that way. You know, and if JMS was sitting here, he'd probably tell me why I'm really stupid and why that's an awful idea.

Jeff: Probably.

Brent: You know? And he'd probably be right. But I just, I, I mean, coming off of last week's episode, like that should have just been the end. I don't get this one. Maybe we need to see season five to understand this one. Maybe this one is just sort of a throwaway, but it just, it felt like, like you, you did this rising star. Everything left on a good note and then nope, history's gonna crap all over you and there's nothing you can do about it.

And humanity is gonna descend and forget who it is and what it's about and, and then, oh yeah. They'll actually get to a point where they ascend right before this planet explodes. Like, eh, do I need, I don't need humanity to go on more of these cycles. You know what I mean? Like

Jeff: I just, ultimately,

Brent: that by now.

Jeff: Yeah, I wanna see all the stuff that got planted and everything, and at this point, we'll talk about this, you know, next week again, in, in detail, but I, I, I, I, I've, I've no idea where they go from here to kick off a whole new season. And I don't, and I don't, wow, this sounds worse than, I mean it, but I'm having a really hard time getting excited about it

Brent: Yeah.

Jeff: this point.

It's like, what? Okay,

what, 

Brent: Well, I mean, that goes back to what we were saying earlier of like, usually when we get done with the season wrap up, we're like, okay, can we please get through this episode so we can move on to the next? And I'm kind of like, oh God. Oh, Jeff, oh, this is gonna make me a villain. Oh, but I'm gonna say it anyway because it's my job here. I'm at a spot where I don't know that I care about the fifth season,

Jeff: Wow.

Brent: like, like I do because it's part of Cannon and, and I wanna see more Babylon five. But I kind of like, I, I don't care. Like I, the stakes don't feel there.

Like for my, for my, my Stargate fans, just, it's the difference between seasons one through eight and the difference in, in seasons nine and 10. It's there, it's a part of it. It's canonical, it's a part of the story. It feels like it's gonna have to be fundamentally different. And almost like it should be its own little spinoff show.

Jeff: Yeah. I.

Brent: that's the only thing I can imagine they're gonna do. I hope I'm wrong, I hope I'm wrong.

Jeff: I have a morbid curiosity. It's, it's what it is now. It's just like, what do you got? Like, what do you do from here? It's, I don't know,

Brent: yeah. I mean like, so we were saying last week that season five, oh hey look, looks like we're gonna be able to do the telepath war, maybe the drop war or something like that. Like that's what we'll be able to show. they though, at this point

Jeff: we

Brent: as it feels like it could be something different. Like, you know, I, I mean they gave us this nice little line.

He let the rogue tele be on the station and then they turned against everybody and killed Garabaldi.

Jeff: Mm-hmm.

Brent: Okay. So that's what we have to look forward to in the next season really. And then don't forget, we also got Londo with the thing on his thing, with the thing on his neck and sin out. Sonari prime's burning and he's gotta go.

He and Ja car gotta go kill each other and Vera's gotta stand over their body. Becoming the new emperor and, and like, what, what do we have to look forward to here in season five? Like,

Jeff: I think one of two things are Will ha. Well, you know what? We'll talk about all this next week. We'll talk about that for now.

Brent: Mm-hmm.

Jeff: Do you want to kind of just jump through each one of the little time hits and hit a couple, couple observations or questions or anything that you had?

Brent: I mean, if you had observations and questions, cool. I hit 'em all in my recap. Like there was nothing to observe in this one. It was just, yep. That's, that's what they say happened. You know? Yes. News talk radio is still the worst, 

Jeff: Yeah, 

Brent: even in the future. Um,

Jeff: Academia still the worst.

Brent: a academia where you go back and you, and you try to reinterpret historical events in a, in a current lens, or you just try to poke holes in something and, and, and de discredit it because 

Jeff: Look how smart this makes me look because I have a critical eye towards this historical thing.

Brent: My, my point being, these academics are just like, that's all they're doing here. They're, they're trying to just make it sound cool to hate on this thing that people have,

Jeff: yeah.

Brent: you know, loved or whatever.

Jeff: One example I have was, uh, it is a Twitter fight that I got into, which really, you can just say a Twitter thread, uh, cause that's kinda what they are. But I had put out years ago, there's, uh, my favorite episode of Star Trek Balance of Terror, which is Kirk and the Romulan commander, and,

Brent: that is something you and I share in common, my friend. I never knew that. It is absolutely the best episode of Star Trek I've ever seen. I love that episode. Love it.

Jeff: good. So good. But there's this moment where there's the, one of the, the, the helmsman on the bridge. Is really throwing a lot of shade to

Spock. Cause he looks like the rolins and just being straight up racist. And Kirk looks at him and he is like, get to your quarters mister, there's no room for bigotry on this bridge.

And so I, I put out a meme or, you know, a picture or whatever to that effect and being like, you know, thank you Star Trek for opening the door for, you know, great things and whatever. And these people just jumped down my throat. They're like that. That's ridiculous. There's not room for bigotry in his quarters either.

This is, you know, this, this is allowing someone to continue being a bigot. And I'm like, this episode aired in 1966. These words had never been uttered before on a public broadcast. If, if that hadn't happened, you wouldn't be in a position where you could be mad at me for just taking bigotry off the bridge.

We have to acknowledge the journey. We have to, we can look through a more enlightened lens through things, but we can't change. What happened before because of our lens now. And I think that's what you were talking about, and that's what these, uh, pundits and these academics were, were really trying to do.

I thought it was interesting in, uh, the first, the first, uh, 2262 that, uh, Dylan was really upset with all the hoopla around the wedding and everything. So she can get upset and uncomfortable with the traditions that Sheridan follows for a wedding, but he has to line up and do all the traditions and rituals that she wants to do.

Like we talked about this a couple episodes ago where it's like, oh, so you're gonna make him let, like, have a gallery of people while you explore your pleasure centers, but you're not okay with a

Brent: Sorry.

Jeff: we lo We need to bring that back. But, uh, but yeah, you're not gonna be cool with people having a party over your wedding.

Come on to Lynn.

Brent: I will say this. I, I appreciate the joke that j m s was going for when he wrote the whole thing about Londo going, why are you guys doing all this? This is awful.

Jeff: Yeah,

that was great. 

Brent: Um, I appreciate the joke. You say, it was great. It fell completely flat to me. 

Jeff: Really, 

Brent: I did not find it funny. I found it obnoxious.

Jeff: really.

Brent: But I appreciate what he was trying to do. I real, I see what he was trying to do To me, it just fell completely flat and, and came off way more obnoxious than it did. Funny.

Jeff: I thought it was a great callback to soulmates. It was even a great callback to way back when our incredible community got us a cameo from Peter Juris and he went through and named off, listed off his wives again. You know, it was just, I don't know. That's, maybe that's why I thought it was cool, was just, I, I always remember that moment when he was going through and naming them, and that was so cool.

Let me see if I have anything else here.

So the 500 years into the future, 27 62.

Brent: Mm-hmm.

Jeff: Dude, Daniel won everything he said straight outta 1984. Real facts, good facts, all that. He a hundred percent had the Nazi SS logo on his uniform. Like and, and a question, this is a question I would actually love answers to with that logo that insignia on his chest.

Were there issues with the German telecast of this episode, or do they do something different? The band Kiss for example, they kinda use that style s in their logo. They have a different logo that they use for their records when they're on tour, when they're in Germany.

Brent: they really?

Jeff: Yeah, it's against the law. It's against the law to, to show that.

Brent: Huh?

Jeff: So I'm kind of curious if, uh, He did a thing. I loved that. Garib Alli's personality matrix actively worked to shut things down. One, like he actively went and tried to like rub dude's face in a thing. But len's personality matrix, I'm really begging on Len in this, so I just

acknowledging that. But her personality matrix, uh, just talked and complained, but didn't actually do anything. Oh, you can't do this. This isn't fair. This isn't right. And Garib ball's like, Nope. So I'm gonna, I'm gonna blow this guy up, like I'm gonna solve this problem in the 32 hundreds. I loved the Alwin was played by Roy freaking Brocksmith. we get some love here? What?

Brent: know who that is. Who is that?

Jeff: He's a legend. Total recall.

Arachnophobia a million won uss. He was the Strat Jamma guy in t n G. The guy that played against data.

Brent: Oh, oh, I know who you're talking about. Yeah, yeah, yeah. That guy. That guy. Okay. Okay. Okay. Yeah. Yeah. Oh yeah. Been and everything.

Jeff: Yep. Loved that he was there. Uh, apparently this, uh, this, uh, the other monk got really upset about his parents or something. He screamed and he caused the burn, which got rid of all di lithium across the entire galaxy.

Wait, no. They talked about the, the great burn.

Brent: yeah. Yeah.

Jeff: I, uh, so we l we learned a new term for the Rangers. The endless shock.

Brent: No, we learned that in last episode.

Jeff: Did we?

Brent: When Dylan is standing at the podium, just before they did that big flyover, she said, in my language, we call them the endless shock. 

Jeff: Wow. 

Brent: You people call them the Rangers?

Jeff: okay. I didn't pick up on that. And now just to go back and add to that, what another rub your face in Armin bar superiority thing for that. Oh man. I, hmm. I loved say the animal shock thing. He's, he's, you know, in, he used Val's name as a piece. But my last p, my last question on this one are observation is he's all excited because they're about to figure out how to make a gasoline powered vehicle, but they also say that they're gonna develop the earth in a much better way.

So if you're gonna develop a better earth, why are you making combustion engines? Alwin, what's it gonna be? Yeah.

Brent: Well, you know, you'll, you'll do it without the, you can do the combustion engine with better fuel. That's not gonna destroy the earth for your mining purposes and is not gonna leave the emissions

Jeff: You'd hope. But he literally asks for gasoline in a can. That looks old

Brent: Well, you know, maybe it's what's different on the inside. Maybe it's that, remember when Lanier made that, uh, that motorcycle for Gu Baldy and he souped up the engine and put a different energy source in it? Maybe that's what he's just calling gasoline, but it's actually this other thing because he's slipping it in there.

Jeff: That'd be cooler. Final observation on the whole thing. I have, and I dunno if you have any other ones, but, uh, we get to the million years in the future, my mass effect people out there, dude was totally generic. NPC from mass effect with the b with the bald, with the goat. Like that's the guy I, I am convinced they modeled that NPC character off this guy.

I have no question. Like it is uncanny how much he looks like that guy.

Brent: All I, here's a couple notes I had, uh, it just now hit me that Dylan is now the first lady.

Jeff: Oh yeah. There you go.

Brent: Um, oh, oh, uh, somebody in the crowd. I noticed that somebody in the crowd when Sheridan and Dylan were coming in, had a sign that said, seek trans, eat. Now, the rest of it was Gloria Mundy, which is the actual phrase, right? Um, but it, it, I noticed the seek, I really wanted it to say veer, but

Jeff: Right. That would've been cool.

Brent: you know?

Um, I like that they call the president the package.

Jeff: Yep.

Brent: He's the package, right? Um, this episode was directed by Steven first.

Jeff: Oh, I didn't catch that. That's

Brent: I noticed that. Um, and then here's the other thing, and, and I do, I thought this was actually rather clever with the title last week was Rising Star. A Rising Star with Sheridan. This one is Sheridan is the falling star.

Last week he was the rising Star. Now he's the falling star. Um, and he's being taken down off that pedestal. Uh, and it's also gonna bring down the historical record and, and undermine everything having to do with this. So,

Jeff: And ultimately destroy the star of our solar system.

Brent: Yeah. Except I wonder if like, was the star destroyed just because it was, its time. Like we know at some point, some gajillion years in the future, our son will eventually go supernova and this whole thing's going to be done. Right. Um, cuz that's what happens. Uh, all Stars eventually do that. Right. Did it just reach that, you know, it was nothing.

We did, it just, it was just at that point we had to evolve before then and ascend,

Jeff: Yeah, I have no idea.

Brent: you know, 

Jeff: I, I did notice though that, uh, vlan, human Mass Effect NPC guy, when he flew off his ship, had the Ranger logo on it.

Brent: did it. I was wondering. I wasn't, I wasn't entirely because I just said it looks like a VLAN ship. It looks like organic tech VLAN ship. That's all it look like to me.

Jeff: Yeah. I just liked the real thread in this is the Rangers through, you know, through, through all the super future

Brent: Yeah. I would love to be able to go back when we do the rewatch and from episode one, just see rangers

Jeff: Right. Yeah. There's just

Brent: and just notice where they are. Like notice the badge that they're just seated through the entire thing and you've never noticed 'em before. Um, outside of that, I mean, the episode happened, man.

Jeff: Yep. So now we're at the point, Brent, where, uh, you get to rate this one. We're gonna, we like to boil these things down and determine if they have any Star Trek like messages. That's kind of our term that we use for, for the messages, the morals, the mirror that's held up, Toci society, or the hope that we can be better in the future.

We do that. Uh, and Brent, you'll be doing it here in a moment by rating the episodes on a scale of zero to five delta furries as to how strong the message was and just how Babylon five it was delivered. So, uh, what are, what are your thoughts on this one For a Delta Fury.

Brent: Dalen had a fantastic line in this episode. Old Dalen, did you do not wish to know. You only wish to speak that which you know you ignore because it is inconvenient and that which you do not know you invent. But none of that matters. I found a big parallel here between the one man in the first one, the guy who was against Clark, the one man.

Jeff: Mm-hmm.

Brent: And then it spread to the two college professors, and then it spread to 50% of Earth's population. And then bad stuff happened. And now it was the entirety of Earth's population except for those one little group of people right here. And then eventually we come back out of that and people ascend. Now who knows how many, who knows how many people of earth actually ascended?

Jeff: Right.

Brent: Was, was this representative, all of humanity, ascended and

Jeff: Or was it one dude?

Brent: Was it one dude? Did, did these guys who, who ascended, did they help the ones who did not ascend, move to new Earth? Or did they just let everybody blow up on earth? Who was left behind who didn't, you know? Anyway, that we don't know. They didn't tell us.

Um, but I found a, a parallel here. With what happens a lot with what we're seeing in modern political agendas. And I don't just mean government political agendas, I also mean societal political agendas with, with NGO type organizations that we see doing this exact same thing.

Jeff: mm-hmm.

Brent: And for those of you non-governmental organizations like these are, you know, people who have their own cause that they're trying to prop up.

And what they do is they bring down historical figures to justify what they want to do. You go back and change, uh, listen, I'm not saying that we should put George Washington up on a pedestal as this great man who never made a mistake in his life and was perfect. However, he is still a man to be honored in American history.

Jeff: Mm-hmm.

Brent: Was he perfect? No. Was there some questionable things about his life that we have to, we have to have very real conversations about today? Yes, we do. Does that negate everything about the man for the context that he was in in, in the seventies and the 17, 17 hundreds?

I mean, n n no, it doesn't, but there are, there are people who wanna bring that down. People we go back even further. We can go back, even think, think about what the, what the world's opinion of, uh, Charlemagne is right now.

Jeff: Mm,

Brent: It's not positive.

Jeff: no.

Brent: Think about what the world's opinion is of Caesar right now. It's generally not positive.

Okay. You wanna go back even further? Uh, you can talk about Jesus, who is a world figure. Talk about, uh, uh, I don't know who are some of the other ones? Uh, some of the old Pharaohs. Okay. King Tut was a boy king, and we celebrate him because we see everything about his, he, I mean, he died when he was 19. He wasn't that much of a boy.

But, uh, uh, He wa but he was one of the most ineffective pharaohs in the history of Egypt. Like, he didn't do anything. He just like what Mason so popular was. He was, he was, he was so ineffective that people forgot him and forgot where they put him. That's how, that's how much they just ignored him. Like, you know what I mean?

I just, you, you see this throughout all, throughout all history is, is when you go back and, and bring down historical figures in order to justify what you are doing. Uh, I just see that, that, that there's a parallel to that of rewriting actual historical records and reinterpreting. Um, so here's the question. I think the show Hamilton opposed this in a really good way, and they say this line in the show. Have you ever seen Hamilton, Jeff?

Jeff: Yes. We had this conversation a couple weeks

Brent: Did we, I thought we did.

Jeff: Yeah. Af Yeah. In

Brent: There's, there's a great line that says you have no control over who tells your story.

Jeff: yeah.

Brent: You live, you die, but you have no control over who tells your story.

And Lin Manuel Miranda talks about how nobody told Alexander Hamilton's story. We didn't know he was forgotten. His face is on the $10 bill. And we really didn't even know why outside of he was the first treasury secretary and nobody knew anything else. Turns out he was a pretty fascinating guy, you know?

Um, and so here it was all these years later that we're now telling his story. You know what I mean? You have no control over over who tells your story. So here's the question. And, and by the way, also, that means you have no control over how they tell your story or what of your story that they tell. So I go back to what the question was that sandwiched this episode between Dylan and Sheridan. Should we be receiving all this fame? What is this gonna mean for our legacy? Here's the question. This is the only message I really pull out of this whole deal. Why are you doing what you are doing? Are you doing it to be remembered or are you doing it because it's right? Because there will be people in the future, and this is what I'm trying to get to.

There will be people in the future that will look back and very well likely will just try to pull down everything you did in poke a hole in

Jeff: Mm-hmm.

Brent: and try to undo it. And there's nothing you can do about it cuz you'll be dead by then. So what are you doing now? Um, there are people alive right now who probably hate my guts for things that have happened, you know, uh, and I can only imagine the stories that they tell about me to people that they encounter. And I'm probably thinking way too much of myself that they would even do that. But just go with me on this. When I think back of the things I did, why I did what I did, was it because I wanted to be remembered well, or because I was trying to stand up for what was right in the moment? I can honestly say it's because I was trying to stand up for what was right in the moment.

Even if it made me the villain, I might not have been right to even do it, but I thought it was right in the moment. Split Sheridan did when he broke away from Earth,

Jeff: Yeah.

Brent: right? Because what did he say? We did it because we believed it was the right thing to do. So Jeff, I don't know that this is a Star Trek message, but it is a message.

It is a moral, why are you doing what you're doing for your own namesake or because it's the right thing to do. I found it. Do I find it? Did this message in an incredibly unique way. A very Babylon five way. Did it do it in an incredibly enjoyable way? It's really hard for me to judge that based on the placement of this episode. Put this episode in episode 21. Put it in episode 15. Put it somewhere else. Maybe I would understand.

Maybe I would get it better. Coming right off last week's episode does not help. So, uh, with all of that in mind, I'm going to give this one, two Delta Furies

Jeff: Two. Okay.

Brent: two.

Jeff: I, I took, uh, I took a couple notes on, uh, on the closing thoughts here because I caught, I picked up on the, the message as well, and there I have five words. I. What's our legacy? Who cares? Like, that's the message because you do what you do because you need to. I, uh, you know, I work for a very large public sector organization, and when we have a new head of our executive branch, uh, there's a lot of leadership change that happens.

And I lost my, uh, direct supervisor to some of those political changes, uh, little over or about a year ago. And this person, he's, he's still doing work for the, in the public sector. He's doing great stuff. I mean, he's fine. Uh, but. He did a, he had a couple initiatives, three specifically, that saved lives.

The, the, the, his crowning achievement, in my opinion, was he mandated that every person in our organization went through suicide prevention training and started tracking some metrics around, um, around suicide and the prevention that we were able to, to do. He, he created a policy operations and training that literally saved lives, like powerful stuff.

He got funding, just did a lot of great stuff. Well, as part of the, um, political fallout that happened, when he got removed, they removed his name from those things. Like it, his name got taken off the policy, uh, the, the stuff that. Went across to the governor's office, didn't have his name or contact information from.

I was very egregious and I was very personally offended though, in talking with him. It really helped me understand that I was taking what was happening to him and I was trying to make it about me, uh, in a way cuz I, I just, I, I couldn't fathom the way they were treating him, but he said an incredible thing to me that echoes all of this.

He said, Jeff, I didn't do all that work so I would get credit and my name would be on a thing. I did that work to save people's lives and lives are being saved. So does it bruise my ego that they're erasing me from everything? Yeah, definitely. I'm human and that hurts also. I don't care. I don't care. I can go to bed every night knowing that I helped save lives and that's why I did this thing.

So yeah, I had the exact same thoughts that, that you did. Um, and I, and I can't disagree on just the delivery of this thing. It was, uh, The packaging for what they did in this one and, and the timing of it just really, really hurts this

episode. 

Brent: hurts it. Although again, we, I don't remember if we said this earlier before we hit record, or if we said it after the, um, kudos to j m s for doing the most unique clip shows I've ever seen in my life, and I'm talking about now for a word. Bruce, you didn't like that episode? No, no, no. I like that episode quite a bit.

It was incredibly clever, just unnecessary, uh, for our purposes of binging for what they were doing in Telecast World, absolutely necessary back then. This episode. Incredible way to do a clip show of cl stuff that hasn't even happened yet. You know, uh, Jeff, I did Delta furries. You get the honor, my friend, of adding this one to our definitive 100%. Absolutely correct. And completely accurate Ranking of season four, Babylon. Five. So Jeff, I'm gonna ask you, where are you placing the deconstruction of Falling Stars? The current top five ranking is into the Fire Rising Star intersections in real time.

No surrender, no retreat, and the long night.

Jeff: This one was not hard for me. Um, and I think what's what helps with this not being hard is when I look at our rankings all the way down from one down to 21.

Brent: Mm-hmm.

Jeff: There's not a bad episode in the bunch. They're, they're all great. They're all

Brent: three was like, this wasn't it? Like we had one episode in, in season three, where we were like, that was stupid. Um, and honestly, oh, well, I don't know. Are we gonna like it more on the rewatch? Maybe. I don't know. But people seem to like that episode a lot more than I thought they would, but you

Jeff: maybe something comes up in season five that makes it, uh, makes it shine a little more. But when I look down this one, I'm like, there, there's literally one episode that stands out to me now being at the end of the series or this, yeah. Of the series. But really the end of the season, this stands out to me as being the definitive number 22 episode for this one.

And that's epiphanies, um, epiphanies completely, uh, killed everything that had been developed in Buster, and almost everything that happened in that episode ended up being for, for nothing that just got glossed or rushed over and

Brent: That was the episode right after the end of the vo war, right?

Jeff: yes. Yeah. Yeah. So the threads that picked up just, it just didn't, didn't matter in there. So acknowledging that deconstruction of falling Stars is our new number 21.

Brent: Which is the proper, proper place to put it in the season.

Jeff: Yes.

Brent: I was 21. I, I'm actually looking back at my note on epiphanies and my opening thought was, this is a weird episode. It seems so disjointed. This episode feels very much like an episode of, uh, of season one.

Jeff: Yeah.

Brent: that, that's what I said. That epiphanies was so, yeah, that I, I don't disagree with you, Jeff and I really couldn't, even if I did.

So it's our new number 21

Jeff: And with that, we have the full definitive listing

Brent: immutable.

Jeff: immutable, except for next week. Um,

Brent: mute it.

Jeff: we will, because Brent, that's it for the deconstruction of Falling Stars. That's it for season four. We're not playing our prediction game this week because next week. We're gonna look back at all of season four and a lot of the things that we've talked about during this episode we're gonna dive into into even more detail.

Brent: So no reaction video this week. Woo-hoo.

Jeff: right. You get a week off, although we gotta do some

Brent: In the, in the words of Sheridan. Woo-hoo.

Jeff: and hey, don't forget everybody, we've got this giveaway coming up next week in our season four wrap up. You've got days. If you're not subscribed to our Patreon, it's patreon.com/babylon five. First, it's the number five, the word first. Get subscribed like now right away, and you'll be entered for this drawing to win the Babylon five encyclopedia.

We're gonna pick a name completely at random. It's gonna come up, and then you're gonna get this sent right to your home. Hey, thank you all so much for joining us on this discussion of one of the most, um, interesting episodes. I think that's a fair thing to say.

Brent: Not the word I would use.

Jeff: Questionable maybe. Yeah.

Brent: yeah,

Jeff: Episodes of Babylon five. We appreciate it very much. Don't forget to subscribe wherever you're watching or listening. Leave us a radio or review. Please share this show with somebody. Share it with them in time that they can join us next week for our wrap up.

So until next time.

Brent: Hey Jeff,

Jeff: Yeah, man. What's up?

Brent: you know I have something to say and now seems like a really good time to bring this up.

Jeff: Okay. What do you, what do you gotta say?

Brent: On behalf of you and me, I'm gonna look in the camera here. I would like to dedicate this entire episode to all of you out there who said that Babylon five for the first time would not make it and would fail in its mission. Faith manages.

Jeff: Love it.