History Recap / BabylonFiveS04E22TheDeconstructionOfFallingStars

* HistoricalVillainUpgrade: Daniel's plan is to cast the members of the Army of Light, particularly Sheridan, Delenn, Stephen and Garibaldi as megalomaniac villains to justify Earth breaking away from the IA and embarking on an campaign of conquest.

* BadFuture: In 500 years Earth will apparently start another civil war that will reduce them to a medieval-esque society.

* HistoricalHeroUpgrade: Barbara Tashaki and William Exeter accuse the ISA of doing this with Sheridan, both consider him a VillainWithGoodPublicity. By the time following the Great Burn Sheridan and his companions have become religious figures integrated into Christian-esque mythology.

This recording is a broadcast with a panel of professors doing a series on the centennial of the Alliance, concentrating on its origins and founders. On this panel are Jim Latimere of the University of York, Dr. Barbara Tashaki ot the University of Japan Tokyo, and Dr. William Exeter from New York University. Their first question is what role did the Babylon station play in the creation of the 100-year peace? Exeter and Tashaki don't think it had any real effect, it was just a vessel for social change that people of the time wanted, and Sheridan and Delenn themselves didn't actually do anything of consequence, they were just convenient figureheads for the hopes and dreams of the people. Exeter thinks their current image is only due to good publicity and that they in actuality very nearly blew it several times. Tashaki adds that only the force of history kept it from collapsing after so many died in its first year. She's about to bring up the incident with their son, but Latimere wants to stay focused on those two.

* AndManGrewProud: The portion after the "Great Burn" as seen in the 32nd Century.

* ScienceIsBad: The attitude many have taken, quite understandably, after the Great Burn.

* AbsenteeActor: This is the first episode in which Ivanova doesn't appear.

* SomethingCompletelyDifferent: The episode consists of several vignettes depicting the impact of the show's main storyline years and centuries into the future.

Next question: where did they go wrong? Exeter and Tashaki seem to think...everything. They focus on a colony of telepaths Sheridan created, and later admitted was the worst mistake of his career, saying they were going to turn on him sooner or later and that it might have actually lead to the telepath war. Latimere brings up a recording from the incident in question:

* EndOfTheWorldAsWeKnowIt: Future humans, or rather their descendants, have left Earth for a "New Earth" (vhe Vorlon homeworld according to WordOfGod) before Sol goes nova.

%%* BaldOfAwesome: The human viewing all the recordings in the final FlashForward.

* CrapsackWorld: Post-Great Burn Earth

** A star goes prematurely supernova [[Recap/BabylonFiveS01E09Deathwalker under suspicious circumstances.]]
** Even earlier then that. [[Recap/BabylonFiveS01E04Infection Infection]] makes reference to the fact that humanity will go extinct unless they go to the stars. After all, someday the sun will die. Be it in a million, a billion years...
** Garibaldi's good with [[Recap/BabylonFiveS01E03BornToThePurple cracking computer systems]].

* ArtisticLicenseAstronomy: Sol isn't the kind of star that can go nova, and it certainly wouldn't be a [[ScifiWritersHaveNoSenseOfScale mere million years from now]]. Background material[=/=]WordOfGod states this was artificially induced by someone opening jump points inside the sun to siphon off its mass and deliberately causing it to become unstable, ostensibly to prevent the curious from trying to retrieve technology from Earth after humanity moves on from it.

* BaldOfAwesome: The human viewing all the recordings in the final FlashForward.

-->'''Daniel''': You can't make an omelet without breaking eggs.

* SufficientlyAdvancedAlien: One million years after the founding of the ISA, Humans have evolved into this. They also wear encounter suits like their long-vanished forebears the Vorlons. WordOfGod establishes that the Minbari have also become this, while the Narn and Centauri have not.

* ApocalypseHow: Two of them; the "Great Burn", the nuclear war that reduced mankind to medieval level, and then the destruction of the entire planet when Sol goes nova.

->''What matters is what we did here, together. In a hundred years it won't matter who we were. They probably won't even remember.''
-->-'''Delenn'''

* {{Hypocrite}}: Both Exeter and Tashaki are quick to lay direct blame on Sheridan and Delenn for deaths during the first year of the ISA and even the Telepath War, while at the same time denying them any individual credit, claiming that any good that came from the ISA is the result of history and the shared common destiny of humanity.

* TheReasonYouSuckSpeech: Delenn delivers a blisteringly short one to a panel of armchair academics a hundred years in the future.

* ArtisticLicenseAstronomy: Sol isn't the kind of star that can go nova, and it certainly wouldn't be a [[ScifiWritersHaveNoSenseOfScale mere million years from now]]. Background material[=/=]WordOfGod states this was artificially induced by someone opening jump points inside the sun to siphon off its mass and deliberately causing it to become unstable.

He sends the younger monk off to finish his work. Before he does, Michael expresses the wish to walk among the stars just once before he dies. After he leaves, Alwyn comes over and speaks to the camera, reporting to someone about having enough information to reconstruct a gasoline engine and asks to arrange to have some gasoline "found" nearby - though he exhorts that the Supply Department should use an ''old'' container this time, because the ''last'' time they tried something like this, the ruse barely held because it looked too primitive to have been made pre-Great Burn. He then goes to his wardrobe and pulls out a Ranger's uniform, declaring they will rebuild the Earth. He also thinks Brother Michael is a promising candidate, or will be in twenty years or so. He concludes his report ("We live for the One, we die for the One."), and the record ends.

Sheridan and Delenn return to Babylon 5 where they are ambushed...by a surprise party, courtesy of Garibaldi. They have a lot of things to celebrate and aren't going to let John and Delenn get out of it. Sheridan promises to pay him back for it someday. They find newfound attention throughout the station, which Delenn is a little perturbed by. Sheridan says it doesn't really matter what people say, only what they accomplished. Besides, in a hundred years they probably won't even remember it. Delenn is placated and joins him for their closeup...as the image skips and distorts before a message appears saying the signal has been lost. Command is given to reload the sequence, and options appear for the years 2262, 2362, 2762, and 3262, and autoplay is selected.

** The FeudalFuture[=/=]TheDungAges Earth of 3262 occurs after a planetary civil war, where a monastery secretly run by The Rangers is attempting to re-introduce technology. [=JMS=] realized [[http://www.midwinter.com/lurk/guide/088.html#JS halfway through writing the script]] that he was "channeling ''Literature/ACanticleForLeibowitz''".

* ShowWithinAShow: Most of the episode is revealed early on to be video clips from a historical archive being reviewed in the distant future , one million years after the founding of the ISA.