It's in an odd place, but the wordless opening montage of the founding of Alpha is an incredibly optimistic Star Trek–worthy vision of the future, all beautifully set to "Space Oddity" by David Bowie.
We see a wide range of human cultures, then alien cultures, arrive in space, in peace, as equals, and forge diplomatic ties. It becomes such as massive structure with so many people wanting to be part of this, for what can only be diplomatic reasons as Earth can hardly be a massive power that soon after it gets to space, that it has to be ejected from orbit.
And, as this is explained in the only spoken dialogue of the segment, we see the former commander of the station clearly broken up that this age, his age, has come to an end. In only a handful of minutes it paints an inspiring future of peace, reason and tolerance.
Bob Chipman praised the scene as the high point of Luc Besson's whole career and called it "reason enough to see the movie by itself".
Valerian and Laureline giving the pearl and converter back to the Pearls.
