
The Deconstruction of Falling Stars

"The Deconstruction of Falling Stars" is the final episode of the fourth season of the science fiction television series "Babylon 5". This was the final episode of "Babylon 5" to air on PTEN, produced as a replacement for "Sleeping in Light" when the show was renewed by TNT.
Plot.
This episode takes place after the events of the rest of the series. It shows the long-term effect of the Interstellar Alliance from the point of view of one hundred, five hundred, one thousand, and one million years after the founding of the Alliance.
Production.
The footage with Garibaldi and the telepaths foreshadows events in "Phoenix Rising". At the time of filming, "Phoenix Rising" had not been written and most of season 5 existed only as an outline.
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 cable distribution and funding for a fifth season.
The show's creator, J. Michael Straczynski, insisted that the final episode ("Sleeping in Light") not be seen prematurely. As a result, a new fourth-season finale had to be constructed. The episode was filmed as part of the fifth-season production run, and hurriedly constructed for airing in its proper place before the switchover from PTEN to TNT. This is the reason that Claudia Christian, who had left the show prior to the fifth season, appears in the series finale.
The form of this episode is substantially different from most episodes of Babylon 5. All other episodes were shot as unified storylines, but "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:
"DEDICATED TO ALL THE PEOPLE WHO PREDICTED THAT THE BABYLON PROJECT WOULD FAIL IN ITS MISSION. FAITH MANAGES."
On CIS, J. Michael Straczynski described this message thus:
"On the one hand, it is a statement of hope to anyone else out there who has a dream, to follow it no matter who speaks against you, no matter the odds, no matter what they say to or about you, no matter what roadblocks they throw in your way. What matters is that you remain true to your vision.
"On the other hand, 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.
"In billiards, we call that a bank shot."
Monastery sequence.
The vignette that takes place one thousand years later in a monastery bears some similarities to Walter M. Miller, Jr.'s "A Canticle for Leibowitz". While writing the episode, series creator J. Michael Straczynski noted the similarities: