The Deconstruction of Falling Stars - Babylon 5 Grey 17 Podcast - 89
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- Опубликовано: 2 апр 2024
- Season 4 comes to a close with a look into the future, and our crew is divided during our discussion of The Deconstruction of Falling Stars!
If you have just started watching #Babylon5, have no fear! Our newbies are right there with you. If you have watched the series before, and you want to take a deeper dive, stay until the end when we go beyond the rim and talk spoilers for the entire show!
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Hosts: Scott, Blake, Emily, Mike, Kevin, Justin, Jessi, and Nicole
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***No copyright infringement is intended. The content in this video is provided for commentary and criticism fair use under Section 107 of the Copyright Act of 1976. 
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Something I think Mike missed: The Garibaldi hologram didn't *become* self aware, he was created deliberately to *be* self aware from the get-go (as were the other three), because they thought that would be more convincing. The lab guy just thought he had the situation under control. And I don't think that's down to stupidity as much as arrogance (although you could argue under the circumstances that they're the same thing).
I love when Alwyn (the Ranger Monk) says that faith and reason are like the shoes on our feet, we can go further bith both than with only one.
Be seeing you!
This episode was significant to me for another reason: For almost a decade it was my series finale. I watched B5 over rabbit ears as it aired in the '90s, and I never knew it moved to cable for a 5th season. Then years later I get nostalgic and look up the show online, and holy crap there's an entire year's worth I'd never seen.
Wow!
@@Grey17Podcast Ditto.
I wonder if they did not have cable or access to the internet?
@@robertdendooven7258Right, I didn't have Internet or cable in 1997 when it aired. Didn't bother to look up B5 online until the mid-late 2000s.
@@604116 Sounds like a good reason. Where did see season 5 on them? Sci-Fi channel or the DVDs?
My season finale was Atonement. We moved to Germany and the American network, AFN, didn’t show B5.
It wasn’t until we moved back and the widescreen version aired on Sci-fi that I got to finish the show.
My favourite episode of the entirety of Babylon 5.
Hey, neat! It's my favorite episode of the entire series!
I have always loved it - the overall message. We are constantly rewriting our history as it suits us at the moment. Nothing ever changes. We have our ups and downs.
Mine too!
@@IkkaveelsiinIt's also a capstone to the ongoing messages in S4 about truth and lies.
Finally got to hear it completely. Another great episode by you guys. I'll say it again, I love it when you guys have material for a long debate.
Emily giving off biĝ "Is this going to be in the test?" vibes for this one!
How appropriate that this one was released right around Easter.
One of my favourite episodes.
Although, for me the monk part (which is the most fun I think) means:
"Hey, as you have seen this show, all those religous figures were normal people. It is very reasonable to assume, that all religiouns (even yours, whatever it may be) were based on normal people or their fantasies" ...
proper message for an atheist like JMS, it is not in the slightes a religious messge in this part of the episode, it is more of an anti-religious message!
Listening all I heard for mcglaghlinn group is the greatest Gen drop issue 1
Hold on a second - from my knowledge gen Z begins in the late 90s, many of us are a lot older than 17! (I still didn't get the reference... so your point still stands.)
Also, I have seen this episode half a dozen times and still don't have a clear opinion on it. I like some scenes, like the message, but there are holes in it and it also interrupts the flow. It's just a bit of a space oddity (yes, sometimes we do get old references;))
Beyond the Rim:
Agreed on Sleeping in Light... but the damned thing is, even the end credits make me cry. Showing all these characters 20 years later when half the actors wouldn't make it that far.
And on David: yes, we do get a little more of that story in the final book of the Centauri trilogy! A pretty good book series, can recommend. Vir does stuff.
And gasoline? The monk-ranger specifically asked the others for help to bring the gasoline to Earth and hide it as if it had been there all along. It was not there from the beginning.
Bingo. ~Scott
I always thought they made a mistake in the last story. The future human should have entered an encounter suit like a Vorlon but his ship should have entered hyperspace like a shadow vessel, to show we learned from both sides of that conflict, not just emulated one of them.
I am with Blake and Scott, and liked the episode and it is probably one of the more controversial and provocative episodes, and raises lots of questions ad conversation. 🙃
But the first section or so, I'll admit were not my favorite either. 😕 But "Faith Manages".
However, I actually thought Orwell-like "info-speak" and "real-facts" section and the monastery ranger/monk combination was interesting and fun. JMS helped set up at least two points in history that he implied could have been circular... in terms that it has happened before and easily could again (and again). Not only is extreme forms of socialism and editing history on both sides still likely to keep happening, but we can see how religion itself could be sparked by a certain event that did happen, but distorted to fit the times. How many times have we thought some scientific discovery was THE answer... just to discover later that it wasn't the full picture, or that we don't later find a new discovery (of something older) that changes our perspective on what we thought we knew. Take dinosaurs... How often have newer discoveries cancelled out what we thought we knew about them.
Not only that, but the Church (almost certainly linking to the Catholic Church's history) is being used to steer the masses gently (or not so gently) to the goal (good or bad). And the "Great Burn" event shown at the end of the third section leads into the fourth section. I liked the first fade out to reveal it was some sort of recording... and I did like the reveal at the end that we had become the new Vorlon's, even going to their world when ours was at an end. Granted, I'm not sure the timing on that is practical for an "evolution", but hey, this is a sci-fi TV on a limited budget.
I disagree with Kevin and Mike, in that for all we know, we have repeated several points of history more than once, and may have stumbled multiple times. JMS could be implying that this may not have been the first time we've "fallen this far". History does tend to repeat itself... and events today (Russia/Ukraine and Israel/Gaza) seem to indicate that we've forgotten some of the lessens we learned in WWII, which was only 20 years after we should have learned those lessons from WWI. So in that regard, I can easily see us falling multiple times... where the only difference is the size of the bombs that sends us back.
However, I would agree with Mike and Kevin on the time that having other colonies of humans would potentially prevent there being such a sharp cut off between all humans on Earth thinking there was a nothing else but medieval Earth. Aliens may not go over well, even if they bring gifts of technology. But, unless there is something preventing the other colonies from trying to visit Earth, surely some human ships would land on Earth and open the eyes of those "left behind" -- and someone would let the cat out of the bag to inform them that humans have already done a lot of things. The only way that works is if the entire planet, perhaps the entire solar system, had to be quarantined to prevent all access... and thus leave those on Earth isolated. Or, even they initially thought no one on Earth had survived "the Great Burn" at the time... and then it was later discovered that there were survivors. In order for that to work, the survivors might have been all too young to know what was (like Andor implies in the Star Wars universe). Otherwise, even the survivors would know... unless some sort of Walking Dead-style suppression by the survivors of other survivors.
Did you notice that JMS captured the concept of Cancel Culture before it became the norm? 🧐 I know we have done that before in human history, but they portrayed well in this episode. So, I agree with Justin (and I love the Monty Python reference). We see them talking about Sheridan the way we now talk about Columbus. But Delenn is right... all they want to do is speak, not learn. I was not a big fan of the talking heads scene, but I could see how it was used well.
I saw that Bruce Boxleitner had fun playing the Nazi leader like character in one of the video recreations... And we know how JMS thinks of media in terms of ISN. 🤓 SPOILER BELOW...
SPOILER: And we know that this was a filler episode to replace the real final episode that we'll see later. So perhaps any issues you have with the writing boil down to a replacement script.
I always took in account that the other colonies or worlds with human's on them were not effected by the earth civil war. Humanity was still out in the stars, it was just earth that was sequestered.
Agreed!
Like some (perhaps many) others, this was the end of B5 for me until I caught in reruns on SciFi in the early 2000s. I didn't have cable TV in the 90s. My friends that did gave me a quick synopsis of the end of season 5, but that wasn't really the same. Do the folks at Grey 17 have any thoughts on what this would be like as the final B5 episode you saw?
Also, as to the 'rushed feeling', I agree. But I think some of the real world events surrounding this episode very much contribute to that feeling. And the monks were a fun part of the episode...probably the most enjoyable for me (though I do agree...where is the rest of humanity, unless EVERYONE got nuked back to the stone age?). Definitely very "A Canticle for Leibowitz" inspired (not a rip off).
I too love this episode. (Of course, I tend to look at things from a "Future Historical" POV. I'm weird that way.) I really enjoyed "Historical Timeline" stuff. (or in this case, "FUTURE Historical Timeline" stuff.)
Which I why, I too, absolutely LOVE the Issac Asimov's Foundation Series of Books!
Also, EVERY time I hear those obnoxious "talking heads" saying how Sheridan didn't DO anything & that the individual doesn't matter, I remember what Father Willaim (Brother Theo's friend) said, "THAT is the problem today! People have been CONNED into believing they can't CHANGE the world. Have to ACCEPT 'what is'. But I tell you, the world is changing ALL the time. The only question is, WHO is actively enacting those changes,"
Perhaps my FAVORITE "Get off your lazy @$$ and DO something!" speech I ever heard!
When I was young and the episode first aired, I hated the episode quite a bit. However, I have a soft spot for this one in 2024.
The 100 years segment in the future really nailed many of the off-putting professors and activists-masquerading-as-historians that I've encountered over the years. The logistics of Delenn being there doesn't quite work as well as it could. Head-canon was that the moderator intended for Delenn to be there, but his reaction to her appearing is more of complete surprise that she was even there over surprise that she actually showed up after being invited. If there wasn't a time constraint, an additional line by one of the panelists mentioning that the missing panelist sympathetic to the Alliance couldn't even be bothered to appear would have been a nice touch in explaining why Delenn would appear.
I like the 500 and 1000 year segments, but as was mentioned on the podcast, part of me is a bit skeptical about the level of destruction that could occur after the 500 year segment. Was this the entire EA? Was this just Earth? If it's just Earth, I would presume that millions upon millions of humans would be living off-world on not only the major colonies, but also on dozens (or hundreds) of smaller worlds. A complete societal collapse across all Human communities could be possible, but it seems unlikely given the kind of resiliency that Humans have, as well as support that they'd get from other races.
It seems a bit inhumane to rebuild a single world at such a slow pace, that after 500 years Earth/EA and/or descendants of Politdivision isolationists are only at Middle Ages technology (with combustion engines in the near future). It seems incredibly cruel to isolate Earth in this way without giving people a choice - there's no way everyone would be onboard. It would be like forcing all citizens of Axis powers into a perpetual dark age post-WW2 instead of immediately rebuilding. How brainwashed would the Earth-based humans have to be to be entirely okay finding out that the rest of the human race manipulated them for 500+ years?
I don't know if an actual explanation about all the details of how they got from 500 to 1000 years in the future would be satisfying, so I'm willing to just let my questions slide since I enjoy the episode quite a bit overall.
I might be off base here, but I'm now expecting Emily (after her rant in questions and predictions) to love the first half of season 5 😂
Steve from the Last Best B5 Podcast didn't like the fast pace of S4 and really liked S5, so we'll see.
@@simongiles9749 my own opinion has changed over the years. I was 16 when season 5 aired, I loved season 4 and disliked season 5, especially the first half. These days I appreciate the more careful and thoughtful tone, and slower pace. *spoilers*
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I still find Byron himself annoying, but the actual plot with the telepaths is a lot more interesting to me now than it was when I was 16.
Actually, Tolkien didn't write that particular line. Philippa Boyens did. It's a great line.
I like this episode. i do.
But I don't love it. It's not a good season ender, though the last episode was.
Favourite part: The Monks. a lot of thought provoking stuff as well as some good one-liners. "Give him another 20 years, he'll be fine."
Loved the bit with holo-Garibaldi leaking out the broadcast for all to see... and do something about.
I remember reading that a lot of the human colonies did survive that civil war, so were still part of the alliance, but... yea, Earth was isolated for a couple of millennia.
After all this time, still not sure what to think of the end... it's never been explained why our Sun explodes in a million years; whatever made that happen cannot have been natural, as our Sun's expected to last ~4-5 billion more years.
true, no official reason, but JMS hinted that there was an unknown race that was going aroud the universe and opening jump gates inside stars and destroying them in the process.
The entire holodeck scene.....was not ludicrous. A 1000 years from now AI is probably much more advanced. No reason that an AI Garibaldi couldn't both dupe the bad guy and allow the other side to attack. This led to the 'Great Burn' of an atomic attack. Great television? probably not, but it was a good scene.
I also wish that the Ranger 'monk' would have started to share something with the young monk....show the transition back to a technological society. Would have been a nice touch.
A computer programme that could nearly annihilate the human race with the push of a few buttons?
I'm not sure where that appeared in the episode. All I saw was a computer programme that activated a phone app without permission and sent a video log to the people on the contact list.
We have computer programmes that can do that now.
It is just that in this case the programme sent the file to someone with itchy fingers on the launch button for some WMDs.
Yeah... I kinda raised my eyebrow at the one too. As I said, we see what we want to see. ~Scott
It's only *mansplaining* if the person you're talking to knows as much or more than you do, or your doing it to be patronising (or both). Otherwise it's just explaining.
(P.s. Yes, I know what I just did)
He asked first. That matters.
College professors are not as arrogant as you say. But I will agree that Jordan Peterson needs to stop talking.
🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣
This one has never been my favorite. Just felt like a waste of time real quick. It was fascinating but overall just pointless.