Babylon 5’s series finale, “Sleeping In Light,” aired 20 years ago today, November 25, 1998. “SIL” was set twenty years down the line from the rest of the series, and ended with the (apparent) death of Captain Sheridan. So if someone was to do a new B5 show… I guess Sheridan would be gone.
“Sleeping In Light” was… remarkable. Everything about it was perfect, up to and including the way it turned Manly Fans into horrible gelatinous blobs of sadness. It ranks up there with “Old Yeller” and “Jurassic Bark” in that very select group of movies and TV episodes where it is perfectly permissible for a man to burst into tears watching. If you cried at the ending of “Friends” or “Sex And The City,” man the hell up, Nancy (and question why you were watching those in the first place). If you cried at the end of “Sleeping In Light,” or indeed at any of a number of spots in the episode (JMS shutting off the lights, B5 going foom, Garibaldi swiping a shotglass, Sheridan walking away, Delenn sitting alone, etc.), that merely shows that you’ve been paying attention and aren’t a sociopath.