The Road Home is an animated film set within the Babylon 5 universe, written by original show creator J. Michael Straczynski. It was released on August 14, 2023.
Taking place before the Series Finale, former Babylon 5 commander, John Sheridan, President of the Earth Alliance, and hero of the Shadow War, is taken across timelines after being exposed to tachyon energy on Minbar.
Tropes:
- All-CGI Cartoon: The original series is in live action, while this film is presented in Cel Shaded 3DCG animation with stylized character designs and vibrant colors.
- Alliance of Alternates: Zathras has hundreds of copies of himself at the Great Machine, and can communicate with versions of himself across timelines through quantum communication. When Sheridan sees many of the copies greeting him and Lochley he almost wants to be put out of his misery.
- And the Adventure Continues: After Sheridan returns to his own time, the end of the film focuses on the "No Shadow War" timeline he visited last. That Sheridan meets his version of Delenn (still full Minbari), Garibaldi discusses visiting the Great Machine with Zathras, G'Kar and Londo argue about the most recent Centauri/Narn dispute, and it ends with Ivanova on the bridge as the camera zooms out into space. The original story may be over, but this one is just beginning.
- Be Careful What You Wish For: Captain Lochley is excited to meet Zathras. As Sheridan lampshades, that feeling is replaced with the urge to punch him in the face less than a minute after they meet.
- Borrowed Catchphrase: Upon hearing that Zathras has come up from Epsilon III to the alternate B5 (right after Garibaldi insisted that there was nothing and nobody down there), Sheridan quips, "No-one listen to Sheridan."
- Call-Back:
- As in the original series, no one listens to Zathras.
- The alternate timeline where the Shadows assault a Sinclair-led B5 is more or less a variation of the Bad Future from "Babylon Squared" and "War Without End", namely Garibaldi and Sinclair fighting the Shadows to trigger the station's self destruct and Ivanova sending a distress call that's nigh identical to the one in the latter two-parter.
- Colony Drop: In the timeline where the Shadows won the war, the Vorlons decide to destroy Earth. However, because Earth is a fairly large planet compared to most habitable planets, instead of using their planet buster directly, they use it to push the moon out of orbit and into Earth, achieving the same effect with less energy expenditure.
- Curb-Stomp Cushion: In the Battle of Alternate B5, B5's defenses are no match for the Shadows, but they do score some small victories before they go out.
- The weapons on B5's Starfuries can't even penetrate the hulls of the Shadow fighters, but they do manage a couple of kills through unorthodox tactics, including one Starfury pilot taking out a Shadow fighter by latching onto it with a grapple and dragging it along the station's hull until it explodes.
- B5's defenders are overrun by the numerically and technologically superior Shadows, but they manage to trigger the self-destruct, taking out the three Shadow vessels surrounding it, allowing the evacuation ships to escape. This provides hope that Delenn and the League council escaped to continue the war.
- Defiant to the End: In the timeline where the Shadows attack during Sinclair's time as head of Babylon 5, Ivanova chooses to remain on the bridge while sending the remaining crew to the shuttles. When the Shadows break through, she simply pulls out her sidearm and meets them head on. The last thing heard of her is an explosion that can be felt from the shuttlebay, suggesting she went out in a quite literal blaze of glory.Ivanova: Everything ends. I'm not afraid. Bring It.
- Deflector Shields: The Shadows engage in infantry combat using shields that protect their bodies (but not their legs) while also firing energy bolts as an offensive weapon, letting them attack and defend simultaneously.
- Dimensional Traveler: In addition to being Unstuck in Time, Sheridan is rendered out of phase with normal time. The longer he spends outside of his proper time, the more he begins to drift across different timelines, where things went very differently for the B5 station.
- Dramatic Irony: The final timeline Sheridan, after seeing his other self leave with the love of his life (obscured by the temporal field), muses to his own Delenn that he would like to meet the woman willing to jump through time to rescue her husband.
- Face Death with Dignity: Ivanova and Londo in the Shadow victory timeline decide to watch Earth's destruction by Colony Drop at the precise point the moon will impact, since the Vorlons won't allow anyone to leave the planet, sitting on a balcony in lounge chairs and sharing a drink while discussing the spectacular view.
- Good All Along: The mysterious glowing orb which seems to be pursuing Sheridan? It's actually Delenn, following him to bring him home, with the aid of tech provided by the Zathri.
- In Spite of a Nail: In the B5 destruction timeline, Lyta and G'Kar team up, something that happens a few years later in the original timeline. In the No Shadow War timeline, Sheridan is in command of B5, even without the Shadow-influenced chain of events leading up to his taking command in the original timeline.
- Interquel: The Road Home is set during the gap between "Objects at Rest" and the series finale "Sleeping in Light" (but also prior to the events of The Lost Tales).
- Last-Second Word Swap: In the final timeline, Sheridan realizes this timeline never met the Shadows and nearly gives away the name of their homeworld. Thinking better of it, he quickly corrects to "Z'Ha'Boom" and refuses to elaborate.
- Last Stand: Discussed. Sinclair asks Sheridan if they stand any hope against the Shadows, as he's obviously more familiar with them than those in this alternate timeline are. When Sheridan can't offer any advice, Sinclair offers him a rifle while informing him he's just joined this B5's last stand.
- Leaning on the Fourth Wall: Sheridan is unstuck in time and space, but a multiverse-aware Zathras will not let him say that he is lost in time and Lost in Space because the copyright concerns are complicated.
- Misplaced Vegetation: Or, rather, mistimed in this case. When Sheridan meets his dad at the family farm (which is located in the American Midwest) there's a fully-grown field of corn next to them looking close to ready for harvesting, suggesting the middle of summer... but when he asks the date, his dad says it's January.
- More Expendable Than You: Sheridan chooses to activate the self-destruct on the alternate B5 because he's familiar with the procedure and Sinclair's men are more likely to follow him to their deaths than obey a stranger.
- Never Shall The Selves Meet: Averted. When Sheridan hops into the future, Franklin advises against Sheridan contacting his future self for timeline reasons, but Sheridan is actually dead at this point in the timeline and Franklin just didn't have the heart to tell him. Sheridan later meets an alternate version of himself with no issue, even though his timeline-hopping is dangerous on a multi-universal scale.
- Not Distracted by the Sexy: Sheridan blips into Captain Lochley's quarters in the middle of the night, and in his rush to explain to her what's happening and that he needs her help, fails to notice that she's not dressed until she asks for a moment of privacy.
- Oh, Crap!: Said word for word by Sheridan when he's told the Minbari facility he's in runs on tachyons, and realizes he's in for something screwy.
- The Password Is Always "Swordfish": Fortunately for Sheridan (and worryingly for station security), both his station and that of Sinclair's timeline use the default admin codes for the Self-Destruct Mechanism.
- Planar Shockwave: B5's self-destruct unleashes a circular shockwave that cuts a Shadow vessel in half while thankfully barely missing the civilian transports.
- Plot-Demanded Manual Mode: B5's Self-Destruct Mechanism requires three heavy levers to be pulled in sequence, which circle the perimeter of the reactor and are a fair distance apart, to ensure that whoever ordered the self-destruct absolutely intends to blow up the station on purpose. Sheridan complains about the distance, as the Shadows are hot on his heels, but the computer merely responds that it isn't responsible for the design and can only do as it was programmed.
- Point of Divergence: In the final timeline, the Shadow War never happened because Interplanetary Expeditions went bankrupt before the Icarus expedition could even happen, leaving the Shadows dormant for the foreseeable future. Sheridan wisely thinks better of telling his counterpart where to look.
- Read the Freaking Manual: Sheridan asks what powers the reactor and is told it was in the press release. He angrily responds that no one reads those. If he had, he would have known it is powered by tachyons.
- Salt the Earth: In the second alternate timeline Sheridan visits, the Shadows won the war, so the Vorlons are destroying any planets under Shadow influence to deny their enemies resources. Unfortunately, Earth falls under that umbrella.
- Self-Destruct Mechanism: To destroy the Shadows in Sinclair's Shadow War timeline, Sheridan activates the station's self destruct. The computer doesn't treat it with the gravitas one usually expects:Computer: Destruct sequence? Are you feeling alright? This isn't just one of those 'I'm having a bad day' things.
- Set Right What Once Went Wrong: Sheridan travels back to the moment where the Icarus woke up the Shadows and tries to prevent it. Unfortunately, their exploration team has already entered the city and done just that.
- Sink the Lifeboats: In Sinclair's Shadow War timeline, the Earth Alliance personnel do everything they can to hold the Shadows off for as long as possible, as the Shadows will turn on the civilian transports once they've neutralized the military resistance. With the local jump gate destroyed, the only hope is that a jump-capable ship arrives in time.
- Speak of the Devil: In the final timeline, Sheridan explains to his alternate self and staff that he needs to speak to Zathras at the Great Machine. They're unfamiliar with both and don't even know anyone is living on the surface, until they're informed that someone named Zathras is flying up from the surface as a representative of the Great Machine.
- Stuff Blowing Up: Including the station itself in one timeline, a last ditch effort to protect the civilians from the Shadows.
- Time Crash: Sheridan's travel between alternate timelines threatens to destroy all of reality, as each one he observes becomes real and the timelines clash attempting to exist simultaneously. Managing to get back to his own time and stabilize himself separates the timelines once more.
- Uncertain Doom: The fate of Alternate Sinclair and Garibaldi in the timeline where the Shadows attack B5. We last see them holding off Shadow troops but we don't know for sure if they managed to escape the station before it went boom or if they died.
- Unstuck in Time: Thanks to exposure to a massive tachyon energy generator, Sheridan begins uncontrollably jumping through time.
- What Happened to the Mouse?:
- We see the Great Machine and the army of Zathras clones running it, but there's no mention of Draal, the Machine's guardian from the series.
- There's also no mention of what happend in the primary timeline after Sheridan returns home or how the events affected that timeline.
