Babylon 5: Season 5 - The Wheel of Fire Review

Today on Sci-Fi Adventures I'll be writing a bit about the fifth and final season of Babylon 5! And I suppose I should say something about the series overall as well. If I can remember enough of it.

I can't promise I'll say much here you haven't read a thousand times before on a thousand other websites, or heard on a thousand podcasts. Maybe you've even watched a thousand YouTube videos. But I do have one unique fact for you that no one anywhere has ever mentioned before: each season of Babylon 5 features slightly longer episode titles on average than the previous one, and by season five the titles are, on average, 42% longer than season one titles. I hope this extremely trivial trivia brings joy into your day.

But did longer episode titles mean better episodes? Was the miraculous fifth season renewal a good thing overall? Did Babylon 5 actually stick the landing? I'll tell you what I think and then you can tell me what you think in the comments afterwards.

There will be SPOILERS here for pretty much all of Babylon 5, aside from the spin-offs and Lost Tales. That's The Gathering all the way to Sleeping in Light.

Babylon 5 5-22: Sleeping in Light

Episode:

110

|

Writer:

J. Michael Straczynski

|

Director:

J. Michael Straczynski

|

Air Date:

25-Nov-1998

---

This week on Sci-Fi Adventures, I did it, we're here, it's the last episode of Babylon 5, episode 110 of 110. I have finally reached Sleeping in Light! Though here it looks more like Sleeping in Bed. I suppose they do have that lamp on.

It had originally been filmed as an extremely final season 4 finale when their network was collapsing and the future looked bleak. But when the miracle happened and TNT gave them a fifth season, it provided them an opportunity to film an alternative end to season 4 and hold onto this for a while. That means that the episode finally aired 394 days later than planned! The actors and crew knew the story, people from the media got hold of the script, but it seems like no one ever said anything in all that time.

It's the first and only episode of the series to be directed by showrunner J. Michael Straczynski. In fact it was his first time directing anything. Personally if I was going to try my hand at being a director I wouldn't start with the finale to my epic sci-fi series. Endings are incredibly important to a story, they're one of the things that people remember most and it colours their opinion of the whole saga, so screwing up here would be very bad.

Okay you're if you're reading my final B5 review you probably already know the drill by now, but I write about entire episodes scene by scene, with a recap under screencaps, so there'll be HUGE SPOILERS. I'll not spoil anything that happens in the spin-offs, Lost Tales, or any other series however. So if you're hoping for me to compare it to Deep Space Nine's finale, that's not going to happen. I could compare it to a certain other Trek finale though, with its 20 year time jump.

Babylon 5: The River of Souls - Part 2

This week on Sci-Fi Adventures, I'm still making my way through the 1998 Babylon 5 TV movie, The River of Souls. This is part 2 of 2, so if you want to go back to part 1, click HERE.

There are actually six Babylon 5 movies, kind of:

• The Gathering (1993) - The original pilot movie.
• In the Beginning (1998) - A prequel about the Earth-Minbari War.
  
• Thirdspace (1998) - Lovecraftian weirdness during season 4.
  
• The River of Souls (1998) - You are here.
  
• A Call to Arms (1999) - A lead-in to the Crusade spin-off.
  
• The Legend of the Rangers (2002) - The pilot for a spin-off that never made it to a series.
  

So even though I'm in the final stretch now there's plenty left for me to write about. In another timeline I'd be going straight into writing about the Babylon 5 reboot series afterwards, but that's seeming less than likely at this point. Still, at least I can write about a couple of episodes of Crusade. Yay.

SPOILER WARNING: I'll be writing about this whole movie and mentioning things that happened during the series. I'll not spoil a thing about Crusade or Legend of the Rangers however.

Babylon 5: The River of Souls - Part 1

Written By:

J. Michael Straczynski

|

Directed By:

Janet Greek

|

Release Date:

1998

---

This week on Sci-Fi Adventures I'm watching the third of the Babylon 5 TV movies made for the TNT network: The River of Souls. I keep wanting to call it River of Souls but there's definitely a 'the' at the start.

The first two TNT movies, Thirdspace and In the Beginning, were filmed before season 5, in May-June 1997, but this was filmed after the series had wrapped, between 1st-21st April 1998. It's a film about the Soul Hunters, from one of B5's least-loved early episodes, so I wonder how many people showed up for work on that first day wondering if it was an amazingly elaborate April Fool's prank. The series was over, writer J. Michael Straczynski could've told a story about anything, but he decided give the Soul Hunters another shot!

At least the film's got a good director: Janet Greek. She had directed stories like Signs and Portents, Chrysalis, The Coming of Shadows and The Fall of Night. Plus it features some real stars in the cast, including The West Wing's Martin Sheen and Deadwood's Ian McShane. No seriously.

Chronologically the movie should come about halfway into a season 6 that doesn't exist, but it actually aired with three episodes of season 5 left to go. They moved it up a couple of weeks so that the finale wasn't overshadowed by it (or vice versa), messing up the order. I'm watching it after Objects in Motion and Objects at Rest however, so there may be SPOILERS here for the two episodes... in addition to all the stories that came before them. I'll not be saying a word about anything that comes after though, so this is first-time viewer safe.

Babylon 5 5-21: Objects at Rest

Episode:

109

|

Writer:

J. Michael Straczynski

|

Director:

John Copeland

|

Air Date:

18-Nov-1998

---

This week on Sci-Fi Adventures, I'm watching the penultimate episode of Babylon 5: Objects at Rest. Episode 109 out of 110.

Babylon 5 was always meant to last five seasons, but for a while it seemed like it would be cancelled at the end of its fourth year. To avoid leaving the story unfinished, showrunner J. Michael Straczynski rushed to get the main storylines concluded at the end of season four and filmed a final episode to wrap everything up called Sleeping in Light. Then they got a fifth season after all, so the final episode was put away for a year until it was time. I'm bringing this up now because it means that Objects at Rest was the last ever Babylon 5 episode to be filmed.

It was also the third and final episode to be directed by producer John Copeland, who'd previously directed Endgame and The Ragged Edge. Those were both very effects-heavy episodes, but I'll be surprised if this episode goes in that direction. In fact I think I'm going to be surprised whatever happens. All the plot I can remember from my first watch already happened in The Wheel of Fire and Objects in Motion.

Alright, I'll be going through the whole episode giving my scene by scene recap and reactions with screencaps so there will be huge SPOILERS here, for this and earlier stories (except for The River of Souls which I'm saving). I'll not say anything to spoil what happens next though, not that there's a whole lot of 'next' left at this point.

Babylon 5 5-20: Objects in Motion

Episode:

108

|

Writer:

J. Michael Straczynski

|

Director:

Jesús Salvador Treviño

|

Air Date:

11-Nov-1998

---

This week on Sci-Fi Adventures, I'm watching Babylon 5 season 5 episode 20: Objects in Motion. Hey wasn't that the name of a Firefly episode? Oh sorry, I'm thinking of Objects in Space.

Objects in Space was the final episode of Firefly, this on the other hand is just the final Babylon 5 story to be directed by Jesús Treviño. He was one of the chosen few to have been asked to direct one of the movies (along with Mike Vejar and Janet Greek), but Thirdspace had been and gone by this point. He did return to the B5 universe one last time for an episode of Crusade however.

This is also one of the rare episodes to give Harlan Ellison a story credit (along with writer J. Michael Straczynski), which probably means he suggested something for one of the plots.

SPOILER WARNING: I'll be recapping, screencapping and commenting on the whole episode, scene by scene, so if you don't know what happens in it yet, you will do after reading this. I'll not be spoiling anything that happens afterwards however, not that there's much left to spoil.

Babylon 5 5-19: The Wheel of Fire

Episode:

107

|

Writer:

J. Michael Straczynski

|

Director:

Janet Greek

|

Air Date:

04-Nov-1998

---

This week on Sci-Fi Adventures, I'm watching Babylon 5 season 5, episode 19: The Wheel of Fire! I'm getting really close to the end of the series now so I'm almost out of pictures of an episode title over a shot of the station. This is one of the better ones though I reckon, the lighting on it looks great.

Each of Babylon 5's seasons was named after one of the most important episodes that year, and this is the one that season 5 took its title from. That puts it in the company of Signs and Portents, The Coming of Shadows, Point of No Return and No Surrender, No Retreat, so if it doesn't immediately make it onto my top 10 list it's going to be a massive let down.

Here's some trivia for you: 60% of these monumental season title episodes were directed by the same director, Janet Greek, and she came back for this one. I've read that showrunner J. Michael Straczynski considered her and Mike Vejar to be his two favourite directors on the show and I can see why. This was her final episode, but she did return for the movie River of Souls and two episodes of the spin-off series Crusade.

I'm going to be recapping and reviewing the episode one scene at a time, so there will be massive SPOILERS here, for this and earlier stories. I'll not be spoiling anything that happens next however, so if you're watching the series for the first time this will all be safe to read.

Doctor Who: The Thirteenth Doctor Era (2018-2022)

This week on Sci-Fi Adventures, I'm writing about the entire Jodie Whittaker/Chris Chibnall era of Doctor Who! It seemed like a smart idea to put my thoughts down now while it's still fresh in my mind to save me from having to watch it all again at some point. I mean I'm not saying that this run was bad... not up here in the intro anyway.

Though I'm starting to regret committing to this, as I'm not sure I can come up with anything I haven't said already, never mind the rest of the internet. Reviewers have turned tearing apart the Chibnall era into an art form. YouTube's packed full of video essays with hours of content, each of them representing months of work. Meanwhile all I have is a few scribbled down thoughts I've had over the last few days. Basically I'm not in a great position to be criticising trite half-baked writing.

But I said I'd do this and I need to see it through, so now that the smoke has cleared and the dust has settled etc. I'm going to take a look back at the Thirteenth Doctor era and figure out if I liked it. There will be SPOILERS beyond this point.

Babylon 5 5-18: The Fall of Centauri Prime

Episode:

106

|

Writer:

J. Michael Straczynski

|

Director:

Douglas E. Wise

|

Air Date:

28-Oct-1998

---

This week on Sci-Fi Adventures, I'm watching Babylon 5 episode 106, The Fall of Centauri Prime. I suppose lots of planets have an autumn.

Babylon 5 originally took a bit of a break after the last episode, Movements of Fire and Shadow, and even more of a break in the UK. In fact viewers had to wait over four months for this episode! That's way more than the month I've kept you waiting, so I'm not even feeling guilty. There were no more breaks after this though. They aired this final stretch of stories over five weeks, with the movie River of Souls thrown in as a bonus. In the UK, Channel 4 did one better by airing them over five days. Unfortunately it was scheduled a little earlier than usual... at 11:30 AM as part of The Bigger Breakfast block.

The episode was directed by Douglas E. Wise, nephew of Robert Wise (director of The Sound of Music, The Andromeda Strain and Star Trek: The Motion Picture). It was the only episode of the series he directed, but he'd been on the series for a while at this point working as a the first assistant director so I'm sure he knew the difference between a Centauri and a Minbari.

I'll be going through the entire episode writing my comments under screencaps, so there will be massive SPOILERS below. I'll also be spoiling the hell out of anything relevant that led up to it, though I'll not say a word about the episodes that come after.

Doctor Who (2005): The Power of the Doctor - Part 3

This week on Sci-Fi Adventures, it's the final part of my The Power of the Doctor review. I'm sorry I had to split this into three parts, it's just that my screencaps tend to get out of hand when I cover something that lasts longer than an hour. Especially when it's as frantic as this. The episode's all over the place!

You can find the previous two parts HERE and HERE.

SPOILER WARNING: This will contain extreme Doctor Who spoilers up to and including this episode.

Doctor Who (2005): The Power of the Doctor - Part 2

This week on Sci-Fi Adventures, I'm still racing to get my thoughts on The Power of the Doctor typed up. You can find part 1 HERE and there'll be a link to part 3 at the end just as soon as I get it written and published.

SPOILER WARNING: I'm spoiling everything. Every Doctor Who episode up to this point is fair game.

Doctor Who (2005): The Power of the Doctor - Part 1

Episode:

871

|

Writer:

Chris Chibnall

|

Director:

Jamie Magnus Stone

|

Air Date:

23-Oct-2022

---

This week on Sci-Fi Adventures I'm watching all 90 minutes of the Doctor Who BBC Centenary special, The Power of the Doctor!

It's the last episode of the Jodie Whittaker/Chris Chibnall era, which means it's also a regeneration story! Oh damn, I should've covered all the modern regeneration episodes first! Why is that only occurring to me now? Never mind, I wouldn't have had the time to do it anyway.

I have to be honest, if I'd known that this was going to be 90 minutes I wouldn't have been so quick to tell everyone it was going to be my next review. For whatever reason I can cover a 45 minute episode in a normal-sized review just fine, but a 90 minute story usually means three times the work. So if this seems a bit more rushed, scruffy and downright inaccurate than usual, that's because I'm racing to get it finished. It's going to have some real first draft energy.

Oh right, the SPOILER WARNING. Can't forget that. I'll be going through the whole episode scene by scene so if you want to experience its surprises properly I'd strongly recommend watching it first. This is an anniversary special so I'll probably be talking about stuff from a bunch of other episodes too.

Star Trek: Prodigy - Season 1 Review, Part 3

This week on Sci-Fi Adventures, I've reached the halfway point of Star Trek Prodigy's first season! Every other current Star Trek series is getting just 10 episodes a season now but Prodigy is going crazy with massive 20 episode seasons... that are split down the middle, giving us 10 episodes a year. In fact I'm just going to call this its own season and write a little season review thing at the end.

I'll be writing about these three episodes:

• 1-08 - Time Amok
  
• 1-09 - A Moral Star, Part 1
  
• 1-10 - A Moral Star, Part 2
  

There will be SPOILERS here for Prodigy and other Star Trek series, but only up to the point in time these episodes were released. So if you haven't seen anything after episode 10 you've got nothing to worry about here. Not that there is anything after episode 10 right now.

Star Trek: Prodigy - Season 1 Review, Part 2

This week on Sci-Fi Adventures, I'm writing about Star Trek: Prodigy! Or Nickelodeon: Star Trek - Prodigy, according to the logo up there. I'm going to be covering four episodes this time, which I have listed in a convenient list below for your convenience:

• 1-04 - Dreamcatcher
  
• 1-05 - Terror Firma
  
• 1-06 - Kobayashi
  
• 1-07 - First Con-tact
  

There will be SPOILERS, for these episodes and earlier ones, but nothing that comes after them. Partly because I wrote about each episode right after watching them and I didn't actually know anything else at the time, partly because I don't want to ruin anything for other people who are watching it for the first time.

Babylon 5: Thirdspace - Part 3

This week on Sci-Fi Adventures, I'm finally going to shut up talking about the Babylon 5 movie Thirdspace. I just have to write about what happens in the ending and then I'm done. Though if you want more words you can check out PART ONE and PART TWO and read how the story got to this point.

This review will contain SPOILERS for the movie and the first half of season 4, but I don't intend to give away any more than that, for the sake of people watching the series for the first time. There should always be people watching this series for the first time.

Babylon 5: Thirdspace - Part 2

Today on Sci-Fi Adventures, I'm writing about the middle third of the Babylon 5 movie Thirdspace. If you want to go back to PART ONE then click that text and you'll go straight there.

There'll be SPOILERS here for the first half of season four, but I'll try not to give away anything about what happens next. Sure the movie aired near the end of season five, but some people might decide to watch the films where they fit chronologically, and I don't want to ruin one damn thing for first time viewers.

Babylon 5: Thirdspace - Part 1

Written By:

J. Michael Straczynski

|

Directed By:

Jesús Treviño

|

Release Date:

1998

---

This week on Sci-Fi Adventures, I'm watching the Babylon 5 TV movie Thirdspace. Not The Third Place, that's a PS3 advert directed by David Lynch where he plays a duck.

The series hit a bit of a snag during its fourth season as PTEN, the network airing B5 in the US, collapsed. Fortunately it found a new home with the TNT network for its final season and they even wanted them to produce some B5 movies! Thirdspace was the first of the these movies to be filmed, however it's technically the second film as it aired 7 months after In the Beginning (on July 19th 1998 if you're curious). That puts it three quarters of the way through season 5, which is why I'm writing about it after ep 5-17, Movements of Fire and Shadow, even though chronologically it fits somewhere in season 4. Ep 4-09, Atonement, seems the most suitable place for it to slot in, though it would have to take place between the first scene and the rest of the episode.

Like all the best movie DVDs, Thirdspace's disc comes with a commentary track and it's loaded with people. There's director Jesús Treviño, Bruce Boxleitner (Sheridan), Patricia Tallman (Lyta), Jeff Conaway (Zack), and Stephen Furst (Vir), and they're a good group of people to hang out with for 90 minutes. It also features SPOILER. Just one single spoiler, at least that's all I noticed

This recap/review, on the other hand, is going to be WALL TO WALL SPOILERS, for this movie and any relevant episodes leading up to it. But if you're watching through the series for the first time you'll be fine here, I'll not ruin anything that happens next.

Babylon 5 5-17: Movements of Fire and Shadow

Episode:

105

|

Writer:

J. Michael Straczynski

|

Director:

John C. Flinn III

|

Air Date:

17-Jun-1998

---

This week on Sci-Fi Adventures, I'm watching the Babylon 5 season 5 episode Movements of Fire and Shadow. Sounds like it should be the name of a Game of Thrones novel, but you know that things are getting real when the word 'Shadow' shows up in a B5 episode title.

It was the final episode to be directed by John C. Flinn III, but he carried on in his other job as the series' director of photography until the end. The main thing I remember about Flinn's episodes is that he's not great at shooting actors in monster suits, but if they can avoid that here this might be a good one.

We're getting really close to the end now, only 5 episodes left after this one, but they decided to be cruel during the show's first airing on TNT and make people wait 19 weeks for the next episode. That's four and a half months! We had it even worse in the UK, as we had to wait 2 weeks longer than that. Though they did at least air the B5 movie Thirdspace in the meantime... which confusingly slots in during the events of season 4.

I should probably mention that there will be SPOILERS beyond this point for this episode and earlier episodes too, but I've written this warning over a hundred times now and I'm getting pretty bored of doing it, so you're just going to have to live without it this time.

Star Trek: The Next Generation 1-06: Where No One Has Gone Before

Episode:

6

|

Writer:

Diane Duane and Michael Reaves

|

Director:

Rob Bowman

|

Air Date:

26-Oct-1987

---

This week on Sci-Fi Adventures, I'm jumping ahead to Star Trek: The Next Generation's sixth episode, Where No One Has Gone Before! They've gotten a bit clever with its title, as it's a callback to the classic Original Series episode Where No Man Has Gone Before, with the name updated to match the iconic line in Next Gen's politically corrected opening narration. The earlier episode was about going beyond human experience, now this time they're going beyond anyone's experience. Presumably.

The episode's credited to writers Diane Duane and Michael Reaves, though it ended up being heavily rewritten by producer Maurice Hurley, to the point where there wasn't much of their story left. This was their only script for the series, though Duane had written a number of Trek novels, including The Wounded Sky, which was actually the inspiration for this episode. It's not often that you come across a Trek episode that was based on a novel.

It's the first episode to be directed by Rob Bowman, who ended up directing 13 episodes over the first four seasons. He's probably better known for his work on The X-Files and Castle though, and was chosen to direct the first X-Files movie.

Alright I'm going to go through the whole episode scene by scene so there'll be all kinds of SPOILERS here. I might talk about events from other episodes as well, though if I mention anything from a later story/series I'll keep it extremely vague and harmless. There'll be no Star Trek: Discovery/Picard/etc. spoilers here. 

Star Trek: The Original Series 1-03: Where No Man Has Gone Before

Episode:

3

|

Writer:

Samuel A. Peeples

|

Director:

James Goldstone

|

Air Date:

22-Sep-1966

---

This week on Sci-Fi Adventures, I'm watching the third episode of Star Trek: The Original Series: Where No Man Has Gone Before. It's also the second and the first, depending on how you look at it.

Sometimes people use the term 'pilot episode' to refer to the first released episode of a series, but this story was a true pilot, created to prove the concept and get Star Trek green lit. In fact it was the second pilot, produced after The Cage failed to win executives over. Getting two pilots like this was unusual, probably still is. When Desilu (the studio) originally came to NBC (the network) they'd offered them a choice of four story concepts and NBC picked the hardest one, so they felt like they were partly to blame for it not working out like they'd hoped.

So the Star Trek folks came up with some new options for the executives to choose from: three scripts titled Mudd's Women, The Omega Glory and Where No Man Has Gone Before. All three stories were put into production eventually, with Mudd's Women being regarded as one of the worst episodes of season 1, and The Omega Glory one of the worst in season 2. Fortunately Where No Man Has Gone Before was the script chosen for the second pilot, and it got the job done, earning Star Trek its first season.

It takes a while to get a TV series going though, so they ended up sitting on the finished episode for over a year. The episode ended up airing as the third story in season one, after The Man Trap and Charlie X, which is a bit weird as it features different characters and uniforms to the episodes before and after it. It does have the same premise as Charlie X though to be fair, so the story would've been familiar enough. Also at this point 66.7% of all Star Trek episodes featured the word 'man' in the title, down from 100% a couple of episodes ago. At the time of writing Trek would have to release another 550 episodes with 'man' in the name to get the percentage back up to where it was this week in 1966.

I'd give you some more facts, like how the cinematographer, Earnest Haller, had won an Oscar for Gone with the Wind and was pulled out of retirement for one last job, but I think I've proven by now that I've read the Wikipedia page.

Okay I'm going to go through the whole episode now commenting on basically everything, so this review is going to have SPOILERS. I'll not spoil anything that aired after it however, no matter how many Gary Mitchells or galactic barriers it has.

Star Trek: Strange New Worlds - Season 1 Review, Part 1

This week on Sci-Fi Adventures I'm giving my thoughts on the first three episodes of Star Trek: Strange New Worlds!

Strange New Worlds is the third live-action series of the Alex Kurtzman era and the first to return to the episodic style of shows like Star Trek: The Original Series, Star Trek: The Next Generation and Star Trek: Voyager. It's so old school that when I describe it to people, I just say that it's Star Trek. It's about a crew of competent professionals going from world to world on the USS Enterprise, solving space problems and moral dilemmas in around 40 minutes. At least, that's what all the reviews say when they're listing reasons why it's so much better than Discovery and Picard.

From what I can tell, Star Trek fans aren't just happy with how the series has turned out, they're also relieved. It's not going to have have serialised seasons that start spinning their wheels halfway through because there's only enough story for four episodes. It's not going to have examinations of how imperfect the Federation really is. It's not going to have damaged heroes who routinely find themselves at the centre of universe-threatening crises because they're so special. Well, in theory anyway.

Personally I've liked the very serialised Discovery and Picard so far... to a degree, but variety is good and I am 100% for an episodic Trek all about Pike, Spock and Number One. In fact I've been waiting for this since Discovery's second season finale, so my enthusiasm level is high here.

I'll start off by sharing thoughts and SPOILERS for these three episodes:

• 1-01 - Strange New Worlds
  
• 1-02 - Children of the Comet
  
• 1-03 - Ghosts of Illyria
  

Though I'll probably also mention something about the earlier Star Trek series as well, so continue reading at your own risk.

Star Trek: Picard - Season 2 Review, Part 1

This week on Sci-Fi Adventures, I'm writing about the second season of Star Trek: Picard! 

The series was under new management this season, with Strange New Worlds showrunner Akiva Goldsman and 12 Monkeys showrunner Terry Matalas taking over from Michael Chabon, who's been busy developing a different show based on his novel The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay. Though Goldsman and Matalas were busy too, with Goldsman helping create a new Trek series and Terry Matalas switching his focus to the third season halfway through, so things were a bit messy behind the scenes. That's normal for Star Trek to be fair, the shows often don't settle down until season three, but Star Trek: Picard's only getting three seasons so it'll be nice if whoever was left minding the store didn't screw this one up.

I'm going to be covering the first three episodes here:

• 2-01 - The Star Gazer
  
• 2-02 - Penance
  
• 2-03 - Assimilation

This means that there'll be SPOILERS for each of these stories and probably some earlier Trek stories as well. I wrote each review right after watching the episode for the first time however, so couldn't have spoiled anything that comes next if I wanted to. And I didn't want to.

Babylon 5 5-16: And All My Dreams, Torn Asunder

Episode:

104

|

Writer:

J. Michael Straczynski

|

Director:

Goran Gajić

|

Air Date:

10-Jun-1998

---

This week on Sci-Fi Adventures I'm watching Babylon 5 season 5 episode And All My Dreams, Torn Asunder. Now there's a proper Babylon 5 title for you. In fact it's so Babylon 5 that JMS basically used it once already for season three's Severed Dreams. This is just a more poetic and less pithy way of phrasing it.

It's really rare to see an episode begin with the word 'And' like this. In fact outside of Babylon 5, the only other episode I can think of that does is Star Trek's And the Children Shall Lead. Babylon 5 was written by one guy for the most part though, so he had plenty of opportunities to express his idiosyncrasies. Which means we got And the Sky Full of Stars in season 1, And Now For a Word in season 2, plus And the Rock Cried Out, No Hiding Place in season 3. Season 4 missed out unfortunately.

The episode was directed by Goran Gajić, who was Delenn actress Mira Furlan's husband. It's the first and only episode he ever did for the series, which was apparently Warner Bros' fault more than anyone else, as creator J. Michael Straczynski had wanted to hire him for a while. The episode also had a different director of photography than usual, with Fred V. Murphy II taking over from John C. Flinn III for the 8th and final time. I'll be curious to see if it looks any different with all these new people behind the camera.

Okay I'll be rewatching, recapping, reacting and dropping massive SPOILERS for this entire episode, and some earlier episodes as well. I'll not be spoiling anything that comes next however.

Star Trek: Discovery - Season 4 Review, Part 1

This week on Sci-Fi Adventures, I'm writing about the fourth season of Star Trek: Discovery! Because writing about Star Trek is extremely on-brand for science fiction website and I'm a bit of a fan. Plus it's traditional for the fourth series of a Star Trek series to be the peak of its quality, and I like quality.

It's also traditional for Star Trek series to burn through showrunners early on, and Discovery has definitely lived up to that tradition. Last season featured the third transition of power, as Michelle Paradise took over as showrunner (or co-showrunner with Alex Kurtzman) and sailed the series in yet another wildly different direction. She's still in the captain's chair for season four however, and it and seems like Discovery may have actually settled down a bit.

There were two major changes behind the scenes this season though: everyone had to deal with COVID-19 protocols, and they got a new AR wall to play with like the one used on The Mandalorian. So there was much less location filming, but they had better fake locations.

Okay, I've written reviews here for these four episodes:

• 4-01 - Kobayashi Maru
  
• 4-02 - Anomaly
  
• 4-03 - Choose to Live
  
• 4-04 - All is Possible

There will be MASSIVE SPOILERS for these stories (and lesser spoilers for earlier Trek stories) so I guess this is mostly for people who's already seen and formed their own opinion about the episodes and wants to read someone else's thoughts.

Star Trek: Prodigy - Season 1 Review, Part 1

This week on Sci-Fi Adventures, I'm writing about the first three episodes of the first ever 3D animated Star Trek series, Star Trek: Prodigy! Well, maybe they're actually just two episodes, as it starts off with a double length story. Either way, what you're getting here is:

• 1-01 - Lost and Found (1)
  
• 1-02 - Lost and Found (2)
• 1-03 - Starstruck

Star Trek is far from the first sci-fi franchise to get a kiddified animated spin-off (RoboCop got two of them!), though Prodigy seems to be more of a Star Wars: The Clone Wars than a Stargate: Infinity, as it's apparently considered to be in-continuity. That means if they blow up someone's homeworld in it, it has to be blown up in all the serious grown-up live-action series too, that's just how it works. Prodigy's also far from the first Trek cartoon, though it does something the other series have been avoiding until now: it stars a crew of literal children. This is a very different approach to the one Star Trek: The Animated Series took, as the series deliberately avoided putting kids on the ship, trusting that young viewers would be able to latch onto the adult heroes just fine. I have to admit, it's not exactly filling me with hope and enthusiasm, but I'm trying to keep an open mind.

Okay, there'll be SPOILERS here for the two/three episodes and probably some earlier Trek series as well (like Discovery), but I'm going to act like I don't know a thing about what happens next. Because I actually wrote these reviews right after watching the episodes for the first time and I genuinely had no clue where it was going.

Babylon 5 5-15: Darkness Ascending

Episode:

103

|

Writer:

J. Michael Straczynski

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Director:

Janet Greek

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Air Date:

03-Jun-1998

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This week on Sci-Fi Adventures I'm watching Babylon 5 season 5 episode 15: Darkness Ascending. A bit of a miserable title for this one. Also most of the time the series puts its episode titles over an establishing shot of the station, but twice this season they've put it over one of the characters instead and both times it's been Garibaldi. So there's some immensely pointless trivia for you.

The episode was directed by Janet Greek, which is a name that showed up a lot in seasons one and two, especially at the start of the most important episodes, but then disappeared entirely for seasons three and four. This is her third episode this season though and she'll be back for two more stories before it's all over.

Warning: I'll be recapping, screencapping, reacting to and commenting on this entire episode, so there will be SPOILERS below. There may also be spoilers for earlier episodes too. There will not be spoilers for later ones.

Battlestar Galactica (2004): Miniseries, Part 3

This week on Sci-Fi Adventures, I've nearly finished writing about the 2003 Battlestar Galactica miniseries. This article has three parts and you're looking at the last of them. If you want to go back to PART ONE or PART TWO just click the appropriate text. Speaking of appropriate text, I was a bit surprised that they kept the original 1978 Battlestar Galactica logo for their gritty serious reimagining. I suppose that would've been one of the few things it had in common with the other attempts to bring the series back.

Original star Richard Hatch had been trying to get a proper continuation of the classic series going and in 1998 he filmed a 30 minute pilot movie called The Second Coming to pitch his concept to Universal and show it off to sci-fi conventions. The conventions apparently loved it, but Universal wasn't interested. Then a few years later Bryan Singer and Tom DeSanto began work on another reboot idea that made it as far as pre-production. The 9/11 attacks along with Singer's commitments to the movie X2: X-Men United jammed a stick through that project's spokes. It was going to be a co-production with Fox and when it failed they decided to go with another sci-fi series instead... called Firefly.

So fans could have gotten a continuation of the original Battlestar Galactica story, it was actually in development, but instead they got a brand new story that used the basic premise as a starting point. I can see why this series was a little bit divisive at the time.

There will be SPOILERS here for BSG '78: Saga of a Star World and this BSG Miniseries. I'll won't talk about the later episodes, though I might mention at some point that the series has a controversial ending. I won't say what happens, just that it's controversial.

Battlestar Galactica (2004): Miniseries, Part 2

Hi! This week on Sci-Fi Adventures, I'm still working my way through the epic reimagined Battlestar Galactica miniseries. It's only got two parts but they're really long parts so I haven't quite finished the first one yet. I mean it's three hours long, so that's basically four regular episodes when you think about it.

Just to make things confusing this article has three parts and you're on part two. (If you want to go back to PART ONE just click the text).

Here's some trivia about the Battlestar Galactica reimagining: it was maybe the most expensive show that Sci Fi (later renamed Syfy) had produced, and it was the third most watched program on the channel. The first half got 3.9 million viewers and the second got 4.5 million, which put it roughly where Star Trek: Enterprise was at the time. For comparison, the original Battlestar Galactica movie, Saga of Star World, got an estimated 65 million viewers back in 1978. But it aired on ABC so it had a bit of an advantage there.

Alright, there will be SPOILERS for BSG '78: Saga of a Star World and this BSG Miniseries that I am currently writing about. I'll not say a thing about what happens next however.

Battlestar Galactica (2004): Miniseries, Part 1

Writer:

Ronald D. Moore

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Director:

Michael Rymer

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Air Date:

08-Dec-2003

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This week on Sci-Fi Adventures, I'm watching the two-part Battlestar Galactica remake miniseries. The parts are sometimes called Night One and Night Two but on my DVD they were edited together to form one 3 hour movie. Wait, 3 hours? I struggle enough writing about 90 minute movies! This is going to absolutely destroy me.

Okay, okay, I can do this, I'll just split it into three parts covering an hour each, it'll be fine. Oh by the way, I've called it 'Battlestar Galactica (2004)' up there, because that's the year the actual TV series started airing, and that's what everyone calls it. Even though this actually came out at the end of 2003.

The miniseries was directed by Michael Rymer, who I don't actually know much about. He'd just done that Queen of the Damned movie apparently (which was a sequel to Interview with the Vampire). Writer Ronald D. Moore, on the other hand, is a much more familiar name to me. His writing career began when he joined Star Trek: The Next Generation in season 3, then he wrote a couple of Trek movies and moved on to Deep Space Nine. It was all going well until he joined Star Trek: Voyager, which was a series about a group of people trapped together on a spaceship with limited resources on a long journey to a shining planet called Earth. Basically, he didn't get on with the way his former friend Brannon Braga was running things and he quit after two episodes, taking with him a whole lot of ideas on how the series could've been improved.

Four years later he got another chance to tell a story about a starship crew on a journey, only this time he was in the captain's seat, and this is what we got. It's a more naturalistic and grounded series designed to appeal to viewers who'd gotten tired of cheesy Star Trek space adventures with reset buttons and Starfleet protocols, but didn't want Farscape's goofy characters or Firefly's playful dialogue.

This BSG is also a reimagining of a series from 1978 and seeing as I just watched the pilot movie, Saga of a Star World, I figured I might as well compare the two as I go. This means that there will be a few SPOILERS for Saga of a Star World mixed in with a ridiculous amount of spoilers for this miniseries. Seriously, I'll be going through it scene by scene. I'll not spoil a thing about what happens later though. In fact I won't even drop cheeky hints, because screw cheeky hints.

Star Trek: Lower Decks - Season 2 Review - Part 2

Today on Sci-Fi Adventures, I'm writing about the second half of Star Trek: Lower Decks' second season. If you'd rather go back to the first block of reviews and read about the first five episodes, then you should click THIS LINK.

Star Trek series often have a big shakeup behind the scenes during their first few seasons... but not this time. They didn't even replace the showrunner! In fact I can't think of much to talk about in this intro so I'll just mention that there'll be SPOILERS for this season and previous Star Trek series, and get on with it.

Star Trek: Lower Decks - Season 2 Review - Part 1

This week on Sci-Fi Adventures I'm writing about veteran Star Trek series Lower Decks, which returned for a second season recently to show newbies like Prodigy and Strange New Worlds how it's done.

Well I say "recently" but the second season started in August 2021, so it's actually been almost a year now. Funny thing is, I actually wrote about each episode immediately after watching them, so I've just been sitting on these reviews all this time. It never felt like the right time to finish the article and get it published, because I had all those other series to write about first. Netflix's live-action Cowboy Bebop remake took priority!

SPOILER WARNING: I'll be spoiling the events of every episode I review and probably something from earlier Trek episodes as well.

Babylon 5 5-14: Meditations on the Abyss

Episode:

102

|

Writer:

J. Michael Straczynski

|

Director:

Mike Vejar

|

Air Date:

27-Mar-1998

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This week on Sci-Fi Adventures I'm watching Babylon 5 season 5 episode 14: Meditations on the Abyss. I'm not sure about that title as meditation isn't typically all that thrilling. Though abysses can be dramatic sometimes I suppose, especially when there's a risk of all your hopes and dreams falling in. James Cameron even made a film about one once.

The episode was written by showrunner J. Michael Straczynski, though that goes without saying really. There are just eight episodes left after this and they're all by him. This was the final episode to be directed by Mike Vejar however, which is a shame because he's a contender to be the greatest director B5 ever had. He did come back for the movies and the Crusade spin-off though.

SPOILER WARNING: this is episode 102, which means there are 101 other episodes that I could spoil at any time, and I'm definitely going to spoil this one. The particulars of subsequent episodes will remain undisclosed however.

Battlestar Galactica (1978) 01-03: Saga of a Star World, Part 3

Today on Sci-Fi Adventures, I'm writing about the last third of the Battlestar Galactica: Saga of a Star World TV movie. Well, roughly a third. I haven't measured it to the minute and I have no idea how the film was split when it was divided into three parts for syndication.

If you want to go back to PART ONE or PART TWO you can click either of those links.

I'm sorry it doesn't actually say "Battlestar Galactica" up there, by the way. The words fly onto the screen one at a time, so this is the best I could do without using a distracting looping video. It's a good title though I reckon; it's dramatic without being too cheesy, distinctive enough that it'll be at the top of the results in a Google search, and it just sounds nice out loud. Lots of 'a' sounds in a row.

SPOILER WARNING: I'll be giving away basically everything that happens in the movie.

Battlestar Galactica (1978) 01-03: Saga of a Star World, Part 2

Today on Sci-Fi Adventures, I'm still working my way through the original 1978 Battlestar Galactica movie, also known as Saga of a Star World. If you want to go back to the start of the film, click this link: PART ONE.

The film was written by Glen Larson, who was some kind of series-creating machine at the time. Battlestar Galactica was the 6th series he'd created (out of a total of 22), and his previous series, Sword of Justice had started airing the previous week. I feel like he's mostly known for Quincy, M.E., Buck Rogers in the 25th Century, Magnum P.I. and Knight Rider, but I might be wrong and there could be a massive fanbase for Manimal, Automan and Night Man.

The film's credited to director Richard Colla, but Glen Larson had a bit of a rift with him due to creative differences halfway through filming and he was replaced by Alan Levi. The reason why Levi wasn't credited on the film was Larson had a bit of a rift with him as well. Apparently Colla shot about 25 days of footage and Levi then shot another 27 days, which is quite a lot for TV. As far as I know the average at the time was about 7 days per episode, so they put a lot of time into this.

SPOILER WARNING: Every single thing that happens in this movie is going to get spoiled.

Battlestar Galactica (1978) 01-03: Saga of a Star World, Part 1

Episode:

1-3

|

Writer:

Glen A. Larson

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Director:

Richard A. Colla and Alan J. Levi

|

Air Date:

17-Sep-1978

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This week on Sci-Fi Adventures I'm watching the epic first episode of the original 1978 Battlestar Galactica series! Well, first movie really. I've called it episodes 1-3 because it was later split for syndication, but it's all one film.

Battlestar Galactica was originally supposed to be a miniseries made of just three stories: the Saga of a Star World TV movie, The Lost Planet of the Gods, and The Gun on Ice Planet Zero, but things escalated quickly and they found themselves rushing to make another 17 episodes. And then it got cancelled after one season. And then it got a sequel series. And then that got cancelled after half a season. It makes Lost in Space and Star Trek's modest three season runs seem pretty lengthy by comparison, especially as they'd been on repeat in syndication for years.

Though at this point in 1978 there hadn't been a science fiction series like this airing new episodes on US TV in a long while. Space 1999 had just finished in the UK, plus we had Blake's 7, and Doctor Who was on Tom Baker's fifth season (they'd just reached The Ribos Operation), but there was a real absence of glossy expensive American sci-fi. Fortunately Star Wars happened, and executives had suddenly become a lot more interested in stories about spaceships and ray guns... like the one that creator Glen Larson had tried to pitch a decade earlier.

There was a bit of interest by the public as well, as Saga of a Star World aired to an estimated audience of 65 million viewers! That's about five times as many as watched Star Trek's The Man Trap 12 years earlier, and four times as many as watched TNG's Encounter at Farpoint 9 years later... I think. Basically, it was wildly successful. In fact it was later released in cinemas as a theatrical movie... because it cost a damn fortune and they wanted to get some money back. I've seen a few numbers given for its budget and one of the lowest is $7 million (the poster says $14 million). To give that some context, Star Wars: A New Hope cost $11 million the previous year.

Okay, this is basically going to be a reaction video in text form, with comments under screencaps. That means there'll be SPOILERS for the entire feature-length story. I won't be spoiling the rest of the season however (because I have basically no idea what happens in it) and I won't spoil any story content in the 2004 remake series either. The movie is two and a quarter hours long so I'll be splitting this article into three roughly equal parts that probably won't line up with when the syndicated episodes start and end... because I don't actually know. I'm not exactly a classic BSG expert I'm afraid.

Babylon 5 5-13: The Corps is Mother, The Corps is Father

Episode:

101

|

Writer:

J. Michael Straczynski

|

Director:

Stephen Furst

|

Air Date:

15-Apr-1998

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This week on Sci-Fi Adventures, I'm finally getting back to Babylon 5! It's been a whole month since I wrote about a B5 episode, but I guess that's kind of inevitable now that I'm alternating between Sci-Fi Adventures and Super Adventures every week. Plus this isn't the only science fiction series I'm writing about.

I've failed to find any evidence of this to back me up, but I remember once reading a magazine which called this episode The Crops is a Mother, the Crops is a Father and that's always stuck with me. Even though actual content of the story has faded from my brain.

Incidentally its actual name is the longest title in Babylon 5's whole run, with an astonishing 8 words and 32 letters (and a comma)! That's three times your average sci-fi title... probably (I haven't actually checked them all). I can tell you that it's beating Doctor Who's longest title, The Doctor, the Widow and the Wardrobe, by one whole letter. But it's trailing behind Deep Space Nine's Looking for par'Mach in All the Wrong Places (36 letters), Discovery's The Butcher's Knife Cares Not for the Lamb's Cry (38 letters) and Star Trek's For the World is Hollow and I Have Touched the Sky (40 letters).

I tried looking at some other series too but I got as far as Farscape's Self-Inflicted Wounds, Part 1: Coulda, Woulda, Shoulda (43 letters) before deciding that any longer titles should be recategorized as short stories and giving up.

This was directed by Vir actor Stephen Furst, who seemed to be showrunner jms's go-to for weird format-breaking episodes, as he also did The Illusion of Truth and The Deconstruction of Falling Stars. I suppose the series must get more normal after this as this was his final episode as director. Though he did direct two episodes of the spin-off series Crusade.

SPOILER WARNING: I'm going to spoil the entire episode scene by scene and I'll probably spoil something from earlier episodes as well. I'll not say a thing about what happens afterwards however.