Star Trek: Discovery - Season 4 Review, Part 3

This week on Sci-Fi Adventures, it's the climactic resolution to Star Trek: Discovery's fourth season!

In fact I'll be covering four episodes, telling the story of Discovery's journey... to do stuff. I'm not going to spoil anything in this intro. I don't have to, the episode titles are doing that for me.

• 4-10 - The Galactic Barrier
  
• 4-11 - Rosetta
  
• 4-12 - Species Ten-C
  
• 4-13 - Coming Home
  

There will be SPOILERS past this point though, for all four episodes and previous Trek stories. I won't spoil a thing about what happens next however. Mostly because I don't want to, but also because season 5 hasn't aired yet at the time I'm writing this and no one really knows what happens next.

Star Trek: Discovery - Season 4 Review, Part 2

This week on Sci-Fi Adventures, I've finally reached the middle of Star Trek: Discovery's fourth season! Just five months later than planned. It's the season about the DMA blowing up planets if you've forgotten.

I'm sorry I disappeared for so long, I was supposed to get this article finished and published in September last year, but I decided to focus on getting Babylon 5's last season done instead and messed up all my plans. Then it just carried on slipping down my list of priorities, even though it was next in line to get published. Funny thing is, I wrote these reviews back in December 2021 right after watching each episode and all they needed was a bit of tidying up to make them readable.

Okay, most Trek series have 10 episode seasons these days and Discovery's going to join them this year, but season four featured 13 and that doesn't divide evenly into three articles. At first I thought about writing about 4.33 episodes in every article, but I figured it'd be simpler to just add a bonus review to this one and write about 5 this time:

• 4-05 - The Examples
  
• 4-06 - Stormy Weather
  
• 4-07 - ...But to Connect
  
• 4-08 - All In
  
• 4-09 - Rubicon

There will be huge SPOILERS for each of these episodes, and earlier series, but if you're watching the Discovery for the first time you don't have to worry about me spoiling anything that happens afterwards. I hadn't even seen the later episodes when I wrote these reviews.

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.

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.

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.

Star Wars: The Book of Boba Fett - Season 1? Review

This week on Sci-Fi Adventures, I'm writing a bit about the first seven episodes of Star Wars: The Book of Boba Fett! This could be season 1 or it could be a one-off miniseries, I have no idea, but I'm pretty sure it's not actually a book.

Boba Fett was first introduced in the Star Wars Holiday Special all the way back in 1978, so he's been waiting a while now to get his own series. There was a Boba Fett movie announced in 2013, but director Josh Trank's issues on Fantastic Four led to him quitting before he could get fired, and it ultimately never happened. In retrospect that might have actually been a good thing, considering that the Star Wars TV series have been getting more love from their viewers than the movies lately.

This is a spin-off from The Mandalorian by the same creator, Iron Man director Jon Favreau, with Desperado and Sin City director Robert Rodriguez directing half the episodes, so there's a fair chance it might be good. Or it could be a massive disaster like the Star Wars: Resistance cartoon. It came out months ago so I guess everyone already knows! All my reviews were written directly after watching each episode though so any apparently cluelessness is genuine.

There will be SPOILERS for The Book of Boba Fett, The Mandalorian and probably lots of other Star Wars below. But I won't spoil anything that comes afterwards, in chronological or production order. In fact I can't spoil anything made after it, as right now this is still the newest Star Wars.

Cowboy Bebop (2021) - Series Review

This week on Sci-Fi Adventures, I'm writing about the first season of Netflix's live-action Cowboy Bebop! It's also the only season, as the series was cancelled after just three weeks. They worked pretty damn fast there. Much faster than me, I only just finished watching it all.

I have no idea what the viewing figures were like, but I do know how it was rated on sites like IMDb, Rotten Tomatoes and Metacritic, and it didn't do great. With critics or users. But I've already written about episode one, Cowboy Gospel, and I really liked it, so is there a chance I'm going to like the rest of it as well? Or am I going to witness it crashing down and exploding into flames? Keep reading to find out!

The season has 10 episodes and I've already seen one of them, so I'll be going through the other 9 stories one by one and then I'll write a bit of about the series overall at the end. There will be SPOILERS here, for this series and maybe the anime as well. What I can remember of it at least.

Doctor Who (2005): Series 13 - Flux Review

This week on Sci-Fi Adventures, I'm writing about the 13th series of the Doctor Who revival, which has been given the shiny golden title of Flux. It's pretty unusual for an entire season to have a name and it's also unusual for it to be one long continuing story like this. You'd have to dig pretty deep into Doctor Who history to find anything like it, to seasons like The Key to Time in the 70s and The Trial of a Time Lord in the 80s. Honestly, I'm in the mood for some proper cliffhangers so this works for me.

Incidentally, The Key to Time was also the last time we got a six-part serial like this, even though they'd been part of the Doctor Who format since series 1. They were around for 15 years, then disappeared for the next four decades, but showrunner Chris Chibnall has finally brought them back! Well he's brought one back anyway; what happens next is out of his hands as this is his and Jodie Whittaker's final series. It's not their last story, they've still got a year of specials after this, but it is their final full season. Jodie Whittaker decided not to try to beat Tom Baker's record as the Doctor who spent the most years on the show. Though her run will span from 2018 to 2022, five years, so technically she's in joint second place with Jon Pertwee!

Alright I've already written enough about chapter one: The Halloween Apocalypse, so I'll give the other five episodes a bit of a review each and then wrap this up by assessing the season overall. There will be SPOILERS.

Cowboy Bebop (2021) 1-01: Cowboy Gospel (Quick Review)

Episode:

1

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Writer:

Christopher Yost

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Director:

Alex Garcia Lopez

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Air Date:

19-Nov-2021

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This week on Sci-Fi Adventures I'm watching the first episode of Cowboy Bebop, again. Though this time it's the first episode of the long-awaited live-action version that finally debuted on Netflix a week ago. This would've actually been filmed at some point in 2019 I think, before John Cho's knee injury put the brakes on filming for 6 months. Still, the timing's not that bad, as it's only two months shy of coming out 20 years after the first English airing in 2001.

Look, they've given me an actual title card to use for the picture, just like the anime did! Though this time the background text is Japanese and the foreground text is English, which is a nice touch. They've also pretty much recreated the classic opening credits sequence and they've flipped the script on that as well. My ability to read katana hasn't improved any in the last few days but I'm fairly sure this says "Cowboy Gospel", as in gospel music. The original series featured music-related episode titles and they're carrying on the tradition here. That's one of the few things that Cowboy Bebop has in common with Castlevania games.

The original anime series lasted for just 26 episodes and a movie, mostly because the creator, Shinichirō Watanabe, didn't want the series to become something like Star Trek that just keeps going on and on forever. Now we're in 2021 and Star Trek and Cowboy Bebop are both airing new episodes this month, so I guess that plan failed. We're also getting new The Expanse, Lost in Space and Star Wars soon, plus there's a new Blade Runner anime, so it's a pretty great time to be a science fiction fan. Well, assuming any of them are any good.

There will be SPOILERS beyond this point, but not as many as you might expect. The entire season dropped on Netflix at once, so I'm sure most people who've seen episode 1 will have also seen episode 10 by now, but I'm watching through them slowly and I don't actually know where the season goes from here. Plus I've forgotten most of the original anime series, so I can't spoil much of that either.

Doctor Who (2005) 13-01: Flux - Chapter One: The Halloween Apocalypse

Episode:

863

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Writer:

Chris Chibnall

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Director:

Jamie Magnus Stone

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Air Date:

31-Oct-2021

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Hi, Sci-Fi Adventures should still be on a break, but I felt the urge to write something about Doctor Who... because Russell T Davies is coming back! Can't say I saw that coming. I'm not sure his next run is going to be the second coming of the Eccleston/Tennant era of the show, and I'm not sure I even want it to be, but I do feel cautiously optimistic about it. More optimistic than I am about Chris Chibnall's final series anyway.

Though with this series the Doctor Who revival does finally pulls ahead of Red Dwarf, which aired its Series XII in 2017 (even though it's really only had 11 seasons). Even more importantly, this is the first season since Doctor Who began where the Doctor's number is the same as the season number! (Neither of these two facts are important).

Series 13 is going to be massively cut down compared to a normal Doctor Who season, as COVID meant they were only able to produce six episodes, but for the first time since Trial of a Time Lord in 1986 we're getting one story playing out over an entire series! This is also the first six-parter since the Fourth Doctor's The Armageddon Factor in 1979, though the episodes are double the length these days.

To be honest I was seriously considering skipping the rest of Chibnall's run and waiting for the RTD episodes, but when I learned how short it was going to be I figured I might as well stick with it. It's the best marketing they could've done! Though the Doctor Who team also tried a bunch of other clever tricks to get me to watch, like projecting a spaceship in the sky and deleting their social media accounts. Plus they've brought in a new companion from Liverpool! Tom Baker and Liz Sladen were both from Liverpool as well, so I'm considering this to be a good sign.

What am I expecting from series 13? Fewer people on screen, less location filming in South Africa, and a frustratingly reactive and ineffective Doctor. I'm not expecting a regeneration though as I know we've got three Jodie Whittaker specials to come after this. I'm not expecting to enjoy it much, but I wouldn't mind being surprised.

Okay I'll be screencapping the episode in its entirety and writing some commentary underneath so this review is going to be full of SPOILERS.

Doctor Who (2005) - New Year's Day 2021: Revolution of the Daleks

Episode:

862

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Writer:

Chris Chibnall

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Director:

Lee Haven Jones

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Air Date:

01-Jan-2021

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This week on Sci-Fi Adventures, I'm writing about Doctor Who again! I felt like I was probably done with the series after that last season, at least until Chris Chibnall stepped down as showrunner, but I needed to write about something new to break up all the Babylon 5 I've been reviewing and this one-off special aired at just the right time for me.

I mean I didn't hate series 12, but every now and then Doctor Who makes a real effort to sever my emotional investment in it and The Timeless Child did a better job than most episodes. Plus after two seasons of Chibnall Who I'm well aware of what to expect from it and I know it's not really my kind of thing.

Revolution of the Daleks is following in the tradition of classic 'R of the Daleks' stories like Resurrection of the Daleks (Davros tries to cure a Dalek virus), Revelation of the Daleks (Davros runs a funeral home) and Remembrance of the Daleks (Dalek vs Dalek in WW2 London). But not the last New Year's special, Resolution, as they forgot to include the 'of the Daleks' part for that one. Its title was announced before it aired, but it wasn't shown in-episode until the end credits so it seemed like they were going to reveal it was really Resolution of the Daleks... but it wasn't.

This time the title's up at the front of the episode, where it usually is, and... that's about all the trivia I can think of to write about here. Anyway, this I'm going to do the full recap and commentary thing with this one, so there'll be SPOILERS for the entire story, and perhaps other stories too.