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.