Babylon 5 4-18: Intersections in Real Time

Episode:

84

|

Writer:

J. Michael Straczynski

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Director:

John Lafia

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Air Date:

16-Jun-1997

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That's a nice looking title image up there I reckon, with a good render of the station. Shame it's a complete fiction. The actual screencap was bit too spoilery to be displayed on the front page of my site where anyone could see it, so I decided that bending the truth a little by Photoshopping my own one would be thematically appropriate for this story.

This week on Sci-Fi Adventures, I'm watching Babylon 5's Intersections in Real Time, perhaps the only episode of television to get its name from its own commercial breaks. Well not the act breaks specifically, but the way the episode is sliced up by them to form blocks of story that we intersect with. The 'real time' part of the title is perhaps more self evident:

This is episode 84 of Babylon 5, which doesn't seem like a milestone at first glance, but the 60s Lost in Space series only managed 83 episodes during its three season run. Which means that if you'd made a list of the longest running US space opera TV series of all time at this point in 1997 it would've looked something like this:

1. Star Trek: The Next Generation (176 episodes)
2. Star Trek: Deep Space Nine (122 episodes)
3. Babylon 5 (84 episodes)
4. Lost in Space (83 episodes)
5. Star Trek (79 episodes)
6. Star Trek: Voyager (67 episodes)
7. Buck Rogers in the 25th Century (37 episodes)
8. Battlestar Galactica (24 episodes)
9. Space: Above and Beyond (23 episodes)
10. Galactica 1980 (10 episodes)

Third place!

Non-Star Trek US space sci-fi had much more success afterwards, with series like Andromeda (110 episodes) and Battlestar Galactica 2004 (76). But seeing as only Stargate SG-1 (214), Deep Space Nine (176), and Voyager (172) have beaten Babylon 5's final score since, the series is still top 5 to this day!

SPOILER WARNING: I won't spoil anything that happens after this story, but everything else is fair game.

Babylon 5 4-16: The Exercise of Vital Powers

Episode:

82

|

Writer:

J. Michael Straczynski

|

Director:

John Lafia

|

Air Date:

02-Jun-1997

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This week on Sci-Fi Adventures, it's The Exercise of Vital Powers, or maybe just Exercise of Vital Powers? IMDb agrees with the title on screen but it seems like everything else, including the DVD box, put the 'The' at the start. I like it better with the 'The' so that's what I'm going with.

It's a nice title I reckon, and it gets explained during the episode so I don't have to write anything about the meaning here. That means I've got more room to mention that this is director John Lafia's second episode, after the excellent The Long Night. He only directed one more episode of the series and it's coming up very soon.

We're in the last third of the season now, by the way. Seven episodes left to go. If all goes to plan I should be writing a season four review by the end of next month.

SPOILER WARNING: I'm going to go and type out everything that happens during this whole episode and that's inevitably going to spoil the series so far as well. But if you're watching through Babylon 5 for the first time you'll be fine, as I won't mention anything that happens next.

Babylon 5 4-05: The Long Night

Episode:

71

|

Writer:

J. Michael Straczynski

|

Director:

John Lafia

|

Air Date:

27-Jan-1997

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This week on Sci-Fi Adventures I'm writing words about Babylon 5 episode The Long Night, and if you're struggling to remember exactly which one that is, I think I have an idea why. Seems that showrunner Joe Straczynski had a fondness for combining the word 'long' with a word related to night in his titles. We've already had The Long Dark and The Long, Twilight Struggle and there's a Very Long Night yet to come in season 5. There's also The Long Road in the spin-off series Crusade, but that's only halfway there.

They got another new director for this one: John Lafia, who directed the movies Child's Play 2 and Man's Best Friend, and the live-action video game Corpse Killer. I can see why they thought 'this is the guy we need to direct our serious science fiction drama series'. He'd go on to direct just two more episodes of season four and then after that he was gone. The thing is though, they're both bloody good episodes, and maybe this will be too!

Oh by the way, this was the first Babylon 5 episode to air in 1997. The series had been up against two Star Trek shows for a while by this point, and by 1997 Deep Space Nine was halfway through its fifth season and Voyager was halfway through season three. Meanwhile The X-Files was starting season four and Red Dwarf had returned after a long absence for its disappointing series seven. Plus two massive cult sci-fi shows were about to start: Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Stargate: SG-1 (Buffy had a robot in its first season, it totally counts as sci-fi). There were a few other sci-fi series starting this year as well, such as Deepwater Black, Gene Roddenberry's Earth: Final Conflict and the legendary Lexx. Oh, also two time travelling cop shows: Crime Traveller and Timecop... which both only lasted one season.

Warning: there will be SPOILERS beyond this point for this episode and earlier stories, but if you're watching the series for the first time you don't have to worry about me spoiling anything that happens later.