Babylon 5 4-06: Into the Fire

Episode:

72

|

Writer:

J. Michael Straczynski

|

Director:

Kevin James Dobson

|

Air Date:

03-Feb-1997

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This week on Sci-Fi Adventures, I'm writing about Babylon 5 episode 4-06: Into the Fire, which continues on from the cliffhanger ending of the previous story: Out of the Frying Pan. Actually the last episode was called The Long Night, but my title's better.

Into the Fire was the second and final episode directed by Kevin James Dobson, who had previously directed Whatever Happened to Mr. Garibaldi? That was perhaps the weakest episode of season four so far, but that's like saying it was the worst choc-chip cookie in the pack. Okay, I'm going to have to take these off my desk or else all my metaphors are going to end up being cookie related.

Anyway, here's a fact you'll never read anywhere else, because who would ever care: the week after The Long Night and Into the Fire were broadcast, Deep Space Nine aired its own epic two-parter called In Purgatory's Shadow and By Inferno's Light. Bit of a 'darkness leading to fire' theme going on in both series. Voyager tried to join in with Jekyll & Hyde Doctor story Darkling, but maybe it would've been better if it hadn't.

This recap/review will feature SPOILERS for this episode and the series up to this point, but I'll not spoil anything that comes after it, so it's first-time viewer safe.

Babylon 5 4-02: Whatever Happened to Mr. Garibaldi?

Episode:

68

|

Writer:

J. Michael Straczynski

|

Director:

Kevin James Dobson

|

Air Date:

11-Nov-1996

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This week on Sci-Fi Adventures it's the second episode of Babylon 5's fourth season: Whatever Happened to Mr. Garibaldi?

WHtMG? is the second episode title so far to feature a character's name in it, after season three's Sic Transit Vir, and... hang on, why has the title text switched to lower case? None of the other episodes have had lower case titles so far. I wish I could check to see if it looked like this when it aired to find out if this feature's exclusive to the widescreen release.

It's the first of two episodes by Australian director Kevin James Dobson, who started directing in the 70s and worked on a ton of series I've never even heard of. Probably because they're mostly Australian. There doesn't seem to be a lot of science fiction on his resume though from what I can tell. Writer J. Michael Straczynski had done a bit of sci-fi by this point though; the previous episode was the 50th script he'd written for the series and by this point he'd written 30 stories in a row. He then went and did another 30 after this (including two movies) before Neil Gaiman turned up to give him the week off.

You should be aware that all my recaps and reviews are generally first-time viewer friendly, meaning there'll be SPOILERS for this episode and the ones leading up to it, but nothing for stories that come afterwards. I won't be ruining Babylon 5 for anyone if I can help it.