Recent Posts

      RECENT REVIEWS
   
DW23 2-04: Lucky Day
 
DW05 1-07: The Long Game
 
DW23 2-05: The Story & the Engine
 
DW05 1-08: Father's Day

Sunday, 5 May 2019

Star Trek: Discovery - Season 2 Review - Part 4

Today on Sci-Fi Adventures, I've ran out of Star Trek: Discovery episodes to review, so now I'm reviewing the series' second season overall. That's 12 or so hours of television, so it's lucky for me I've got a good memory. Wait, I forgot to include the Short Treks in that... or shouldn't they count?

Star Trek spin-offs have rarely had much luck with their second seasons, despite the 'Growing the Beard' trope getting its name from Will Riker's season 2 look, as at this point they were typically still sorting themselves out both in front of and behind the scenes. Sure their first seasons were often worse, but Trek's sophomore seasons have been plenty awkward in their own right. Discovery found itself with a new showrunner five episodes into the season, so it's been living up to Trek tradition behind the camera, but was its second year enough of a mess on screen for it to truly be considered proper Star Trek?

Honestly I don't think Discovery is set up in a way that allows it to fail as spectacularly as previous series, as it has much shorter seasons and it's too serialised. Sure it can put out some rubbish, but it just doesn't have what it takes to produce episodes as legendarily terrible as The Omega Glory, The Outrageous Okona, Threshold or A Night in Sickbay. And unless the budget gets slashed, there's no way it'll ever inflict a Shades of Gray style clip show on us either.

Though does that mean this has actually has a shot at being the best second season a Trek series has ever had? Is this block of episodes really capable of going up against the seasons that gave us The Trouble with Tribbles, The Measure of a Man, Whispers, Projections, and Regeneration? I am going to answer that question for you! Eventually. After I've rambled on about Michael Burnham and time travel for ages first.

I'll also be dropping SPOILERS for the whole season, from Brother to Such Sweet Sorrow, Part 2, and maybe some older Trek as well, so if you haven't seen it yet you should probably go watch it first. Unless you don't care about having the whole plot ruined for you; I know some people aren't really that bothered.

Friday, 3 May 2019

Star Trek: Discovery - Season 2 Review - Part 3

Today on Sci-Fi Adventures, I'm reviewing the second half of Star Trek: Discovery's second season! That's If Memory Serves to Such Sweet Sorrow, Part 2, all created during Alex Kurtzman's time as the show's showrunner. He was already the executive producer, plus he's the guy in charge of all the other new Trek projects being set up, but after five episodes he took the reins on Discovery personally, like an admiral or commodore taking command of a starship. Which usually goes pretty well in Star Trek to my recollection.

All these reviews were written right after I watched the episode and the next time trailer, so you're getting my first reactions and genuine predictions. You're getting SPOILERS as well, and not just for Discovery as I'm considering the rest of Trek to be fair game as well. Especially the Kelvin Timeline movies.

Wednesday, 1 May 2019

Star Trek: Discovery - Season 2 Review - Part 2

Today on Sci-Fi Adventures, it's my second part of my Star Trek: Discovery season 2 review; the part where I actually start to review actual episodes of Discovery's actual second season instead of the Short Treks! 

Below this introduction you'll find reviews for the first seven episodes of the second season, Brother to Light and Shadows, basically covering the time that season one showrunners Gretchen J. Berg and Aaron Harberts still shared the captain's chair. Before they were kicked out for yelling at writers and spending too much money, or whatever actually happened there.

These reviews were all written right after I watched each episode, so you're getting my first impressions and legitimate cluelessness. You're also getting SPOILERS for each episode and I'm considering the rest of Trek to be fair game as well. Plus somewhere in here you'll find a free bonus spoiler for the Ray Bradbury story A Sound of Thunder (hint: it's in my review for The Sound of Thunder).

Monday, 29 April 2019

Star Trek: Discovery - Season 2 Review - Part 1

Today on Sci-Fi Adventures, I vaguely remember mentioning that I wasn't going to be reviewing Star Trek: Discovery's second season, but I went and did it anyway. I can't help myself.

Nothing's been going exactly as I planned to be honest. I decided to nick the format from my Doctor Who review marathon from last year and cover a whole season of episodes in a page of micro-reviews to save myself a lot of work. Unfortunately my brain didn't cooperate and hundreds of words came spilling out as usual, and I realised that if I put all the text I'd written into one long article it would be one long article.

So I've split the season up into four parts instead, which is still considerably less than the 15 it could've been. Well, 19 actually, as this first part features tiny reviews for the four tiny Short Treks that came out before the season began. I'm not sure if Short Treks is technically a separate series or not, but the episodes have a similar title sequence, they feature Discovery characters, two are set on the ship itself and they've all got the same style. So I'm including them.

I actually wrote these reviews up right after watching each episode, with no knowledge about what was going to happen next beyond what was in the trailers, so I can promise genuine confusion and wrong guesses. This also means there'll be SPOILERS for each episode, and the Trek that precedes them, but I won't be spoiling what happens next. Because at the time I didn't know.

Monday, 22 April 2019

Babylon 5 2-19: Divided Loyalties

Episode:31|Writer:J. Michael Straczynski|Air Date:11-Oct-1995

This week on Sci-Fi Adventures, I am once again writing about a second season Babylon 5 episode. Not many of them left now though. This one's called Divided Loyalties and it's episode 19 of 22.

Here, have some TV scheduling trivia to make everything else I write afterwards seem more interesting by comparison: in the US, seasons of B5 were split into four blocks, so you'd get five episodes, a month off, eight episodes, two months off, and so on. Meanwhile in the UK, we had to wait a while for the season to start, but once it was airing we didn't have so many huge gaps and we were able to catch up. So we actually got to watch up to the season two finale The Fall of Night during the four months that US fans were waiting between Confessions and Lamentations and Divided Loyalties. I can imagine VHS tapes were getting mailed across the Atlantic (they probably wouldn't have worked on an NTSC player but you never know unless you try).

Though American viewers soon got their revenge, as season two continued straight into season three without a break in the US, while British fans had to wait eight months for it. Man, could you imagine having to wait eight months between seasons of Westworld, Doctor Who or Game of Thrones?

I'll be screencapping and recapping the whole episode below, throwing in my own opinions and observations as I go, so there'll be SPOILERS for the whole of Divided Loyalties and episodes leading up to it. But if you're watching the series for the first time and you've only gotten this far, then you've got nothing to worry about as I won't spoil a thing about what happens afterwards.

Monday, 15 April 2019

Babylon 5 2-18: Confessions and Lamentations

Episode:40|Writer:J. Michael Straczynski|Air Date:24-May-1995

This week on Sci-Fi Adventures I'm writing about Confessions and Lamentations, the 40th episode of cult 90s space opera Babylon 5.

Incidentally, if you add 40 to 90 you get 130, which is the total number of Babylon 5 stories ever filmed if you include the movies and the spin-offs (and count The Lost Tales as one thing). Why am I mentioning this? Because I feel like I should be writing something here to pad this introduction out a bit. Plus it also means that if I somehow end up owning a Crusade DVD box set in the future I'll have 90 stories left after this to review.

Beyond this point you'll find SPOILERS as I'm going to go through the entire episode in screencaps, and put my opinions and observations underneath, so I wouldn't recommend reading any further unless you've seen the episode already. I won't be spoiling anything that happens after this point in the series though, so it's entirely safe for people watching it for the first time.

Monday, 8 April 2019

Babylon 5 2-16: In the Shadow of Z'ha'dum

Episode:38|Writer:J. Michael Straczynski|Air Date:10-May-1995

This week on Sci-Fi Adventures I'm putting the previous DVD back in to watch In the Shadow of Z'ha'dum.

Babylon 5 first aired with the occasional episode out of order, mostly due to the visual effects taking ages, and if you watch the episodes off disc or Amazon you get to experience the authentic continuity weirdness this causes (which is pretty minimal to be honest, it's not really a big deal). But I'm following the J. Michael Straczynski approved Lurker's Guide Master List order, which enhances the narrative by pulling Knives forwards and slotting this in before Confessions and Lamentations, leaving this block of episodes looking like this:

15 - And Now for a Word
17 - Knives
16 - In the Shadow of Z'ha'dum
18 - Confessions and Lamentations
19 - Divided Loyalties

By the way, this is one of the few episodes to get a DVD commentary by producer jms and if you're watching B5 for the first time I'd recommend leaving it until you've seen the whole series. In fact all the special features seem to have been produced under the assumption that if you've bought the discs you're probably already a fan. Which is fine, but they could've at least included a spoiler warning. Like this:

WARNING, I'm about to write some massive SPOILERS all over this review! But only for this episode and the ones that precede it. Which includes Knives.