Babylon 5 2-22: The Fall of Night

Episode:

44

|

Writer:

J. Michael Straczynski

|

Air Date:

01-Nov-1995

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This week on Sci-Fi Adventures, this is it, I've reached the epic season finale of Babylon 5 season two! Well I'm just assuming it's epic to be honest, I haven't seen it in ages. But if it's half as good as season one's finale, Chrysalis... then I'll be only two-thirds satisfied with it, so ideally it'll be a little better than that.

In the last few episodes we've gone from a Long, Twilight Struggle to The Fall of Night, so things seem to have been getting darker. It made me wonder if this theme had been running through other titles this year, so I looked through an episode list and found Geometry of Shadows and The Long Dark near the start, and All Alone in the Night sitting there in middle. So no, I can't say I saw any journey into darkness in the titles.

I didn't see Janet Greek's name in the 'directed by' column all that much either, but I guess she'd earned a rest after Signs and Portents, Chrysalis, Points of Departure and The Coming of Shadows. Actually she was apparently suffering from pneumonia, but she came back just in time for the end of the season, before vanishing again for the next two years. Anyway she's a good director and that makes me think this will be good.

If you've just gotten hold of some second hand DVDs and you're watching the series for the very first time you might be thinking about listening to the commentary by showrunner jms and maybe even checking out some of those special features. I wouldn't recommend it though, because there's SPOILERS in there for later seasons. You're safe reading this review though, provided you've watched the episode and all the ones leading up to it, as I won't say a thing about where it's all going. Nothing that Ivanova doesn't spoil herself anyway.

Babylon 5 2-21: Comes the Inquisitor

Episode:

43

|

Writer:

J. Michael Straczynski

|

Air Date:

25-Oct-1995

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This week on Sci-Fi Adventures, I'm writing about an episode actually genuinely called Comes the Inquisitor. It's the one where an inquisitor comes to the station I guess.

The is the penultimate episode of Babylon 5's second season so I'm very close to being done with it, though it doesn't really feel like I'm at the end of something. Season two has been a lot more serialised than the first year, but it hasn't built up momentum leading up to anything likely to be resolved soon. There's been no sense of all the pieces falling into place before a massive turning point in the story. So to me this is pretty much just feels like season 2, episode 21.

There will be SPOILERS below for both this episode and the earlier stories that led up to it as I'm going to go through the whole thing writing text under screenshots. Though if you're watching the series for the first time you don't have to worry about me spoiling anything that happens after this episode. This is a first time viewer friendly review.

Babylon 5 2-20: The Long, Twilight Struggle

Episode:

42

|

Writer:

J. Michael Straczynski

|

Air Date:

18-Oct-1995

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This week on Sci-Fi Adventures, I'm reviewing The Long, Twilight Struggle, the antepenultimate episode of Babylon 5's second season! The last few episodes have been a bit miserable but if that title's anything to go by I expect this is going to be the one that really turns things around.

Here's some entirely useless facts for you: according to IMDb, John C. Flinn III was the director of photography for 102 of 110 Babylon 5 episodes, and this is one of the 8 he skipped. It's also one of the 9 he directed, and if you suspect there's probably a lot of overlap between those two lists... you'd be wrong. It's just this one. This was the third episode he directed after TKO and Soul Mates, so he's got the bottom and the middle of the ratings scale covered already, but was this his first really great episode? I'll tell you what I think later, though if you've seen it and remember which one it is I expect you already have your own opinion.

I nearly didn't show this screencap of the title because it spoils a character's surprise reappearance. But then I realised that the role was recast and this actor has never actually been in the series before, so all it really spoils is that a Minbari shows up at the start of the first act. But there will be massive SPOILERS below this point for both this episode and the ones leading up to it, as I'll be going through it one screencap at a time, writing about what happened and what I think about that.

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.

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.

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).

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.