Star Trek: Short Treks - Season 2 Review

This week on Sci-Fi Adventures, I've got a whole batch of reviews for you! Short ones.

I don't know if Short Treks comes in seasons, but I'm calling this 'season two' just to keep things organised. In fact I don't even know if this is considered to be a separate series to Star Trek: Discovery these days. I went into it assuming it had become its own thing, seeing as none of these stories feature the USS Discovery or her crew (except for young Burnham), but it's still got the same Discovery-style title with the starship herself flying past, and it's still got the same theme, so I don't even know.

One thing I do know is that all these episodes were put together with the season one stories and released on Blu-Ray together... except for Children of Mars. So now I'm wondering if that's its own thing. It doesn't have the Short Treks title sequence on it and it has a version of the Picard theme playing over the end credits, so is it actually episode 1 of Short Picard Treks? Are we going to be getting Short Lower Decks Treks next year?

Anyway, I'm just going to write about all of the latest Trek shorts without worrying about what counts. Beyond this point you will find six separate reviews, each of them written back when I first saw the episode and packed with general Star Trek SPOILERS.

Babylon 5 4-06: Into the Fire

Episode:

72

|

Writer:

J. Michael Straczynski

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Director:

Kevin James Dobson

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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 4-05: The Long Night

Episode:

71

|

Writer:

J. Michael Straczynski

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Director:

John Lafia

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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.

Babylon 5 4-04: Falling Toward Apotheosis

Episode:

70

|

Writer:

J. Michael Straczynski

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Director:

David J. Eagle

|

Air Date:

25-Nov-1996

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This week on Sci-Fi Adventures I'm writing about Falling Toward Apotheosis, the 70th episode of cult 90s sci-fi epic Babylon 5.

Hang on, that's the same stock CGI establishing shot they used behind the title for the episode A Day in the Strife! Only this time there's a better title in front of it (in my opinion), and it's in lower case for whatever reason. The previous episode's title was upper case and the one before that was lower case so maybe they're alternating now.

'Apotheosis' sounds like it should be the title of an X-Files or Star Trek: Voyager episode, but it works here I reckon. It means 'the elevation of a person to the status of a divine being'. Here's some more trivia for you: this was the last episode of the series to air (in the US) during 1996. Also this is one of the few episodes to have a commentary track on the DVDs, and I don't think it really spoils anything for once. It's just a few of the actors joking around.

There'll be massive SPOILERS here in this review though, as I'll be going through the whole episode, recapping every scene and talking about relevant events from previous stories. You don't have to stop reading if you're a first-time viewer though. As long as you've watched up to this point you'll be fine.

Babylon 5 4-03: The Summoning

Episode:

69

|

Writer:

J. Michael Straczynski

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Director:

John McPherson

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Air Date:

18-Nov-1996

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This week on Sci-Fi Adventures it's Babylon 5 episode 69: THE SUMMONING. They've switched back to an upper case title after the last one went lower case and now it looks like they're shouting.

The Summoning was the first and only B5 episode to be directed by John McPherson, who I know absolutely nothing about. But IMDb tells me that he directed episodes of The Incredible Hulk, Alien Nation and Sliders before directing a full third of Seven Days (which he was co-executive producer on). He was also director of photography on *batteries not included, Short Circuit 2 and Jaws: The Revenge!

That's a nice shot of the station up there I reckon. We've seen it before actually, as it's one of the Foundation Imaging stock shots and it's been around since at least the start of season three. Though it would later go on to appear much earlier, as in 1998 it was retroactively edited into the pilot movie, The Gathering, for its Special Edition. There's some VFX stock footage trivia for you.

I'm full of pointless information about previous B5 stories and you can bet this recap/review is going to spoil the hell out of this episode, but there'll be no SPOILERS for anything that comes after it. This is a first-time viewer friendly website.

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.

Babylon 5 4-01: The Hour of the Wolf

Episode:

67

|

Writer:

J. Michael Straczynski

|

Director:

David J. Eagle

|

Air Date:

04-Nov-1996

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Sci-Fi Adventures is back for another two months of sci-fi recap reviews! Most of them are going to be of Babylon 5 episodes to be honest as I need to get through this series, but I'm fine with that. I can think of worse series to be stuck with.

I'm starting off with the first episode of season four, The Hour of the Wolf! Though I'm watching it on DVD without the adverts, so it's more like The 42 Minutes of the Wolf.

Here's an interesting fact about US science fiction TV shows during the last century: they didn't typically live long. At the time this episode aired The X-Files was starting its fourth season and Star Trek: The Next Generation had just finished an epic seven season run, but for other sci-fi, especially space sci-fi, three seasons was an exceptional run. Battlestar Galactica and Space: Above and Beyond managed one season, Buck Rogers reached two, and even titans Lost in Space and Star Trek were cancelled after year three. So for Babylon 5 to make it to year four was actually pretty unusual. And appreciated considering the cliffhanger the last season left us on.

Hey I just noticed that the title text has gone back to the season 1 font! Well, on the DVDs at least, it would've looked different on the original airing. The shadow didn't used to look so dark for one thing.

Anyway I should point out that this is a recap/review for people who've already seen the episode or don't care about SPOILERS. It's very first-time viewer friendly though, as I'll not be spoiling anything that happens after this point.