Star Trek: Lower Decks - Season 1 Review - Part 1

This week on Sci-Fi Adventures I'm writing about Star Trek: Lower Decks, the second of the two new Trek series to debut in 2020! We did well for Trek in the 90s, but we've never had two series launching in the same year like this, and we've definitely never had four series releasing new eps in the same year (Short Treks, Picard, Lower Decks and Discovery). That's still only 33 episodes in total, so we're a little short of the 50+ eps and a movie we were blessed with in the Golden Age of Trek, but it's getting there.

Lower Decks is also the first animated Star Trek series since 1974 and the first Trek series to be named after a seventh season episode of Star Trek: The Next Generation. They could've gone with Star Trek: The Pegasus, and made it about a young Will Riker, or Star Trek: Masks, about a group of vigilantes, but I think they made the right choice. Much better than Star Trek: Sub Rosa.

The series is set in 2380, putting it ten years after the episode that inspired it, but it's still firmly in my beloved Next Gen era, even more so than Star Trek: Picard. It starts a year after Star Trek: Nemesis, and a few years after the end of DS9 and Voyager, so I've basically been waiting for this since 2003.

Anyway, these are my authentic first reactions to all ten episodes in season one, written before I had any idea what was coming next. I'll be following the same SPOILER rules as the episodes themselves: basically anything that happened in Trek up to this point is fair game. Unless it happened in the future.

Babylon 5 4-18: Intersections in Real Time

Episode:

84

|

Writer:

J. Michael Straczynski

|

Director:

John Lafia

|

Air Date:

16-Jun-1997

---

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 4-17: The Face of the Enemy

Episode:

83

|

Writer:

J. Michael Straczynski

|

Director:

Mike Vejar

|

Air Date:

09-Jun-1997

---

This week on Sci-Fi Adventures, I'm up to Babylon 5 episode 83: The Face of the Enemy.

You can tell the series is picking up momentum again as they've put the title up during a space battle. More often than not an episode title will appear over a nice calm CGI shot of the station just chilling out and rotating, but there's too much going on in the story for that right now.

The episode was directed by Mike Vejar, again. He skipped the first half of the season entirely, but he's been directing every other episode lately, ep 13, 15 and now 17... not that I'm complaining. This was his last for the year though, and he only directed two stories in season five.

I feel like I should give you a SPOILER WARNING just so it's clear I'm going to go through Face of the Enemy scene by scene and maybe spoil a bunch of earlier stories as well. This article will be first-time viewer friendly though, so there'll be no spoilers for later episodes.

Babylon 5 4-16: The Exercise of Vital Powers

Episode:

82

|

Writer:

J. Michael Straczynski

|

Director:

John Lafia

|

Air Date:

02-Jun-1997

---

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.

Sci-Fi Adventures Awards - Season 5 (2020-21)

It's finally time for the Ray Hardgrit's Sci-Fi Adventures Awards Season 5! This is the time of the year where I highlight the things I personally thought was really good and incredibly bad about the things I've covered over the last 12 months.

Everything I've reviewed from April 2020 to January 2021 is in with a chance to win something, even if it was really terrible! In fact I should be giving more awards to the terrible episodes because 2020 was truly their time to shine. Here's what's in the running this year:

• Babylon 5 3-16 - War Without End to 4-15 - No Surrender, No Retreat
• Star Trek: Picard season 1
• The Mandalorian season 1
• Doctor Who series 12 + Revolution of the Daleks
  
• Short Treks season 2
• Duck Dodgers in the 24½th Century

That's 56 episodes and a Looney Tunes short.

This is going to be a horrific test of memory for me, as I have to somehow recall 2000 minutes of science fiction I watched over a span of 365 days. But it'll be even more horrific for you if you end up running into SPOILERS you really didn't want to see, so if you'd have a problem with me giving away every major plot twist from these episodes you should probably stop reading now.

I know I'm pretty much limiting my audience here to people who have watched all the same things I have, or don't care about spoilers, but hey this article is just bonus content for you really.

Babylon 5 4-15: No Surrender, No Retreat

Episode:

81

|

Writer:

J. Michael Straczynski

|

Director:

Mike Vejar

|

Air Date:

26-May-1997

---

This week on Sci-Fi Adventures I'm writing about another episode of Babylon 5. It's season 4, episode 15: No Surrender, No Retreat.

Each of Babylon 5's five seasons is named after a big game-changing episode from that year. The first was named after Signs and Portents, which introduced one of the series's main antagonists, season two's title came from The Coming of Shadows which kicked off the that year's arc, and season three took it's name from Point of No Return, where the crew made a choice that radically altered their situation. Season four is called No Surrender, No Retreat, so I've finally reached this year's title episode and the shit is almost certainly going to hit the fan.

Here's some more trivia for you: the word 'no' doesn't show up in episode titles as often as you might think. In fact Star Trek and Star Trek: The Next Generation are the only two Trek series to have a 'no' title, and they each only have the one (Where No Man Has Gone Before and Where No One Has Gone Before respectively). Stargates SG-1 and Atlantis have just one each as well (Point of No Return and No Man's Land), as does Battlestar Galactica (No Exit). Doctor's Who's been around for 57 years so you'd think it'd do well here, but even if you count the individual episodes that make up the classic serials, it's still only used 'no' once (in Sleep No More). Babylon 5, on the other hand, has four episodes with 'no' in the title, and this one uses it twice! I guess this is the kind of thing that happens when you get one writer scripting most of the stories.

Before you read any further, I should warn you that there will be SPOILERS below, for this episode and earlier ones. This will all be first time viewer friendly though, so if you've been watching through the series (or just reading through my recaps) you've got nothing to worry about.

Babylon 5 4-14: Moments of Transition

Episode:

80

|

Writer:

J. Michael Straczynski

|

Director:

Tony Dow

|

Air Date:

19-May-1997

---

This week on Sci-Fi Adventures, I've written words about another episode of Babylon 5 for you. This is season 4, episode 14, Moments of Transition, which has to be the least evocative title since Interludes and Examinations last season. You can just tell that nothing interesting or game changing is going to happen here.

The title comes from a monologue by G'Kar in the episode Z'ha'dum, in which he explained that life is made from moments of transition and moments of revelation. So I suppose we can at least be sure there won't be any revelations in the episode.

Though I do have a revelation for you of my own: this is episode 80 of Babylon 5, which means that this is the point where the series had officially overtaken the original Star Trek's episode count. Even if you count Trek's unaired pilot episode, The Cage, Babylon 5 has its own pilot movie, The Gathering, to put it one story ahead again.

I should warn you that there's going to be so many SPOILERS after this point. I'm going to ruin the whole damn episode. But if you're watching through the series for the first time you've got nothing to worry about as I won't even hint at what happens next.