Farscape 1-01: Premiere - Part 1

Episode:

1

|

Writer:

Rockne S. O'Bannon

|

Director:

Andrew Prowse

|

Air Date:

19-Mar-1999

---

This week on Sci-Fi Adventures, I'm writing about Premiere, the first episode of cult 90s sci-fi series Farscape! That's 'late 90s' by the way, not 'early 90s'; late enough for them to have deliberately given it a unique name so that the series would be only thing that comes up if you do an internet search. It was originally going to be called Space Chase, but thankfully they swerved away from that at the last moment.

Farscape first aired in 1999, back when Deep Space Nine and Voyager were still defining space sci-fi, Stargate SG-1 was starting out and Babylon 5 had just finished. Trek was losing its shine at this point and there was a feeling that space opera fans were tired of well-trained military crews following orders on starship bridges and wanted a bit more... anarchy. And muppets I guess?

The series was produced by Hallmark and The Jim Henson Company, so it belongs to the same family as Fraggle Rock and The Dark Crystal. The puppeteered aliens actually put a few people off at the time, probably still does, even though everyone loves puppet Yoda in the Star Wars movies. I'm trying to dig into my memories to excavate my own first reaction to learning about the series, but I'm not getting much. I think I saw a review or a preview in a magazine next to a photo from a series about Vikings and assumed it was going to take place in a mead hall or something.

I do remember liking the series, but I only watched it the once and that was years ago, so who knows what I'll think about it now. Maybe it's horrifically dated now. Perhaps it's been utterly surpassed by its successor/clone Guardians of the Galaxy. I'm hyped to find out if it can still hold my attention.

There will be SPOILERS below for exactly half an episode, no others. I'll be going through Premiere scene by scene, recapping and sharing my thoughts along the way, so this will kind of be like a commentary track. Except you can't put it on in the background while you get other things done. All the screencaps will be from my PAL DVD, but you're not missing much as the Blu-rays aren't particularly HD either. Seems like the original 35mm footage was lost and they weren't keen on spending the cash to recreate all the CGI visual effects in a higher resolution anyway. It's a bit of a tragedy, considering that even Babylon 5 eventually got a HD release.

Babylon 5 5-06: Strange Relations

Episode:

94

|

Writer:

J. Michael Straczynski

|

Director:

John C. Flinn III

|

Air Date:

25-Feb-1998

---

This week on Sci-Fi Adventures I'm watching Babylon 5 season 5 episode 6, Strange Relations. Huh, that's weird, I can usually vaguely remember the names of each episode but Strange Relations doesn't ring any bells with me at all. If I was given one of those quizzes where you have to go through titles and choose whether they're from Babylon 5 or, I dunno, Magnum P.I., I would've totally failed this one. (I would've nailed The Very Long Night of Londo Mollari though.)

You can tell this episode's been around a few years now as a bit of the letter 'g' has gotten scratched off. That's apparently a unique feature of the Region 2 DVDs, so you can tell where all my screencaps are coming from.

This episode was written by J. Michael Straczynski, no big surprise there, and it was directed by the Director of Photography John C. Flinn III. Flinn had previously directed TKO and Grey 17 is Missing, contenders to be the worst episodes of their respective seasons, so he doesn't have a perfect track record, but he's done some good episode too. I'm not considering it to be a warning sign.

Okay I'll be writing about the entire episode one scene at a time so there will be massive SPOILERS here for this story and the series so far. I'll not spoil anything that comes afterwards though.

Doctor Who (2005): Series 13 - Flux Review

This week on Sci-Fi Adventures, I'm writing about the 13th series of the Doctor Who revival, which has been given the shiny golden title of Flux. It's pretty unusual for an entire season to have a name and it's also unusual for it to be one long continuing story like this. You'd have to dig pretty deep into Doctor Who history to find anything like it, to seasons like The Key to Time in the 70s and The Trial of a Time Lord in the 80s. Honestly, I'm in the mood for some proper cliffhangers so this works for me.

Incidentally, The Key to Time was also the last time we got a six-part serial like this, even though they'd been part of the Doctor Who format since series 1. They were around for 15 years, then disappeared for the next four decades, but showrunner Chris Chibnall has finally brought them back! Well he's brought one back anyway; what happens next is out of his hands as this is his and Jodie Whittaker's final series. It's not their last story, they've still got a year of specials after this, but it is their final full season. Jodie Whittaker decided not to try to beat Tom Baker's record as the Doctor who spent the most years on the show. Though her run will span from 2018 to 2022, five years, so technically she's in joint second place with Jon Pertwee!

Alright I've already written enough about chapter one: The Halloween Apocalypse, so I'll give the other five episodes a bit of a review each and then wrap this up by assessing the season overall. There will be SPOILERS.

Babylon 5 5-05: Learning Curve

Episode:

93

|

Writer:

J. Michael Straczynski

|

Director:

David J. Eagle

|

Air Date:

18-Feb-1998

---

Sci-Fi Adventures is finally back! This week I'm watching Babylon 5 season 5 episode 5. All the fives. It's a shame that Deep Space Nine didn't go to nine seasons, as it never got to complete the set. Also Odyssey 5 got cancelled in season 1 and Brooklyn Nine-Nine didn't even make it into double digits. I've still got hopes for Avenue 5 though.

I'm not going to be swayed into liking this episode, by the way. I remember it being a particularly bad episode from the mediocre half of a disappointing season, and I have no intention of allowing myself to inadvertently enjoy it. This isn't going to be a repeat of last time, when A View from the Gallery managed to win me over by the end. Sort of.

Though that being said, it was directed by David J. Eagle, who gave us episodes like Severed Dreams, And the Rock Cried Out, No Hiding Place and The Very Long Night of Londo Mollari, so maybe it'll turn out to be one of the better season 5 stories. I'll let you know.

There will be massive SPOILERS below for this episode and the story so far, as I'll be going through it scene by scene writing comments under screencaps. I'll not spoil a thing about what comes after it though.

Cowboy Bebop (2021) 1-01: Cowboy Gospel (Quick Review)

Episode:

1

|

Writer:

Christopher Yost

|

Director:

Alex Garcia Lopez

|

Air Date:

19-Nov-2021

---

This week on Sci-Fi Adventures I'm watching the first episode of Cowboy Bebop, again. Though this time it's the first episode of the long-awaited live-action version that finally debuted on Netflix a week ago. This would've actually been filmed at some point in 2019 I think, before John Cho's knee injury put the brakes on filming for 6 months. Still, the timing's not that bad, as it's only two months shy of coming out 20 years after the first English airing in 2001.

Look, they've given me an actual title card to use for the picture, just like the anime did! Though this time the background text is Japanese and the foreground text is English, which is a nice touch. They've also pretty much recreated the classic opening credits sequence and they've flipped the script on that as well. My ability to read katana hasn't improved any in the last few days but I'm fairly sure this says "Cowboy Gospel", as in gospel music. The original series featured music-related episode titles and they're carrying on the tradition here. That's one of the few things that Cowboy Bebop has in common with Castlevania games.

The original anime series lasted for just 26 episodes and a movie, mostly because the creator, Shinichirō Watanabe, didn't want the series to become something like Star Trek that just keeps going on and on forever. Now we're in 2021 and Star Trek and Cowboy Bebop are both airing new episodes this month, so I guess that plan failed. We're also getting new The Expanse, Lost in Space and Star Wars soon, plus there's a new Blade Runner anime, so it's a pretty great time to be a science fiction fan. Well, assuming any of them are any good.

There will be SPOILERS beyond this point, but not as many as you might expect. The entire season dropped on Netflix at once, so I'm sure most people who've seen episode 1 will have also seen episode 10 by now, but I'm watching through them slowly and I don't actually know where the season goes from here. Plus I've forgotten most of the original anime series, so I can't spoil much of that either.

Cowboy Bebop 01: Asteroid Blues

Episode:

1

|

Writer:

Keiko Nobumoto

|

Director:

Yoshiyuki Takei

|

Air Date:

24-Oct-1998

---

This week on Sci-Fi Adventures I'm watching Asteroid Blues, the first episode session of legendary anime series Cowboy Bebop. Look, they've given me an actual title card to use, it's awesome! My understanding of Japanese is fairly pathetic, but I recognise enough of that katakana to know that it's just saying the words "Asteroid Blues".

I've covered cartoons like Batman: The Animated Series, Justice League and Duck Dodgers before, but this is the first time I've ever written about an anime. Well, unless you count Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within, which was actually the first article ever published on Sci-Fi Adventures. I have a feeling this is going to be better.

A lot of anime series are based off a manga, like Sunrise's previous space series Outlaw Star, but this one was original. In fact creator Shinichirō Watanabe gave it the tagline "And the work which has become a genre unto itself shall be called: Cowboy Bebop" which would've been incredibly pretentious if the show hadn't then gone and backed it up. This is one of the most well-regarded and important series in anime history, but you don't need me to tell you how famous it is, because... well, it's famous.

The first episode first aired in Japan on 24th October 1998, which is kind of weird as the series started airing back in April. The initial run on TV Tokyo missed out the pilot and half the other episodes, and I have no idea why. The first English airing on Adult Swim missed out three episodes as well, but that was due to it airing during September 2001 and people being a bit cautious about the kinds of destruction they were showing on screen at the time.

The series only lasted 26 episodes and a movie (it was only ever meant to), and I've seen all of them. In fact I've seen this first episode twice! It's been a long while though, so I'm sure it'll have some surprises for me. There'll be no surprises left for you if you keeping reading past this point however, as I'm going to share SPOILERS for the entire episode scene by scene, with screencaps. I'll not say a word about anything that happens in later episodes though.

Doctor Who (2005) 13-01: Flux - Chapter One: The Halloween Apocalypse

Episode:

863

|

Writer:

Chris Chibnall

|

Director:

Jamie Magnus Stone

|

Air Date:

31-Oct-2021

---

Hi, Sci-Fi Adventures should still be on a break, but I felt the urge to write something about Doctor Who... because Russell T Davies is coming back! Can't say I saw that coming. I'm not sure his next run is going to be the second coming of the Eccleston/Tennant era of the show, and I'm not sure I even want it to be, but I do feel cautiously optimistic about it. More optimistic than I am about Chris Chibnall's final series anyway.

Though with this series the Doctor Who revival does finally pulls ahead of Red Dwarf, which aired its Series XII in 2017 (even though it's really only had 11 seasons). Even more importantly, this is the first season since Doctor Who began where the Doctor's number is the same as the season number! (Neither of these two facts are important).

Series 13 is going to be massively cut down compared to a normal Doctor Who season, as COVID meant they were only able to produce six episodes, but for the first time since Trial of a Time Lord in 1986 we're getting one story playing out over an entire series! This is also the first six-parter since the Fourth Doctor's The Armageddon Factor in 1979, though the episodes are double the length these days.

To be honest I was seriously considering skipping the rest of Chibnall's run and waiting for the RTD episodes, but when I learned how short it was going to be I figured I might as well stick with it. It's the best marketing they could've done! Though the Doctor Who team also tried a bunch of other clever tricks to get me to watch, like projecting a spaceship in the sky and deleting their social media accounts. Plus they've brought in a new companion from Liverpool! Tom Baker and Liz Sladen were both from Liverpool as well, so I'm considering this to be a good sign.

What am I expecting from series 13? Fewer people on screen, less location filming in South Africa, and a frustratingly reactive and ineffective Doctor. I'm not expecting a regeneration though as I know we've got three Jodie Whittaker specials to come after this. I'm not expecting to enjoy it much, but I wouldn't mind being surprised.

Okay I'll be screencapping the episode in its entirety and writing some commentary underneath so this review is going to be full of SPOILERS.