Sci-Fi Adventures Awards - Season 6 (2021-22)

I think it's about the right time for Ray Hardgrit's Sci-Fi Adventures Awards Season 6! I watched a lot of science fiction between April 2021 and March 2022 and now I'm going to celebrate the highs and say harsh things about the lows.

First though I should let you know that this is probably the last time I do one of these articles. My memory's just not good enough to do them justice, especially considering the amount of episodes I cover in a year. I mean everything in this list is in with a chance to win something here:

• Babylon 5 4-16 - The Exercise of Vital Powers to 5-11 - Phoenix Rising
  
• Babylon 5 - In the Beginning
• Cowboy Bebop 01 - Asteroid Blues
• Cowboy Bebop 2021
  
• Doctor Who series 13 - Flux
  
• Doctor Who - Eve of the Daleks
  
• Farscape 1-01 - Premier
  
• Firefly 1-01 - Serenity
• Outlaw Star 01 - Outlaw World to 04 - When the Hot Ice Melts
  
• Red Dwarf 1-01 - The End
• Star Trek 1-01 - The Man Trap
  
• Star Trek: The Next Generation 1-01 - Encounter at Farpoint
• Star Trek: Voyager 1-01 - Caretaker
• Star Trek: Enterprise 1-01 - Broken Bow
  
• Star Trek: Discovery season 3
• Star Trek: Lower Decks season 1
• Star Wars: The Mandalorian season 2

You can see why I don't want to do these anymore. There's 77 episodes and a movie in that list! 3000 minutes of science fiction from 15 different series! (Assuming I haven't accidentally left something out.) That's a lot of SPOILERS, so study the list carefully before reading further or else you might learn something about one of these stories you didn't want to know.

Red Dwarf 1-01: The End - Part 2

This week on Sci-Fi Adventures I'm still writing about Red Dwarf's first episode, somehow. The episode's just 30 minutes long! I don't know why this is happening! It's just that whenever I go to type something about it all this useless trivia comes out of my brain. Like this:

Red Dwarf first aired on February 1988, about five months after Star Trek: The Next Generation premiered and a year before Doctor Who went on its long hiatus. Next Gen was the biggest fish in the TV sci-fi pond in America but it took three years to air on the BBC so Red Dwarf had plenty of time to establish itself as the top sci-fi show in the UK. The End got 4-5 million viewers, which is about what Doctor Who manages at its worst, but it was pretty good for a low-budget UK sitcom and the ratings grew over time. In fact Red Dwarf is still being made to this day (assuming they can get the legal problems sorted out) and would be Britain's longest running sci-fi series if Doctor Who didn't have the unfair advantage of starting 25 years earlier.

Anyway, if you're looking for the first half of this article, CLICK HERE. If you're looking for the conclusion you're already in the right place. Be warned though, there are SPOILERS ahead (for this one episode, not the whole series).

Red Dwarf 1-01: The End - Part 1

Episode:

1

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Writer:

Rob Grant & Doug Naylor

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Director:

Ed Bye

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Air Date:

15-Feb-1988

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This week on Sci-Fi Adventures, I'm finally writing about long-running British sci-fi sitcom Red Dwarf! The series started way back in 1988, so if I'd been a bit quicker about it I could've written this in time for the 30th anniversary four years ago. Still, I can't feel too bad as the series did nothing for its 30th either, despite airing new episodes in the two years leading up to it.

People joke about British shows having ridiculous short seasons, but Red Dwarf must set some kind of record for managing just 73 episodes in 30 years. Part of the reason for this is that British sitcoms typically have only one or two writers who work their asses off to get six scripts done a year. In fact Red Dwarf was scripted by former Spitting Image head writers Rob Grant and Doug Naylor for the first five years and then Naylor basically handled the rest of it on his own after Grant left. I was kind of hoping they'd sort their problems out and get back together, but last I heard Naylor's in a legal battle to get the rights back from his former friend so it doesn't seem like the rift's going to heal any time soon.

SPOILER WARNING: I'm going to be analysing this sitcom episode scene by scene, so I won't just be spoiling the story, I'm going to be ruining all the jokes too. I'll not be spoiling later episodes though.

Babylon 5 5-11: Phoenix Rising

Episode:

99

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Writer:

J. Michael Straczynski

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Director:

David J. Eagle

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Air Date:

01-Apr-1998

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This week on Sci-Fi Adventures, I'm watching Babylon 5 season 5 episode 11: Phoenix Rising.

Phoenix Rising was actually the 100th episode to be shot but only the 99th to air (due to Sleeping in Light being shelved for a while), so The Ragged Edge ended up getting the party in its place. They got a big cake from TNT for it and everything. Funny thing is, if the season had been broadcast in the correct order then neither of them would've gotten the cake. I haven't written about Day of the Dead yet because it should come after both stories, making it the true episode 100.

Hang on, that means I've covered 98 episodes and two movies now - this is MY 100TH BABYLON 5 REVIEW! Man, I should've gotten myself a cake.

The episode aired on April 1st, but somehow I doubt it'll be a joke. In fact it's basically the second half of A Tragedy of Telepaths. Or maybe part five of Strange Relations, depending on how you look at it. The series has gotten very serialised again.

There'll be lots of SPOILERS below, as I'm pretty much writing this for people who've already seen all of Babylon 5 up to this point (or followed along with my articles at least). You're fine if you're first time viewer though, as I won't be spoiling anything that comes later. Even the things I can remember.

Cowboy Bebop (2021) - Series Review

This week on Sci-Fi Adventures, I'm writing about the first season of Netflix's live-action Cowboy Bebop! It's also the only season, as the series was cancelled after just three weeks. They worked pretty damn fast there. Much faster than me, I only just finished watching it all.

I have no idea what the viewing figures were like, but I do know how it was rated on sites like IMDb, Rotten Tomatoes and Metacritic, and it didn't do great. With critics or users. But I've already written about episode one, Cowboy Gospel, and I really liked it, so is there a chance I'm going to like the rest of it as well? Or am I going to witness it crashing down and exploding into flames? Keep reading to find out!

The season has 10 episodes and I've already seen one of them, so I'll be going through the other 9 stories one by one and then I'll write a bit of about the series overall at the end. There will be SPOILERS here, for this series and maybe the anime as well. What I can remember of it at least.

Babylon 5 5-10: A Tragedy of Telepaths

Episode:

98

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Writer:

J. Michael Straczynski

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Director:

Tony Dow

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Air Date:

25-Mar-1998

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This week on Sci-Fi Adventures I'm watching Babylon 5 season 5 episode 10: A Tragedy of Telepaths.

The word 'tragedy' in this case is a collective noun, as it's the name for a group of telepaths. You know, like a murder of crows or a litter of puppies. Or a shrewdness of apes. An implausibility of gnus. A congregation of crocodiles. A handful of stegosauruses. An exaltation of larks. A business of ferrets. A tower of giraffes.

I'd mention some trivia here or talk about the director, but I'd rather just keep listing collective nouns. A wisdom of wombats. A dazzle of zebras. A murmuration of starlings. Where do these nouns even come from? Who even uses them? Okay everyone says things like 'a pack of cards' or 'a round of drinks', they're not all bizarre, but no one has ever had to refer to an 'obstinacy of buffalo' before.

Anyway, I hope you're into SPOILERS because there'll be a lot of them coming your way very soon if you keep reading. For this episode and for earlier ones too. But if you've watched the series up to this point you have nothing to worry about as I'll not be spoiling anything that happens after the episode.

Firefly 1-01: Serenity

Episode:

1

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Writer:

Joss Whedon

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Director:

Joss Whedon

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Air Date:

20-Dec-2002

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Today on Sci-Fi Adventures, I'm watching Firefly's feature-length pilot episode Serenity (not to be confused with the feature-length feature film Serenity that caps the series off).

Actually to be honest I'm not watching anything. I already watched the episode ages ago and I had a first draft of this article written up, just waiting for me to give it a final pass. I'd even written the text down by the 'Next Episode' picture at the bottom. The text said that the next review was going to be "Babylon 5 season 1, episode 4 - Infection", so that helps narrow down when this article was supposed to be published. Seems that it was originally meant to go up a few days before the 21st June 2016. I get distracted sometimes and forget things.

This means I watched Serenity in a more innocent time, before Joss Whedon's fan site Whedonesque.com shut down when his ex-wife accused him of multiple affairs, before he was accused of being abusive to actors, and before Justice League. Though it would've been a couple years after Adam Baldwin helped make Gamergate a thing. Honestly I think it's best I'm getting this done now, before anything worse comes out. Though if I'd just waited a few months later I could've posted this on its 20th anniversary.

Firefly aired its one short season in late 2002, at the same time that Buffy the Vampire Slayer hit season 7 and Angel reached season 4. That means that Whedon had three series he'd created running simultaneously, which is maybe a little much, even if Tim Minear was the actual showrunner of this one. I checked their US ratings, out of curiosity, and if these numbers I got from the internet are correct then all three shows were getting roughly the same viewers. (Then I threw Star Trek: Enterprise on the chart as well, seeing as that was in its season second at the time, and it was roughly the same as well.) But I guess Fox expected more from its expensive space show as it was axed after 14 episodes and they didn't even air 3 of them. Also they aired this pilot episode last!

Alright, I'm going to go through the whole story scene by scene, recapping, screencapping (from the PAL DVDs), and typing whatever commentary I can think of as I go. This article is going to feature SPOILERS for exactly one episode, this one... except I'm also going to mention something from the pilot of Outlaw Star. So exactly two episodes then. But nothing more.