Babylon 5 5-14: Meditations on the Abyss

Episode:

102

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Writer:

J. Michael Straczynski

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Director:

Mike Vejar

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Air Date:

27-Mar-1998

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This week on Sci-Fi Adventures I'm watching Babylon 5 season 5 episode 14: Meditations on the Abyss. I'm not sure about that title as meditation isn't typically all that thrilling. Though abysses can be dramatic sometimes I suppose, especially when there's a risk of all your hopes and dreams falling in. James Cameron even made a film about one once.

The episode was written by showrunner J. Michael Straczynski, though that goes without saying really. There are just eight episodes left after this and they're all by him. This was the final episode to be directed by Mike Vejar however, which is a shame because he's a contender to be the greatest director B5 ever had. He did come back for the movies and the Crusade spin-off though.

SPOILER WARNING: this is episode 102, which means there are 101 other episodes that I could spoil at any time, and I'm definitely going to spoil this one. The particulars of subsequent episodes will remain undisclosed however.

Battlestar Galactica (1978) 01-03: Saga of a Star World, Part 3

Today on Sci-Fi Adventures, I'm writing about the last third of the Battlestar Galactica: Saga of a Star World TV movie. Well, roughly a third. I haven't measured it to the minute and I have no idea how the film was split when it was divided into three parts for syndication.

If you want to go back to PART ONE or PART TWO you can click either of those links.

I'm sorry it doesn't actually say "Battlestar Galactica" up there, by the way. The words fly onto the screen one at a time, so this is the best I could do without using a distracting looping video. It's a good title though I reckon; it's dramatic without being too cheesy, distinctive enough that it'll be at the top of the results in a Google search, and it just sounds nice out loud. Lots of 'a' sounds in a row.

SPOILER WARNING: I'll be giving away basically everything that happens in the movie.

Battlestar Galactica (1978) 01-03: Saga of a Star World, Part 2

Today on Sci-Fi Adventures, I'm still working my way through the original 1978 Battlestar Galactica movie, also known as Saga of a Star World. If you want to go back to the start of the film, click this link: PART ONE.

The film was written by Glen Larson, who was some kind of series-creating machine at the time. Battlestar Galactica was the 6th series he'd created (out of a total of 22), and his previous series, Sword of Justice had started airing the previous week. I feel like he's mostly known for Quincy, M.E., Buck Rogers in the 25th Century, Magnum P.I. and Knight Rider, but I might be wrong and there could be a massive fanbase for Manimal, Automan and Night Man.

The film's credited to director Richard Colla, but Glen Larson had a bit of a rift with him due to creative differences halfway through filming and he was replaced by Alan Levi. The reason why Levi wasn't credited on the film was Larson had a bit of a rift with him as well. Apparently Colla shot about 25 days of footage and Levi then shot another 27 days, which is quite a lot for TV. As far as I know the average at the time was about 7 days per episode, so they put a lot of time into this.

SPOILER WARNING: Every single thing that happens in this movie is going to get spoiled.

Battlestar Galactica (1978) 01-03: Saga of a Star World, Part 1

Episode:

1-3

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Writer:

Glen A. Larson

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Director:

Richard A. Colla and Alan J. Levi

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Air Date:

17-Sep-1978

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This week on Sci-Fi Adventures I'm watching the epic first episode of the original 1978 Battlestar Galactica series! Well, first movie really. I've called it episodes 1-3 because it was later split for syndication, but it's all one film.

Battlestar Galactica was originally supposed to be a miniseries made of just three stories: the Saga of a Star World TV movie, The Lost Planet of the Gods, and The Gun on Ice Planet Zero, but things escalated quickly and they found themselves rushing to make another 17 episodes. And then it got cancelled after one season. And then it got a sequel series. And then that got cancelled after half a season. It makes Lost in Space and Star Trek's modest three season runs seem pretty lengthy by comparison, especially as they'd been on repeat in syndication for years.

Though at this point in 1978 there hadn't been a science fiction series like this airing new episodes on US TV in a long while. Space 1999 had just finished in the UK, plus we had Blake's 7, and Doctor Who was on Tom Baker's fifth season (they'd just reached The Ribos Operation), but there was a real absence of glossy expensive American sci-fi. Fortunately Star Wars happened, and executives had suddenly become a lot more interested in stories about spaceships and ray guns... like the one that creator Glen Larson had tried to pitch a decade earlier.

There was a bit of interest by the public as well, as Saga of a Star World aired to an estimated audience of 65 million viewers! That's about five times as many as watched Star Trek's The Man Trap 12 years earlier, and four times as many as watched TNG's Encounter at Farpoint 9 years later... I think. Basically, it was wildly successful. In fact it was later released in cinemas as a theatrical movie... because it cost a damn fortune and they wanted to get some money back. I've seen a few numbers given for its budget and one of the lowest is $7 million (the poster says $14 million). To give that some context, Star Wars: A New Hope cost $11 million the previous year.

Okay, this is basically going to be a reaction video in text form, with comments under screencaps. That means there'll be SPOILERS for the entire feature-length story. I won't be spoiling the rest of the season however (because I have basically no idea what happens in it) and I won't spoil any story content in the 2004 remake series either. The movie is two and a quarter hours long so I'll be splitting this article into three roughly equal parts that probably won't line up with when the syndicated episodes start and end... because I don't actually know. I'm not exactly a classic BSG expert I'm afraid.

Babylon 5 5-13: The Corps is Mother, The Corps is Father

Episode:

101

|

Writer:

J. Michael Straczynski

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Director:

Stephen Furst

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Air Date:

15-Apr-1998

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This week on Sci-Fi Adventures, I'm finally getting back to Babylon 5! It's been a whole month since I wrote about a B5 episode, but I guess that's kind of inevitable now that I'm alternating between Sci-Fi Adventures and Super Adventures every week. Plus this isn't the only science fiction series I'm writing about.

I've failed to find any evidence of this to back me up, but I remember once reading a magazine which called this episode The Crops is a Mother, the Crops is a Father and that's always stuck with me. Even though actual content of the story has faded from my brain.

Incidentally its actual name is the longest title in Babylon 5's whole run, with an astonishing 8 words and 32 letters (and a comma)! That's three times your average sci-fi title... probably (I haven't actually checked them all). I can tell you that it's beating Doctor Who's longest title, The Doctor, the Widow and the Wardrobe, by one whole letter. But it's trailing behind Deep Space Nine's Looking for par'Mach in All the Wrong Places (36 letters), Discovery's The Butcher's Knife Cares Not for the Lamb's Cry (38 letters) and Star Trek's For the World is Hollow and I Have Touched the Sky (40 letters).

I tried looking at some other series too but I got as far as Farscape's Self-Inflicted Wounds, Part 1: Coulda, Woulda, Shoulda (43 letters) before deciding that any longer titles should be recategorized as short stories and giving up.

This was directed by Vir actor Stephen Furst, who seemed to be showrunner jms's go-to for weird format-breaking episodes, as he also did The Illusion of Truth and The Deconstruction of Falling Stars. I suppose the series must get more normal after this as this was his final episode as director. Though he did direct two episodes of the spin-off series Crusade.

SPOILER WARNING: I'm going to spoil the entire episode scene by scene and I'll probably spoil something from earlier episodes as well. I'll not say a thing about what happens afterwards however.

Star Wars: The Book of Boba Fett - Season 1? Review

This week on Sci-Fi Adventures, I'm writing a bit about the first seven episodes of Star Wars: The Book of Boba Fett! This could be season 1 or it could be a one-off miniseries, I have no idea, but I'm pretty sure it's not actually a book.

Boba Fett was first introduced in the Star Wars Holiday Special all the way back in 1978, so he's been waiting a while now to get his own series. There was a Boba Fett movie announced in 2013, but director Josh Trank's issues on Fantastic Four led to him quitting before he could get fired, and it ultimately never happened. In retrospect that might have actually been a good thing, considering that the Star Wars TV series have been getting more love from their viewers than the movies lately.

This is a spin-off from The Mandalorian by the same creator, Iron Man director Jon Favreau, with Desperado and Sin City director Robert Rodriguez directing half the episodes, so there's a fair chance it might be good. Or it could be a massive disaster like the Star Wars: Resistance cartoon. It came out months ago so I guess everyone already knows! All my reviews were written directly after watching each episode though so any apparently cluelessness is genuine.

There will be SPOILERS for The Book of Boba Fett, The Mandalorian and probably lots of other Star Wars below. But I won't spoil anything that comes afterwards, in chronological or production order. In fact I can't spoil anything made after it, as right now this is still the newest Star Wars.

Doctor Who (2005) 6-04: The Doctor's Wife

Episode:

774

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Serial:

216

|

Writer:

Neil Gaiman

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Director:

Richard Clark

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Air Date:

14-May-2011

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This week on Sci-Fi Adventures, it's the second part of a surprise Neil Gaiman double bill! The surprise is that it got interrupted halfway through by a different episode of Doctor Who. Anyway, I already wrote about his episode of Babylon 5 last time and now I'm writing about the first of his two Doctor Who stories: The Doctor's Wife.

I'm a little early posting this one, as it originally aired on 14th May 2011. If I'd just waited a bit I could've put it up on its eleventh anniversary, which would've been kind of fitting for an Eleventh Doctor episode. I've already covered one Eleventh Doctor story, series 5's The Eleventh Hour, but that was a few years ago now and I'm jumping quite a bit ahead to series 6, episode 4. Fortunately I think I can remember most of what happened in between. Well, some of it.

This episode aired almost exactly three years after series 4, episode 6, The Doctor's Daughter, so the series didn't wait long before once again tormenting fans with the hope that they might finally get to meet some of the Doctor's family. The title 'The Doctor's Wife' is much much older than that though, as it was originally attached to the Fifth Doctor serial The Caves of Androzani back in 1984. It was never going to be used, they were just trying to pin down who was possibly leaking information.

Okay I'll be writing text under screencaps of the entire episode so there will be SPOILERS here. In fact I may spoil elements of earlier stories as well, though I won't talk about anything that comes afterwards. Well okay I will, but only very vaguely. For the most part I'm treating this like it's the 14th May 2011 and I haven't even seen the NEXT TIME trailer. I'm sure it looks exciting though.