Babylon 5: Thirdspace - Part 1

Written By:

J. Michael Straczynski

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Directed By:

Jesús Treviño

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Release Date:

1998

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This week on Sci-Fi Adventures, I'm watching the Babylon 5 TV movie Thirdspace. Not The Third Place, that's a PS3 advert directed by David Lynch where he plays a duck.

The series hit a bit of a snag during its fourth season as PTEN, the network airing B5 in the US, collapsed. Fortunately it found a new home with the TNT network for its final season and they even wanted them to produce some B5 movies! Thirdspace was the first of the these movies to be filmed, however it's technically the second film as it aired 7 months after In the Beginning (on July 19th 1998 if you're curious). That puts it three quarters of the way through season 5, which is why I'm writing about it after ep 5-17, Movements of Fire and Shadow, even though chronologically it fits somewhere in season 4. Ep 4-09, Atonement, seems the most suitable place for it to slot in, though it would have to take place between the first scene and the rest of the episode.

Like all the best movie DVDs, Thirdspace's disc comes with a commentary track and it's loaded with people. There's director Jesús Treviño, Bruce Boxleitner (Sheridan), Patricia Tallman (Lyta), Jeff Conaway (Zack), and Stephen Furst (Vir), and they're a good group of people to hang out with for 90 minutes. It also features SPOILER. Just one single spoiler, at least that's all I noticed

This recap/review, on the other hand, is going to be WALL TO WALL SPOILERS, for this movie and any relevant episodes leading up to it. But if you're watching through the series for the first time you'll be fine here, I'll not ruin anything that happens next.

Babylon 5 5-17: Movements of Fire and Shadow

Episode:

105

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Writer:

J. Michael Straczynski

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Director:

John C. Flinn III

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Air Date:

17-Jun-1998

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This week on Sci-Fi Adventures, I'm watching the Babylon 5 season 5 episode Movements of Fire and Shadow. Sounds like it should be the name of a Game of Thrones novel, but you know that things are getting real when the word 'Shadow' shows up in a B5 episode title.

It was the final episode to be directed by John C. Flinn III, but he carried on in his other job as the series' director of photography until the end. The main thing I remember about Flinn's episodes is that he's not great at shooting actors in monster suits, but if they can avoid that here this might be a good one.

We're getting really close to the end now, only 5 episodes left after this one, but they decided to be cruel during the show's first airing on TNT and make people wait 19 weeks for the next episode. That's four and a half months! We had it even worse in the UK, as we had to wait 2 weeks longer than that. Though they did at least air the B5 movie Thirdspace in the meantime... which confusingly slots in during the events of season 4.

I should probably mention that there will be SPOILERS beyond this point for this episode and earlier episodes too, but I've written this warning over a hundred times now and I'm getting pretty bored of doing it, so you're just going to have to live without it this time.

Star Trek: The Next Generation 1-06: Where No One Has Gone Before

Episode:

6

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Writer:

Diane Duane and Michael Reaves

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Director:

Rob Bowman

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Air Date:

26-Oct-1987

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This week on Sci-Fi Adventures, I'm jumping ahead to Star Trek: The Next Generation's sixth episode, Where No One Has Gone Before! They've gotten a bit clever with its title, as it's a callback to the classic Original Series episode Where No Man Has Gone Before, with the name updated to match the iconic line in Next Gen's politically corrected opening narration. The earlier episode was about going beyond human experience, now this time they're going beyond anyone's experience. Presumably.

The episode's credited to writers Diane Duane and Michael Reaves, though it ended up being heavily rewritten by producer Maurice Hurley, to the point where there wasn't much of their story left. This was their only script for the series, though Duane had written a number of Trek novels, including The Wounded Sky, which was actually the inspiration for this episode. It's not often that you come across a Trek episode that was based on a novel.

It's the first episode to be directed by Rob Bowman, who ended up directing 13 episodes over the first four seasons. He's probably better known for his work on The X-Files and Castle though, and was chosen to direct the first X-Files movie.

Alright I'm going to go through the whole episode scene by scene so there'll be all kinds of SPOILERS here. I might talk about events from other episodes as well, though if I mention anything from a later story/series I'll keep it extremely vague and harmless. There'll be no Star Trek: Discovery/Picard/etc. spoilers here. 

Star Trek: The Original Series 1-03: Where No Man Has Gone Before

Episode:

3

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Writer:

Samuel A. Peeples

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Director:

James Goldstone

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Air Date:

22-Sep-1966

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This week on Sci-Fi Adventures, I'm watching the third episode of Star Trek: The Original Series: Where No Man Has Gone Before. It's also the second and the first, depending on how you look at it.

Sometimes people use the term 'pilot episode' to refer to the first released episode of a series, but this story was a true pilot, created to prove the concept and get Star Trek green lit. In fact it was the second pilot, produced after The Cage failed to win executives over. Getting two pilots like this was unusual, probably still is. When Desilu (the studio) originally came to NBC (the network) they'd offered them a choice of four story concepts and NBC picked the hardest one, so they felt like they were partly to blame for it not working out like they'd hoped.

So the Star Trek folks came up with some new options for the executives to choose from: three scripts titled Mudd's Women, The Omega Glory and Where No Man Has Gone Before. All three stories were put into production eventually, with Mudd's Women being regarded as one of the worst episodes of season 1, and The Omega Glory one of the worst in season 2. Fortunately Where No Man Has Gone Before was the script chosen for the second pilot, and it got the job done, earning Star Trek its first season.

It takes a while to get a TV series going though, so they ended up sitting on the finished episode for over a year. The episode ended up airing as the third story in season one, after The Man Trap and Charlie X, which is a bit weird as it features different characters and uniforms to the episodes before and after it. It does have the same premise as Charlie X though to be fair, so the story would've been familiar enough. Also at this point 66.7% of all Star Trek episodes featured the word 'man' in the title, down from 100% a couple of episodes ago. At the time of writing Trek would have to release another 550 episodes with 'man' in the name to get the percentage back up to where it was this week in 1966.

I'd give you some more facts, like how the cinematographer, Earnest Haller, had won an Oscar for Gone with the Wind and was pulled out of retirement for one last job, but I think I've proven by now that I've read the Wikipedia page.

Okay I'm going to go through the whole episode now commenting on basically everything, so this review is going to have SPOILERS. I'll not spoil anything that aired after it however, no matter how many Gary Mitchells or galactic barriers it has.

Star Trek: Strange New Worlds - Season 1 Review, Part 1

This week on Sci-Fi Adventures I'm giving my thoughts on the first three episodes of Star Trek: Strange New Worlds!

Strange New Worlds is the third live-action series of the Alex Kurtzman era and the first to return to the episodic style of shows like Star Trek: The Original Series, Star Trek: The Next Generation and Star Trek: Voyager. It's so old school that when I describe it to people, I just say that it's Star Trek. It's about a crew of competent professionals going from world to world on the USS Enterprise, solving space problems and moral dilemmas in around 40 minutes. At least, that's what all the reviews say when they're listing reasons why it's so much better than Discovery and Picard.

From what I can tell, Star Trek fans aren't just happy with how the series has turned out, they're also relieved. It's not going to have have serialised seasons that start spinning their wheels halfway through because there's only enough story for four episodes. It's not going to have examinations of how imperfect the Federation really is. It's not going to have damaged heroes who routinely find themselves at the centre of universe-threatening crises because they're so special. Well, in theory anyway.

Personally I've liked the very serialised Discovery and Picard so far... to a degree, but variety is good and I am 100% for an episodic Trek all about Pike, Spock and Number One. In fact I've been waiting for this since Discovery's second season finale, so my enthusiasm level is high here.

I'll start off by sharing thoughts and SPOILERS for these three episodes:

• 1-01 - Strange New Worlds
  
• 1-02 - Children of the Comet
  
• 1-03 - Ghosts of Illyria
  

Though I'll probably also mention something about the earlier Star Trek series as well, so continue reading at your own risk.

Star Trek: Picard - Season 2 Review, Part 1

This week on Sci-Fi Adventures, I'm writing about the second season of Star Trek: Picard! 

The series was under new management this season, with Strange New Worlds showrunner Akiva Goldsman and 12 Monkeys showrunner Terry Matalas taking over from Michael Chabon, who's been busy developing a different show based on his novel The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay. Though Goldsman and Matalas were busy too, with Goldsman helping create a new Trek series and Terry Matalas switching his focus to the third season halfway through, so things were a bit messy behind the scenes. That's normal for Star Trek to be fair, the shows often don't settle down until season three, but Star Trek: Picard's only getting three seasons so it'll be nice if whoever was left minding the store didn't screw this one up.

I'm going to be covering the first three episodes here:

• 2-01 - The Star Gazer
  
• 2-02 - Penance
  
• 2-03 - Assimilation

This means that there'll be SPOILERS for each of these stories and probably some earlier Trek stories as well. I wrote each review right after watching the episode for the first time however, so couldn't have spoiled anything that comes next if I wanted to. And I didn't want to.

Babylon 5 5-16: And All My Dreams, Torn Asunder

Episode:

104

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Writer:

J. Michael Straczynski

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Director:

Goran Gajić

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Air Date:

10-Jun-1998

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This week on Sci-Fi Adventures I'm watching Babylon 5 season 5 episode And All My Dreams, Torn Asunder. Now there's a proper Babylon 5 title for you. In fact it's so Babylon 5 that JMS basically used it once already for season three's Severed Dreams. This is just a more poetic and less pithy way of phrasing it.

It's really rare to see an episode begin with the word 'And' like this. In fact outside of Babylon 5, the only other episode I can think of that does is Star Trek's And the Children Shall Lead. Babylon 5 was written by one guy for the most part though, so he had plenty of opportunities to express his idiosyncrasies. Which means we got And the Sky Full of Stars in season 1, And Now For a Word in season 2, plus And the Rock Cried Out, No Hiding Place in season 3. Season 4 missed out unfortunately.

The episode was directed by Goran Gajić, who was Delenn actress Mira Furlan's husband. It's the first and only episode he ever did for the series, which was apparently Warner Bros' fault more than anyone else, as creator J. Michael Straczynski had wanted to hire him for a while. The episode also had a different director of photography than usual, with Fred V. Murphy II taking over from John C. Flinn III for the 8th and final time. I'll be curious to see if it looks any different with all these new people behind the camera.

Okay I'll be rewatching, recapping, reacting and dropping massive SPOILERS for this entire episode, and some earlier episodes as well. I'll not be spoiling anything that comes next however.