Doctor Who (2005): The Power of the Doctor - Part 1

Episode:

871

|

Writer:

Chris Chibnall

|

Director:

Jamie Magnus Stone

|

Air Date:

23-Oct-2022

---

This week on Sci-Fi Adventures I'm watching all 90 minutes of the Doctor Who BBC Centenary special, The Power of the Doctor!

It's the last episode of the Jodie Whittaker/Chris Chibnall era, which means it's also a regeneration story! Oh damn, I should've covered all the modern regeneration episodes first! Why is that only occurring to me now? Never mind, I wouldn't have had the time to do it anyway.

I have to be honest, if I'd known that this was going to be 90 minutes I wouldn't have been so quick to tell everyone it was going to be my next review. For whatever reason I can cover a 45 minute episode in a normal-sized review just fine, but a 90 minute story usually means three times the work. So if this seems a bit more rushed, scruffy and downright inaccurate than usual, that's because I'm racing to get it finished. It's going to have some real first draft energy.

Oh right, the SPOILER WARNING. Can't forget that. I'll be going through the whole episode scene by scene so if you want to experience its surprises properly I'd strongly recommend watching it first. This is an anniversary special so I'll probably be talking about stuff from a bunch of other episodes too.

Star Trek: Prodigy - Season 1 Review, Part 3

This week on Sci-Fi Adventures, I've reached the halfway point of Star Trek Prodigy's first season! Every other current Star Trek series is getting just 10 episodes a season now but Prodigy is going crazy with massive 20 episode seasons... that are split down the middle, giving us 10 episodes a year. In fact I'm just going to call this its own season and write a little season review thing at the end.

I'll be writing about these three episodes:

• 1-08 - Time Amok
  
• 1-09 - A Moral Star, Part 1
  
• 1-10 - A Moral Star, Part 2
  

There will be SPOILERS here for Prodigy and other Star Trek series, but only up to the point in time these episodes were released. So if you haven't seen anything after episode 10 you've got nothing to worry about here. Not that there is anything after episode 10 right now.

Star Trek: Prodigy - Season 1 Review, Part 2

This week on Sci-Fi Adventures, I'm writing about Star Trek: Prodigy! Or Nickelodeon: Star Trek - Prodigy, according to the logo up there. I'm going to be covering four episodes this time, which I have listed in a convenient list below for your convenience:

• 1-04 - Dreamcatcher
  
• 1-05 - Terror Firma
  
• 1-06 - Kobayashi
  
• 1-07 - First Con-tact
  

There will be SPOILERS, for these episodes and earlier ones, but nothing that comes after them. Partly because I wrote about each episode right after watching them and I didn't actually know anything else at the time, partly because I don't want to ruin anything for other people who are watching it for the first time.

Babylon 5: Thirdspace - Part 3

This week on Sci-Fi Adventures, I'm finally going to shut up talking about the Babylon 5 movie Thirdspace. I just have to write about what happens in the ending and then I'm done. Though if you want more words you can check out PART ONE and PART TWO and read how the story got to this point.

This review will contain SPOILERS for the movie and the first half of season 4, but I don't intend to give away any more than that, for the sake of people watching the series for the first time. There should always be people watching this series for the first time.

Babylon 5: Thirdspace - Part 2

Today on Sci-Fi Adventures, I'm writing about the middle third of the Babylon 5 movie Thirdspace. If you want to go back to PART ONE then click that text and you'll go straight there.

There'll be SPOILERS here for the first half of season four, but I'll try not to give away anything about what happens next. Sure the movie aired near the end of season five, but some people might decide to watch the films where they fit chronologically, and I don't want to ruin one damn thing for first time viewers.

Babylon 5: Thirdspace - Part 1

Written By:

J. Michael Straczynski

|

Directed By:

Jesús Treviño

|

Release Date:

1998

---

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

|

Writer:

J. Michael Straczynski

|

Director:

John C. Flinn III

|

Air Date:

17-Jun-1998

---

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.