Star Trek: Deep Space Nine 1-05: Babel

Episode:

5

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Writer:

Michael McGreevey & Naren Shankar

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Air Date:

24-Jan-1993

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This week on Sci-Fi Adventures, I'm up to the fourth episode of Deep Space Nine season one, called Babel.

The episode's named after the Old Testament myth of the Tower of Babel, which ends with God deciding it'd be best if humanity didn't have one common language any more, as it was encouraging them to build giant towers. I always assumed it was pronounced 'bay-bell', but it's apparently supposed to be read like 'babble', as in 'technobabble'. Which is something Star Trek has too much of, in my humble opinion.

I'll be writing SPOILERS for this episode and maybe even the ones that came before it, but everything after it is off limits. This is a New Viewer Safe review.

Babylon 5 1-03: Born to the Purple

Episode:

3

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Writer:

Lawrence G. DeTillio

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Air Date:

09-Feb-1994

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Today on Sci-Fi Adventures, I'm writing about Babylon 5 again! It's only a season one episode though so don't get too excited.

Born to the Purple is the first episode of the series to be written by someone other than series creator J. Michael Straczynski, as executive story editor Larry DiTillio stepped in to give the boss's smoking word processor a chance to cool down. JMS was insanely prolific on B5, writing 92 of the 110 episodes himself, leaving DiTillio in distant second with 7. But that doesn't mean that DiTillio's episodes are bad! Or maybe it does, I dunno, it's been ages since I've seen them. I've got positive feelings about this one at least.

Please be aware that there'll be SPOILERS for everything up to and including this episode. I won't be ruining anything that comes after it for you though.

Doom: Extended Edition

Written by:

Dave Callaham & Wesley Strick

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Directed by:

Andrzej Bartkowiak

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Release Date:

2005

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This week on Sci-Fi Adventures, another video game movie!

Doom can't be as bad as Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within though, surely? Well according to Rotten Tomatoes, 44% of critics came out of Final Fantasy feeling like it brightened up their day, compared to just 19% for Doom. But to be fair, Spirits Within is currently about the highest rated video game movie on the site (second only to Angry Birds), so Doom's actually a mid-tier VG adaptation.

No one could say a bad word about that logo though! Except that they've left a massive gap between the O's and bled all the colour out of it. But they stayed true to the games and I always respect a movie that respects its source material. Trouble is, at the time this was made the Doom games had already had one reboot so there were conflicting sources. Not to mention the comic and the books.

Still, as long as the movie's about a lone Space Marine who fights his way through the warped and broken corridors of a research base located on or around Mars, killing cyberdemons and his possessed comrades on his way to Hell itself, they couldn't really screw it up!

I'm going to be going through the Extended Edition, so you'll be getting 15 minutes of extra SPOILERS. I might even spoil the games too if I can think of any plot to spoil. Not the brand new one though, because while everyone else has been enjoying playing it, I've been busy writing this crap up instead.

Doctor Who (2005) 9-03: Under the Lake

Episode:

816

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Serial:

255

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Writer:

Toby Whithouse

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Air Date:

03-Oct-2015

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This week on Sci-Fi Adventures I'm watching a bit of Doctor Who.

Under the Lake is the first part of the second two-parter of series 9 (or series 35 depending on how you count it) and it's almost certainly about a bloke in a blue box putting himself into a ridiculously dangerous situation which he fails to resolve by the end credits.

As usual there'll be EXTREME SPOILERS for this episode, mild spoilers for episodes that come before, and zero spoilers for what comes after (because at the time of writing I haven't actually seen any further.)

Star Trek: Deep Space Nine 1-04: A Man Alone

Episode:

4

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Writer:

Michael Piller

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Air Date:

17-Jan-1993

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This week on Sci-Fi Adventures I'm watching episode three of Deep Space Nine's first season, A Man Alone. Though if your going by production order it's actually episode two and if you count the pilot as a two parter it becomes episode four!

Swapping episodes around like this didn't happen all that often in Deep Space Nine, but it doesn't seem all that rare for television; I know Babylon 5 and Doctor Who both filmed episodes out of order for various reasons. Sometimes a series has to arrange production to take advantage of an actor's availability, make use of a location, or to give more time for the CGI effects to be completed etc. And sometimes the producers just want to put their better episodes at the front to show that their series isn't all bad.

It's not worth worrying about though, as I remember DS9 season one barely had any continuity to it anyway. US television in '93 still shunned serialisation outside of soaps, so the producers had to fight for their arcs, and at this point they were more interested in making it easy for new viewers to jump on board.

I do have continuity though, so I'm going to be dropping all kinds of SPOILERS for this story and every episode that aired before it. But not the ones coming after it, they're all safe. For now.

Babylon 5 1-02: Soul Hunter

Episode:

2

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Writer:

J. Michael Straczynski

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Air Date:

02-Feb-1994

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Today on Sci-Fi Adventures, it's perhaps the absolute low point of Babylon 5! I can't really express just how terrible Soul Hunter is, mostly because I haven't seen it in years and I can barely remember it. Maybe it's not actually that bad! I suppose I'll have to watch it again to know.

Here's a pointless fact for you: B5 season 1 was filmed almost entirely out of order for whatever reason, so an episode's production number rarely ever matches up with its episode number. But Soul Hunter was both the second episode shot and the second one aired. The first episode filmed after the pilot movie was Infection, which may actually be worse than this, so it's amazing the actors had any enthusiasm left by episode 3.

Like before there'll be SPOILERS for the episode and everything that aired before it, but I won't spoil a thing about what's to come. Except that the series gets better, I promise.

Aliens: Special Edition

Written by:

James Cameron

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Directed by:

James Cameron

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Release Date:

1986

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This week on Sci-Fi Adventures I'm going to go through James Cameron's legendary sci-fi action thriller sequel Aliens! Because 20th Century Fox have decided that the 26th of April is now 'Alien Day', and that's enough of an excuse for me to give it a rewatch. I suppose it would've made more sense to watch Alien today and save Aliens for its 30th anniversary in July, but that idea occurred to me a little too late unfortunately. Maybe I'll watch Alien later and sneakily swap the post dates around... no one will ever notice.

I already watched the movie last April as research for my 'Aliens: Colonial Marines' review on Super Adventures, so I was thinking I'd put the theatrical cut on instead this time and save myself some work. But that doesn't seem right when the Special Edition is considered the definitive version by basically everyone, especially James Cameron and Sigourney Weaver who weren't that happy when 14 minutes of their movie got sliced out. Sometimes a 'director's cut' is just a re-edit purely for the sake of selling the same movie twice, but Fox had the theatrical version of Aliens cut down so that cinemas could fit more screening in each day, so this is a restoration of its true form. All two and a half hours of it.

Like always I'll be going through the whole damn movie, writing my thoughts underneath DVD screencaps and throwing out massive SPOILERS all over the place, for this film and the original Alien. I won't spoil a thing about Alien³ onwards though, no matter how tempted I am to go into a rant.