Doctor Who (2005) 9-05: The Girl Who Died

Episode:

818

|

Serial:

256

|

Writer:

Jamie Mathieson and Steven Moffat

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Air Date:

17-Oct-2015

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This week on Sci-Fi Adventures, I'm writing about The Girl Who Died, which is an entirely different episode to The Girl Who Waited (but likely not unrelated to The Woman Who Lived, which is coming up next).

Series 9 hasn't entirely won me over so far, but I'm hyped for this one just because of the talent involved. The best writer of modern Doctor Who teaming up with Steven Moffat, how can that not lead to awesome? Okay maybe I should wait until Mathieson writes more than two episodes before I declare him all-time champion of Doctor Who, especially as Moffat has crafted a formidable set of stories. But Moffat's been kind of hit and miss since taking the reins and Mathieson's two episodes were really good!

Oh, plus they've also got the former lead guitarist for The Vapors in the role of director. I've no idea if that's a good or bad thing, I just had to mention it.

Just so you know, I'll be filling my text with SPOILERS from start to finish, maybe even for Doctor Who episodes that came before this one. Episodes that aired after it are perfectly safe though, as this is actually my first time through the season.

Star Trek: Deep Space Nine 1-06: Captive Pursuit

Episode:

6

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Writer:

Jill Sherman Donner and Michael Piller

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Air Date:

31-Jan-1993

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This week on Sci-Fi Adventures, I'm going to be going through the fifth-ish episode of Deep Space Nine: Captive Pursuit.

This one's fairly well regarded I believe, for a season 1 episode. That's hardly a guarantee of quality, but it's an O'Brien story so I'm sure it'll be bearable enough. Bearable for me I mean; O'Brien himself will probably spend the whole thing tormented and miserable. Especially if his wife Keiko is in it.

Like always I'll only be writing SPOILERS for this episode and the ones that come before it, not the ones afterwards. So if you haven't seen Voyager, Enterprise, the Next Gen movies, the reboot films or the last 170 episodes of DS9 it's still perfectly safe to read on!

Man there's a lot of Star Trek.

Babylon 5 1-04: Infection

Episode:

4

|

Writer:

J. Michael Straczynski

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Air Date:

16-Feb-1994

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Today on Sci-Fi Adventures I’m spoiling Infection, which actually isn't Babylon 5's inevitable 'plague spreads through the station' episode, and involves precisely zero scenes of Dr. Franklin struggling to come up with a cure before it's too late! It should've been the plague episode though, because that's what Deep Space Nine's fourth episode was about too, and it'd would've given us another weird coincidence for the list.

Infection is chronologically the fourth episode, but it was the first written and filmed after The Gathering pilot movie, so it's probably a little shaky compared to the ones that aired before it. In fact a lot of fans consider this to be the worst of all B5 episodes, even worse than all the other episodes in season one! Personally I'm not sure what I think of it, because it's been ages since I last saw it, but I'll give it a fair chance to win me over.

I'll be writing SPOILERS for this episode and those that aired before it, but nothing that comes after. So if this episode somehow leads to any huge events down the line I'll keep my metaphorical mouth shut about what they are.

Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan - Director's Edition

Written by:

Nicholas Meyer

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Directed by:

Nicholas Meyer

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Release Date:

1982

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Today on Sci-Fi Adventures, I'm revisiting Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan, considered by many to be one of the best Star Trek movies and considered by me to have one of the worst Trek movie title fonts.

The Director's Edition of the film finally got a rescanned and remastered Blu-ray release last week to replace the weirdly blue-tinted theatrical cut Blu-ray that's been around since 2009, but I'm going to be going through the fuzzy old 2002 Director's Edition DVD instead (mostly because it's what's on my shelf). Not that there's actually much difference between the theatrical and director's cuts though, and they definitely haven't pulled a Star Trek: The Motion Picture this time and added new effects shots (because the film doesn't need them).

I'm going to be giving away SPOILERS for this movie and things that came before it (the episode Space Seed for instance) but everything afterwards is safe. I do want to spoil one of the recent films, but I'll restrain myself.

Doctor Who (2005) 9-04: Before the Flood

Episode:

817

|

Serial:

255

|

Writer:

Toby Whithouse

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Air Date:

10-Oct-2015

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This week on Sci-Fi Adventures I'm watching the second half of the second story of Peter Capaldi's second year as the 12th Doctor, finishing what was started with Under the Lake.

The last episode introduced a lot of weirdness and any explanations given for it were fairly terrible, so I'm hoping this one's going to reveal what's really going on in a satisfying and intelligent way. Because I like to set myself up for disappointment.

As usual there will be SPOILERS for everything that comes before and nothing that comes after. Relative to the episodes I mean, not the timeline. Basically I might spoil something that happened in a David Tennant episode but nothing about The Girl Who Died onwards.

Star Trek: Deep Space Nine 1-05: Babel

Episode:

5

|

Writer:

Michael McGreevey & Naren Shankar

|

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

|

Writer:

Lawrence G. DeTillio

|

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.