Babylon 5 4-05: The Long Night

Episode:

71

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Writer:

J. Michael Straczynski

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Director:

John Lafia

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Air Date:

27-Jan-1997

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This week on Sci-Fi Adventures I'm writing words about Babylon 5 episode The Long Night, and if you're struggling to remember exactly which one that is, I think I have an idea why. Seems that showrunner Joe Straczynski had a fondness for combining the word 'long' with a word related to night in his titles. We've already had The Long Dark and The Long, Twilight Struggle and there's a Very Long Night yet to come in season 5. There's also The Long Road in the spin-off series Crusade, but that's only halfway there.

They got another new director for this one: John Lafia, who directed the movies Child's Play 2 and Man's Best Friend, and the live-action video game Corpse Killer. I can see why they thought 'this is the guy we need to direct our serious science fiction drama series'. He'd go on to direct just two more episodes of season four and then after that he was gone. The thing is though, they're both bloody good episodes, and maybe this will be too!

Oh by the way, this was the first Babylon 5 episode to air in 1997. The series had been up against two Star Trek shows for a while by this point, and by 1997 Deep Space Nine was halfway through its fifth season and Voyager was halfway through season three. Meanwhile The X-Files was starting season four and Red Dwarf had returned after a long absence for its disappointing series seven. Plus two massive cult sci-fi shows were about to start: Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Stargate: SG-1 (Buffy had a robot in its first season, it totally counts as sci-fi). There were a few other sci-fi series starting this year as well, such as Deepwater Black, Gene Roddenberry's Earth: Final Conflict and the legendary Lexx. Oh, also two time travelling cop shows: Crime Traveller and Timecop... which both only lasted one season.

Warning: there will be SPOILERS beyond this point for this episode and earlier stories, but if you're watching the series for the first time you don't have to worry about me spoiling anything that happens later.

Babylon 5 4-04: Falling Toward Apotheosis

Episode:

70

|

Writer:

J. Michael Straczynski

|

Director:

David J. Eagle

|

Air Date:

25-Nov-1996

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This week on Sci-Fi Adventures I'm writing about Falling Toward Apotheosis, the 70th episode of cult 90s sci-fi epic Babylon 5.

Hang on, that's the same stock CGI establishing shot they used behind the title for the episode A Day in the Strife! Only this time there's a better title in front of it (in my opinion), and it's in lower case for whatever reason. The previous episode's title was upper case and the one before that was lower case so maybe they're alternating now.

'Apotheosis' sounds like it should be the title of an X-Files or Star Trek: Voyager episode, but it works here I reckon. It means 'the elevation of a person to the status of a divine being'. Here's some more trivia for you: this was the last episode of the series to air (in the US) during 1996. Also this is one of the few episodes to have a commentary track on the DVDs, and I don't think it really spoils anything for once. It's just a few of the actors joking around.

There'll be massive SPOILERS here in this review though, as I'll be going through the whole episode, recapping every scene and talking about relevant events from previous stories. You don't have to stop reading if you're a first-time viewer though. As long as you've watched up to this point you'll be fine.

Babylon 5 4-03: The Summoning

Episode:

69

|

Writer:

J. Michael Straczynski

|

Director:

John McPherson

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Air Date:

18-Nov-1996

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This week on Sci-Fi Adventures it's Babylon 5 episode 69: THE SUMMONING. They've switched back to an upper case title after the last one went lower case and now it looks like they're shouting.

The Summoning was the first and only B5 episode to be directed by John McPherson, who I know absolutely nothing about. But IMDb tells me that he directed episodes of The Incredible Hulk, Alien Nation and Sliders before directing a full third of Seven Days (which he was co-executive producer on). He was also director of photography on *batteries not included, Short Circuit 2 and Jaws: The Revenge!

That's a nice shot of the station up there I reckon. We've seen it before actually, as it's one of the Foundation Imaging stock shots and it's been around since at least the start of season three. Though it would later go on to appear much earlier, as in 1998 it was retroactively edited into the pilot movie, The Gathering, for its Special Edition. There's some VFX stock footage trivia for you.

I'm full of pointless information about previous B5 stories and you can bet this recap/review is going to spoil the hell out of this episode, but there'll be no SPOILERS for anything that comes after it. This is a first-time viewer friendly website.

Babylon 5 4-02: Whatever Happened to Mr. Garibaldi?

Episode:

68

|

Writer:

J. Michael Straczynski

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Director:

Kevin James Dobson

|

Air Date:

11-Nov-1996

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This week on Sci-Fi Adventures it's the second episode of Babylon 5's fourth season: Whatever Happened to Mr. Garibaldi?

WHtMG? is the second episode title so far to feature a character's name in it, after season three's Sic Transit Vir, and... hang on, why has the title text switched to lower case? None of the other episodes have had lower case titles so far. I wish I could check to see if it looked like this when it aired to find out if this feature's exclusive to the widescreen release.

It's the first of two episodes by Australian director Kevin James Dobson, who started directing in the 70s and worked on a ton of series I've never even heard of. Probably because they're mostly Australian. There doesn't seem to be a lot of science fiction on his resume though from what I can tell. Writer J. Michael Straczynski had done a bit of sci-fi by this point though; the previous episode was the 50th script he'd written for the series and by this point he'd written 30 stories in a row. He then went and did another 30 after this (including two movies) before Neil Gaiman turned up to give him the week off.

You should be aware that all my recaps and reviews are generally first-time viewer friendly, meaning there'll be SPOILERS for this episode and the ones leading up to it, but nothing for stories that come afterwards. I won't be ruining Babylon 5 for anyone if I can help it.

Babylon 5 4-01: The Hour of the Wolf

Episode:

67

|

Writer:

J. Michael Straczynski

|

Director:

David J. Eagle

|

Air Date:

04-Nov-1996

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Sci-Fi Adventures is back for another two months of sci-fi recap reviews! Most of them are going to be of Babylon 5 episodes to be honest as I need to get through this series, but I'm fine with that. I can think of worse series to be stuck with.

I'm starting off with the first episode of season four, The Hour of the Wolf! Though I'm watching it on DVD without the adverts, so it's more like The 42 Minutes of the Wolf.

Here's an interesting fact about US science fiction TV shows during the last century: they didn't typically live long. At the time this episode aired The X-Files was starting its fourth season and Star Trek: The Next Generation had just finished an epic seven season run, but for other sci-fi, especially space sci-fi, three seasons was an exceptional run. Battlestar Galactica and Space: Above and Beyond managed one season, Buck Rogers reached two, and even titans Lost in Space and Star Trek were cancelled after year three. So for Babylon 5 to make it to year four was actually pretty unusual. And appreciated considering the cliffhanger the last season left us on.

Hey I just noticed that the title text has gone back to the season 1 font! Well, on the DVDs at least, it would've looked different on the original airing. The shadow didn't used to look so dark for one thing.

Anyway I should point out that this is a recap/review for people who've already seen the episode or don't care about SPOILERS. It's very first-time viewer friendly though, as I'll not be spoiling anything that happens after this point.

Star Wars: The Mandalorian - Season 1 Review

The week on Sci-Fi Adventures... is going to be the last week for a while I'm afraid. I'll be writing about video games on Super Adventures instead for the next two months so that hopefully I don't go insane. But before that I'm going to be sharing my thoughts about season one of The Mandalorian, the very first live action Star Wars TV series!

Man, it took them bloody long enough. Star Trek made the jump from live action series to movies 13 years after it first premiered, but it took Star Wars 42 years to do the opposite! On the other end of the scale, Doctor Who and Firefly hit cinemas just 3 years after their first episodes aired, which is the same amount of time that Stargate took to evolve into a TV franchise. Even Lost in Space beats Star Wars, as it got a movie after 33 years (then jumped back to TV 20 years later). Plus if you count TV movies, Babylon 5 progressed from pilot movie to series after just a year, Battlestar Galactica got a film after 29 years, and Red Dwarf actually got its promised movie after 32 years. Okay I'm done now.

Wait, Indiana Jones (11 years). Sorry, now I'm done.

The reason a Star Wars series took so long to get made is that they were waiting for the technology to make it possible to produce on a TV schedule and budget. George Lucas actually had something like 40-50 scripts for a show called Star Wars: Underworld (from writers like DS9/BSG's Ronald D. Moore), which was planned to be produced in the late 2000s, but it just wasn't time yet. Lucasfilm apparently took some of the story concepts and ideas and put them into things like Rebels, Rogue One and Solo instead. It turns out the technology they needed was a set made of giant LED walls featuring a resolution high enough for them to be used for both lighting and as the backdrop, with the scenery rendered in real time using Unreal Engine 4 so that the parallax is always correct from the camera's point of view. But they've got that now, so it's cool.

Anyway, I wrote these reviews right after watching the episodes so if I sound like I don't know what's coming next, that's because I actually didn't at the time. There'll be SPOILERS here for the whole first season and maybe a few of the movies, so I recommend you stop reading here if that's going to be a problem.

Babylon 5: Season 3 - Point of No Return Review

Today on Sci-Fi Adventures I'll be writing a bit about the third season of Babylon 5! Three down, two to go.

I've finally hit the end of the middle season and it's nice to be 60% done with the series. Not because I'm not enjoying it, it's just a relief to see some light at the end of the tunnel. Only 44 episodes, a handful of movies and a couple of spin-offs left and then I can finally relax. Move on. Maybe even start a Babylon 5 podcast. (I won't be starting a B5 podcast).

Anyway, this is going to feature SPOILERS for the whole of season three, from Matters of Honor to Z'ha'dum, and I'll inevitably end up spoiling earlier seasons as well. I won't say a word about future seasons though, so if you're watching through the series for the first time and you've made it up to this point then this is all safe for you to read.