Babylon 5 5-10: A Tragedy of Telepaths

Episode:

98

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Writer:

J. Michael Straczynski

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Director:

Tony Dow

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Air Date:

25-Mar-1998

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This week on Sci-Fi Adventures I'm watching Babylon 5 season 5 episode 10: A Tragedy of Telepaths.

The word 'tragedy' in this case is a collective noun, as it's the name for a group of telepaths. You know, like a murder of crows or a litter of puppies. Or a shrewdness of apes. An implausibility of gnus. A congregation of crocodiles. A handful of stegosauruses. An exaltation of larks. A business of ferrets. A tower of giraffes.

I'd mention some trivia here or talk about the director, but I'd rather just keep listing collective nouns. A wisdom of wombats. A dazzle of zebras. A murmuration of starlings. Where do these nouns even come from? Who even uses them? Okay everyone says things like 'a pack of cards' or 'a round of drinks', they're not all bizarre, but no one has ever had to refer to an 'obstinacy of buffalo' before.

Anyway, I hope you're into SPOILERS because there'll be a lot of them coming your way very soon if you keep reading. For this episode and for earlier ones too. But if you've watched the series up to this point you have nothing to worry about as I'll not be spoiling anything that happens after the episode.

Firefly 1-01: Serenity

Episode:

1

|

Writer:

Joss Whedon

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Director:

Joss Whedon

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Air Date:

20-Dec-2002

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Today on Sci-Fi Adventures, I'm watching Firefly's feature-length pilot episode Serenity (not to be confused with the feature-length feature film Serenity that caps the series off).

Actually to be honest I'm not watching anything. I already watched the episode ages ago and I had a first draft of this article written up, just waiting for me to give it a final pass. I'd even written the text down by the 'Next Episode' picture at the bottom. The text said that the next review was going to be "Babylon 5 season 1, episode 4 - Infection", so that helps narrow down when this article was supposed to be published. Seems that it was originally meant to go up a few days before the 21st June 2016. I get distracted sometimes and forget things.

This means I watched Serenity in a more innocent time, before Joss Whedon's fan site Whedonesque.com shut down when his ex-wife accused him of multiple affairs, before he was accused of being abusive to actors, and before Justice League. Though it would've been a couple years after Adam Baldwin helped make Gamergate a thing. Honestly I think it's best I'm getting this done now, before anything worse comes out. Though if I'd just waited a few months later I could've posted this on its 20th anniversary.

Firefly aired its one short season in late 2002, at the same time that Buffy the Vampire Slayer hit season 7 and Angel reached season 4. That means that Whedon had three series he'd created running simultaneously, which is maybe a little much, even if Tim Minear was the actual showrunner of this one. I checked their US ratings, out of curiosity, and if these numbers I got from the internet are correct then all three shows were getting roughly the same viewers. (Then I threw Star Trek: Enterprise on the chart as well, seeing as that was in its season second at the time, and it was roughly the same as well.) But I guess Fox expected more from its expensive space show as it was axed after 14 episodes and they didn't even air 3 of them. Also they aired this pilot episode last!

Alright, I'm going to go through the whole story scene by scene, recapping, screencapping (from the PAL DVDs), and typing whatever commentary I can think of as I go. This article is going to feature SPOILERS for exactly one episode, this one... except I'm also going to mention something from the pilot of Outlaw Star. So exactly two episodes then. But nothing more.

Babylon 5 5-09: In the Kingdom of the Blind

Episode:

97

|

Writer:

J. Michael Straczynski

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Director:

David J. Eagle

|

Air Date:

18-Mar-1998

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This week on Sci-Fi Adventures I'm watching Babylon 5 season 5 episode 9 - In the Kingdom of the Blind. I watched episode 7 - Secrets of the Soul last time so I should probably explain where episode 8's gone.

I'm following the Lurker's Guide's Master List, which tries to put the episodes in the place which makes the most sense for continuity. It only moves a few stories around, in fact the last time I skipped an episode like this was back in season 3, and I think this might be the last episode I'm watching out of order.

The Master List reordering leaves this run of episodes looks like this:

07 - Secrets of the Soul
09 - In the Kingdom of the Blind
10 - A Tragedy of Telepaths
11 - Phoenix Rising
12 - The Ragged Edge
08 - Day of the Dead

So episode 8's not coming around for a while.

Why is this relevant to you? Well it's going to affect what kind of SPOILERS you're going to read here. I only write about the episode I'm on and the ones that came before it, I don't spoil what comes next, so this reordering means that I won't say a thing about anything that happens in Day of the Dead here. On the other hand, my eventual Day of the Dead review could be full of spoilers for episodes 9-12... theoretically.

Outlaw Star 01-04

Eps:

1-4

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Writer:

Katsuhiko Chiba

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Directors:

Takeshi Ashizawa, Naoyoshi Kusaka, Takahiko Hoshiai

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Air Date:

08-Jan-1998 - 29-Jan-1998

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This week on Sci-Fi Adventures I'm watching the first four episodes of Outlaw Star!

I was only planning to write about one episode, but then I discovered how serialised the series is and long I'd have to keep writing about it just to reach the bit with the spaceship in. I've got other series I need to write about, I can't keep posting about Outlaw Star every week, so I've decided to get all four episodes out of the way in the same article. It's a giant-sized super-fast paced extra-value review!

This isn't actually my first time watching the series, I just haven't seen much of it and what I have seen I don't remember much of. That's not necessarily a sign that it's bad, as I'm easily distracted and my memory isn't always great. It might be a really good series for all I know! It'd definitely had a good studio behind it, as it was made by Sunrise, the people who made Cowboy Bebop. Outlaw Star had a more typical origin however, as unlike Bebop it was adapted from a manga.

Okay I'll be going through each of the episodes, summarising what I see and sharing my thoughts, so there will be huge SPOILERS here.

Babylon 5 5-07: Secrets of the Soul

Episode:

95

|

Writer:

J. Michael Straczynski

|

Director:

Tony Dow

|

Air Date:

04-Mar-1998

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This week on Sci-Fi Adventures I'm watching Babylon 5 season 5 episode 7, Secrets of the Soul. It's promising secrets, plural, so it'd better deliver or else I'm going to be slightly disappointed. Or more likely I'll forget what the title was five minutes in and not actually care.

SPOILER WARNING: I'll be going through the episode scene by scene and writing what happens underneath, so if you don't already know what happens that might be a problem. Especially as I'll be talking about earlier episodes as well. I'll not be talking about what happens next though.

Doctor Who (2005) - New Year's Day 2022: Eve of the Daleks

Episode:

869

|

Writer:

Chris Chibnall

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Director:

Annetta Laufer

|

Air Date:

01-Jan-2022

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This week on Sci-Fi Adventures I'm watching Doctor Who again! This time it's the 2022 New Year's Day special: Eve of the Daleks, and it's a time loop tale! I hope no one considers that to be a spoiler, it wasn't meant to be. I'm going to be mentioning a lot of time loop episodes in all kinds of TV series so if that's an issue for you should skip the next paragraph and then also the rest of the review. Sorry.

Some of the best episodes in science fiction have been time loop stories. Supernatural's Mystery Spot, Stargate: SG-1's  Window of Opportunity, Red Dwarf's White Hole. Oh and there's Groundhog Day, obviously. So this has a good chance of being something kind of special.

It's also the third New Year's Eve Dalek story in a row, so that's become a bit of a tradition. I feel like it might be the last of them, seeing as Russell T. Davies is coming back next year and he introduced Christmas specials, but you never know, maybe it'll stick. We could even have a Merry Cyberman Christmas, a Happy Dalek New Year and a Master Easter special all in the same year!

I'll be going through the whole episode scene by scene writing my thoughts down under screencaps, same as usual, so beware of SPOILERS.

Farscape 1-01: Premiere - Part 2

This week on Sci-Fi Adventures, I'm still writing about Farscape's first episode. It's not a double length story, pilots just give me a lot to write about. Click THIS LINK if you'd like to jump to part one instead.

It's not even really a pilot to be honest, as Farscape cost so much to set up that they needed a network to commit to at least 11 episodes before shooting a single one. Sets and animatronics aren't cheap, but once you've got them built you can keep using them and spread the cost out. For a while it seemed like Fox was going to be the one to greenlight the series, but the Sci Fi Channel was the one who finally came through for them. Which probably worked out better in the long run as sci-fi shows on Fox don't tend to last very long (just ask fans of Space: Above and Beyond or Firefly).

The creators are American but they decided to film and produce the series in Australia to get more on screen for their budget. They did hire one American for the cast though, star Ben Browder. This had a side-effect of dropping his character in a distant part of the universe where everyone either speaks with an Australian accent or like an Australian trying to put on a British accent.

Alright, I've already given you all the SPOILERS I can for the first half of the episode and now I'm going to go and spoil the second half too. With pictures! Enjoy.