ORBzine - UK TV Roundup January 2000
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First Week, JanuaryStar Trek: DS9 [Season 6, Episode 11] The Magnificent Ferengi This is reviewed in our special supplement here!
Season 6 takes off where Season 5 ended. The events of the movie are more or less swept under the carpet; nobody believes what happened at the south pole, so Mulder and Scully are replaced in the new X-Files Dept by Agent Spender and Mimi Rogers, just recovered from Season 5's gunshot wound. An accident at the Shadow Conspiracy's Arizona base infects a worker with the Bee virus, and spawns an Alien monster. CSM takes Gibson, the psychic boy he kidnapped when he shot Ms Rogers, and searches for the beast. Star Trek: TNG [Season 7, Episode 10] Inheritance This is reviewed in our special supplement here!
This is reviewed in our special supplement here! Buffy [Season 4, Episode 1] The Freshman This is reviewed in our special supplement here! .
This is reviewed in our special supplement here! . . .
Yet again the star of the show is nowhere to be seen, and we are given a tale of Young Herc instead. This time he meets Medea and Jason, played as the same age as the star [mid-to-late teens]. .
Second Week, January
This starts with a high-speed chase; cop cars, helicopters and roadblocks involved in a 90-mile pursuit over ... a stolen car?! Jesus, what a waste of police resources. Are there no more serious crimes in the USA any more? Mouldy & Skull are on BATF duty, investigating farmers buying Ammonium Nitrate fertiliser [as used in ANFO explosives]. Once they learn of the car chase, and its conclusion [spontaneously exploding human heads] they disobey orders and head off to investigate. Brimstone [Season 1, Episode 1] Pilot This is reviewed in our special supplement here! .
This is reviewed in our special supplement here! . .
This is reviewed in our special supplement here! . . .
This is reviewed in our special supplement here! . . New Adventures of Robin Hood Robin and his merry men rob a casino [castle with female mud-wrestling pool], but the casino-owner captures Friar Tuck and holds him hostage. Robin is forced into a most dangerous game against 3 hunters and assassins.
This is reviewed in our special supplement here! . . .
This is reviewed in our special supplement here! . .
Salmoneus and Autolycus join Widow Twanky's dancers [a la Some Like It Hot]. Autolycus gets to use the infamous Evil Dead line, Gimme some sugar, baby! .
Third Week, JanuaryGhormenghast is the mighty castle of Earl Titus Groan, where kitchen-boy Steerpike seeks to topple the unelected privilege-holders. This reviewer noticed the similarity in the names; Steerpike - Sparhawk. Hmm.
This is reviewed in our special supplement here! . . .
This is reviewed in our special supplement here! . . Star Trek: DS9 [Season 6, Episode 12] Who Mourns For Morn? This is reviewed in our special supplement here!
This week the cast is on-location, with Mulder on a 1939 passenger ship and Scully in FBI HQ. As a result, the episode visually looks great; lots of steadicam work, and it's shown in widescreen. The lighting is excellent too, and the look of the episode is cinema-quality. The Lone Gunmen walk into FBI HQ with visitor badges. Scully kisses Skinner, and Mulder kisses Scully. As ever with this show, there are lots of inaccuracies and discrepancies, with no real explanation or logic. The only logical explanation for the script is that Mulder fantasised the entire 1939 part. This show disappeared up its own arse so many years ago it's not even worth talking about it.
This is reviewed in our special supplement here! . .
This is reviewed in our special supplement here! . . . Brimstone [Season 1, Episode 2] Heat This is reviewed in our special supplement here! This sees a scientist test his VR system - but a combination of bugs in the system and the scientist's own fragile psyche conspire to make the test program [a VR Detective story] take an unpleasant twist.
This is reviewed in our special supplement here! . .
Fourth Week, January
This is reviewed in our special supplement here! . . . Star Trek: Voyager [Season 5, Episode 1] Night This is reviewed in our special supplement here!
This is reviewed in our special supplement here! . . Brimstone [Season 1, Episode 3] Encore This is reviewed in our special supplement here! Gormenghast Part 2 sees the Cook and Manservant finally fight it out, with meat-cleaver and broadsword! The old Earl passes away, and young Titus is given the Earldom.
This is reviewed in our special supplement here! . . .
This is a double-episode, an oddity insofar as it is not linked to the usual X-Files conspiracy guff. The show starts with a dose of vintage Season One hokum; M & S drive down a highway near Area 51 at midnight, to meet a secret unknown contact. They are stopped by security troops commanded by a cigarette- smoking man who looks suspiciously like the late, great J.T. Walsh. Just then a UFO overflies them, and Mulder and the Walsh lookalike swop bodies. Scully and the new Mulder get back in the car and drive off. The new Mulder is a vast improvement, and starts to get himself a life! The thing is, as he puts it himself, you think it's fun being a MIB? You can't imagine the paperwork! Compared to that, being a Fed is a doddle; he spends all day playing computer golf, kissing the Assistant Director's ass and seducing the AD's secretary! Even worse, the producers show how desperate they are for ratings by trying to revive the UST [Unrestrained Sexual Tension] that disappeared 5 years previously. The brother-sister relationship is being undermined, starting with Mulder's fantasy [ie last episode] and climaxing in episode 3 of Season 7 [the Millennium episode, shown in USA November 1999, due out in UK via ORB-store.com video release soon, more than likely]. Mulder, OTOH, takes advantage of his position as a MIB to investigate further. However, instead of answers all he discovers is more questions. The end? Well, Mulder and Scully get Missing time [ie memory loss] of the events of the episode. The changes made to their homes and office remain, however - which raises the question, since Scully lost her job during the episode, will she no longer be a Fed in further episodes?
This is reviewed in our special supplement here! . .
This is reviewed in our special supplement here! . . . Star Trek: Voyager [Season 5, Episode 15] Dark Frontier (Part I) This is reviewed in our special supplement here!
Ares is not such a bad type, you see - along with Callisto he is one of this reviewer's favourite characters. And when Callisto double-crosses him there is some great character development. Ares and Hercules must work together; they were brothers, rivals, but at the end of the day Zeus' blood runs thick in both their veins. Callisto is given a lot of development. At first she admits her life ended at Syra when Xena burnt her family to death - but she has worked with Hope before, and is willing to fight Herc although her vengeance against Xena is dead. All she wants is for her pain to end. She states that the thought of Ares touching her makes her sick. She was his lover on a previous occasion - so why did she change her mind? The only explanation is Ares' gloating over Xena's reign of terror ... The ending? Hercules is trapped between worlds with his evil self, while Callisto travels back in time to kill Herc's mother and Ares sends Iolus back to save her.
This is reviewed in our special supplement here! . . Gormenghast Part 2 leaps forward about 5 years, and sees young Titus rejecting the responsibilities of the Earldom. He escapes from his tutor [Stephen Fry] and finds a secret way out of the castle. Steerpike, meanwhile, is trying to seduce the Lady Fuschia. |
Buffy [Season 2, Episode 13]
Surprise
Angel [Season 1, Episode 1]
City of ...
Hercules [Season 4, Episode 11]
Medea Culpa
Farscape [Season 1, Episode 3]
Exodus From Genesis
Xena: Warrior Princess [Season 3, Episode 13]
One Against An Army
Stargate SG-1 [Season 1, Episode ]
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