ORBzine - UK TV Roundup July 1999

22nd June 1999 [Tuesday]

The Visitor - created by Devlin & Emmerich [ Stargate, ID4, Godzilla ] - landed on ITV tonight. There was no warning of this - the episode seemed mid-season, and without previous episodes or the pilot it made little sense. Here is what I managed to piece together.

The hero is a long-haired guy called MacArthur. Decades ago, when he was short-haired but otherwise indistinguishable from now, he was a pilot. He was abducted by a UFO and has now come back to Earth. He has now returned, and has the power to transfer part of his life-force to another person in order to extend their life temporarily.

27th June 1999 [Sunday]

Babylon 5 [Season 2, Episode 2] Revelations

We visit for episode 2 of Season 2 - a flashback that took me back to 1994-5.

This is reviewed in our special supplement

American Gothic [Season 1, Episode 6] Potato Boy

This is reviewed in our special supplement

29th June 1999 [Tuesday]

Quantum Leap [Season 2, Episode 10] Catch A Falling Star

QL pops up again to fill vacancies caused by Wimbledon ending sooner than expected.

This is reviewed in our special supplement

The Visitor returns, this time in a rather boring Xmas edition.

3rd July 1999 [Saturday]

Spy Game

This is the new series from Raimi & Tapert [ American Gothic, Hercules, Xena ]. It's a contemporary spy-thriller show, but there is an SF element insofar as the weekly McGuffin this week is a rogue android under orders to assassinate a VIP ...

4th July 1999 [Sunday]

Babylon 5 [Season 2, Episode 3] The Geometry Of Shadows

This is reviewed in our special supplement

American Gothic [Season 1, Episode 9] To Hell And Back

This is reviewed in our special supplement

6th July 1999 [Tuesday]

The Visitor continues to evade both the FBI and US Army. This week we witness Colonel Veiss [Steve Railsback]'s descent into madness. His friends were abducted in 1975 on a fishing trip, and as the sole survivor he is wracked with guilt and nightmares.

Duane Barry, anyone?

This week, the FBI capture the title character, MacArthur [Northern Exposure's John Corbett] and hold him in prison long enough for certain Story Arc revelations to come out.

MacArthur reveals his mission on Earth - taken from the Bermuda Triangle in the 1930s by Aliens, he has returned to change the future and save mankind from the Millenium Apocalypse.

MacArthur's arch-enemy, sent to take him back and undo the changes, is actually Veiss's best friend from 1975.

By the end of the episode, the arch-enemy plot has changed direction utterly; the events in this episode may lead to on the series' climactic conclusion!

You may have just caused the very thing you wanted to prevent.

7th July 1999 [Wednesday]

Star Trek: TNG [Season 6, Episode 10-11] Chains Of Command I & II

This is reviewed in our special supplement

8th July 1999 [Thursday]

Star Trek: DS9 [Season 2, Episode 1] The Homecoming

Star Trek: DS9 [Season 2, Episode 2] The Circle

This is reviewed in our special supplement

9th July 1999 [Friday]

Quantum Leap [Season 1, Episode 5]
How The Tess Was Won

This is reviewed in our special supplement

Spy Game This time the McGuffin is a machine that creates some kind of vortex that sucks in ... well, everything.

10th July 1999 [Saturday]

UFO [Season 1, Episode 8] Sub-Smash

This is reviewed in our special supplement

11th July 1999 [Sunday]

Babylon 5 [Season 2, Episode 4] A Distant Star

This is reviewed in our special supplement

American Gothic [Season 1, Episode 10] The Beast Within

This is reviewed in our special supplement

13th July 1999 [Tuesday]

The Visitor visits a Doomsday Cult, who proclaim him to be the sign that the end is nigh. As you can expect, the Federal Agents try to raid the cult's HQ ...

15th July 1999 [Thursday]

Star Trek: TNG [Season 6, Episode 12] Ship In A Bottle

This is reviewed in our special supplement

16th July 1999 [Friday]

Spy Game

Yet more of Raimi's pseudo-SF hokum. This time the plot centres around a brainwashing technique developed by the US Military, and now in the hands of a renegade General who wants to take over the USA.

Outer Limits [Season 2, Episode ] This was repeated on BBC2.

This episode features a man trapped in a post-apocalyptic world, with nuclear winter in full effect. He finds himself in a survival lodge run by a control freak, and stocked with a number of strange characters. However, all is not what it appears to be.

ITV designated the early hours of Saturday morning as Night of the Jedi and used it as an excuse to show lots of SF shows.

Starship Bloopers lets us see stacks of Hardware Wars type SW satire home movies.

Today's SciFi films are Plymouth and The Last Starfighter

Star Wars Fantasies is C4's look at the Star Wars phenomenon. Someone interviewed dozens of Yanks outside some cinemas showing the Special Editions back in 1997.

18th July 1999 [Sunday]

2001 - A Space Odyssey and The Land That Time Forgot

Outer Limits [Season 2, Episode ]

This is set in an Upper-class American boys' Reform School, where the pupils are brainwashed.

Babylon 5 [Season 2, Episode 5] The Long Dark

This is reviewed in our special supplement

American Gothic [Season 1, Episode 11] Rebirth

This is reviewed in our special supplement

19th July 1999 [Monday]

The Simpsons [Season 5, Episode 15] Deep Space Homer
Shown Deep Space Homer

This is reviewed in our special supplement

20th July 1999 [Tuesday]

3rd Rock from the Sun

Harry joins a freakshow. No change there, then.

Today's movies include Hackers

The Visitor returns, still chased by Veiss [a cross between Duane Barry and the evil Colonel from Barb Wire ]. This week ties up a couple of loose ends from the previous episodes; the invisible forcefield and the Alien enforcer killed by Veiss.

This attempt at a story arc does not prevent the show from being blatantly inferior to Dark Skies . IMHO if the idea had not come from Devlin and Emmerich then this piece of schedule-filling trash would never have been taken up.

Haunted Fishtank like most things this week was a Star Wars special. Included was advice on Things to do with an unemployed wookiee -

Rug

Car-seat cover

Julia Roberts' armpits

Seeing-eye wookiee for the Blind

22nd July 1999 [Thursday]

Star Trek: DS9 [Season 2, Episode 3] The Siege

Star Trek: DS9 [Season 2, Episode 4] Invasive Procedures

This is reviewed in our special supplement

23rd July 1999 [Friday]

Quantum Leap [Season 2, Episode 4]
What Price Gloria?

This is reviewed in our special supplement

Today's SciFi films include A Vampire in Brooklyn and TMNT 2: Secret of the Ooze .