by J.J. Estes
The Outlook comes across an abandoned, but highly advanced, station, and the crew is faced with a choice: take the technology and risk destroying themselves with it, or let it be.
The crew happen across a deserted space station, and while James' reluctance to investigate seems alarmingly unprofessional (you get the feeling they're playing up his slacker nature a little too much), there's some nice comedy moments with the ship's science nerds clamouring to come along. Ivan's a bit overly comic, though - we get that he's an arrogant genius, but it's almost like he's being that stereotypical on purpose at times. It's good to see the rest of the Outlook crew doing something, though - there's a larger sense of scale involved by seeing all the little people who help keep the ship going. The mystery progresses nicely as the team discover a set of humanoid bodies, with the crew's differing personalities getting some screen time as they all approach the situation very differently, and there's a good moral issue here - is it right to effectively steal another civilisation's technology, even if they appear to be long dead? Bravo for the Engel/James conversation about the misuse of weapons as well - great character moments. A better episode, managing to weave in some good modern commentary into a fairly typical sci-fi story, and throws some neat little character moments in there too. Okay, so Ivan's schtick is getting a little irritating but this is Outlook back on form.
======================================================
by George Willson
Harrison and Stansen are hunted by a man who blames them for what the US government did to him.
With news that neither James nor Anna are making themselves out to be Captain material at the moment, we're soon into a story about the crew taking the chance for some downtime again. This always seems to follow a down note - in episode three it was following a death, and here it's following a very high profile mission failure. As the 'replacement' angle with Engel and Hans gets another development, we're shown the aftermath of the attack from the Teaser, and that somebody or something named 'Goliath' is on the loose, and before long Stansen's daughter is almost kidnapped by some Hulk wannabe. Letting a skeleton fall out of the wardrobe of the guys in charge of things always makes for some good drama, and here it works to great effect. Okay, so Stansen's explanation of the situation clunks along a little despite getting some topical anti-genetic engineering opinions in there, but it's backed up by some touching stuff between Engel and Hans' father. When Jeff the Goliath does make it into the base to attack our guys, that old bugbear of flat stage direction kills any tension that the scenes may have had, but the scene where Jeff and Harrison fall foul of nitrous oxide makes for some good comic relief. A somewhat flat epilogue doesn't round the episode off as well as it could have, so despite getting some good mileage out of Stansen (seeing his paternal side in action is a great piece of characterisation), this loses out by not making Jeff's attack on the base as dramatic as it needed to be.
No comments:
Post a Comment