ORBzine UK Television Roundup April 1999

23rd March 1999 [Tuesday]

Highlander [Season 2, Episode 21] Finale, Part I

This is reviewed in our special supplement!

24th March 1999 [Wednesday]

Buffy the Vampire Slayer [Season 1] was cancelled for ice-skating.

27th March 1999 [Saturday]

Timecop - the series
Stalker

Reviewed here!

30th March 1999 [Tuesday]

Renegade may not be Sci-Fi, but this week it had Gary Graham (the ugly cop in Alien Nation: the series ) as guest villain. This episode must date back to 1993 - the main Guest Star is the late L.Q. Jones ( ), repeating his previous role of the Texas Ranger-turned-Bounty Hunter.

Highlander [Season 2, Episode 22] Finale, Part II

This is reviewed in our special supplement!

31st March 1999 [Wednesday]

Buffy the Vampire Slayer [Season 1, Episode 12 - Finale] Prophecy Girl

We do not have to wait long for Season 2, though - it starts next Thursday. And we even get to see a trailer to announce the new slot!

1st April 1999 [Thursday]

Star Trek: DS9 [Season 1, Episode 10] Move Along Home

This is an early episode, reviewed here!

Red Dwarf [Season 8, Episode 7] Pete: Part 2

This is reviewed in our special supplement!

4th April 1999 [Sunday]

Everyone's favourite Kiwi, Sam Neil, is revealed as Merlin.

5th April 1999 [Monday]

Today Merlin concludes.

Red Dwarf [Season 8, Episode 8] Only the good ...

This is reviewed in our special supplement here!

8th April 1999 [Thursday]

Star Trek: DS9 [Season 1, Episode 11] The Nagus

This is an early episode, reviewed here!

Buffy the Vampire Slayer [Season 2, Episode 1] When She Was Bad ...

Buffy returns - this time Season 2 [originally shown in the USA from 1997-8].

This is reviewed in our special supplement here!

The Last Train had its second stop tonight. Last episode a group of travellers had their train journey interrupted by a crash in a tunnel; when they emerged to daylight they found that civilization had ended and the human race was nowhere to be seen.

This episode the leader, a 30-something female scientist, takes her companions to a hidden MOD bunker where her BF (and fellow-scientist) was supposed to wait for her. However, the bunker appears empty - and the walls are smeared with blood. Obviously the bunker's inhabitants started to crack up under the stress of confinement - and the survivors' psyches are also cracking up.

The show ends with the group heading north to a special site in Scotland. Let us just hope the story starts to go somewhere too.

11th April 1999

Babylon 5 [Season 1, Episode 12] Signs and Portents

This week's rerun is noteable as the core episode of Season One and the first appearance of ultra-smooth villain Mr Morden (Ed Wasser).

Wasser's only other TV appearance was a cameo in Season 2 of Sliders alongside John Rhys Davies ( Raiders of the Lost Ark ), who brightened up this week's above average episode of Voyager along with the sexy Borg ( Jeri Lynn Ryan ).

Jeri's previous TV show, Dark Skies , ends its 1960s flashback run with yet another slew of cameos by famous figures of that era. The episode was filmed when everyone working on it knew it would not be continued next Season, and the 5-year story arc was doomed.

The links to the series' Pilot are full of ironies - for example, Jim Steele (the gunman on the grassy knoll, who started the 1960s era with a bullet) becomes Charlie Manson, who later ended the era with the Sharon Tate murders. How easy it is to explain away all evil as acts of alien intervention - ORBzine's resident Hard SF reviewer actually refused to watch the show on the grounds that it was nothing but an illustration of the necessity US audiences felt to rewrite history rather than studying it.

The other great irony in the show is that not only is it the last appearance of Captain Bach, it is also the last TV role of the actor who played him, the late, great J.T. Walsh.

14th April 1999 [Wednesday]

Buffy the Vampire Slayer [Season 2, Episode 2] Some Assembly Required

This is reviewed in our special supplement here!

15th April 1999 [Thursday]

Star Trek: DS9 [Season 1, Episode 12] Vortex

Before he heads to Sunnydale High, Armin Shimmerman drops by to run the bar.

This is an early episode, reviewed here!

Buffy the Vampire Slayer [Season 2, Episode 3] School Hard

This is reviewed in our special supplement here!

This week's double-dose of Buffy will have to do us for the rest of the month; We will not get our next fix until Wednesday 5th May!

Prey [Season 1, Episode 9] Collaboration

This is reviewed in our special supplement!

16th April 1999 [Friday]

Red Dwarf [Season 8] was repeated today - well worth the watch for those who missed it.

17th April 1999 [Saturday]

Brent Spiner, formerly of TNG and ID4, is now exiled to The Outer Limits - and he is actually quite a talented actor!

18th April 1999 [Sunday]

Babylon 5 [Season 1, Episode 17] T.K.O.

This is reviewed in our special supplement here!

Now that the rerun on Dark Skies [1996-7] is ended, we get to see Sheriff Lucas Buck again in the 1995-6 show American Gothic

19th April 1999 [Monday]

Space 1999 faced yet another mysterious alien cloud thing in the path of the Moon. Yawn.