The SF Site: Babylon 5.1 by Rick Norwood

Babylon 5.1
by Rick Norwood

Star Trek: Voyager, "Pathfinder" (***)
written by David Zabel

Websites
Other Babylon 5.1 Columns
For more information, you can try the following sites:
Rick Norwood's Website
Worldwide TV Schedule
The Official Babylon 5 Website
The X-Files
Pocket Books: Star Trek
Paramount Star Trek

Ratings
Ratings are based on a four star system.
One star means that the commercials are more entertaining than the program.
Two stars watch if you have nothing better to do.
Three stars is good solid entertainment.
Four stars means you never dreamed television could be this good.

Star Trek: Voyager The long awaited Reg Barclay story is a lot of fun. Most of this episode is set on Earth, with Reg as the star -- his very own Star Trek episode. Reg has a cat named Nelix, and is obsessed with Voyager. The real Voyager does appear briefly, but most of the Voyager part of the show takes place on the holodeck, where Reg has given in once again to his holo "addiction". The holo-Tom Paris has to say lines like, "Gee, Reg, can I hang out with you? You're my hero." At the same time Reg is using his considerable engineering talent to establish two way communication between Earth and Voyager.

Deanna Troi also has a small role -- perhaps for the last time, if rumors that there will not be any more Next Generation films prove true.

The X-Files, "Rush" (***)
written by David Amann

X-Files The X-Files meets The Flash, in this unexpectedly entertaining non-mythos episode. So far this season, the non-mythos episodes have been better than the mythos episodes, if you can get over the idea of Mulder and Scully going back to routine FBI work, knowing what they know. This is in contrast to last season, where most of the non-mythos episodes were awful.

The writer, new to The X-Files, is to be commended for considering some drawbacks to super-speed, such as torn muscles and premature aging.

The rumor mills are predicting a eighth season of The X-Files without Anderson or Duchovny. Maybe that wouldn't be as bad an idea as it sounds, if they continue to develop good new writers.

The X-Files, "The Goldberg Variations" (***)
written by Jeffrey Bell

X-Files The law of conservation of luck seems to state that if one person is very lucky, then someone else, in this case Mulder, must be equally unlucky. The success of these non-mythos X-Files depends not so much on the idea -- all of the ideas on The X-Files were seen on The Twilight Zone, back in Rod Serling's day -- but on how well the author develops the idea and the characters. I had a few minor quibbles with this episode. Didn't Mulder and Scully get on the other side of a locked door awfully quickly, without explanation? But the good stuff far outweighs the bad. The good stuff includes a man lucky enough to survive being tossed off a skyscraper, with no harm except the loss of his glass eye. And there are some really nifty Rube Goldberg machines.

Rick Norwood is a mathematician and writer whose small press publishing house, Manuscript Press, has published books by Hal Clement, R.A. Lafferty, and Hal Foster. He is also the editor of Comics Revue Monthly, which publishes such classic comic strips as Flash Gordon, Sky Masters, Modesty Blaise, Tarzan, Odd Bodkins, Casey Ruggles, The Phantom, Gasoline Alley, Krazy Kat, Alley Oop, Little Orphan Annie, Barnaby, Buz Sawyer, and Steve Canyon.