205. Last Call at the Broken Hammer
Hercules and the crew go searching for a long lost great leader thought to be hiding out on a little planet out in nowhere. But the Halderan (a vicious race of aliens who can’t shoot for shit) are after the same person, and trap the crew in a bar with the leader and a few other people who will probably die during the episode.
This episode features: The purple babe getting her tail shot off, aliens who wear sunglasses and the lamest shootout in sci-fi history.
A so-so ep, let down by a story that just doesn’t have anything really happening in it other than the oncoming alien attack, which when it arrives is nothing but hordes of them streaming through a doorway and getting shot down.
206. All Too Human
Rommie is on Machen Alpha trying to get info from an informer when they are discovered by the Planetary Security, who also discover that she’s an android, something they’re not too happy about seeing as how androids nearly wiped them out once. Tyr, Rev and Seamus are on the Eureka Maru hiding underwater waiting to extract Rommie and the snitch when they take on enemy fire and sink. Hercules, Trance and Beka are hanging out on the Andromeda walking down the corridors a bit and trying to act concerned while discussing the impending Basilisk Forces attack, or something along those lines, I’m not sure, because it all got to be a little too much for me.
This episode features: One of the Lone Gunmen from The X-Files acting really badly, Rommie wearing sexy black lipstick and a long black leather coat and the purple babe in a tight push-up-booby thing.
Another so-so ep, because all these names for things, like Basilisk, Machen Alpha, Eureka Maru, Gorgonzolian Cheezites, etc etc just make my eyes glaze over. I’ve said it before, I’ll say it again: tall blonde alien chicks, intelligent chickens, violent bloodbaths, that’s what I want from my sci-fi, okay? Don’t try to be so damn outlandish and sci-fi-ish with the stupid plots and names and things and cheeses and stuff. Sexy chicks, big guns, smart fowls - got it?
Anyway, forget all that, now for this week's episode of Deep Trekkin’ Voyage Wars, Ahoy!
You may recall that last week, well-hung Captain Magnadoodle was angry that his application for Galactic TV show Survivor: Alpha Centauri was rejected, so in revenge he wiped out a race of hyper-intelligent doorknobs from the planet Doorius 9.
This week, the Galactic Security Ch’ops (a cross between chickens and cops) are hot on the trail and find the crew hiding out amongst the fleshy-coloured asteroids of the Haemorrhoid 6 Galaxy. With power shutdown to avoid detection, it looks like they may evade capture, that is until Malarkus Sarsparilla realises that they’re out of Scotch and calls for a home delivery from Dan’x Murphyius Galactic Bottle Shops.
The Ch’ops detect the signal from the Space-Phone (that’s right, it’s like a normal phone, but it works in space) and attack with their Class 5 Swoosh-O-Bang missiles. In a cunning ploy designed to give them more time to think of a real plan and build suspense during the commercial break, Magnadoodle surrenders to the police and hands himself over while the rest of the crew take The Mighty Kukamunga and hide behind a nearby planet.
But things go awry when the crew are sucked into a field consisting of negative-polarity-hyper-neutrinoamabobs which have generated a space/time-chrono-warp-thingy thrusting them back in time. By a stroke of luck, Boony’Shanewarnix realises that if they introduce Forfarksake Crystals to their Mugambox Invertors and turn them up to 11, then they can reverse the space/time-chrono-warp-thingy and go forward in time to the moment just before they surrendered and instead blow those Ch’ops to hell with the Bomb-O-Kill missiles they just remembered they have on board.
The crew survive the adventure, Malarkus Sarsparilla is banned from calling 0055 phone numbers and they all have drumsticks for dinner. Stay tuned for a new episode next week!
The picture quality is much the same as the last instalment, which means pretty good. It also means that the picture is once again the panned and scanned version rather than the correct 1.78:1 ratio, which is pretty bad. Detail is again good, with a slight blur on finer detail upon movement (visible mostly on faces, for example). I’m assuming this is a transfer thing, not a source thing, until someone tells me otherwise. Email corrections to: vinceknowsnothing@dvd.net.au. Colours are good, contrast is good - everything's good. Aspect ratio bad, aliasing not a problem, CGI a bit fake looking most times.
Audio is also basically the same again. Surround encoded stereo, with nothing much going on back there worth pointing out. Upfront is where it all happens, with good clarity in the centre channel, and this time no problems with any dialogue at all. Generally the sound never really climbs above its “made for TV” level, missing a bit of substance and excitement, yet still perfectly acceptable.
The Ker’rap Sing-Er’s have declared any bonuses contravene Galaxy by-laws and destroyed them with a ten Smegaton bomb, so the DVD contains just the two episodes and nothing else.
