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Originally aired December 17, 1995
In my memory “The River of Stars” is one of the weaker early episodes of Space: Above and Beyond, yet watching it again for the first time in many years I can say that this is actually one of the better episodes of the series. It may even be the best one.
“River of Stars” is a “bottle episode,” mostly taking place in a few sets from the interior of the damaged shuttle with the 58th to the control room of the Saratoga. And I think it’s this element of being closed in with the characters having to deal with one without much outside elements to interfere that makes this episode work so well. “River of Stars” is also very much a Christmas episode, almost too much so. From it taking place at Christmas time to Christmas themes to the “Peace” Christmas message from the SAaB producers at the end of the episode it’s just on the wrong side of too much Christmas spirit.
Much of “River of Stars” is pretty standard stuff. The 58th is in a damaged shuttle that’s drifting off into deep space behind Chig lines. Their systems from power to oxygen are slowly depleting and they can receive radio communications but they can’t send them. Much of the episode deals with the 58th trying to figure a way out of the situation they’re in and TC McQueen aboard the Saratoga trying to figure a way to find his team before it’s too late.
The episode is satisfyingly a slow one, with the 58th talking and bonding as they drift towards an uncertain future. It’s almost the SAaB version of the Apollo 13 movie in many ways.
While it might be standard stuff all the interpersonal stuff between the characters here is really great. From Paul Wang having experienced so much bad in the war that he’s given up faith to Cooper Hawkes, who’s really a child only a few years old in the body of an adult, trying to figure out how to fit in and even McQueen not ever giving up hope that he’s going to bring his guys back alive. In all this “River of Stars” is well written and reveals more about the characters than any episode except maybe the first one.
Here too like with “Hostile Visit,” SAaB creators are setting up that there’s more to the Chigs than just them wanting to wipe humanity out. In “River of Stars” as the 58th drift towards oblivion they receive a mysterious radio transmission directing them to the nearby comet Yanelli Wimberly. Wang figures out that if they can take the shuttle into an orbit of the comet they can ride it out back to friendly space.
And while they’re never quite sure of just where this mysterious transmission came from they suspect it’s from the Chigs. And if the Chigs were the ones to send it and save the 58th why would they want to help and not just wipe them out?
I remember this episode as being more of an episode that features Paul Wang more than it really does. Wang does have a bigger than usual role here from fixing things around the ship to taking a space walk to reorient one of the shuttle’s engines to save the group. But this episode is really a whole 58th episode and doesn’t just focus on one person.
Grade: A.
Favorite dialog:
Nathan West (about the engines): “Shut them down! Vansen, shut them down!”
Shane Vansen: “I don’t have to. We’re out of fuel.”
Cooper Hawkes: “All I know about Christmas is that there was one day out of the year that everything in Philadelphia was closed. And it was lonelier than usual.”
Goofs:
ISSCV shuttles have solar arrays to provide backup power for situations like the 58th are in. But in this episode the unit are in deep space and no where near any close stars which would make the solar panels useless.
Wang describes seeing the constellation Eridanus, the “river of stars,” from his home in Chicago as a boy. There’s absolutely no way he could have more than a few stars of that constellation from light-polluted Chicago, let alone the whole thing.
The shuttle the 58th are in runs out of fuel at the beginning of the episode yet they’re able to burn the engines for 58 seconds at the end of the episode to orbit the comet.
Stray Observations:
Lt. Kelly Anne Winslow (Tasia Valenza) who’s a new member of the 58th is introduced in this episode. She’ll play a much larger role in later episodes.
The 58th are sporting new logo designs on their helmets.
What’s scarier, the prospect of getting blown away by a Chig fighter or slowly drifting off into space?
There’s a neat little moment here where the 58th talks about the idea of the immaculate conception. Some believe it’s true but Wang knows it’s impossible. But the rest 58th point out to him that Cooper Hawkes’ parents never were and here he is.
The 58th picks up an old TV transmission of the 1960s Batman TV theme song as they drift off into space.
This is the last episode of SAaB to air in 1995.
Charles Lacey Beach is a battleship the Saratoga is ordered to help.
Hawkes’ nickname for Wang is “Wanger.”
J. August Richards who plays Deathlok in Agents of SHIELD has a small part here as a pilot of the 32nd squadron, the Chigbusters, who find the 58th.
The last several years, this one included, the new fall TV season has been underwhelming at best and just plain bad at worst. It’s not like there aren’t any interesting new shows on in the fall anymore, it’s just that there are so few of them. If the fall season is so blargh, then lately the winter, spring and summer TV seasons have been a true joy. In fact, you won’t find a single series here that started in the fall. Each and every one was a non-fall show.
The methods I use to determine my “best of” lists changes every year. Sometimes I try to rank the shows best to worst throughout the year and sometimes it’s simply based on my mood when compiling the list at the end of the year. That being said, this year I did things a bit differently. The list this year is mostly based on how much I wanted to watch a season of a show again after having finished it. And the show that kept coming to the top of my list when thinking about this was The Americans on FX.
Phillip Jennings: “The KGB is everywhere.”
The Americans is the rare series that’s actually about something. The first season of the show was about what it’s like to be a married couple in the US in the guise of a 1980s period spy drama of USSR vs USA and this season was about what it takes to get someone to betray their ideals in pursuit of a greater cause.
Here, characters Philip (Matthew Rhys) and Elizabeth Jennings (Keri Russell) are KGB agents posing as a normal married American couple in early 1980s Washington DC but they’re really Soviet sleeper agents out to bring down the red white and blue. In this most recent season, Philip and Elizabeth are trying to uncover the secrets of new stealth technology while at the same time hunting the killer of another KGB family that was a mirror of the Jennings’.
What was really interesting with The Americans this season were the places series creators were willing to go. Be it with the murder of an entire family, Elizabeth mentoring an young idealist agent who shares the same ideals whom Elizabeth must sacrifice for the greater good to Phillip and Elizabeth learning that while mother Russia might want Phillip and Elizabeth to make sacrifices for “the cause,” that’s nothing compared to what they have in store for their children.
Joe MacMillan: “I’m not talking about money, I’m talking about legacy.”
Cameron Howe: “You’re not the future, you’re a footnote.
I’m not sure how or why, but I seem to be the only critic out there who liked Halt and Catch Fire, let alone loved it. Some have complained that Halt is too much like Mad Men with it taking place in the corporate world, having a young woman as an up and coming employee with a strong male with a self destructive streak in the lead. As if only Mad Men were allowed to do this or even that Mad Men is far from the first series to play out this way.
Regardless, I was enamored where Halt went with certain characters being plowed under by the stress of trying to create a new PC in the early 1980s and others rising to the challenge. And not to spoil the ending of the first season too much, but if every other show out there is about people building something great and successful, Halt was about building something that turned out to be, at best, average. I’m not sure any show has ever done that before.
Hannibal Lecter: “Occasionally I drop a teacup to shatter on the floor. On purpose. I’m not satisfied when it doesn’t gather itself up again. Someday, perhaps a cup will come together.”
If the first season of Hannibal was about FBI detective Will Graham (Hugh Dancy) trying to track down a serial killer who they don’t realize is Hannibal Lecter (Mads Mikkelsen), then the second season is about the FBI trying to catch Lecter in a trap and jail him for the murders. Except the one guy you don’t try and trap is the guy who’s going to be ahead of you every step of the way setting traps of his own.
If Hannibal was head-trippy then True Detective was acid-trippy. It’s a show that seems to divide up my friends nicely. Some of whom loved it and character Rust Cohle’s (Matthew McConaughey) ramblings about the intricacies of good and evil in an uncaring universe while others hated the show and found the series to over the top and boring.
In its fifth season Community returned with series creator Dan Harmon back at the helm after an absence of a year and returned a sheen of greatness to a series that had faltered in recent years.
Even if micro-series Sherlock is only three episodes long, they’re some of the best hours you’ll spend in front of the television. If there’s anything I’m worried about with Sherlock is that while there are two season’s of the show left, Sherlock star Benedict Cumberbatch is now on the verge of uber-stardom with recently being cast as Doctor Strange in a Marvel movie and I can’t see him wanting to stick with Sherlock any longer than he’s contractually obligated to do so.
I find it humorous when people binge-watch past seasons of something like Game of Thrones in a few days or weeks. They have absolutely no idea of the excruciating wait between new seasons that makes viewer’s wait nearly 10 months between the end of a season and the start of the next agonizing. I’m not complaining, though. When it’s on Game of Thrones is the best thing on TV. I do wonder if it had aired in the fall rather than spring if Game of Thrones wouldn’t have made an appearance much higher on this list?
While Orange is the New Black did start off a bit slow this season and focused on more characters than Piper Chapman (Taylor Schilling) as in the first — the sure sign that someone is trying to stretch out a show into multiple seasons — I thought the back half of Orange was just as good as the first season of the show.
Another great year for a great comedy almost no one’s talking about. Here’s to President Meyer!
Writer/Director Steven Soderbergh returned to TV with The Knick, a series about a hospital at the turn of the 20th century New York City. In The Knick, medicine is taking leaps and bounds forward like never before. Even if it means that most people who go into the hospital end up dying there or that having a doctor like John W. Thackery (Clive Owen) hooked on cocaine is not only legal, it’s normal.
