Fireball XL5 Episode 30 Review: A Day In The Life Of A Space General

[Jubal]

Fireball XL5 Ep 30: A Day In The Life Of A Space General

Rating out of 10: 5
IMDB Link: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0803300/?ref_=ttep_ep30

Review (SPOILERS AHEAD):
This was in some ways a funny little episode, but it had an extremely lame premise. Basically, the "it was all a dream" premise is naff unless executed exceptionally well or with some sort of twist, and this was the bad trope played entirely straight.

There are good points to the episode, mostly in that this gives Lieutenant Ninety a nice outing as a character, with his dreamscape being the basic setting for the episode, setting up a tables-turned scenario in which for once he has control of Space City and predictably messes everything up. It of course ends with him being fairly relieved to discover that it had been a dream, given that at the end of it literally everything blows up. Having everything blowing up made for some fun visuals (a pity that most of the actual real-world episodes don't include that much in the way of catastrophe and drama!). The ending was quite nicely quirky and throughout the Zero/Ninety relationship got a good amount of exploration on its own terms which it doesn't in most other episodes, often being cut to unnecessarily and without much benefit to the plots.

Essentially the "let's over-promote 90 and watch him mess up" plot could have been done in better ways, even if only a subplot within another episode, or with some clever mechanic around the dreamscape. I've seen worse episodes, certainly, but this isn't one I'd be desperate to re-watch any time soon!