Fireball XL5 Ep 16: Convict In SpaceRating out of 10: 8.0
IMDB Link: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0819048/?ref_=tt_ep_nxThis was pretty decent, it was definitely the best of the Space Spy episodes I've seen so far, though it had too rushed an ending.
The good headline point - it's a complex plot, it's handled quite neatly. There's little room for serious character development, but that's fine if an episode is packed with enough action and plot twists, which this one was. The "oft evil doth evil mar" aspect of the plot is very well handled, and unlike other Space Spy episodes there's some good twists and turns in this. The Space Spies seem to be handled slightly better as characters, and Griselda does get a good showing as the pair's mastermind, though the clearly promoted difference between the butch-female-dominated "evil" SS Thor crew and the hyper-masculine "good guy" Steve is still uncomfortable to watch. Having a villain in Grothan Davlis who is at least as effective as them (and probably more so) for them to be played off against definitely helps make the SS Thor crew a little more human though, which is an extremely welcome development, and if they'd been handled like this from the start they'd be quite good characters. Other good features include the return of the Space Pen as a concept which is a really nice continuity nod to its eponymous episode, and the use of cut-in TV news broadcasts to give backstory and cut between time frames, which works very nicely as a jump segment and helps give it a slightly more movie-esque feel. Finally, worth noting is Steve's rescue of Prof Matic, which has very heavy
Thunderbirds style elements and rather foreshadows the later series in style.
The downsides are relatively few, but there are three major ones. First and second are Steve's mishandling of the prisoner exchange, and then Boris and Griselda's mishandling of the document exchange. These are necessary for the plot to go forwards, but could have been written much better. Steve allowing himself to get locked in the cockpit and blindly trusting that Prof Matic would be sent back is clearly silly - having Steve and Venus get temporarily knocked out, by contrast, or just having the villain making a successful escape, would have been a great way to show off the villain's prowess and thus make his recapture all the more satisfying. Likewise, on the volcanic planet the fact that Boris and Griselda are both unarmed is just odd - they are themselves planning a double-crossing operation, so their being blindly trusting is strange. In both cases, the victor of the exchange should have been shown as strong; in both cases, it is the loser who is shown as incompetent, which is less satisfying and lowers both the stakes and (in the former case) the audience's faith in the heroes. My other bugbear, point three, is that it ends too quickly. We got a lot of time spent on big blowy-up volcano shots which should have been spent answering obvious questions like "what the hell does Steve do with Boris and Griselda", which needed literally seconds to cover but is just unmentioned, with them apparently just wandering around Fireball at the end of the episode.
All in all, a sound episode and a well crafted plot. If I was more comfortable with Boris and Griselda as characters in their long-term arc, or if a couple of the major plot twists or the ending had been handled better, it could easily have got into the mid eights; as it is, it can sit with a scraped 8.0 score.
