Fireball XL5 Ep 18: Flight To DangerRating out of 10: 7.4
IMDB Link: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0807587/?ref_=tt_ep_nxFlight to danger was a perfectly decent episode, not spectacular but overall it worked well.
The plot idea was fine - the setup took perhaps an excessive amount of time (half the episode) and wasn't all that exciting, as the episode was focussed very heavily towards the final sequences. Some more in-depth character interactions or interesting looks at the mechanics of Fireball might have kept my interest better here; whilst the characters were interacting fine and normally, there wasn't much depth to it and it was obviously clear from quite an early conversation that the final stage of Ninety's training was going to be the focal point (thus making the amount of time spent on the other stages feel excessive).
The second half, which had the important stuff in it, was notably well handled from a characterisation and emotional perspective, but not so well handled from a mechanical perspective. The explosion and Ninety's assumed death are handled very well in characterisation, and the characters' concern for one another comes across extremely well. On the other hand, it would have taken very little time to give a better explanation of Ninety's appearing on the radio scanner, and the buildup to the real problems starting is a little too slow and uneventful. Requiring some more obvious technical competence of Ninety would have been a good shout during the lunar orbit.
All in all this was fine, but the start was too slow. A decent average episode of Fireball, though, with a decent average-grade score.
