Day: April 17, 1983

Categories
National Public Radio Radio & Audio Dramas Star Wars

The Clash Of Lightsabers

The Empire Strikes Back NPR Radio DramaThe battle between Luke and Darth Vader rages on in the bowels of Cloud City. Vader is impressed by Luke’s ability with the Force and a lightsaber, but is frustrated by the young warrior’s refusal to give in to hatred and fear. Even when Vader cuts his hand off, Luke announces that he will simply jump from the reactor gantry and throw himself into Cloud City’s hollow core – but the Sith Lord upsets his calm resignation by claiming to be Luke’s father and explains that Ben Kenobi lied about Vader’s origins. But even when Luke is convinced that he is indeed facing his father, he chooses a suicidal leap to joining the dark side.

Order this CDwritten by Brian Daley
based on the screenplay Star Wars by George Lucas
directed by John Madden
music by John Williams

See the first episode for cast information.

Categories
Deep Space Nine Season 03 Star Trek

Through The Looking Glass

Star Trek: Deep Space NineStardate not given: Sisko is kidnapped by O’Brien’s counterpart from the parallel timeline visited by Kira and Bashir a year before, and is cornered into assuming the role of his violent, lascivious alter-ego who has died while fighting for the Terran rebellion against the Klingon-Cardassian Alliance. His mission – to get aboard Terok Nor and contact turncoat human scientist Jennifer Sisko before she can develop a new sensor array that will mean the end of the rebellion. Though his fellow rebels feel Jennifer could be assassinated as easily as she could be liberated, Sisko must do everything he can to keep the alternate timeline incarnation of his wife alive while not betraying the rebellion.

Order the DVDsDownload this episode via Amazonwritten by Ira Steven Behr & Robert Hewitt Wolfe
directed by Winrich Kolbe
music by Jay Chattaway

Cast: Avery Brooks (Commander Benjamin Sisko), Rene Auberjonois (Odo), Siddig El Fadil (Dr. Julian Bashir), Terry Farrell (Lt. Jadzia Dax), Cirroc Lofton (Jake Sisko), Colm Meaney (Chief O’Brien), Armin Shimerman (Quark), Nana Visitor (Major Kira Nerys), Andrew Robinson (Garak), Felecia M. Bell (Jennifer), Max Grodenchik (Rom), Tim Russ (Tuvok), John Patrick Hayden (Cardassian Overseer), Dennis Madalone (Marauder)

LogBook entry by Earl Green

Categories
Season 5 Xena: Warrior Princess

Antony And Cleopatra

Xena: Warrior PrincessCleopatra is relaxing in a milk bath when a messenger brings her a scroll. When she unrolls the parchment, a snake bites her. Before she dies, Cleopatra asks her trusted servant Shiana to take a message to Xena. In it, the Queen tells the Warrior Princess that Romans have been wanting to ask her about using her naval fleet. So Xena must find out which Roman was behind Cleopatra’s assassination – Marc Antony or Ceasar’s former right hand man, Brutus.

Order the DVDswritten by Carl Ellsworth
directed by Michael Hurst
music by Joseph LoDuca

Guest Cast: Jon Bennet (Marc Antony), David Franklin (Brutus), Mark Warren (Octavius), Josephine Davison (Cleopatra), Mariama Smith (Shiana), Dion Blair (Soldier), Benjamin Crellin (Brutus’ Lieutenant), Geoffrey Knight (Antony’s Lieutenant), Paul Willis (Advisor #1)

LogBook entry by Mary Terrell

Categories
K-9 Season 1

Jaws Of Orthrus

K-9The Department’s plan to implant microchips into every citizen of London meets with a rowdy protest – one at which K-9 appears, fires on Drake (non-fatally), and causes even more very public commotion. Inspector Drake immediately applies for an arrest warrant for K-9, but Gryffen’s initial examination of K-9’s memory seems to show that K-9 didn’t attend the rally… and certainly didn’t do any shooting. But even K-9 himself finds the accusation disturbing, and prepares to turn himself in to the authorities, even though it’s almost surely an elaborate ploy on Drake’s part to dismantle the robot dog.

written by Lindsay James
directed by James Bogle
music by Christopher Elves

Discuss it in our forumGuest Cast: Robyn Moore (Inspector June Turner), Connor Van Vuuren (Drake)

Note: Orthrus – K-9’s “evil twin” – is named after the treacherous twin brother of the mythical dog Cerberus in Greek mythology.

LogBook entry by Earl Green

Categories
Clone Wars Season 2

Death Trap

The Clone WarsA group of green clone cadets is brought aboard the Endurance for training, but among them is young Boba Fett, still seeking revenge for his father’s death in the Battle of Geonosis. With help from someone at the other end of a communicator, he sneaks away from the cadets’ tour of the ship to plant a bomb in Mace Windu’s quarters. But the next person to set foot through that door is a trooper, not Windu himself. Boba’s next instructions from his contact are even more severe: blow the engine reactor core. He accomplishes this, crippling the Endurance, which slowly falls toward the planet Varquon. The cadets are ordered to head to the escape pods while the rest of the crew prepares to abandon ship, except for Admiral Kilian, who stubbornly stays at his post even when Windu and Anakin order him to leave with them. Boba intentionally damages the pod he’s in so it drifts off course, away from the rest of the cadets and evacuees, to be found by his contacts: Aurra Sing and Bossk, flying the ship that once belonged to his father. They recover Boba but set the three cadets with him adrift again.

Download this episode via Amazonwritten by Doug Petrie
directed by Steward Lee
music by Kevin Kiner / original Star Wars themes by John Williams

Star Wars: The Clone WarsCast: Matt Lanter (Anakin Skywalker), Daniel Logan (Boba Fett / Clone Cadets), Dee Bradley Baker (Clone Troopers / Clone Cadet Jax), Terrence Carson (Mace Windu), Jaime King (Aurra Sing), Julian Holloway (Admiral Kilian), Tom Kane (Narrator)

Notes: Daniel Logan also played young Boba Fett in that character’s live action appearance in Star Wars Episode II: Attack Of The Clones. He also played a role in an episode of the fan series Star Trek Continues.

Jedi Fortune Cookie: “Who my father was matters less than my memory of him.”

LogBook entry by Earl Green

Categories
Doctor Who New Series Season 05

Victory Of The Daleks

Doctor WhoThe Doctor is summoned to wartime London during the Blitz. None other than Winston Churchill himself has called the Doctor for help, but with the TARDIS’ unreliability, it’s taken the Doctor a month to answer that call – and in the meantime, Churchill has turned elsewhere for help in the war effort. Professor Bracewell has designed mobile war machines of immense power, capable of picking off German bombing formations before a single bomb can be dropped. Bracewell and Churchill call them “Ironsides,” but the Doctor knows them all too well as the last remaining Daleks – and he’s puzzled that Amy can’t remember ever having seen a Dalek, even after Earth was invaded by them. But these Daleks insist that they are soldiers, here to protect Britain from the Germans. In order to get them to reveal their true plan, the Doctor will have to do something very dangerous indeed: provoke the Daleks into showing their true, deadly colors.

Order the DVDDownload this episodewritten by Mark Gatiss
directed by Andrew Gunn
music by Murray Gold

Cast: Matt Smith (The Doctor), Karen Gillan (Amy Pond), Ian McNeice (Churchill), Bill Paterson (Bracewell), Nina de Cosimo (Blanche), Tim Wallers (Childers), Nicholas Pegg (Dalek 1), Barnaby Edwards (Dalek 2), Nicholas Briggs (Dalek voice), Susanah Fielding (Lilian), James Albrecht (Todd), Colin Prockter (Air Raid Warden)

Victory Of The DaleksNotes: This isn’t the first time that the Daleks have pretended to be servants of the human race; they launched a very similar scheme in the future on Vulcan, a human colony planet, in the first Patrick Troughton story, Power Of The Daleks; incidentally, their aim there was also to power up the production line on a new race of Daleks. Churchill says that the Doctor has changed his face “again,” which implies that he’s met at least two of the Doctor’s previous incarnations, though we don’t know which ones. This marks the first new series reference to the Doctor’s TARDIS being a Type 40 model (a statistic dating back to the original series, first mentioned in The Deadly Assassin during Tom Baker’s reign), as well as the first new series reference to the Daleks’ time corridor technology (Resurrection Of The Daleks).

LogBook entry & review by Earl Green

Categories
5th Doctor Doctor Who The Audio Dramas

The Emerald Tiger

Doctor WhoThe Doctor brings his friends to Calcutta, India to sit back and watch a cricket match, but things almost immediately take an unexpected turn when a fellow spectator shows signs of being infected with rabies. As Nyssa tries to tend to the man, a British soldier steps forward and ends the man’s suffering with a gunshot to the gut – but not before the rabid man has bitten Nyssa. Appalled, the Doctor and Turlough confront the shooter, Major Haggard, only to find he has no pity for the victim (or, indeed, for anyone else). Tegan, sent to the TARDIS to get a medical kit, returns to the Doctor with the alarming news that the TARDIS has been removed from where it landed. The TARDIS is spotted on a train, and Turlough and Tegan manage to climb aboard the train as it leaves the station, while the Doctor and a still-unconscious Nyssa must find other transport, getting help from Professor Narayan. Aboard the train with Tegan and Turlough are Major Haggard and an enormous tiger, which seems to have a telepathic and empathic link with Nyssa. Haggard thinks he’s trying to track down a treasure, but the Doctor soon learns that the real treasure is an alien life force deposited on ancient Earth by a meteorite impact. That life force’s new inheritor, Nyssa, may never be the same.

Order this CDwritten by Barnaby Edwards
directed by Barnaby Edwards
music by Howard Carter

Cast: Peter Davison (The Doctor), Janet Fielding (Tegan Jovanka), Mark Strickson (Turlough), Sarah Sutton (Nyssa), Cherie Lunghi (Lady Adela), Sam Dastor (Professor Narayan), Vincent Ebrahim (Shardul Khan), Neil Stacy (Major Haggard), Vineeta Rishi (Dawon), Gwilym Lee (Djahn / Lord Edgar), Trevor Cooper (Colonel Creighton / Kimball)

Timeline: for the Doctor, Tegan and Turlough: between Enlightenment and The King’s Demons; for Nyssa: 50 years after Terminus. This story takes place after Rat Trap and before The Jupiter Conjunction.

LogBook entry and TheatEar review by Earl Green