Meltdown Review--Aeryn and Crichton get some Book Summary and Study Guide
Meltdown--5 stars out of 10
The episode starts out with a truly excellent scene, where we see Crais about to kill Aeryn Sun's Momma. But things don't turn out as we thought they did, and we see Crais making a deal with Mrs. Aeryn to betray the others. Then he looks into the camera and says "Is that what you thought happened?" And then we realize that he's telling a story to John Crichton, that this didn't really happen. Excellent story telling!
Unfortunately, the quality of storytelling goes down from there. Talon gets the urge to ram into a star; they manage to stabilize in orbit, but learn that the invading monster of the week wants to destroy them. Talon emits a mist that makes John Crichton and peacekeeper Aeryn Sun sexy. Meanwhile, Stark meets ghost girl and realizes he can save her and the ship by becoming the pilot. He links up and becomes the pilot for a short time, but he's unable to prevent the ship from heading towards the star. Crichton locates the enemy base on/in the star and blows it up, ending the episode quickly and conveniently.
This episode had a LOT of problems in the continuity/realism department:
1) At the beginning Talon feels the urge to go into the sun, and then stops. They can't get the ship to retreat from the sun, but neither will it go into the sun. So which is it? If Talon is resisting the call, they should be able to fly away--if not, Talon should be heading towards the sun. I don't see any in-between mode.
2) A pilot has to be of a special race and takes time and complicated surgery to mesh with a leviathan. Stark, however, can simply stand in the right area for 10 seconds and have wires attached to his groin to take control. How realistic is this?
3) Why didn't they simply turn off Talon's sensors and fly manually, visually (hint: away from the star) at the very beginning?
4) The enemy lived on/in a star and could survive there; are we to believe that Talon's little cannon could destroy it? And how come they never detected the enemy installation on the star to begin with?
5) Why did the mist make Aeryn and Crichton sexy but not Crais--I was half expecting him to start wearing his pumps and hit on Rigel.
In the aesthetics department
1) That "they are sexy now" music was very corny and irritating.
2) Stark was very corny and irritating. Maybe if he doesn't pan out the writers will send him to join Zhaan (Zhan).
Deeper thoughts:
1) With Aeryn getting more sex than she's gotten in 3 seasons, we almost know for a certainty now that they're going to have to kill off this Crichton to press the "reset" button again.
Note: the views expressed here are only those of the reviewer(s).
