More Words, Deeper Hole

Exploring Tomorrow: The First Baby in Space aka Space Baby

So having slagged most of the episodes I end on one that actually wasn't too bad. The woman having a baby in space is up there because she's in the military and that's where they sent her. She's also the one who figures out the solution to the technical problem presented.

One issue they raise but don't solve is the issue of re-entry accelerations. Given that it will need to be able to survive nine (?) gees, how old will the baby have to be before it's not obviously going to kill it to subject it to re-entry accelerations?

(The US must have ended up spending a ton of cash on that kid)

Exploring Tomorrow: The Mimic

The odd thing about this is portions of the plot are highly reminiscent of (spoilers) ( Read more... )

Exploring Tomorrow: First Contact

What's interesting about this one is that we can compare it to X Minus One's version of First Contact. I have not checked ahead to see if this will come up again.

Overall I'd say the X Minus One people had better actors but took more liberties with the plot for some reason; the ending in particular feels strained. The Exploring Tomorrow people had weaker actors (and the guy doing the captain really needed to discover his inner volume rheostat) and the pacing seems off but the plot's resolution is truer to the original.

Something that occurred to me years after reading the story for the first time; how do the two groups know the other side didn't leave a nuclear device on a time? Or a galactic range beacon?