i: the jungle itself is gorgeously scary, lush and crimson and bulbous and dense, and -- while the inside of camp and later spaceship are functional rather than "designed", the mise en scene, as they say in film school, is GREBT; as is the music, which seems to be a sekrit hommage to the electronic works of Louis&Bebe Barron. All the more disappointing, then...
ii: ... that the story, which wants to be a cross between FORBIDDEN PLANET -- unstoppable see-through monster eats energy and will kills us all, but why, whyyyy -- and DR JEKYL AND MR HYDE -- well-meaning researcher takes one too many doses and wreaks ape-like havoc and ruin -- is moar laik star trek does The Treasure of Abbot Thomas: after the death of only 763 throwaway crew members, they (= guess who) finally puts the cursed hoard back in its hole and the happy ghost waves them off, no harm no foul...
iii: The far future is a foreign country: they do science differently there. And dear g0d, standards of coherence have declined :( :( :( DUDES YOU SO CAN'T JUST PUT ANTI-MATTER IN A CAN! Also, positronic radiation probably won't turn you into an hunchbacked ANTI-MAN with terrible teeth, and even if it DOES, it still won't turn your orange overalls into a silver shell suit! Plus also why does the parallel anti-universe need see-thru red energy suckmonsters to kill intruders when you can't actually leave with stuff in a rocket! (Poss = parallel anti-universe not that bright); and I'm not sure that you can counteract the effects of a dying sun via the "kinetic energy of a planet", when it's all that keeps yr planet from falling INTO the dying sun?
iv: the plot is lots and lots of hindsight moralising: something bad -- and confusing -- happens, and DW is all shoutily "Didn't you know you should never have done that, because [insert totally new information here]! Don't you know anything about things you know nothing about, that I only just realised!" It is not very surprising the young, inexperienced ship's controller goes batty and ends up being all "yes yes we'll deal with the universe-threatening cataclysm later, let's execute this so-called doctor RIGHT NOW ftb he is even more of an MEGATONIC CRYPTIC ARSE THAN USUAL" -- no jury would convict...
v: nice bits = there is an oddly moving and brusque funeral service for one crewmember, complete with coffin ejected into space; the OCULOID TRACKER is a surveillance cats-eye in a little skimming pod (curious though that the ship has no CCTV in its corridors); when the doctor punches someone, the sound effect is a funny little pop!
vi: three strong pretty good cliffhangers, even if all three lead to an ep-start which is pretty much "with one bound he was free": 25 mins is such an excellent ep-length
vii: And the GOLDEN PIGSBUM goes to Sorenson, the tormented scientist whose meddling causes all the problems in the first place, returning home with a v.high body count and a totes failed expedition on his charge sheet -- unsatisfying that he's a survivor, when
Sadly the excellent bits -- scenery, music -- are as casually thrown away on a story that manages to be stereotypical and badly logically managed (too many "but why didn't they do that earlier!!??" moments; the stuff in the ship being esp.badly organised); SJ doesn't have much to do except get into trouble and squeak; the unease among the crew is more ideas as sketchy promise than actually coherently realised, and etc. Endings are hard in SF, and this was weak and annoying.
