"Requiem"
Reviewed by Donner

Out of five stars:

THE GOOD

• Well, it's nice to finally see what happened to Wade exactly and not have the same old PECKerhead, "Darn, isn't it a shame that Wade's bumping pelvises with a Kromagg in a breeding camp somewhere?" line.

• Cleavant Derricks. You GO boy! Great delivery of lines, great emotion, and just all overall great! Take THAT JOC!

• Clever way of having Wade in the episode - while not having Wade in the episode. The body double they got for Sabrina was almost (almost!) flawless and the sight of her in that vat made my skin crawl.

• We got to see more of the almost-never-seen Kromagg manta ship. The maggs may be lame now thanks to PECKerhead, but I still think those things are cool.

• Kari Wuhrer. Again, more restrained in her performance instead of going ballistic as she has in the past. Great performance from her at the end when she thinks that they've lost Rembrandt. She was muted during all of the Wade scenes, but considering how Wade and Maggie felt about each other (Wade: SLUT! Maggie: BITCH! Wade: WHORE! Maggie: TWIG!) can you blame her?

• The female Kromagg... so bad she was good in a Snidely Whiplash kind of way.

• Wade's fate left open. Nice.

THE BAD

• Sabrina did a great voiceover, but MAN! What an episode this could have been if she had actually been there!

• Robert Floyd: God, what was with him in this episode? He seemed smug one minute and just plain pathetic the next and that whole running up to robo-Wade and hugging it going "Oh Wade, we failed you!" was Robert at his worst (although I can see how he would play the part as phoney since he was trying to trick the maggs, but what he did was ridiculous and even more ridiculous that the maggs didn't catch it!)

• Come to think of it, Mallory and Diana were just kind of dead weight in this episode, wern't they? Don't get me wrong, I love Diana... I like Mallory sometimes, but they were like Wendy and Marvin to the Superfriends in this episode!

• Parts of this episode sounded as if the voiceovers were done a little too quickly. Did anyone else notice when Cleavant almost muffed his lines when he was asking Wade to interface with the computer? And, was it me, or did some of Wade's lines sound as if they were recorded on a tape recorder (Hell, they probably were!)

• Ultra-cheesy special effects: From the environment that Wade brought Remmy to the first time, to the Wade-created wormhole, to the tinker-toy manta ship flyover, to the whateverthehell Wade did to the Kromaggs and the control room, to the cheesy (but sweet) Wade reflection in the water. These special effects belonged on Babylon 5, Xena, or Nightman!

• WHAT AND HOW DID WADE DO THAT AT THE END!? A very convenient way to escape that cheapened the episode. Call it Deus ex Wade if you will.

  WADE: Oh look! Here's the "Kill all the Kromaggs" button. It was there all the time! MAN! I'd slap my forehead if I could!

THE VERDICT

Very sweet, emotional, and tragic but hopeful wrap-up to the Wade question. A nice balance of emotion, welcome return of Wade (or at least her voice), and the wrap up of a question that has been badly handled over the last two years. Still bogged down with bad effects and an easy ending. And there's always that lingering thought of what the episode could have been if only Sabrina was in it.

Donner
I like the 5th season. Anyone else can just kiss my ass.