Having spent November doing NaNoWriMo, I've
fallen behind a bit on both my new TV watching and my reviewing. I'm going to
do a bit of a catch-up here before getting back into it for December.
First up, Marvel's bid for Kinga
Forrester-style global media domination continues with the opening quartet of
episodes from Inhumans – ‘Behold… The
Inhumans’, ‘Those Who Would Destroy Us’, 'Divide and Conquer' and 'Make way
for… Medusa'.
We begin our story in Hawai'i, where a
fish-looking dude named Triton fundamentally fails to rescue a newly changed
Inhuman from men with guns. Then we transition to the Moon, and the hidden city
of Attlian on the far side of Earth's only natural satellite(1), where the
Inhuman Royal Family rules over a high-powered elite and a massive underclass
of those Inhumans who turn out to have rubbish powers. Maximus, brother to Black
Bolt(2), king of the Inhumans, came out of his terrigenesis purely human. He
argues that the Inhumans should go to Earth and take over, allowing them to
live and breathe free and liberate the toiling underclass. By replacing them
with a toiling underclass of humans, certainly, but honestly in the early
episodes he's scoring major points against the other Royals, whose interactions
with their social inferiors are limited to patronising those who gain cool
flying powers and dissing servants for being attracted to them.
 |
| Who is this girl? We will literally never know. |
So, spoilers for this review if nothing
else, I don't like the Inhumans. I'm going to watch the remaining four episodes
of Inhumans, but the characters
themselves I do not like.
With Triton vanished and Gorgon, leader of the
Royal Guard, on Earth looking for him, and a young seer falling into his influence,
Maximus launches a coup. He directs the Inhuman-hunting mercenaries to kill
Gorgon, which doesn't go well for them, captures and shaves Queen Medusa's
animate kung-fu hair - because what would this series be without a man forcibly
divesting a woman he has expressed desire for of her power? - and tries to kill
his brother to prevent him using his power, a voice which annihilates
everything in its path. Since this power is basically uncontrolled - he can
whisper or shout, but not focus the blast - Black Bolt has the ultimate power
of awesome uselessness.
 |
| The hair is cool, but ind of moves around Medusa, instead of with her. The result is to make Medusa herself seem a very passive character. |
Medusa's sister, ice-slinger Crystal(3),
uses her teleporting dog Lockjaw to send Black Bolt, Medusa, and douchebag
quasi-Vulcan prognosticator Karnak to Earth, but she and Lockjaw are captured
for a time. Black Bolt gets arrested after walking off with a suit, and he and
Medusa try to find one another by basically treating the world like they own
it. Black Bolt is broken out of prison and escapes with an Inhuman named Sammy
to a compound run by Declan, a geneticist who is generally well-meaning, but
working with Maximus, where Medusa finds them after generally being a dick to
space scientist Louise. Gorgon hooks up with some surfing military veterans and
barely fights off an attack by the Royal Guard, including Mordis, an off-brand
version of Cyclops. Karnak gets a bump on the noggin and works on a cannabis
farm while his powers are on the fritz, getting his freak on and apparently
provoking one of his fellow farmers to start a lethal buyout of his comrades.
Crystal escapes when called on to give a speech supporting Maximus, who uses
this to accuse the Royal Family of being quitters wot run when the going gets
tough. She gets to Earth, but Lockjaw is hit by a car, introducing her to
friendly locals Dave and Audrey, to whom she is a dick about them accidentally
hitting and failing to instantly heal her dog.
In short, a bunch of Inhumans who were dicks
to their fellow Inhumans on the Moon come to Earth and are dicks to humans. Our
heroes, folks. Inhumans is a
massively ambitious show, with a cast full of superpowered characters, but
there just isn't that much to like.
Anson Mount's Black Bolt is a complete stiff on the Moon. He's better once he
gets into prison and starts to look baffled by stuff, but a mute character is
tough to do well in television, especially as part of a speaking ensemble. All
of the Royals treat the underclass like crap, and it's not as if it’s a small
divide. The Royal Family aren't the upper levels of an all-around crapsack
society, they live in a glorious, artificial paradise, while the peons work in
the mines and starve. There is some indication that Black Bolt may have been
trying to make changes, but it's hard to see him as a man of the people and
Maximus will always have that over him in terms of sympathy. The rest of the Royals
are just as bad, always slagging off those who are 'only human' and looing down
their noses at anyone whose powers aren't cool. No place here for Arm-Fall-Off
Boy(4).
Inhumans:
Ultimately, far more Agents of SHIELD
than Legion, but with the saving
grace of a short season.
Next, the last two episodes leading to the
mid-season finale of Star Trek: Discovery
- 'Si Vis Pacem, Para Bellum' and 'Into the Forest I Go'.
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| "I talk to the trees..." |
The war is going badly for the Federation.
The Klingon sarcophagus ship is back in action, which means that the Federation
fleet is struggling to cope with waves of cloaked enemy vessels. They need a
new edge; a means to detect and target the cloaked vessels before they pop out and murder your friends. They need - and bear
with me on this - sonar. There's a
world, right, which is all one big forest, except for what appears to be a
naturally occurring antenna. The trees in the forest sing and the antenna
broadcasts this song into space. The crew of the Discovery believe that this
signal can be used to detect the cloaked vessels because gosh darnit it just can, THAT'S WHY, okay!
Burnham and Tyler accompany Saru to locate
the source of the song, which turns out to be a kind of collective tree consciousness,
which gets into Saru's head and makes him feel safe. This causes him to go
mental and try to trap his away team on the planet, but Burnham and Tyler are
able to stop him and Burnham seems to persuade the mind that they have good
intentions and just want to bring an end to the war. Meanwhile, creepy Klingon
interrogator L'Rell tries to defect while rescuing Admiral Cornwell, but is
forced to abort and smack the Admiral against a thing that sparks, seemingly
killing her, only to be condemned herself by Kol. Luckily for her, Kol is
distracted when the forest planet sends a subspace shout into the void to
invite the Klingons to attend a peace summit, because apparently trees are
total Pollyannas.
 |
| It seems shocking that an M/M kiss is somewhere that, in Star Trek at least, no man has gone before. |
This brings us on to 'Into the Forest I Go'(5),
in which the Discovery faces off
against the sarcophagus ship. Stamets is getting burned out and intends to quit
soon for the sake of his health, but not before undertaking one last mission.
In order to defeat the sarcophagus ship, Burnham and Tyler will sneak aboard as
it briefly appears to shoot at the Discovery
and plant a few large, blinking and flashing sensor buoys in largely public
spaces. Then the Discovery simply has
to make a few hundred consecutive jumps in order to conduct a vast number of sensor
sweeps from all angles.
The boarding party find L'Rell and the
not-entirely-dead Cornwell, and Tyler freaks out a bit and has flashbacks to
what is either him having sex with L'Rell back when he was Voq(6) or L'Rell committing
what would be a very serious offence outwith the framework of a brutal military
regime. Burnham has to go on alone, then to distract the Klingons by revealing herself
as the killer of T'Kuvma the One and Only. She fights Kol and manages not to
just fall down in the face of his slightly greater skill and vastly superior
strength and resilience, buying time for the Discovery to bounce around it like a mad thing, vaguely reminiscent
of Scrappy Doo.
 |
| Nice set. Shame if it were to... catch fire. |
Anyway, Discovery
transports Burnham, Tyler, Cornwell and L'Rell aboard, then blows the crap out
of the Sarcophagus Ship. Lorca ships Cornwell off to a medical facility, L'Rell
assures Tyler that she won't let anyone hurt him, and then a final black alert
jump takes the ship... elsewhere.
The theory has long been out there that
Tyler is in fact Voq, transformed into a human aspect like that dude in Trouble with Tribbles, and if this much
is true then also brainwashed to believe that he is a human. I still subscribe
to this theory, although I'm starting to hope that I'm wrong, because if I am
then Star Trek is looking like it's
going to tackle a serious subject in a serious manner (in contrast to previous
series, which have tended to be played a bit more as Arthurian love potion plot
than as sexual assault.
Anyway; now we're into the mid-season break,
so Discovery reviews will return some
time in January.
I watched the first episode of Season 2 of Stranger Things, but I want to take
another pass at that when I have time to get a few episodes in, so finally for
this time I caught Season 1 of The Good
Place, a Netflix sitcom about the afterlife.
Actually, I call it a sitcom, and it has many
of the hallmarks of the genre, but it becomes apparent through the course of
the season that it is actually a developing series, which develops its
characters and situation before finally throwing a massive curveball in the
season finale(7). The leads are all excellent, and even though none of the
characters are intrinsically very likeable, Bell actually manages to make us
root for the vaguely reforming horror show that is Eleanor. The show is witty
and fast-paced, and notably features a widely diverse cast - the leads are a white
woman, a black man, an Asian American man and a British Muslim woman.
Also, the running gag that no-one can swear
in the Good Place could be annoying, but is forking hilarious. That must have
taken some doing.
So, in summary: Discovery is a definite keeper, Inhumans
has the virtue of smallness, and The Good
Place is a gem to set alongside The
Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt.
(1) A status I would not be surprised to see
challenged by the revelation that it was put there by the Kree in a later instalment.
(2) As near as I can tell, this is his given
name.
(3) Who is painfully princessy.
(4) Admittedly this is at least partly because
he's a DC character.
(5) The title is taken from a poem by
naturalist (John Muir https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0YInfr0hm4A): 'Into the
forest I go, To lose my mind and find my soul.' It's a beautiful line, although
probably the 19th century equivalent of those 'this is an
antidepressant' memes if you really analyse it. It is also widely attributed to
'unknown' for some reason.
(6) See below for theory discussion.
(7) Season 2 is making a strong showing,
despite the immense challenge set by this twist cliff-hanger.
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