RIP Leonard Nimoy

A couple of days ago, it was reported that Leonard Nimoy had been admitted to hospital. Today he died as a result of end-stage chronic obstructive pulmonary disease. My condolences, for what they are worth, go out to his family and friends.

For me, as a fan, this is an end of an era moment. Partly it feels like a tipping point for the cast of classic Trek, but also just that Nimoy himself was such a presence. His height, that face, and the voice. He could really sell the technobabble, and that was a big part of what made the whole thing work.

Who else is there like him? I guess Patrick Stewart was the Nimoy of TNG, with Jonathan Frakes as his Shatner. I can't think of anyone with the same kind of oomph below the age of 65, which bodes ill for future Trek. Zachary Quinto does his best in the reboot, but it's not the same.

Live long and prosper.

He was also the link between the various incarnations of Trek, with his appearances in The Next Generation and the reboot movies grounding them to the 'real' Trek. Again, that was all about the presence. The reboot used a time travel gimmick and he sold it to us.

Leonard Nimoy was a true original. He will be missed.

The 100 - 'Reapercussions'

Well, that's a relief. I thought this episode was going to be creepy and horrible.

No Jaha this week, so we're looking at our three standards, with the addition of 'Clarke and Anya' and 'Team Bellamy'.

Clarke and Anya: Clarke lets Anya out of her cage and they escape into the tunnels beneath the Mountain; Reaper tunnels. Over the course of the episode we learn that the Mount Weather group leave their almost-dead filter captives for the Reapers, because just using Grounders as living dialysis machines wasn't creepy enough for Chancellor Not-Hitler. We're starting to get definite aspects of horror in the mix now.

Ultimately they escape in the manner of The Fugitive (film, not series) and Anya knocks Clarke out, intending to use her as her trophy to get back in with her tribe. Hanna is getting ticked off with Anya's ongoing hostility, but on reflection she has lived with the (admittedly nebulous to her) threat of the Reapers and the Mountain Men for her entire life, and from what we've seen the tribe is pretty tough on failures. I do agree that I wish they'd stop bleating about all the people who were killed in the Drop Site Massacre, because they definitely started that one, so they just sound like they're whining about getting whupped by a bunch of kids.

The 48: Life is pretty good for the 48 still, but with Clarke on an extended absence, Monty gets spooked and Jasper starts to wonder if maybe he was a bit of a dick. He's started leaning on local girl Maya for info, but it's not yet clear if this will be bad for him or for her.

The Grown-ups: Kane has Abbie punished for letting Bellamy go, the punishment taking the form of 10 lashes. It's clear that he does so to appease the fractious military element in Camp Jaha, who miss the absoluteness of the Ark, but he flip-flops between necessity and higher aspiration a little too quickly. In the end, he decides to seek peace with the Grounders, taking a mission led by a Grounder prisoner and leaving Abbie in charge as Chancellor pro-tem. Given that Abbie tends to make exactly the opposite bad decisions that he makes, I can't help feeling that a middle ground candidate would be good, but there really isn't one.

Team Bellamy: Bellamy, Finn, Murphy and the two minor characters capture a Grounder who has Clarke's watch and question him. In a decidedly uncomfortable reversal, Bellamy takes the moral high ground in this exchange, while Finn's feelings for Clarke turn him from the moral core of the crew into a complete dick, whaling on the prisoner and ultimately shooting him in the head once they're done.

I know that there's a serious Lord of the Flies motif going on, but it's weird how Bellamy and Finn have switched over here, and disappointing to see Finn completely abandon the principles he held on to throughout Season 1. Did something happen that we didn't see? Was there some trigger that we don't know about? Some particularly vile threat leveled against Clarke by Tristan, the ranger who captured Finn?

Octavia: Once more, the girl who was too stupid to live comes through. When her first offer to work with the Grounders to rescue the Reaper captives is violently rejected, she pushes until they accept her and proves herself in battle, winning their respect in a way that the more wily and manipulative Clarke fails to do with Anya. Sadly for Octavia, Lincoln - on whom she is pretty much fixated having abandoned or lost the rest of her world - is no longer among the captives; he's apparently been taken to Mount Weather - the plot thickens! - where a tech directs him not to 'harvesting', but for 'Project Cerberus.'

The Flash - 'Crazy For You'

You are basically just taunting me now, aren't you, The Flash?

A teleporting meta-human rescues her deadbeat boyfriend from Iron Heights, offering a chance for Barry to reconnect with his father. Meanwhile, Cisco enlists Hartley to search for the truth about Ronnie. Barry and Caitlin, pressed by their friends to actually start getting over Iris and Ronnie instead of just saying that they are moving on, visit a karaoke bar for fun and cringes, where Barry meets sports reporter Linda Park.

Okay, seriously, what the fuck, The Flash? You're just messing with me now, aren't you, teasing the Barry/Caitlin ship and then throwing in ol' Linda Park, the canon love interest of the other Flash. Seriously, it's not enough we've got Iris in the mix, we're dragging in Wally West's girlfriend as well?

Oh, right; the A plot.

Shawna Baez is an interesting adversary, her teleportation power making her technically faster than the Flash in the right conditions. With all the B plot going on, there's not a lot made of it, however, and their one major fight really just showcases that Barry still hasn't taken Oliver's advice about training and being mindful of his environment to heart. Given that Oliver managed to take down Barry, you'd think he might at least consider there are some lessons he could apply against Reverse-Flash.

There is a nice bit of character development for Cisco and Caitlin, when he admits he let Hartley escape because he was tracking Ronnie, not for her but because he sealed Ronnie into the test chamber during the resonance cascade scenario (I have thought that now and I can't unthink it.) You can see that he expects a complete bollocking from Caitlin for what he did and for hiding it from her, but instead she forgives him and helps him to take off the burden of guilt.

Nice Barry moments this week include the karaoke scene, in which Caitlin calls him up to sing and, being Grant Gustin and an alumnus of Glee, he kills it (much to her annoyance) and his discomfort when the super-drunk Caitlin starts stripping off. In the latter scene, points a) for him superspeed changing her into her adorably sensible PJs when asked, b) obviously for him not sneaking a peak, but c) for there being no kiss to reward him for that; he didn't peak because he's a hero and a gent, that is all.

All right; you win this round, The Flash.

But fuck you series for the scene the next day where it so nearly happens. I do not like your canon love interests and do not appreciate you taunting me like this!

Why should I continue watching this series if you're going to be this way? Give me one good FUCK YEAH, GRODD!!!

Continuum - 'Minute to Win It' and 'Minute Changes'

Cool. It's a thing.

Liber8 set out to enact radical change by mind-controlling corporate executives to raid their own safe deposits and reveal their companies' malfeasance. This course of action troubles Travis, who seems to be becoming the voice of positive spin for the organisation, or perhaps is just freaked out by Lucas puppeteering living humans. Kiera and Carlos stop a robbery and find a strange piece of tech, which appears to be a pan handle, but is apparently more advanced than even the Freelancers have seen before.

Meanwhile, Green Alec inherits Piron and learns that Emily was working for Escher, as well as finding out that Escher was his father. Red Alec continues to put the moves on Emily, who is confused when the two Alecs blow in such different directions. Alec discovers that her past is more than a little chequered.

Hearts and minds, but not spelling.

In 'Minute Changes' Green Alec steps up as CEO of Piron, with a little advice from Kellogg, while Red Alec lets Emily in on his secret. Kiera and Carlos investigate pro-Liber8 rallies on a university campus, which turn ugly when a security cop loses his gun and a cop opens fire into a cloud of smoke at a rally, killing a student.

Theseus is back on the scene, engaging in some sort of psychological cat and mouse with Carlos, who is a cop on the edge. This week he uncovers Betsy as the mole and voices his confusion to dead Kiera. Kiera herself is increasingly skeptical of the value of 'the system' as something worth protecting in and of itself. Even in her future flashbacks she seems softer, and I wonder if this isn't a sign of the future timeline shifting, the Kiera who will be changing as her world becomes more and more obviously a crapsack.

The Flash - 'Revenge of the Rogues' and 'The Sound and the Fury'

"It's okay; we brought our own filters."

'Revenge of the Rogues' sees the return of Leonard Snart, aka Captain Cold, and his new partner Mick 'Heat Wave' Rory, an unstable arsonist played by none other than Dominic Purcell. The two are in town to kill the Flash, cause some havoc and get mad loot. At first, Barry is persuaded to allow the police - protected by a shield devised by Cisco at Star Labs - to handle Snart and his new partner, while he focuses on training to face the Reverse-Flash, but when Caitlin is put in danger he steps up for his first public showdown.

This is a solid episode, dealing with the fallout from Barry's duel with Reverse-Flash as well as bringing in a pair (or three, as revealed at the end of the episode) of recurring villains for a spectacular showdown. Narratively it brings the Flash out of the shadows and into the public eye, as well as establishing the Flash in the classic superhero dilemma, forced to chose between reacting to every threat or trying to pursue a specific goal. Ultimately of course it is Barry's fate to choose the former, while the chessmasters like Snart - or Harrison Wells - are villains precisely because they can choose to walk away when someone is in trouble.

And they laughed when Cold and Heat Wave didn't want to go the full
costume route.

Speaking of chessmasters, things get personal for Wells in 'The Sound and the Fury' when a former protege returns seeking vengeance. Cisco and Caitlin remmeber Hartley Rathaway as an arrogant jackass, but he also warned Wells against activating the particle accelerator.

Like Cold and Heat Wave, 'the Pied Piper' (he further annoys long-time nemesis Cisco by choosing his own villain name) is an ordinary human, but uses sonic technology as a devastating weapon. He also makes a nod to superhero costuming, but ends up looking more like a nerd in a hoodie. I'm not saying it's a bad look, but the kind of melodrama he's rocking really needs a mask, rather than spectacles.

Also like Cold, he is always a step ahead of Team Flash, and that's getting a little old. Much has been made of Barry's brilliance, but he's not getting a chance to show it, being largely limited to running really fast while the team comes up with a solution. After 'Flash vs. Arrow' I hoped to see a development in his methods, but it hasn't happened yet. I know a smart speedster is basically god, but currently he just seems like an overconfident fool and that really ought to be more of a supervillain look. Ultimately this episode falls a little flat in part because it is another episode where the Flash is barely an effective agent, having to be rescued in the denouement instead of overcoming an obstacle himself.

'The Sound and the Fury' also develops Wells' arc, revealing that his access to the Speed Force is, although powerful, erratic, and also the thing that lets him walk despite real injuries that should confine him to the chair. In the episode stinger, it is hinted that he intends to use Barry to permanently restore his own damaged abilities.

Finally, the Firestorm arc is developed across these two episodes, with Cisco learning that F.I.R.E.S.T.O.R.M. is an incredibly elaborate acronym, and Rathaway claiming to know how to find and save Ronnie.

Constantine - 'Waiting for the Man'

John Constantine, now with 100% more firearms.

Satanists, voodoo kings and zombies; we're going back to New Orleans for Constantine's mid-season season possibly-series finale, 'Waiting for the Man'. A teenage sort-of-runaway is lured by three tripped out waifs into coming with them to 'marry the Man', and receive a 'wedding ring' in the form of a neck brand. When a detective investigating is desiccated and branded with 'the Devil's Mark', Jim Corrigan (he of the 'second-husband of the action hero's ex-wife' beard and glowing future in undead vengeance) calls in John and Zed to help investigate while Chas... isn't here. Meanwhile, the Brujeria have put out a hit on John - a fact he is warned of by dead friend Gary (making what amounts to a stunt appearance, animating a corpse, quite possibly tacked on when they knew they weren't getting the second half-series) - and Papa Midnight is inclined to collect.

'Waiting for the Man' is a decent enough monster of the week story, intended to show the impact of the Rising Dark on ordinary human evil. The Man is a garden variety serial killer suddenly able to suspend the souls of his victims in some sort of thrall and use them to trap the unwary and incredibly stupid (seriously, the show does not provide an adequate reason for the victim to follow the creepy brides home, and although it does imply she was in some sort of trance it isn't really shown enough.) This part of the episode plays like an occult themed episode of Criminal Minds or a crossover with True Detective, and is pretty damned creepy, as ordered.

Where it falls down is as the conclusion of the series, or even the season. The producers were clearly confident of a pick-up when they made this one, because it hits the beats for a mid-season break, not a closer, and even that it doesn't do as well as 'The Saint of Last Resorts'. It's a shame, because the show had been getting very strong, and this is only okay.

The Musketeers - 'The Good Traitor', 'Emilie' and 'The Return'

It seldom pays to fuck with anyone played by Colin Salmon.

We had a bit of a catch up on The Musketeers this week, starting with 'The Good Traitor', in which Spanish General Tariq Alaman (Colin Salmon) offers France a devastating new kind of gunpowder if the Musketeers can help to rescue his daughter (because all sympathetic generals in this series have sexy daughters of about the Musketeers' age.)

This episode brings up a number of interesting things about The Musketeers, most obviously that - unlike say Merlin or Atlantis, it doesn't use colourblind casting. This is because it is actually a show that is interested in race. Alaman and his daughter are Spanish Moors, betrayed by their country; Alaman's protege turned persecutor Balthazar spits racism, while his daughter Samara tells Porthos that France will one day turn on him. This dovetails with a developing subplot across these three episodes: General de Fois from 'Keep Your Friends Close' has left Porthos a bequest and Treville won't explain why. The audience knows it is about his parentage, so now we all wonder who his dad is and how that will affect his acceptance.

Next for Crusaders

As is the way with this series so far, the episode also sees the Musketeers either not actually succeeding, or by sticking to their code displeasing the King. In this case, they save the girl but not the secret formula (and of course the dad buys it; they always do,) while 'Emilie' follows the latter scenario. The Musketeers are more or less sent to assassinate a prophetess mustering a peasant militia for a war against Spain. Discovering that she is an honest woman being used as a puppet prophet, they instead persuade her to stand down her force, but the King - who wanted blood - finally dismisses Treville as Captain of the Musketeers.

'Emilie' also has a watershed moment for the Queen and Aramis, as Anne takes a risk to save lives and almost loses hers, precipitating a reunion with her Musketeer (and the ditching of the royal nanny, who is almost at once scooped up as a source by Rochefort.) Of course, the Aramis business is likely to seriously moulder Rochefort's rind, as he is clearly obsessed with the Queen well beyond his desire to rule France through her. Other than this unknown bump in his designs, things are going swimmingly for him, with the King adoring him more than anyone bar new squeeze Milady and the latter deployed to terminally terminate his deal with the Spanish.

A final development across these two episodes is in the relationship between the Queen and Constance. Kidnapping the Dauphin to see his fever properly treated almost has Constance executed, but ultimately secures her the Queen's favour. This is confirmed when she is chosen to escort Anne to visit Emilie.

"Can you not afford even a single unripped shirt on a
Musketeer's salary? Maybe you could shop where that
peasant prophet goes."

All - or from another point of view, as this is a standalone episode with character notes for Athos, none - of which brings us to 'The Return'. During a major drunk, Athos is kidnapped by the tenants of his estate and brought to defend them against his neighbours' rapacious land-grabbing. Baron Renard and his idiot son are suitably vile, at one point kidnapping the featured village girl for a ritualised rape which is thankfully interrupted. In some ways, however, the real villain of the piece is Athos' late brother's former fiancee, initially nudged in as the episode's love interest, but revealed to be exactly the same kind of elitist swine as the Baron.

Catherine is mostly there as a set-up for later, I think, as she seems determined to bring some vigilante justice to the King's mistress, and the bulk of 'The Return' is given over to the Magnificent Seven-style showdown as the villagers defend their homes and usher in a spirit of early Republicanism.

On the strength of these three episodes, the second season of The Musketeers is more than holding its own, and exceeding the standards of the first. It's really getting its teeth into the character - despite the loss of the Cardinal - and even managing some decent commentary on liberty and equality.

Constantine - 'Angels and Ministers of Grace'

Some days are tougher than others.

It might be hard to admit it, but John is missing his backing group. Chas is back in play, but Zed is hiding out in an extraspatial meditation chamber since her powers overwhelmed her in confronting Felix Faust. Constantine encourages her to get back on the horse, but she suffers a seizure as they try to track a source of 'dark matter'. Zed is taken into care at a hospital full of murders, and John - needing another helper - binds Manny into a human form to force him to actually get involved for once.

'Angels and Ministers of Grace' is a significant episode for Manny, but also for John, who is forced to confront the fact that he still needs people, and that Zed is more than just a handy psychic receiver, when she is diagnosed with a brain tumour that may or may not be the source of her visions. It is also a watershed for Zed, who wants to know where her gift comes from, but seeing John visibly racked with guilt for pushing Zed to use something that may be killing her was a real turning point for the friend-sacrificing, nun-snuggling hard man of urban sorcery.

It's tough to be human.

After his total absence last week, Chas had a bit of a side role here, but less through lack of inspiration than to give John the impetus to force Manny to be his sidekick, I suspect. Much of Manny's role in the episode was as comic relief, but he also gained a new appreciation for the problems of the humans he usually only observes. He also signaled a sea change in the series by destroying Liv's scrying map, calling it a prop.

Of course, we're almost out of episodes now, the series having not picked up a second half order and with renewal looking dicey. Here's hoping it at least goes out on a high note.

Alphas - Season 1

Season 1 Cast - Ryan Cartwright, Laura Mennell, Warren Christie, Malik Yoba, David Strathairn and Azita Ghanizada

Once more, Netflix helps me to catch up on another now-cancelled series.

Dr Lee Rosen (Strathairn) is a man with a mission, to discover humans with extraordinary neurological abilities - Alphas, in his parlance - and to help them to achieve their full potential. He is not an Alpha himself, although it emerges at the end of the season that his daughter Danielle is. Rosen is a psychologist and the leader of a team of Alphas who work under the auspices of the Defense Criminal Investigative Service to track down and contain dangerous Alphas. Throughout the season they work against both individual Alphas and the Alpha supremacist organisation Red Flag, but all the while it becomes increasingly apparent that their own side is more sinister than at first they might appear*.

Alongside Strathairn's Academy nominated heavy talent, the team - each with their own ability and downside - are played by either relative unknowns or TV stalwarts: Bill Harken (Yoba) is an FBI field agent and hyperadrenal, who gains superhuman strength from his adrenaline rush but is exhausted afterwards and always cranky. Nina Theroux (Mennell) is the veteran of the team and a 'hyper inductive', able to override the will of others through speech and eye contact. Rachel Pirzad (Ghanizada) has the ability to heighten any one sense to an incredible degree, but only by dulling the others to near-insensibility; an ability that the series calls synaesthesia, which kinda makes me want to punch things. Gary Bell (Cartwright) is a transducer; he can sense any electromagnetic radiation and interpret it as images, sounds or patterns. The new guy is Cameron Hicks (Christie), who sounds like he ought to be fighting aliens on a spaceship and is in fact an ex-Marine/ His hyperkinesis allows him uncanny agility and hand-eye coordination.

The basic format is a monster of the week anthology, with the team tracking down Alphas who are, deliberately or unwittingly, causing harm. A double-edged arc plot concerns the rising activities of Red Flag and the increasing evidence of Guantanamo-style abuse at the facility set up to house the Alphas that the team brings in.

The meat of the show is in the characters and their interactions. Bill is constantly aggravated by his amateur teammates, but it is the same informality that sets the show apart. Nina struggles with her compulsion to use her ability to simply take whatever she wants with no consequences. Rachel struggles with a family who consider her ability an illness and Cameron labours under the white man's burden or something (seriously; of all of them, Cameron is the one most cursed with awesome. He's a natural ninja who sometimes chokes up under pressure.)

The show loses points for having the Hulk be the African-American character, but pulls something back for making him the highly-trained professional agent genuinely struggling with his anger management issues and the fact that they keep him from getting back to the job he loved. Likewise Rachel is in some ways a stereotypical sheltered, over-controlled Asian girl, but without succumbing to most of the more obvious signifiers (her parents fix her up with dates, but don't try to arrange her marriage.)

The real triumph of the show is Cartwright, however, whose nuanced performance as Gary eschews typical autistic stereotypes. Of particular note is the relationship between Gary and Anna, a Red Flag strategist and omnilinguist whose own combination of autism and profound intelligence made her the one person in the world that Gary could ever felt truly close to.

It's easy to see why Alphas didn't make it past two half seasons. It's a decent enough show, but it's not doing anything new enough or well enough to stand out from twenty years in the shadow of The X-Files. Still, it did get two seasons, so expect another review somewhere down the line.

* And they first appear as a team of black-suited, faceless government goons who disappear 'bad' Alphas to an upstate compound for remedial time in the maximum fun chamber.

Sleepy Hollow - 'Go Where I Send Thee...' and 'The Weeping Lady'

You have to take the journey...*

As my darling daughter prevented her parents watching anything new this weekend, here's a couple of episodes of Sleepy Hollow I'd been meaning to review for a while.

In 'Go Where I Send Thee...' we revisit Abbie's past, as a child kidnapping leads her back to a woman who helped her when she was orphaned. Recognising some family memorabilia (and taking umbrage at the canonisation of an ancestor he - naturally - knew personally to be a cad,) Ichabod realises that the Lancaster family's surse (to lose a daughter each generation) is the work of a Pied Piper in the service of Moloch. With a little help from mercenary artefact hunter Nick Hawley (a man with a truly ludicrous collection of magical gizmos to  not believe in magic even a little bit) they rescue the kidnapped girl, but her mother takes her back into the woods, because the curse has a second edge to its blade that forces a truly terrible choice.

** Well, it certainly ends badly for someone.

The Piper is immensely creepy, thanks to a combination of costuming and eerie camera effects to visualise his sonic powers. The added element of child threat makes this episode good, old-fashioned nightmare fuel. As a cherry on the sundae, former captain Frank Irving tries to fire his attorney on the grounds that he is the infernal Horseman of War, only to learn that due a trick pen he's already signed his soul away in blood. He is also given a sneak preview of how that will end for him**.

It's okay; I wasn't planning to sleep anyway.

Following up the creepfest of 'Go Where I Send Thee...' is 'The Weeping Lady', which is probably as close as Sleepy Hollow is going to get to doing The Woman in Black. It begins with the mysterious death of Caroline, a lovely Civil War reenactor with a sweet crush on Ichabod. There's a  La Llorona in town and she has a personal beef with anyone laying a hand or even an overfamiliar eye on Ichabod.

Once more, the villain is a personal acquaintance of Ichabod's (I'm mostly okay with this, because 'destiny') and indeed was his promised bride when they were both children. This woman, Mary Wells, even went so far as to try to 'save' him from the clutches of the colonies (and the trashy ginger witch who seduced him from his kin and country) but supposedly went home again when he wouldn't turn. Once the day is saved and the Weeping Lady put down, it emerges that she was killed in a confrontation with Katrina, who wrote a letter in Mary's handwriting so that Ichabod wouldn't take her body home to England and screw up his destiny with the sense of damned decency that leads him to turn up and personally apologise for giving the doomed historical seamstress the wrong idea**.

I liked the way this episode was put together, with Henry raising Mary through her connection to Katrina's sin (the lie she told Ichabod) in order to put a wedge between them. It plays back nicely to his sin eater gift. It also led on to a new revelation, that Katrina is something important to Moloch - a 'Hellfire Shard' - and that compared to her the Horseman of War is a disposable asset, suffering a major executive arse-kicking for putting her in danger.

'Go Where I Send Thee...' and 'The Weeping Lady' play to all of Sleepy Hollow's core competences: Historical coincidence, high octane nightmare fuel, sinister John Noble, and the lovable awkwardness of Ichabod. I am hoping to see more definite progression of the arc plot soon, and maybe some sign of a third Horseman*** before the season is out.

* No, I don't forsee myself running out of Into the Woods references any time soon.

** An adorable scene; I am so sad they killed her off essentially as ablative armour for Abbie and Katrina.

*** I say man but I won't lie; as much as the new Captain annoys me, it would be awesome if she turned out to be the Conqueror on the White Horse.

Continuum - 'Minute by Minute' and 'Minute Man'

Fancy meeting you here.

Season 3 of Continuum begins where 2 left off; with all of the time travelers in Freelancer cube prison apart from Alec Sadler, who has jumped back a matter of days to save Emily from the Freelancers. In short order Kiera is offered a deal; by taking himself out of the equation, Alec has basically turned the timeline she is in - dubbed the 'Red' timeline - into a doomed multiversal cul-de-sac. To restore any semblance of order, she needs to cross into the over-Sadlered 'Green' timeline and clean up the mess.

Oops.

What follows is a pretty patchwork of paradox, as Alec's attempts to save Emily's life lead first to Escher being assassinated and then to his discovery of 'Green' Kiera's corpse in his lab. This leads straight into episode 2, 'Minute Man'.

Red Alec and Red Kiera - who is not unreasonably pissed at Alec - show Green Kiera's corpse to Carlos, then start to work on fixing the royally fucked timeline. It's only after that that they learn of Escher's death, and that Kellogg planned it. Kiera uses her knowledge of Escher's identity to keep Kellogg away from Alec, but Kellogg then uses that information to hook Emily into working for him. Meanwhile Liber8 are going after the Mayor to make themselves more likable and considering how to go after Kiera without the supersuit that Alec got rid of until Garza - who was released from the Freelancer cube farm by Red Keira - shows up and tells them it's all more complicated than they think.

And that's kind of the theme of this season, to judge by the opening episodes: 'It's all more complicated than you think.' From Liber8's new touchy-feely approach and Kiera's continuing slide towards monomaniacal bitch, I wouldn't be entirely shocked to see her played as the villain for at least some of this season, and the same is true of Red Alec.

As yet, the question of how the Freelancers have dead members of Liber8 in custody has not been touched on. Maybe next week.

Kingsman - The Secret Service

At the extreme left of the poster, at the end of a line
of three tiny figures, you can just make out Roxy, the
principle heroic female character.

Kingsman: The Secret Service is the cinema adaptation of a comic book by Mark Millar, MBE. Millar is a frankly divisive figure in comics, not least for his work on Marvel's 'Civil War' arc, two words pretty much guaranteed to start a fight at any comic book convention. He has also gone on record saying that comics aren't for women and he employs rape as a mere plot device. In his definite favour he's less aggressively homophobic and misogynist than Frank Miller, but then that can be said of so many people (with or without MBEs.)

But this is an adaptation, and since Millar's Wanted, a comic about a conspiracy of costumed supervillains who secretly rule the world, was adapted into Wanted, a movie about a conspiracy of assassins who improve the world by executing targets nominated by a magical loom, judging it by Millar's record is probably beside the point. Since Millar's record on controversy has not inclined me to seek out his work, I doubt I shall be making any direct comparisons anyway. So, in conclusion, thank you for reading the last two paragraphs, which are mostly just me establishing some sort of personal context.

Harry Hart (Colin Firth), codenamed Galahad is a member of the Kingsman Agency, an international, apolitical intelligence service, dedicated to world peace, formed by an alliance of elite tailors when their wealthy, aristocratic clientele lost a huge percentage of their heirs in the Great War. The Agency is headed by Arthur (Michael Caine), with technical support from Merlin (Mark Strong), and apparently employs something like twelve agents, a nebulous technical division and maintenance crews for a vast secret base and a fleet of private jets.

Mark Hamill!

When Lancelot (Jack Davenport) is killed attempting to rescue a kidnapped professor (Mark Hamill), it sets off both an investigation which leads to a global conspiracy devised by software mogul Richmond Valentine (Samuel L. Jackson) and his deadly henchwoman Gazelle (Sofia Boutella), and a recruitment process for a new Lancelot. Harry proposes London council lad Eggsy (Taron Edgerton), who is up against decent posh girl Roxy (Sophie Cookson) and a crowd of snobbish Oxbridge lads.

There is a lot to like in Kingsman. It's packed with wit and breakneck action, the performances are all good, it's exciting; everything a spy movie should be. The production is good and the music is excellent. It is, however, not a film without its problems, many of which stem from a desire to have its cake and eat it.

It's central theme is the Kingsman code of conduct. A Kingsman Agent, Hart explains, is first and foremost a gentleman, but being a gentleman is not defined by wealth, birth or status; it is a learned thing, and his hope is to widen the Agency's recruiting sphere in order to keep it relevant in the modern world, whereas Arthur wants to keep Kingsman 'elite'. Honestly, this is an idea that I can get behind; that there is a value to manners and decency that isn't tied up in a parcel with patronising anyone who isn't a posh bloke and backing the patriarchy to the hilt. It's just a shame that the movie can't find a way to describe that cinematically that isn't a man putting on a suit and speaking in a posher accent.

That being said, there are some nice suits in the movie.

Gazelle is a pretty amazing character, a female henchling who is a deadly and graceful double amputee in actual trousers. I'm actually a little sad that they made her the dragon, thus necessitating that she eventually be beaten by the heroes, and that they didn't cast a performer who actually wears leg blades. She and Roxy are the only significant female characters and it is also a shame that they never get to share a scene. Roxy is in general left out in the cold (literally; she spends most of the action-packed climax standing on a glacier,) which is a double shame as she is clearly just as much of an outlier in the recruitment process as Eggsy; there are no female Kingsman Agents either. She never even gets her Kingsman suit and brolly; what a rip.

There is one other female character, but since she is never even given a name and is apparently only present so that the film can give Eggsy the expected reward for saving the world, she doesn't really count.

Oh, and Eggsy's Mum and baby sister, who are mistreated by Eggsy's stepdad to foment character conflict and then imperiled to create tension in the climax because there's no-one else in the world we have a reason to care about. Seriously, almost everyone we meet who isn't a Kingsman Agent (and some who are) is an arsehole.

On the upside no-one gets raped for cheap effect and Roxy doesn't end up in the fridge, but... Well, honestly, that should be a given.

I wanted to love Kingsman, but I find that I can only like it, and that in a slightly indulgent manner. It's a pity, because it could have been much better.

Stargate Universe - Season 1

Working the 'flawed character' concept to the max, from left to right: Sgt. Greer (Jamil Walker Smith), a barely contained cauldron of ill-directed rage; Camille Wray (Ming-Na), an uptight bureaucrat*; Col. Young (Louis Ferreira), a hypocritical, laid-back dictator; Chloe Armstrong (Elyse Levesque), a supersecialsnowflake who is superspecial because... um... she's pretty; Nicholas Rush (Robert Carlyle), a surly, Scottish genius with obsession issues; Lt. Scott (Brian J Smith), screw-up, fuckaround ex-priest; Tamara Johansen (Alaina Huffman), indecisive medical officer; Eli Wallace (David Blue), slacker maths genius and comedy fat nerd; Col. Telford (Lou Diamond Philips), a resentful career soldier.

Once upon a time, there was a show called Stargate SG-1, about a magic door that let the USAF explore the galaxy. Then there was the spin-off, Stargate Atlantis, which was pretty much more of the same with different wallpaper. There was also a cartoon called Stargate Infinity, but no-one would thank me for bringing that up. Finally there was Stargate Universe, a grim and gritty spin-off which more or less killed the franchise and left the door open for the makers of the original film to reboot.

Destiny, a ship that looks nothing like anything else in the
Ancients' history, despite clear evidence from other shows in
the franchise that their aesthetic sense never changed over the
course of millennia.

SGU has obvious echoes of Battlestar Galactica and Star Trek: Voyager, with a mismatched crew stranded on a spaceship on the wrong side of the galaxy. In this case, they became trapped during an experiment to dial the 9th chevron of the Stargate, an act which turned out to destroy a planet as well as throwing the crew across space to a distant 'gate seeding' ship on its return course. The cinematography certainly owes a lot to BSG, with lots of grainy, shaky footage and PoV shots from the kinos, remote cameras which replace some sort of stun weapon as the alien gizmo of the week and the MALP all in one.

Throughout season 1, the crew have little control over Destiny, which instead drops out of Hyperspace near planets which have resources they need (early episodes are thus entitled things like 'Water' or 'Life'.) The thrust of the series is therefore not exploration, but the relationships and power dynamics within the crew. The former involves a few friendships and a fair old soap opera of affairs - the military chief has knocked up his MO and his XO was sleeping with another officer and is now sleeping with a civilian consultant, despite said other officer still being on board and the prior relationship having had no specific end.

SGU's strengths are a good cast and a genuinely different take on the Gateverse; its weaknesses are unlovable characters and a use of the Stargate which is not actually any more inventive than Star Trek's transporter. It's striking how different the familiar - the Gate and also returning characters such as O'Neill and Carter - appears in a blueish filter and on film instead of video. It's also disconcerting to see Jack 'Leave No Man Behind' O'Neill talking about acceptable losses, and part of me feels that more of a break - even a total break - from SG-1 would have favoured SGU.

The characters of SGU are themselves difficult, in part because they are more - some might say overly - flawed and complex than those the lighter preceding installments. Nicholas Rush is obsessive and driven, bringing more than a hundred people to Destiny instead of evacuating to Earth on the grounds that they might not be able to dial the ninth chevron ever again. He is often selfish and egotistical, but is also shown to be capable of immense personal courage and conscience. His military counterpart, Colonel Everett Young, is initially the voice of reason, but rapidly seems to descend into a kind of monomaniacal determination that no-one else can save these people. Between them it's hard to pick a side, especially when team civilian so often seem to be flat out wrong, but team Air Force consists of Young, a vacillating MO who was having an affair with him, a hot-shot lieutenant who can't keep it in his pants and a borderline psychotic sergeant whose only redeeming feature is his loyalty to Young.

There is a mild creep factor, as members of the crew use the Ancient body-swapping communication stones to visit relatives on Earth and, in a few cases, these become conjugal visits. One visiting scientist tries to get it on with Rush in Camile's body, while her own is host to Camile's consciousness under the stewardship of Camile's wife. I have serious doubts whether she would be cool with someone using her bits to jump a man in her absence.

By the end of Season 1, SGU also lacks an iconic villain. The aliens who attempt to steal the Destiny around the midseason break are interesting, but sufficiently alien that they never enter into a dialogue with the crew. Good aliens; crappy primary antagonists. The Lucian Alliance are chattier, and their humanity makes their brutality all the more shocking, but they're a reused SG-1 villain, and a pretty prosaic one at that. Given that the series is set in another galaxy, I feel that opportunities were missed.

That being said, the Season finale ends on a pretty tense cliffhanger, and the gritty atmosphere really pays off there.

* She is also, I think, the franchise's first gay character; certainly the first to be out. I don't mention that above because it's not played as a flaw; indeed, it's pretty much the steadiest and strongest relationship in the series.

Agents of SHIELD - The Return of Season 2

The preview trailer for the post-break return of Marvel's Agents of SHIELD shows us a battered team struggling to cope with the death of Antoine 'Trip' Triplett, respected operator, trusted friend and comrade, and tangible link to SHIELD's idealistic beginnings.

I'm just kidding. It's all about poor Skye Daisy. For all he got to do in the first half of the Season, I wonder if anyone will notice that Trip is actually dead.

The Librarians... and the Loom of Fate

I give you... the Librarians.

One of my favourite shows of the past year comes to an end with the finale The Librarians... and the Loom of Fate.

Flynn returns once more with a plan to restore the Library; a plan which can only work thanks to an assortment of the artefacts that the Librarians in Training have gathered over the course of the series, including the Book of Tales, Morgan le Fay's smartphone app and Tesla's dimensional stabiliser. But when Dulaque interrupts the spell and hijacks it to break the Loom of Fate, the world is altered and only Eve can remember how it once was. With the aid of a rather lost non-Librarian Flynn, she must travel through a series of possible worlds and find a way to fix what was broken.

In the first world Eve died fighting the Serpent Brotherhood and her Librarian, Jake, is now travelling the world trying to keep magical artefacts out of the hands of bandits, mercenaries and anyone else who might abuse them. In the second, Katie the serial killer from ...and the Heart of Darkness managed to unleash a tide of ghost-zombies on the world, with only 'Team Jones' (Librarian Ezekiel having franchised the Library) to oppose them. In the third, magic has gone feral and dragons rules the skies, and Librarian Cassandra is a mighty white witch and the former student of Morgan le Fey.

In each instance, Eve is dead, having taken a stab wound from Excalibur that Flynn would have taken if he'd been Librarian, but the news is softened by a lovely running gag where she reacts with horror to learn that she and Librarian Jake were involved, or that Librarian Ezekiel looked on her as a mother figure. Also in each instance, non-Librarian Flynn brings something to the table that the Librarian in action lacks, because Flynn is a one-man band while the Librarians are a beat combo. Between the different worlds and the device and the denouement, basically everything from the past nine weeks is woven together.

Hey kids! It's Jerry O'Connell from Sliders! (Also Rebecca Romjin's husband.)
I love this show so much I'm not even going to bitch about that sword hilt.

Eventually, of course, they must return to the Loom, defeat Dulaque and restore the weave using Ariadne's thread, but to do that they need to return to their own timeline with the aid of all three alternate Librarians. The three accept that they are about to be written out of existence, happy with lives of adventure well lived. Flynn and Eve face off against Dulaque and are thoroughly outmatched by the rejuvenated Lancelot, until the (still aged) Galahad/Jenkins shows up and kicks his ass.

Eve is fatally stabbed (because she dies for her Librarian in every timeline,) but Flynn calls bullshit on fate, weaves the Library back to the Annex and uses his healing potion to save her. So very much huzzah!

I cannot adequately quantify the degree to which I have loved this series. It's done so much with such a limited budget and sparkling writing, and the season construction was splendid (even the Santa episode is relevant.) I so want it to go for another season.

Continuum Season 2

Serious... but stylish.

I polished off Continuum Season 2 this week, catching me up to UK TV in general.

Following on from Season 1, Kiera's position in the VPD is shakier now, and Agent Gardiner and CSIS (Canadian Security Intelligence Service) are all over her as a potential Liber8 mole, despite her being clearly too stiff and correct to ever use an 8 in place of the suffix '-ate' like that. She is protected largely by the mysterious Mr Escher, a modestly wealthy corporate head with fingers in a lot of pies, but there are new antagonists on the scene as well. The Freelancers are described as time-travelling privateers and collectors of other time travelers.

Season 2 of Continuum gets kinda dark, with Kiera's 'get the job done' attitude aligning her with the darker side of the VPD from honest cop Carlos and her drive to get home becoming more and more consuming and selfish. Alec is out on his own and being courted by Kellogg, who is determined to profit from someone he knows to be a surefire winner. He also has his own little love story, which turns out to be a set up of course, with tragic consequences, and it is a testament to Erik Knudsen's kicked-puppy expression that he pulls off this somewhat hackneyed plot twist.

I found Season 2 a somewhat uneven ride, although it does end up on a shockingly effective cliffhanger.

Constantine - 'A Whole World Out There'

John goes visiting another old friend.

With his usual backing group on hiatus to recover from their clashes with Felix Faust, John is enjoying the chance to wallow in self-pity; at least until Manny provokes him into seeking out another old friend. Ritchie Simpson, not seen since the pilot, is making a quiet living as a teacher, until an ill-chosen class project leads four of his students into another dimension, and not one occupied by fauns and friendly dryads.

The antagonist of the week is Jacob Shaw, a mystic and architect who fled from persecution into a world of his own creation. Accessible through Egyptian spirit projection incantations in his journal, this world takes the form of a house which he controls through his mind, and through which he stalks the spirits of those who come to him... potentially forever. As John and Ritchie strive to save the last surviving student, for once is it not John who has the knowledge to take on the enemy, but Ritchie; if he can overcome his own Newcastle-induced self-loathing.

'A Whole World Out There' manages a pretty decent balancing act, showing us Constantine's guilt over Gary's death in 'A Feast of Friends' without ever letting the audience be certain he isn't setting Ritchie up for a similar fall. In the end, however, it is John who convinces Ritchie to come back to the world - albeit in a typically jerkass fashion - yet also John who remains trapped by the past, having helped Ritchie to find a new purpose in his philosophy lecturing.

It is also an effective creepfest, with wounds appearing on bodies in trance-states and Shaw stalking his victims through reflective surfaces. As in The Librarians and the Heart of Darkness, it has a lot of haunted house material to draw on, explained by Shaw's obsession with games and murder and games of murder.

Ritchie's condemnation of Shaw as a man who could have created like a god but chose to destroy as a monster actually covers a lot of Constantine's villains. Not the demons, obviously, but the mortals who use their magic for dominance and destruction.