Wayward Pines - 'Choices'

"Abby... Somebody. Abby Normal!"*

After last week's flurry of exposition, we have... more exposition. Where Ethan was essentially illustrating the truths revealed to Ben in 'The Truth', however, this week it's him getting the info dump.

Pilcher and his sister, Nurse Pam, explain how he discovered that humanity was on the brink of a catastrophic environmental and evolutionary collapse. Unable to convince the world, he devoted his genius and fortune to a project to create an Ark of sorts, developing revolutionary cryonic technology and creating the vast underground facility which stored his chosen survivors for 2,000 years and now serves as its support facility, nurturing it towards self-sufficiency.

All is not well, however. While Pilcher and his volunteers - including Mrs Fisher and Arnold Pope - were prepared for the new world, the first group to be awakened into the town freaked out, either fleeing into the abbie infested woods or simply destroying themselves and their families. Thus the adults are now kept in ignorance, merely paving the way for the First Generation, but some will never accept, and there is a resistance group planning to blow up the fence. Back in town, Theresa follows a paper trail to the mysterious Lot 33, while Ben struggles to deal with the truth and Kate and her husband build a bomb.

'Choices' once more does much to clarify the world of Wayward Pines, and brings us to the end of the material I know from the book. It works hard to ensure that Ethan's choice to throw in with the authorities seems reasonable, by giving a grim alternative - the fence is blown, the abbies storm the town - and by having him set his own conditions - no more Reckonings; no executions and a phasing out of the universal surveillance. While he accepts that people can't be told outright, he has no will to enforce a reign of terror. It also shows that what the town has been missing is a new voice in this secret cabal; someone who hasn't drunk all the kool aid and can still see beyond the party line.

There is a line of social commentary, even satire, in Pilcher's initial frustration with a society frittering its existence away with trivial entertainments, always putting off what needs to be done in favour of watching the latest TV craze or writing about it on the internet. It's always a little odd watching this sort of satire get stuck in to the hand that feeds, but it also explains why Pilcher didn't arrange for someone to lay in the next fifty years worth of DVDs after the hibernation began in order to provide some bread and circuses to distract the people.

I think the most important facet of the last couple of episodes is that they are bringing together the plot threads and tying off the material from book one, which means that we don't have the question of what the hell Pilcher thinks he's doing anymore. Now that Ethan is in on the secret, it is no longer madness to give him the badge and the guns, and he doesn't have to try to escape over and over and then have everyone act as if it's all hunky-dory. All-in-all it makes for a more convincing, and thus more compelling, story. Now, if only they can fit Theresa back in decently.

* It was this or 'Is it because I is slate grey?'

Dominion - 'Mouth of the Damned'

"I like Buster Keaton movies. Eccentric!"

Alex and Noma discover that New Delphi is inhabited by a mixture of humans and eight balls apparently living in peace. Julian, eccentric and trade-obsessed leader of the city - well, bunker; apparently the budget won't stretch to more than one actual city - is angry that Alex shot one of the possessed and demands the life of one of his party in recompense, although he is persuaded to delay when Gabriel attacks the city. During the defence it becomes apparent that New Delphi is armed with a substantial quality of the same angel-killing metal that Michael and Gabriel's swords are made from. After Gabriel retreats, Julian agrees to ally with Vega if Alex can retrieve a certain key from a nest of mad possessed.

In Vega, a V1 named Zoe attempts to assassinate Clare as the head of the oppressive, caste-driven government. Evelyn coaxes an eight ball into working for her, with the promise of returning images and artefacts of the woman whose body the angel possessed, with the implication that she had learned how to manipulate lower angels from Uriel. She sends the angel to make an incriminating sex tape with Whele - well, it never gets to actual sex, but that's the theme of the thing - which Clare uses to force him out of power, then Evelyn kills the eight ball.

Finally, Michael learns that one of the conditions under which the town is protected is that each year all of the townsfolk confess their sins to Serious Leader Lady (the series is still very bad at using people's names.) A woman who saw him washing blood off his wings stumbles back into town, having run away to avoid confession. She admits to adultery, but Michael persuades her that God wants her to keep quiet about the wings. Since secrets are sins - apparently, because obviously there had to be something messed up about this place - this leaves the town in peril, so her married lover - Manly Suspicious Pants - straight up murders her.

Once more, Dominion's overarching theme seems to be that, actually, maybe Gabriel is right and God has gone away because people are just that shitty. I quite like the city of eight balls, however; it's very different and now we have three distinct survivor settlements, or four if Helena counts when we haven't seen it. Sadly, Gabriel has just been angry so far, and we've not seen much of the fun and snarky psychopath who enlivened Season 1 with his affable monstrosity, although chirpy wheeler-dealer Julian takes up some of the slack.

Wayward Pines - 'The Truth'

Manly.

As Ethan heads off into the woods with a shotgun and a manly action face, his son Ben, utterly frustrated with his mother's unexplained clinginess and rather less concerned about possible conspiracies than the possibility that he might score with his assigned cutey, is called into Room 101 for 'orientation'. Ethan faces the humanoid monsters in the woods - super-fast and razor-clawed, but otherwise basically naked dudes - as he makes his way to Boise. He passes ruins where there should be buildings, before finally reaching the wreck of what used to be Boise. Meanwhile, Ben is learning that the monsters are 'abbies', an aberration of human evolution that has arisen while the children and their parents slept for 2,000 years in suspended animation.

Mrs Fisher's creepy over-familiarity is reminiscent of real-life hypnotists like
Derren Brown, but even more creepy in a teacher.

The children are told that they are part of the first generation, the hope of the future, brought to Wayward before the collapse of the civilisation to be the future of humanity after. They are watched over by the founder of the town, David Pilcher - the man Kate Hewson was sent to track down - but must not tell their families, adults who learned the truth having previously turned self-destructive.

In Boise, the psychiatrist Dr Jenkins comes in a helicopter to collect Ethan, introducing himself as David Pilcher. He explains that Wayward is the last refuge of humanity and they flee from a pack - although Mrs Fisher uses the word herd - of abbies. Ben and his fellow orientees are photographed and brought into a hall for a candlelit welcome where the other children do everything short of chanting 'one of us'.

This is surely the stuff of adolescent nightmares.

And Theresa... Theresa gropes slowly towards an inkling of the truth that her family have just been handed on a plate while enduring the mild leching of her new boss. To say that she is not pulling her weight as a character might be an understatement.

For the first time in a couple of episodes, Wayward Pines makes more sense after 'The Truth'. Clearly Mayor Fisher's pronouncement was literal truth; the town is all about the children; the adult abductees are basically maintenance workers to keep things running while the more mentally flexible younger generation are prepped to take over by the few who are in the know. It's still a deeply flawed system which relies on an increasingly wobbly control mechanism, but less rockheaded if all of the grownups are deemed expendable. Well... all except Ethan, and that's odd given the level of trouble he's caused.

Coming to this after the first book I notice a lot of flaws, but it's interesting to note that reviewers not familiar with the books were heading for the same time travel explanation I leaned towards while reading. Onwards and upwards, perhaps to an episode in which Theresa does something which contributes materially to the plot.

Wayward Pines - 'One of Our Senior Realtors has Chosen to Retire'

Graffiti = Death
Murder = Sheriff
Presumably the mayor is an arsonist and all the school teachers habitual
jaywalkers

Having killed the Sheriff and inadvertently fed his body to the totally wolves, honest, Ethan is somewhat surprised when the night mailman delivers a school acceptance letter and uniform for Ben, like a very small Hagrid. He breaks into the Sheriff's office to steal some hardware, but is surprised by Arlene the receptionist, Pam the nurse and a man named Fisher, the Mayor of Pines, who have brought cake to congratulate him on replacing the retiring Pope. They even bring a copy of the newspaper announcing Pope's retirement.

As Sheriff, Ethan gets access to the files of everyone in town, listing not just their occupations and addresses, but the details of their former lives. For example, Mayor Fisher's wife is the Stepford school teacher and a former hypnotherapist, so Ben's induction interview ("Where do you come from? Where do you live? Where is home?") is almost as creepy as the fact that he seems to have been assigned a cute girl to help him feel more welcome. As the Mayor explains when the Burkes invite the Fishers for dinner, "It's all about the children; shaping their minds."

Theresa confronts Kate, who basically gives her the condensed version of the 'your life as you knew it is over' spiel, and Nurse Pam makes a citizen's arrest on the realtor who introduced the Burkes to their house and pointed out the monitors. Apparently this man, Peter, is an 'insurgent', who defaces public property with demoralising graffiti. As this is his third strike, she tells Burke, he needs to be hounded through the streets by a mob before Ethan cuts his throat. Justice! (The title of the episode is taken from a letter sent to Theresa offering her his job.) Naturally, Ethan refuses, and bonds with Peter for a while before trying to smuggle him away, learning that he was brought here after an indiscrete liaison with a much younger Nurse Pam. Peter hugs him, tells him the town needs him, and then throws himself onto the deadly electric fence.

Ethan decides to leave Theresa and Ben in the town while he goes for help, scaling the cliff beside the fence while something humanoid but inhuman watches from the shadows.

Wayward Pines grows ever more mysterious, but also less credible, the powers that be apparently feeling that the way to win Ethan over is to give him access to enough information to confirm that serious hink is going on, to all the guns, and persuade him to their way of thinking by... I don't know; having Pam needle him about being shit until sheer machismo makes him determine to be the best darn sheriff this town has ever seen. And then there's Ethan, who has realised that something is up with the school, which is run by a former hypnotherapist, but leaves Ben there while he goes for help, despite the fact that there is clearly some wibbly wobbly timey wimey shit going on. Matt Dillon's naturally baffled expression is working increasingly hard here.

At this point, the series seems to me to be a lot of excellent parts - the performances are top notch - struggling to create a coherent whole. I think the main problem is that their determination to stretch out the mystery while involving Ethan's family has created a scenario that seems utterly untenable and forces unlikely turns such as Ethan's appointment as Sheriff while still utterly at odds with the town, and his knowing abandonment of his wife and son despite the possibility that any help he brings back after a week could be mysteriously a decade too late.

Dark Matter - Episode 7

"Let's switch on the sex bot; what could possibly go wrong?"

Recalling her dreams from last episode, Five retrieves the code for the vault, granting access to a treasure trove of money, guns and women. Seriously; there's a woman in stasis and a dismantled 'entertainment' android, and being smart people, our heroes immediately wake them both up. The woman is Sarah, a critically ill farmer who had a thing with Marcus/Three after she saved his life. He put her in stasis because of her illness, then of course forgot that he was trying to find her a cure. They bond for a time before he has to return her to stasis as the illness accelerates.

The android is Wendy, a perky bot with an Aussie accent who wins the crew over with her cooking and massage skills and has sex with One ("You seem anxious. If it would help, I can switch off my performance analytics before we begin,") thus pissing off both Two and the Android, who feels threatened by the newcomer. Of course, the sexbot turns out to be an assassin, or rather an actual sexbot reprogrammed to kill the crew and gloat in the voice of their vanquished foe - a man whom, of course, none of them remember at all - as they crash into the sun. Three acts as bait to lure the bot off the bridge while Five releases the others who were locked in the mess and they work together to avert disaster. Unfortunately, the bot's sabotage causes power fluctuations, including knocking out Sarah's stasis pod.

This episode gave us a chance to see another side of Three. We learn that Marcus initially tried to run out on Sarah when things got emotional, but stayed to help her when she got sick. We're never sure if he would have stayed if she hadn't, but either way it's a softer side than we've seen before. The real star, however, is Zoie Palmer's Android, managing to use extremely limited facial movement to transform her wide-eyed blandness into the most heartbreaking kicked-puppy impersonation as the crew go gaga for Wendy's thrifty yet delicious cooking. The scene where she tries to win back One's regard with a range of exciting accent options is priceless tragicomedy.

Agent Carter - 'Time and Tide'

Agent Carter: More interrogation scenes than your average police procedural.

The SSR follow up on the dropped hotel key (Man in Green's, not Carter's; my bad) and find the magic typewriter. They also learn that Leet Brannis was a Russian agent who died two years ago. Based on the license plate from Stark's car, they haul in Jarvis for questioning, leaning on him using a shady past including a charge of treason and a dishonourable discharge. While Carter is able to spring him, to do so she has to actively fluff the investigation, thus seriously damaging her hard-won credibility with her male fellow agents.

Peggy Carter may not be a great conspirator, but she excels at the rough stuff.

There is a bit more detective work and Carter and Jarvis track the remaining stolen weapons to a boat, but the focus of the episode is on Carter and the consequences of her off-the-books investigation on behalf of Stark. Unable to take the credit for her find, she has Jarvis call in an anonymous tip, but this leads to the death of an SSR agent when someone rubs out the only witness. As the witness was also able to finger Carter for her activities, we're left to ask: Who had the man killed? Was it Leviathan? Or was it Stark or Jarvis? The killer was thin enough to be Jarvis, but had a bit more swish in his - or was it her? - step. Regardless, it is clear that this is no longer doing a small favour for a friend, as the Agency determine that the boat and the tip were a trap set up to kill one of their own.

The message of the episode is that Carter may be an excellent agent, but she's a terrible spy. It's not that she can't keep a secret; just that she is fundamentally honest. She can lie to her enemies, but struggles with lying to her allies, even the ones who don't like her much. We see also that her relationship with her non-work friend Angie is threatened by her secrecy, and that despite her determination to keep clear of attachments, this hurts Carter. Again, she lacks the detachment of a true spy, a trait which, like her honesty, speaks of her true nature as a hero. Despite her desire to gain respect as an agent, she is willing to drop the credit and even to seem incompetent to protect a friend, and we can expect the strain of her double life to tell more than ever as the series progresses.

I think this is one of the greatest successes of the series so far; that the writers have steered clear of the common failing of equating 'strong female character' with a lack of flaws and weaknesses. Carter is physically capable, intelligent and quick witted, observant and a skilled actress, but she is also loyal to a fault and incapable of entirely switching off her emotions, then again without coming off as irrational. If anything, Jarvis's cool rationality in a crisis is eerie by comparison, and like so much else hints at an even patchier past than some forged letters of transit for his future wife.

Dominion - 'Heirs of Salvation'

Where did all the cow angels go?

In a small village, a group of human survivors watch in terror as the unmistakable silhouette of the Archangel Michael (sans wings) kills lots of people with swords.

Cutting back in time a short way, we see Michael wandering the desert in the aftermath of his massacre in the Vega labs. Meanwhile, Alex is in Gabriel's eyrie, having promised the Word of God in exchange for Vega's safety, but the tattoos aren't talking. Just as Gabe is losing his rag, the humans drop a massive dirty bomb on the eyrie, which fails to really kill anyone of note. Alex escapes with higher angel bestie Noma while Gabriel plots vengeance and determines that all he needs of Alex is his skin.

In Vega, Clare - now Lady of the City - celebrates the strike, but the emergence of living angels hints that retribution is coming. David Whele and his cronies, angered that Clare has given some of their living space to the workers, has those floors fired to whip up anger against her, while Clare and Helena (who may still be fronting as Pseudosapphic Diplomat, I wasn't clear on this one) plot a counterattack. Whele is also talking to his son, despite abandoning him in the desert, and it eventually transpires that this is a figment of his imagination.

Alex and Noma head for New Delphi (the former Philadelphia?) Alexa wants to persuade them to send their army to aid him in defending Vega, but Noma - apparently unaware of Michael's heel turn - is mindful of warnings he gave her about going to New Delphi and sends him a message by wing telegraph (apparently higher angels talk long distance by flapping.) They fall foul of a mob of eight balls. Alex evicts one and his tattoos go funny; this time, the host survives, with no memories of the war. Noma remarks that this makes Alex uniquely dangerous, but as they approach New Delphi they find a crucified higher angel and they are captured with electric nets.

Out in the desert, Michael finds a small town where a bonfire is kept burning. The people there hail from many faiths, but believe that the Father speaks to them and protects the village as long as the flames burn. Although unable to hear his Father, Michael is clearly effected, and when rain puts the fir out and the surrounding eight balls attack, he steps up to help defend the village, revealing the cold open to have been him killing eight balls. Then the sun comes out and the bonfire reignites, causing all of the nearby eight balls to catch fire and flee.

Season 1 of Dominion was a silly treat. Season 2 is just as mad, but with I fancy a touch of quality that the first lacked. Whether it will lose some of its charm from a more professional approach remains to be seen, but 'Heirs of Salvation' isn't a bad start.

Wayward Pines - 'Our Town, Our Law'

"I'm a reasonable man, although I will confess a bit rapey."

Now that Ethan has twice made a direct escape attempt from Wayward Pines and actually stabbed a guy rather than just being accused of a murder he (probably) didn't commit, and has witnessed the Sheriff execute his friend Beverly, he is naturally still given the complete run of the place. (In fairness, this continuing liberty clearly pisses off Sheriff Arnold 'This is my town' Pope to no end. Ethan is slowly realising that there is more going on here than a local sheriff on a power trip; there is someone else pulling the strings.

He makes another escape attempt, stowing away on a curiously general purpose delivery truck which takes him to an underground garage full of abandoned cars, where he is once more knocked out by Pope and dragged back topside. To his astonishment, he finds that he now has a house in Wayward Pines - Beverly's old house - and that Theresa and Ben apparently live there with him. All three of the Burkes are pretty weirded out, especially when Pope comes around being all creepy at Theresa (his alpha male attitude taking on uncomfortably rapey overtones with Theresa.)

Ethan makes one more run at getting information from Kate, learning that she really has been there twelve years and that Bill Evans only showed up for the last two of those, apparently unaged as Ethan was. She also advises him to tell Theresa she is there before gossip does, but Ben has already tailed his dad and so Ben and Theresa head off on foot, only to be chased down by Sheriff Pope. When he threatens the family, Ethan attacks him, Ben runs him down in his own car and Ethan shoots him with his own gun (another reviewer points out the irony that his own symbols and tools of mastery are turned on Pope.)

The Burke's attempt to escape by using Pope's key fob to open a door in the Jurassic Park fence, but something comes through and snatches Pope's body, and they quickly slam the door on an eerie, inhuman howling.

The changes from the book continue to confuse me, as they pretty universally serve to make the forces controlling the town seem much, much stupider, its equilibrium far more unstable. Moreover, while it is important for recognition, making Ben an angry teenager before coming to Pines makes the appearance of the Burkes in the town much less unsettling, and is just one of the things that makes the whole setup less frightening. Despite Pope's speeches about everyone in town maintaining the order of things, it really is down to fear of a man with a gun at the moment.

Still, here there be monsters it seems, and that's got to shake things up a little, right?

Penny Dreadful - 'Glorious Horrors'

"As your host, I hope I am offending you all equally."

With the forces of darkness closing in, it's party time! Dorian Gray drops in to the fortress of stiff upper lips with invites to Angelique's coming out ball just as the team are noticing something amiss with the luvved up Sir Malcolm's reaction to his estranged wife's suicide ("cut her throat? I'll have to change that carpet.") After a visit to the waxworks and a blackmail visit from the maimed and excessively optimistic Pinkerton (seriously; it's quite adorable that he thinks Ethan is the badass) Ethan cries off the ball due to lycanthropy, but Victor attends with Lily, Sir Malcolm takes Mrs Poole and Vanessa and Hecate Poole go separately and stag. Dorian pisses Victor and Angelique off by homing in on Lily (told you that wasn't going to stay happy,) while Hecate torments Vanessa with magic. Meanwhile, Ethan has Sembene chain him up in the basement and finally has someone who knows exactly what happens to him.

Although he crosses paths with the rest of the cast, Dorian Gray remains a largely pointless source of fan service, and otherwise mainly throws a spanner into the works of another incidental plot. On that topic, neither Vanessa nor Dorian appears to recognise Lily; I guess it's hard to see past the consumption and the accent, and they did at least keep Ethan out of the picture so far. Anyway, that leaves about half of the episode to formal plot, which pretty much comes down to 'Ethan is the hound of God, Mrs Poole is after Sir Malcolm and Hecate seems determined to fuck with Vanessa's head just to prove a point or something.' It's possible that Hecate is just feeling pissy because Mr Lyle pronounces her name 'Heckaty-poo.'

So, yeah; mostly filler this week.

True Detective - 'Night Finds You' and 'Maybe Tomorrow'

"Is this inappropriate?"

Okay, we've had a bit of a break, which may indicate the degree to which this season has not grabbed me the way Season 1 did. So it goes.

"It's my strong suspicion that we get the world we deserve."

The Caspar killing is of interest to many, so our three broken cops are all assigned to it: State claims jurisdiction because Woodrough found the body, promising to disappear the IA case and make him a detective if he plays ball. County makes a deal with State for Bezzerides to head up the investigation in exchange for her collecting dirt on Velcoro and getting an in for State's probe into Vinci PD.  Vinci PD meanwhile want Velcoro to steer the investigation away from any of their embarrassing business and any connection with the Mayor of Vinci. Velcoro's criminal contact Frank Semyon, meanwhile, has trouble of his own, as Caspar died with Semyon's big 'going straight' investment money still in his bank account.

The task force - the main three plus slobby detective No-one-uses-his-name - looks into Caspar's finances and activities, finding regular large payouts and an escort habit. While Bezzerides and Velcoro make a start on talking to the obnoxious Mayor and Caspar's other contacts, Woodrough has a difficult goodbye with his clingy mother and alienated girlfriend before joining them at the other end of California. Velcoro goes to Semyon and is put onto an apartment where he finds a camera, a hard drive, and a gunman with a shotgun and a raven mask who shoots him twice in the chest, doing literally what his ex-wife did figuratively when she told him she was moving for sole custody on the grounds that he's a fucking arsehole.

"'Sup?"

Fortunately, it turns out that the gun was loaded with rubber shot, merely precipitating a vision in which he speaks to his father. It's a bit weird and Twin Peaks. While he's laid up, Bezzerides pals about with Woodrough, and sets him to talk to hookers. "Put your looks to use," she tells him, which obviously makes him uncomfortable. This is a bit hypocritical given how she reacts when the lady from state tells her to dangle sex to get Velcoro to fess up. Woodrough's reaction falls into place, as 'Maybe Tomorrow' outs him to us as a very, very closeted gay. The phone records from the sex flat lead Bezzerides and Woodrough to the Mayor's house, drawing a measured reaction from the Mayor ("I want that c*&@ fired!") and a general escalation of the State vs. Vinci conflict embodied in Bezzerides and Velcoro.

Meanwhile, Frank is concerned that someone is gunning for him when one of his men turns up dead. He gathers his people, but one of them mouths off when he demands they find out who took what was his. "What you got left?" He beats the man unconscious and pulls out his gold teeth, later tossing them into the bin in his house as his wife attempts to make up after an argument.

Bezzerides and Velcoro track down the car used for a dump, but it gets fired. They chase the masked arsonist, but he escapes. Velcoro pulls Bezzerides out of the path of a truck, earning her thanks. "You want to thank me, tell me what State's got on me?" "I don't know."

I think my biggest problem with this season is that no-one seems capable of having a conversation with their significant other without it turning almost spontaneously into an argument. It's not that they're troubled, it's that they seem incapable of employing any rationality before flying off the handle; they're like teenagers. The other problem is that Semyon's story is only tangentially connected to the others, and his philosophising less gripping than Rust Cohle's. Actually, in general the cast aren't quite Woody Harrelson and Matthew McConaughey, most tellingly with Vince Vaughn and Taylor Kitsch. I guess the latter is trying to reinvent himself, but he's much better at anguished heroes than complete wrecks. It's almost needlessly bleak.

Wayward Pines - Don't Discuss Your Life Before

"Nice face."
"Back at ya."

Ethan Burke is determined to leave Wayward Pines, and despite the opposition of Sheriff Pope, finds an ally in Beverly, who is still pretty spooked to learn that it is 2014. She helps him to dig a tracking chip out of his arm and he finds Bill Evans' escape map. They intend to abscond after a meal with Ethan's weirdly aged ex-partner Kate and her husband, but when Beverly slips up and mentions her life before Pines, all the phones in town ring and they find themselves hunted. Beverly is captured, and Ethan can only watch as Pope cuts her throat.

Two episodes in, and Wayward Pines is suffering from comparison to the book and the transition from eerie weird fiction to rather more overt conspiracy. The rules are posted in public places and intoned at the 'reckoning', which is neither as tense and terrifying as the book's fete - in which the entire town hunts Ethan and Beverly with machetes and kitchen knives - nor as creepy in its climax; Pope's dramatic execution replacing the corporate act of murder which binds the book's community in their shame and secrecy. The pacing is also significantly different, and again loses much of the tension through its more relaxed structure. As a side note, the network-mandated language restrictions make Nurse Pam's outbursts much more cutesy. Referring to a hefty needle as a 'bad boy' has less punch than calling it a motherfucker.

Unfortunately, these comparisons make it hard for me to judge the series as its own thing. It seems to have done very well for itself, so it must have an appeal by its own lights, but so many of the changes throw up plot holes for me. If the town is held together by constant fear, how come they all look so happy? And how come they all go along with it so jolly? There are other niggles that don't quite sit right, but although I'm running behind, I'll discuss them as they become not spoilers for the point in the series.

Penny Dreadful - 'Above the Vaulted Sky'

"Shall we dance?"

"All sad people love poetry. Happy people love songs."

In the wake of the Nightcomers' ninja assault, Team Dreadful batten down the hatches, investing in stronger doors and locks, all the rituals and charms of protection you can shake a wand at, and lots and lots of guns. This does precisely dick to stop the Nightcomers popping up in some sort of astral form while Vanessa is praying, but does mean that when Inspector Rusk comes to ask Chandler some questions, he is in the process of buying a suspicious amount of ammunition for a retired sharpshooter. Rusk has also learned that Chandler is using an assumed name, and has a man tailing him, but the police are so shit that the tail is spotted and evaded more easily than a dude with one eye and a conspicuous leather half-mask where Chandler ate the rest of his face off.

The Creature is impatient to get to know 'Lily', but she is clearly repulsed by him despite his heartfelt account of their imagined love (it is clear he's thought a lot on the subject) and he goes off to sulk in the catacombs. Vanessa meets Victor's 'cousin' in another delightfully light scene and immediately spots his non-familial affection for her - seriously, they're adorable, and therefore almost certain to die horribly - before going to work in her soup kitchen. Here she has another heart to heart with 'John Clare', and teaches him to dance. I would feel so much more sorry for him over Lily if he didn't have a good friend in Vanessa and a seriously interested blind girl at the waxworks that he is completely ignoring whenever he goes all 'poor me'. Oh well, I guess he's socially awkward.

Face touching.

Speaking of socially awkward, a spiteful attack from a former client prompts Angelique to resume male garb, but Dorina assures her he loves who she is, not how she was born. It's like a rogue scene from Sense8 and would be terribly positive and uplifting if a) this weren't Dorian Gray, perhaps the most infamous destroyer of innocence and betrayer of love in 19th century literature, and b) it had one iota to do with the rest of the plot. Seriously, Gray just seems to be here to fuck things and look blandly anguished. I don't know if it's more or less annoying that he isn't even tangentially associated with the plot by fucking actual characters, although I guess it's nice that he's found someone as inhumanly smooth and hairless as him.

Date rape.

But hey, it's not just Dorian and Angelique getting it on this week. Vanessa and Ethan don't actually get groiny, but they they have some intense non-sex, and when Lily shelters from a thunderstorm in Frankenstein's bed, inevitable outcome is inevitable. Meanwhile, Evelyn Poole is using the love whammy - delivered via her spiked ring - to seduce Sir Malcolm, and her voodoo dolls to drive his wife into insanity and suicide. The climax - pun intended - of the episode is three intercut sex scenes and some intense stair staring from Vanethan, with the eroticism seriously undercut by including Lady Murray slashing her own throat while being menaced by hallucinations of her zombie children.

I've said it before and will say it again: Penny Dreadful is like the Victorian era, in that it is both obsessed with sex and hates sex. Three sex scenes - one is going to lead to violence, one is date rape and one is incidental to the plot and also unlikely to end well, juxtaposed with death, because sex in this show leads to madness, evil and death, like... every time. If Vanessa and Ethan had gone the full montage, she would no doubt be possessed by the devil again. If Sembene and Lyle feel left out, I hope they realise what a bullet they've ducked. What, I have to ask, is this show's entirely literal fucking problem?

Dark Matter - Episode 6

Samurai iiin spaace!

It's backstory time, as in an effort to open the vault, Five takes an electrohypnotic trip into the memories somehow stored in her brain. First she experiences Four's childhood as prince of the Ishida clan, learning that he did not in fact murder his father, but was framed by his stepmother and killed several guards while trying to escape. Then she drops into her own lost past, and we see that she was a street thief who stole a key, which all of her friends were killed for. A boy whom she found dead on the ship earlier on in the series was the last of those friends, who stowed away on the Raza with her.

Oh, I get it. Raza. Rasa. As in tabula. Fuck. Okay.

As her brain starts to seize, Six goes in to try to pull her out, but witnesses his own memory as a member of a resistance, who turned on his own and tried to kill himself when they went terrorist. Finally he finds Five in an idyllic memory of life on a farm; it is a boy's memory and they guess One's, although Three seems more the farmboy type to me. Five wants to stay in this happy place, but Six rescues her by reminding her that something bad is going to happen, even there, because clearly something bad happened to each of them.

My current speculation is that the crew are clones, and that rather than having their memories erased, they were due to be implanted with memories, but Five's presence mucked it up and she got all the uploads. Who exactly did this and when, I am less sure. It is also highly suggestive that the crew all seem to recall an inciting incident in which they were wronged, and I strongly suspect that once their pasts are revealed they will have a second chance to choose whether to embrace the evil that came over their lives or reject it.

One thing I really liked about this episode was the Ishida Empire. Although heavily modelled on Feudal Japan and with a clear strain of Japanese ancestry, it was actually not just a copy. The swords have the characteristic hilts associated with the katana, but straight, double-edged blades, and the fashions and iconography are all subtly off, as if the Ishida Empire was mimicking an older period that it only partially understood.

Marvel Needs Women

The MCU's Black Widow is awesome, but she is
also one of only two core Phase 1 Avengers not to get
her own movie, and has notably different hair in each
appearance, where the boys seem fine with an iconic
do*. (Poster for The Avengers, (c) Marvel Studios)

It is not infrequently noted that it is a crying shame that the cinematic juggernaut that is the MCU doesn't have more female headliners, and just as common for such rejoinders to be offered as: "But it's got Black Widow," or "The Captain Marvel movie is in the works," or "Jane Porter is a strong female character, even if she doesn't do much fighting," and all of these are true, but it is still the case that there has yet to be a female headliner. As awesome as many of them are, all of Marvel's female characters to date are supporting roles. The most common response when the absence of female characters in any given film is mentioned is 'but this film is about [male character X], and you can't hold this movie responsible for the general dearth of female leads in Hollywood'. This is, as far as it goes, true, but the thing about the MCU is that it isn't just one film, it's twelve films, with another ten already scheduled for Phase 3, and three ongoing TV series with four more in the works (and in fairness, two of those - Agent Carter and Jessica Jones have female leads,) plus one shots, tie-ins and a colossal presence in the cultural zeitgeist.

This (plus their own chequered history) is why is is incumbent on Marvel to take a lead here. Received wisdom is that a female lead won't sell a comic book movie, but the MCU has sold The Guardians of the Galaxy, and Ant-Man, and if you can do that, you can certainly shift product on a Black Widow movie. As noted above, there is one extant series and one incoming with female leads, but the big screen is still the big screen, and the MCU doesn't have the excuse that this is one movie that happens to be about a dude. When you plan your movies four years and ten pictures in advance, you can make some serious, game-changing choices. Ant-Man is a film about fathers, which is why Hope van Dyne doesn't get to be the Wasp until the - if you'll pardon me - stinger**, but while the film on its own weathers that decision, as part of the MCU it is much less forgivable not to have brought the character to the foreground.

I mean, don't get me wrong; I respect the progress represented by having a
woman teach a man to fight and not have him end up better than her, I just
think they could be going further. (Still from Ant-Man, 2015, (c) Marvel
Studios)

And ultimately that's where Marvel is falling down. They have the characters, they're just keeping them in the background, and even when they get to do awesome it is in support of someone else and with that someone's name on the marquee. Pepper Potts supports Iron Man, Jane supports Thor, and Black Widow is the eternal second stringer. Peggy Carter is Cap's best gal. Darcy had to be saved by her intern's intern in The Dark World. Hope fits into that same mould; by being the support to her father and trainer to Scott Lang, she is a strong character who is held back from taking the lead. On the plus side, she never really needs to be rescued.

But where are the true leading ladies, the heroines at the point of the spear? Well, we have Agent Peggy Carter, who is awesome in late 40s chic, and the forthcoming Jessica Jones (which may in fact feature an honest to gosh superhero, Luke Cage, in a supporting role prior to his own series.) We have Melinda May and Bobbi Morse as the top combatants in Agents of SHIELD, and even Skye is marginally more tolerable as Daisy, but it's still Coulson's show and part of why I dislike Lance Hunter is as the living embodiment of the need to put a white man of action somewhere front and centre***. And of course the Widow. Add in Sif from the Thor movies and that's a fine ensemble for movie - or movies - of their own. Yet we have nothing on the cards until Captain Marvel in 2018.

Okay, if we want to do this right we might want to talk about
the outfit... (Image from Marvel.com, (c) Marvel)

I guess part of this comes from the source material; there are far fewer a-list female superheroes than male (Marvel.com's 'Women of Marvel' page categorises all of seven iconic female characters****,) and in particular most of Marvel's options are mutants, belonging to the forbidden X-Men franchise (not that that stopped them with Scarlet Witch and Quicksilver*****.) It can not be said that the MCU doesn't take chances, however, (Ant-Man, Guardians) and it's hard to accept that, say, a movie featuring the mutant Firestar would be that much tougher to sell than one about a gang of competent misfits including a foul-mouthed raccoon and a walking tree. Not only that, but the MCU has had a marked influence on the comics it sprang from, so more women headlining the movies could translate into more women headlining comics: Win!

From the perspective of Marvel, there is an even bigger reason to push forward a female headliner: As it stands, DC are going to beat them to it with Wonder Woman. Aside from the fact that DC has never been a bastion of feminist sensibility, Wonder Woman is also a notoriously troubled solo property; hugely influential and wildly successful as part of the various incarnations of the Justice League, but she hasn't had a successful live-action screen outing since Linda Carter hung up her satin tights, which is pretty much as if Batman had been a no-show since Adam West. Maybe Marvel would like to see Wonder Woman fail, but it would make it that much harder to make any other female-led comic book movie, given the tunnel vision for which studio executives are famed. Either way, win or lose, Wonder Woman will be highly influential on the future of the MCU, whether as a win for DC or a loss for superhero movies as a whole. One might have thought that Marvel would want to get out in front of that.

The 'bad present' contingent in Days of Future Past are trying a little harder
(which is more than can be said for Iceman's beard,) but then we remember
that Wolverine (the ultimate manly superhero) was given the starring role
originally taken by reader-liaison everygirl Kitty Pride. (Post for X-Men:
Days of Future Past, (c) 20th Century Fox

Perhaps most compellingly of all, I contend that the MCU should have more female characters, and black characters, and queer characters, because they can. Because now is the time when the studio has the potential to bring it home, and make the continuity that was spawned by metaphors for exclusion and prejudice a place to take a stand for equality again, instead of pandering for the bottom line. It's all well and good saying that the X-Men represent all minorities, but it doesn't really make up for the fact that in the otherwise excellent First Class the black guy died and the Latina turned evil.

Obviously, X-Men and the Sony Spider-Man movies are their own thing unconnected to the MCU, and I don't mean to go into them here except to say not falling, but doing motherfuckers******!

And that's what I want to see in the MCU - female characters, not falling, but doing; not helping, but leading; neither hogging the limelight from the male characters, nor shrinking from it, but participating and contributing as full equals. There are ten movies planned in Phase 3; one has a female headliner. It should be more, and I sincerely hope that by 2019 it is.

* And then there's the whole 'infertile = monster' thing in Age of Ultron, which I think is largely a result of conflating a couple of unrelated points due to lack of screen time, but is still problematic.
** I know some people are sad that Cassie Lang is too young to be brought in as Stature for at least a decade, but that's more of a nerd discussion.
*** The race thing is a whole separate issue, but again we've got lots of supporting non-whites and the likes of Luke Cage and Black Panther coming up to play lead. shame about Spider-Man.
**** Black Widow, Captain Marvel, Medusa, Ms Marvel, Scarlet Witch, She-Hulk and Storm (http://marvel.com/characters/list/996/women_of_marvel). Take that Invisible Woman! For comparison, there are 10 'top heroes', two of whom are Black Widow and Captain Marvel.
***** Because the twins are also part of the Avengers franchise in the comic continuity.
****** Seriously; I wrote that post just over a year ago and the idea of an Ant-Man movie was laughable then.

Wayward Pines - 'Where Paradise is Home'

The cast, many of whom are as yet mysterious.

Ethan Burke (Matt Dillon), Secret Service agent, wakes on the road into the small town of Wayward Pines, Idaho, with no wallet or ID. He dimly recalls an accident, a truck hitting his car and killing his partner. He remembers that he was looking for two other missing agents. And he can not get out of Wayward Pines, a town which seems too perfect to be true.

He meets a friendly barlady, Beverley (Juliette Lewis), who points him to a dilapidated house where the mutilated body of one of the agents awaits. He ducks the solicitous attentions of oh-so-chipper Nurse Pam (Melissa Leo), and attempts to extract his ID from either the hospital or the rum'n'raisin slurping Sheriff Pope (Terence Howard). Then a barman denies Beverley exists before knocking him out. 

As the cloying folksiness gives way to reveal a glimpse into something darker, Burke's family and co-workers in Seattle struggle with the fact that he has literally vanished: The car he was in has been recovered along with the body of his partner, but with no sign he was ever in it. His boss, however, seems to know more than he is saying.

A psychiatrist named Jenkins (Toby Jones, woo!) tells Burke he is suffering a brain hemorrhage and has him scheduled for surgery, but Beverley rescues him and tells him that the dead agent was trying to escape when he was killed. She also tells him that she has been in the town for a year, since a car accident in 1999. The next morning, he sees the other missing agent, his ex-partner and ex-lover Kate (Carla Gugino), but she is twenty years older and seems to have spent two decades in Wayward Pines since vanishing ten days ago. Considering this shit to be weirder than his pay grade, Burke breaks a rule; he doesn't buy a gun, but he does steal a car, he tries to run but he don't get far. The road out of town loops back on itself, and when he sets out on foot he finds a vast electric fence circling the town, bearing the legend: "Return to Wayward Pines. Beyond this point, you will die."

"What've they got in there? King Kong?"

Back at the car, the sheriff ambushes Burke and tells him 'you're not going anywhere'.

The opening episode of M Night Shyamalan's adaptation of the Wayward Pines novels is a beautiful thing, making the most of the bleak grandeur of its Idaho pine woods and mountains. The books wre a conscious tribute to Twin Peaks, and much has been made of the nods to other series on display here - in particular the parallels between the opening sequence and that of Lost. Sadly, the accelerated pace of the series loses some of the creeping weirdness that was so effectie in the first book, but it has to evolve and that might actually be easier from this base.

Agent Carter - 'Bridge and Tunnel'

Before big screen TVs, people had to make their own entertainment.

Continuing the search for Howard Stark's 'bad babies', Peggy Carter tracks down the milk truck used to steal the molecular nitramene, at the same time continuing to assist her fellow agents with their investigations into Stark's assumed activities, including the destruction of Roxxon Oil's refinery.

On a more personal level, Carter is looking for a new place after the murder of her roommate. She is offered a luxurious apartment - one of Howard Stark's - by Jarvis and a room in a hotel for respectable single women by her waitress friend Angie, ultimately choosing the latter, although she is concerned that her work could get Angie - or indeed Jarvis - killed.

Tracing the nitramene and the man who stole it - named as Leet Brannis - Carter and Jarvis are attacked by the second scar-throated man on the orders of the mysterious 'Leviathan'. Brannis is killed and the nitramene destroyed, and the SSR retrieve the key to Stark's apartment and the license plate of his car from the two blast sites.

The miniseries format is working well for Agent Carter, maintaining the sort of tight focus that we saw in Daredevil, instead of the sagging filler episodes of Agents of SHIELD. Peggy Carter is delightfully badass, but also canny and adaptable, as seen when she swipes a lab coat from Stark's roleplaying wardrobe to masquerade as a health inspector and inspect the milk company's vehicles. The scar-throated assassin (aka the Man in Green, apparently*) is a truly sinister henchvillain, with his utter ruthlessness, his enforced silence and neat little cue cards, and his magic typewriter conveying orders from an unseen superior with a biblical name. Although as yet the SSR agents feel a little underutilised, with the exception of the big dumb one, they rise above the level of mere strawmen for the sexism of the era, which was their place in the short (which was okay, because it was a short and a short can stand some strawmen for shorthand in a way that wears in a series.)

* I'm colourblind, so I have to take that on trust

Sense8 - 'We Will All Be Judged By the Courage of Our Hearts', 'Death Doesn't Let You Say Goodbye', 'What is Human?' and 'Just Turn the Wheel and the Future Changes'

Again, a marathon watch, so I'll thread the episodes together. In a weekly series this would probably be a poor way to review, but for a block release like Sense8 it actually works.

Capheus (Nairobi)
Capheus decides to step away from Kabaka's business, despite the fact that it will mean no more medicine for his mother. He makes up with his friend and partner Jela in a scene which contains one of the most succinct pieces of relationship establishment I have ever seen:

Mrs Jela: Hey shithead! It's motherfucker!
Jela: How’m I supposed to tell them apart if you keep calling all my friends motherfucker? Oh. It’s this motherfucker.

Unfortunately, not everyone is willing to see Van Damn retire; the Superpower gang want him to hand over Kabaka's daughter to them for revenge, otherwise they will kill his mother. What is already a tough choice is made more so as Capheus reveals to Riley that when he was a boy his mother gave birth to his sister, only to be forced to give her up to an orphanage for lack of food.

In the end, he makes the only choice he can, and goes to confront the gang alone, fully expecting to die. In the absence of the girl, they produce a bound and beaten Kabaka and order Capheus to 'be a man' and kill him. Fortunately, this triggers another share with Sun, and all kinds of rowdiness ensues. Capheus flees with Kabaka with the gang in pursuit. Will helps out when Capheus visits and admits he believes he is about to die, but it is Capheus who faces down the leader of the Superpowers and brings Kabaka home to his daughter.

Sun Bak (Seoul)
As we surely all suspected, Sun has a chance to establish her prison yard chops when she trips the bully who keeps stealing her trainer's work. In the ensuing confrontation at the painting wall, she drops half a dozen of the bully's crew before the guards subdue her. In solitary, she receives a paintbrush as a token of regard from the other inmates.

Hope arrives in the form of her father, who explains that he has decided to come clean, having realised that his daughter is important to him, regardless of tradition. Her lawyer visits, and she agrees to let her father do this, despite the consequences for her brother. A day later, her brother comes to tell her that their father has apparently committed suicide in remorse and she attacks him, knowing that he killed their father to save himself.

This, right here, is shit about to get real.

Nomi Marks (San Francisco)
Nomi and Amanita are truly thunderstruck by the violence that they witnessed in the murder of Dr Metzger, opening the montage of pain in 'We Will All Be Judged...' They fall back to Amanita's family home, where Nomi and Will work the case in part of an ongoing collaboration between her hacker smarts and his cop skills. She loses her tools, however, as Whispers brings the heavy crew to their hideout and this is where Sense8 really gets to play with its concept.

Trapped in an alleyway by two federal agents, Nomi asks for help and Sun hops in with her usual extreme badassness, while Will provides expert analysis on the agents' tactics. Nomi then hops a bicycle until she can find a car. "But I can't drive!" she protests, before finding herself experientially in the passenger seat. "I can," Capheus assures her, and he can. This is a scene that could only happen in Sense8, and manages to top both the orgy and the 'What's Up?' scene for proof of concept.

Nomi retreats to her old apartment, having used Will's badge number to put out a BOLO reporting her last seen boarding a flight to Australia. Amanita finds her there - not sure how or why they let her go yet.

When Riley collapses, Nomi works to keep her off the radar, knowing that if she is discovered, Whispers will trace the entire cluster. Will joins her to work out what to do, but Jonas visits them both and tells them - prompted by Whispers - that Whispers knows, he is going to Iceland and knows that Will will not be able to resist going there as well.

Kala Dandekar (Mumbai)
Nomi describes the dislocation following Metzger's death as akin to being in a cinema where everyone else is laughing but you don't get the joke. This segues to Kala, watching an apparently hysterical movie with her family, but in tears from the communicated grief of Wolfgang. Later, she asks to have the wedding in her own temple, which prompts her Papa-gi - Rajan's father - to seek her out there and ask her to call the whole thing off. He does not approve of religion, as was noted earlier, and rather than see this as an out she takes umbrage at the attack on her faith and refuses to cancel the wedding at his say so. Before he can press his case, a masked gang deliver a run by stabbing, leaving him bleeding on the pavement at Kala's feet.

Kala gives her statement to the police, omitting the specifics of Papa-gi's visit. As he is in a coma, Rajan's mother feels able to ask Kala to pray with her.

Later, Kala visits the temple again and is greeted as the hero who lured the enemy to be killed. She rejects this, and Will steps in to help her run off the fanatics.

I'll be honest, this is the segment that is most dragging, and Kala only really kicks in when she interacts with the other Sensates, like watching Van Damme movies with Capheus or being all awkward with Wolfgang. In a way, this is because she is the most normal, and the only Sensate to show any significant revulsion of violence. Even Riley is afraid of violence, but not notably shaken by it, and Nomi's reaction is a bit of a one-off. This is made explicit when she watches Lionheart with Capheus and comments that the film is violent. 'Life is violent,' he replies, and while he is a good man with a heart as big as outdoors, that it his truth and why he is able to channel Sun without being wracked with guilt.

Towards the end of 'Just Turn the Wheel...', she asks Sun how she deals with emotional turmoil. Sun tells her that to seek to avoid feeling is to know death, and that she puts all that she cares about into her fists and fights for it.

Riley Blue (Iceland*)
Riley and Will share a moment, and a kiss; a touching scene nicely offset as Will's partner walks in on him. Getting settled in Iceland, she visits an old family friend, Sven, who offers to drive her anywhere she needs to go.

In 'Death Doesn't Let You...', Riely visits the scene of her childhood encounter with 'the hidden folk' and encounters Yrsa, an older Sensate who works with BPO, but does her best to conceal undetected Sensates from notice. She wanted to scare Riley away from Iceland, with its high volume of DNA researchers per capita. Ojnce one Sensate is found, BPO can then trace the psychic connections to others. When their meeting crosses with Riley's visit with Will, Yrsa derides love within a cluster a 'pathological' and a form of extreme narcissism. Learning that Jonas is talking to Will, she cuts the meeting short, telling Riley that Jonas is a hunter, working for Whispers to find new clusters. This seems odd given that in episode 1, Whispers was unable to interact with the visiting Jonas and told Angelica that he was looking forward to meeting him.

Riley next visits a graveyard, where we learn that she was married to a man named Magnus who once picked her up from school on a pony, before he died, along with their newborn daughter Luna. She discusses loss with Capheus, and provides the episode title: 'Death doesn't let you say goodbye.' She then attends her father's concert, but the music triggers birth memories for all of the cluster, ending with Riley remembering giving birth to her daughter as the car her husband was driving them to the hospital in went off the road. She suffers a violent nosebleed and collapses.

Wolfgang Bogdanow (Berlin)

This is not what is best in life.

Kala visits Wolfgang at Felix's bedside, and we learn that they were more than just working partners. Friends from childhood, with a shared love of Conan the Barbarian (seriously, this series has a thing about life-influencing movies,) who became brothers, not by an accident of blood, but by choice, setting up another important pillar of the overall thesis of the series.

Wolfgang's uncle visits and tells him that he must put an end to his rebellion; toe the family line, as he does not want to have to bury him.

Visiting a holocaust museum, Wolfgang sees various members of the cluster and has a rare clash with Will, who doesn't get Genghis-by-Conan references. Cousin Steiner visits Felix's hospital room and threatens to kill both Wolfgang and Felix if he doesn't get his diamonds. He arranges a handover and plans to counter-ambush Steiner, but is unable to get enough space until Lito steps in with an expert lie to put Steiner off his guard, allowing Wolfgang to take out Steiner and his thugs with a pistol and a rocket launcher, because the man has pizzazz.

He takes Felix from the hospital and secretly installs him in another, where his family have not influence, before going to deal with his uncle. Kala begs him not to and they kiss, but he says this is what he has to do, or his uncle will destroy everyone he has ever cared about.

Lito Rodriguez (Mexico City)
Lito is at first delighted to hear that Daniella has retrieved her phone and that Joaquin will not be releasing the photographs, but less so when she turns up to a late night meeting with a black eye to explain that in exchange for the phone, she agreed to marry Joaquin. This is too great a sacrifice for Hernando, who turns up on set to explain that he is leaving Lito, although he still loves him very much. "We will all be judged by the courage of our hearts," he tells Lito, quoting the film he is shooting and setting the title of the episode.

Lito gets drunk, insults a gay barman who hits on him and then visits a gallery where he had his first date with Hernando. There, he and Nomi discuss art and shame; his fear of exposure and the loss of his career, and her experiences as a shy boy whose father wanted him to 'man up' through the tried and tested method of institutionalised locker room bullying. Faced with his cowardice, Lito wallows in tequila and finally tries to end it all, but the gun he tries to eat is a lighter (providing a splendid moment of bathos at the end of an overwrought montage.) "Fake," he decides, like his entire life.

Inspired by his visit with Wolfgang, Lito makes a magnificent apology to the barman, then swaggers into Joaquin's place 'to get my friend back.' Joaquin begins to beat the tar out of him, but then Wolfgang returns the favour. As well as making a nice change from Sun doing all the fighting, it showcases a different style, Wolfgang having all of the brutality with none of the grace. Lito and Dany return to Hernando and the three are reunited.

Will Gorski (Chicago)
Diego sees Will kissing air, in one of the few lighter moments of 'We Will All Be Judged...' and then suffers through Will's conspiracy theories as his partner works some off the books contacts, partnering with Nomi to discover the existence of the Biologic Preservation Organisation, a sinister multinational who sound like they've escaped from the pages of the X-Men. He also finds security footage, showing the lobotomy victim receiving a package with a suit and a gun and suddenly seeming to come to life again. All this is too much for his captain, however, who suspends him.

Will revisits his dream of the girl being lobotomised, the girl he has been trying to find for most of his career. Once more she warns him not to look at Whispers: "That's how he found me." Jonas visits Will, who apologises for getting him caught. Jonas tells him that Angelica believed that love between members of a cluster was the purest form of all. He also reveals that all the members of the cluster were born at the same moment.

In 'What is Human?' they continue their discussion, Jonas suggesting that far from a new evolution, Sensates probably predate the declining empathy that has made 'normal' humans the most efficient killers ever. This is an interesting statement, as an increasingly small number of the Sensates have not killed anyone yet. They also discuss conflicting allegiances, which becomes important as Whispers prompts Jonas to bait a trap, apparently specifically for Will.

With one episode to go, there is a lot for Sense8 to wrap up, and it's hard to see how much mileage it would have as an ongoing serial. Like True Detective it is so caught up with the specifics that trying to move the same characters to a new situation would likely not work. I guess they could reboot with a new cluster, perhaps crossing over some of the original characters for continuity? That would allow a season which didn't have to reintroduce all of the old concepts, and given that it is the big set pieces in 'We Will All Be Judged...' and 'Just Turn the Wheel...' that are the first to really pull it all together, that could be a big advantage.

* I'm trying to be city specific, as no one country is a single cultural milieu, but much of Riley's stuff seems to happen in rural Iceland, with just the concert in Reykjavik (or possibly Reykjavik is even less urbanised than I imagined.)

Dark Matter - episodes 1-5

Android (Zoie Palmer), Four (Alex Mallari Jr), Three (Anthony Lemke), Two (Melissa O'Neill), One (Marc Bendavid), Five (Jodelle Ferland) and Six (Roger Cross).

Six strangers wake from suspended animation in a distressed spaceship. They have procedural memories - how to operate the ship, how to fight, how to move and speak and all the basic stuff - but no clue who they are or how they got there. The ship's android tries to kill them, but once her security protocols are cancelled she becomes a part of the rather odd crew. With no names, they number themselves in order of waking.

The Android unlocks some of the ship's mainframe and reveals that the six are mercenaries, apparently hired to wipe out a small colony on a planet that a massive corporation wants to take over. Instead, they help the colonists to fight of the invasion attempt. Over the next few episodes, the crew struggle to keep the ship repaired despite a lack of funds and to discover who sabotaged the ship and erased their memories.

They become stranded near a supernova and then visit a space station to raise funds. Here, One and Three are almost killed by an exact duplicate of One who claims to be the original. They are then contacted by an old handler who puts them on a salvage mission with plague zombies, during which Two is bitten but shrugs off the 100% terminal disease and heals the bite in hours.

Over the first five episodes of Dark Matter, a series created by Stargate alumni Joseph Mallozzi and Paul Mullie, the crew of the starship Raza struggle with trust and identity (notably, all six tacitly or explicitly reject their old identities in favour of their numbers,) with hints that none of them may be who they seem to be, or indeed be strictly human. The show owes something to the likes of Firefly, Blake's 7 and Deepwater Black (to be a bit obscure,) although with its squabbling ragtag crew it is probably closest to Farscape, just without aliens.

One is the nice guy idealist, although his original self, Jace Corso, is more of a smiling psychopath, which raises a question over how much of the original personality remains with the memory gone. It is clear that each of them has a fully realised personality, just not whose.

Two is a pragmatist, and the default leader of the crew simply by being the no-nonsense, take charge one. She is also smart and observant, counting cards in a casino without even understanding quite what she's doing, and capable of killing half a dozen mob enforcers on instinct.

Three is the Han Solo of the crew, brash, cocky, selfish, but with hints of a heart of gold. Actually, he might be the Jayne, since he names his guns. One and Three both show an interest in Two, who seems inclined to prefer Three as unlikely to get serious, and the two men are often paired up to exploit the dramatic and comedic potential of their personality clash.

Four is the strong, silent type, and the only one with any notion of his true past, having discovered he may be the heir to a vast empire who murdered his father. He is Asian, talks a lot about honour and loves swords, but I'm sure we can get past that.

Five is the odd one out. She's just a kid, but a technical savant, and begins to dream the memories erased from the others without context.

Six is a gentle giant and the pilot of the group, who assigns himself as Five's guardian and, like One, acts as a conscience for the more pragmatic members of the group. Props are to be given for not casting someone who looks like Roger Cross does as the heavy, although Four limits this to a partial credit.

Finally, the Android is constantly perky and slightly baffled.

Dark Matter doesn't do anything hugely new, but it recombines the elements of its science fictional DNA into an entertaining whole, and it may yet have a twist when the crew's nature comes out in the end.

Agent Carter - 'Now is Not the End'

Sadly not yet.

Agent Carter was one of the best of the Marvel One-Shots which sadly no longer grace their BluRay releases, featuring Peggy Carter from Captain America kicking arse in retrosexist post-war America and then heading off to found SHIELD with Howard Stark. It had just enough Mad Men-esque period sexism to make you want to smack Bradley Whitford's smug SSR boss (seriously; outside of The West Wing has he ever played a character with any redeeming features?) and lashings of action; it was, in short, a joy.

Well, when it came to making a series to fill in the mid-season gap in Agents of SHIELD, they clearly didn't want to do SHIELD: The early years so much as they wanted more of what was in the One-Shot, and maybe getting Hayley Atwell and Dominic Cooper on a weekly basis was a touch costly, so Agent Carter the series, has a bit of a soft reset. Stark has been accused of selling weapons to the enemies of America and so SHIELD is presumably on hold, while Carter is back at the SSR being treated like a secretary, despite her obvious skills and the fierce independence represented by her red hat. She is rooming with a girl named Coleen whose work in the factories is similarly under threat from a returning male workforce who are preferred despite a lack of training or ability.

Because she goes against the flow, you see.

We open with Stark going on the run. Carter doesn't believe that he is a traitor, but when the SSR is tasked with bringing him in she knows she is the woman for the job. Her bosses, in particular action man Jack Thompson (Chad Michael Murray) and grumpy supervisor Roger Dooley (Shea Whigham) naturally disagree. She does have some support from crippled war hero Daniel Sousa (Enver Gjokai), although Carter notes that if he stands up for her it makes her look like she needs him to. Stark is two steps ahead of the SSR, however, and not only eludes capture but also recruits Carter to secretly hunt down whoever stole and is now selling his 'bad babies', the inventions that turned out too deadly to ever be released. To help her, he leaves her with his butler, Jarvis (James d'Arcy), a very proper, very English man whose experience with espionage apparently extends to catching the petite cook stealing some spoons (although he and Stark may both be hiding things from Carter.)

Agent Nice-Guy, Senior Agent Douche, Chief Grumpy and
Agent Carter

The first baby is a horrifically explosive gas being sold via a nightclub owner and fence. Carter dons a blonde wig and sparkly dress and deploys knockout lipstick and a safe-cracking watch to acquire the formula before the SSR, only to find that the formula has already been weaponised. Adding a MacGuyver slant to her James Bond antics, she gathers several bottles of household chemicals to neutralise the explosive. In a nice touch, one of the bottles is bourbon, and that she reserves for after the delicate operation is complete.

Car, Stark, Carter and Jarvis.

That is the moment that she finds her flatmate murdered and is attacked by an unspeaking and apparently unstoppable man with a scarred throat, who walks away after she throws him out of a third storey window. After a pep talk from Jarvis, she consults with Stark Industries scientist Anton Vanko (c.f. Iron Man 2) and tracks the production of the explosives to a Roxxon Oil (because we don't have enough Easter Eggs yet) facility, where she clashes with another scar-throated man who speaks to her with a voice synthesiser, declaring that he and the man who attacked her are somehow at odds, before destroying the facility and escaping with a van full of the gas bombs.

'Now is Not the End' is a strong opener, showing a lot of the promise that Agents of SHIELD never delivered on. It's got conspiracy, triple identities and two factions of dudes without voice boxes, one of whom communicates with his bosses through a remote typewriter. It's like Alias (wigs and all) crossed with Fringe and a goodly dollop of old-fashioned pre-noir detective glitz. There is, in short, a lot to like, and I am at this stage (which is to say an entire series behind; thanks UK broadcasters) cautiously optimistic.