Doctor Who - 'The Witch's Familiar'

“Admit it. You've had this exact nightmare.”

Missy and Clara gone, the TARDIS destroyed, the Doctor at the mercy of his archnemeses (creatures that shouldn't even recognise the concept:) could it get worse. Of course it could. There are the sewer graveyards for starters.

The Doctor faces off against his dying foe as his companions struggle to get back to him, and Davros reveals his organic vulnerability in his dying moments. Enemies become friends, friends become enemies, and as a new day dawns on Skaro, something terrible is looming, a prophesied dark messiah of war uniting the two most destructive races in history: Dalek and Time Lord.

The Good

• Davros is on superb form, playing on his own vulnerability and impending mortality to manipulate the Doctor. Julian Bleach and Peter Capaldi work it like the pros they are as Davros elicits pity and even laughter from the Doctor and the Doctor is appalled at himself for allowing it.
• Once again, there is a firm grasp on the motivations of the villains. Missy falls down because she shoots for the moon, and while Davros does want to overthrow the Doctor's belief in the virtue of compassion, he wants life and power more.
• The idea of the Daleks literally channeling their rage, hate and disgust into their weapons is actually quite neat. It also turns the denouement from a simple bait and switch to a definitive act of catharsis as the Doctor pours out his self-loathing in an act of mercy.
• Dalek Clara was a decent call-back to Jenna Coleman's initial appearance as Oswald in Asylum of the Daleks, which also had an early iteration of the sewer-tomb with its deathless, demented Dalek abominations.
• Deus ex machina as it was in-episode, I quite liked the idea that the Mistress escaped death using a trick she copied from the Doctor, highlighting the difference between them: Missy comes up with hugely elaborate master plans while the Doctor just wings it.

The Bad

• Sonic sunglasses? The screwdriver may have got a bit cliche and overused, but if you're going to have a sonic macguffin it is at least a classic.
• I'm not anti the TARDIS having a forcefield, or even the radical upgrade of the HADS from displacement to dispersal, but we've specifically been told that the Daleks are on top of this shit from millennia of Time War, so when exactly did the TARDIS get these upgrades?

The Ugly

• And damnit, we've just got back the Doctor as a mostly moral and effective hero and now he's the kind of arsehole who wears sunglasses indoors.

Theorising

Okay, so there's not a huge amount left to theorise on from these two episodes. I am hopeful, for the first time in a while, that we might get away from some of the more egregious excesses of the whole Doctor as antihero move. I confess I am a little concerned about the idea of a Time Lord/Dalek hybrid as the arc macguffin, although bit occurs to me that Maisie Williams would play the shit out of that concept.

Top Quotes

• "He’s trapped at the heart of the Dalek Empire. He’s a prisoner of the creatures who hate him most in the universe. Between us and him is everything the deadliest race in all of history can throw at us. We, on the other hand, have a pointy stick."
• "Proposition -- Davros is an insane, paranoid genius who has survived among several billion trigger-happy mini-tanks for centuries. Conclusion -- I'm definitely having his chair." Bonus points for the fact that the chair force-field meshes with one of the fan theories of Dalek chronology, which is that the Doctor clued Davros in enough to add one, thus saving his life at the end of 'Genesis of the Daleks' and creating the Imperial/Loyalist schism which prevented universal Dalek dominance for millennia.
• "Is this the conscience of the Doctor, or his shame? The shame that brought you here."
  "There's no such thing as the Doctor. I'm just a bloke in a box, telling stories. I didn't come here because I'm ashamed. A bit of shame never hurt anyone. I came... because you're sick and you asked. And because sometimes, on a good day... if I try very hard... I'm not some old Time Lord who ran away. I'm the Doctor."
  "Compassion then?"
  "Always."
  "It grows strong and fierce in you -- like a cancer."
  "I hope so."
  "It will kill you in the end."
  "I wouldn't die of anything else."
  "You may rely on it."
  Davros and the Doctor discuss, basically, what makes the Doctor the Doctor. Unless of course that is better summed up by:
• "And still you play the fool."
  "Well, by now that should make you nervous."
• "I’m not sure any of that matters. Friends, enemies. So long as there’s mercy. Always mercy." Compare and contrast with Ten's 'I used to have so much mercy' speech in 'School Reunion'. Since Ten ended up as the epitome of the messiah Doctor, I approve of this reversal at least.

The Verdict

Hells yes!

'The Witch's Familiar' is not perfect, but Doctor Who so rarely is. It just has too many things to be, and in particular if it's funny it's not serious enough and if its serious it's too dark; the balance is next to impossible to achieve. But sometimes, when the stars are right and the wind is fair, it gets pretty damn good. Honestly I found Missy really grating last season, but in this two-parter (oh, yes, it definitely helps for me that it's a two-parter, because I always prefer them) she's rather delightful in her sinister way. It also feels like something of a reversion to my preferred philosophy of Who. The Doctor sometimes makes hard calls, sometimes has to balance terrible alternatives, and occasionally even resorts to scuffling. In the end, however, he does carry people out of the fire.

Violence is not strength, compassion is not weakness, and your no-nonsense solutions just don't hold water in a complex world of jet-powered apes and time travel.

Score - 9/10

Arrow - 'Streets of Fire' and 'Unthinkable'

This is a variation on the iconic costume of the supervillain Ravager, who is
(in comics) either a man or Slade's illegitimate daughter Rose. Somehow the
live action version of the mask looks more like fetishwear than the comics.

The final two episodes of Season 2 of Arrow are all go.

In 'Streets of Fire' Team Arrow struggles to regroup, with the Foundry compromised and Deathstroke outmanouevring them at every turn (although Felicity saves Diggle by hitting Isabel with a car.) Wilson captures the Star Labs Mirakuru cure, but Sebastian Blood - who still thinks he's the good guy - turns on Slade after a massacre of his staff and steals it back, getting a couple of swords through the chest for his trouble. With Amanda Waller ready to daisycutter Starling City to ash rather than let Deathstroke and his army escape, Oliver has no choice but to test the cure on Roy. Sara returns and Laurel convinces her she can be a hero, in time for a reunion with the reinstated Detective Lance, leading the charge as the SCPD falls in behind a masked vigilante on the basis that he's the only one with a clue what's happening. And at the train station, Thea is rescued from one of the Mirakuru thugs by a masked archer - her father, Malcolm Merlyn.

This was fucking badass.

In 'Unthinkable', Sara unveils the cavalry - by promising to return to them, she has brought Nyssa and a band of League Assassins to assist in delivering the Mirakuru cure, along with Diggle and Roy, the latter sans Mirakuru strength, but also sans 'roid rage and wearing a shiny new red domino mask. This leads to a conflict of methods, but Oliver's no killing policy largely prevails (with the exception of Isabel Rochev, who is apparently too much of an arrogant bitch for Nyssa to stomach.)

"I am Nyssa al Ghul, heir to the Demon."
"Felicity Smoake, MIT class of '09."
We love you so, Felicity.

Oliver then sets a trap for Slade, who has kidnapped Laurel so he can kill the person Oliver most loves. Oliver hides Felicity in his bugged house and says that she is the one he truly loves, so that when Slade grabs her she can get close enough to stick him with the cure because - and I can not stress this enough - Felicity Smoake is a fucking badass and the real hero of this series. Her face off with Nyssa al Ghul is a highlight of the series. My other favourite moment of this episode was when Team Arrow flee Oliver's clocktower sulking pad ahead of a mob of goons, only for Lyla to blow the whole tower up with a missile launcher out of a helicopter widow, and Diggle's expression when he sees her (it's pretty much shouting 'damn, that's hot.')

Oh, and Oliver fights and defeats Slade while Lyla and Diggle bust out the Suicide Squad to delay Waller's drone strike. Slade tries to goad Oliver into killing him, but Oliver delivers him to an ARGUS blacksite on Lian Yu and thanks him for helping him to become a hero.

Sara goes off with Nyssa and Quentin collapses because someone in this series has to actually suffer long term effects from being thrown into walls by superhuman thugs. Roy tries to reconcile with Thea, but she finds his spare bow (seriously; he apparently has two bows, despite at last view before the coma still being a crap shot) and eventually goes off with Malcolm Merlyn on the basis that she's fucked off with people lying their arses off to her and he is at least a plain dealing villain*. Interestingly, this is almost a theme in the DCTVU - secret identities are basically a bad thing.

In flashbacks over the two episodes, we see Oliver once more attempting to rescue Sara from the Amazo as we build towards his first 'killing' of Slade Wilson, while Wilson goes increasingly crazy from imaginary Shado taunting him all the time and urging him to murder up Oliver a treat. This ends with Oliver putting that arrow through Slade's eye after Anatoly (the jovial Bratva leader, played by Stargate Atlantis's ensemble darkhorse Peter Nikl) torpedoes the Amazo and Sara is sucked out of the sinking ship. Oliver blacks out and wakes from unconsciousness in Hong Kong, to be greeted by Amanda Waller.

Season 2 of Arrow is a massive improvement on Season 1 in terms of pacing, especially in terms of the flashbacks. In that regard, the decision to have it turn out that he didn't spend five years on an island developing high-tech crimefighting solutions is a very good one. The cast is getting a bit unwieldy - although the finale trims it back a bit - but that's actually no bad thing, taking the focus off Oliver's grumpy monkey act in favour of a more ensemble vibe (although Roy and Sara mostly rock variations on the ill-tempered primate look.) What it also does well is build elements of a coherent world; those feeding into Flash and hinting at other comics, but also the establishment of this world's League of Assassins, ARGUS and just something other than Starling City here and Lian Yu there and not much else besides this mythical 'Australia' that Slade Wilson claims to come from.

Right; now we just need to get through Season 3 before Season 4 arrives in... oh, about a month, probably.

* Actually, he's a deluded, self-justifying toolbag, but she can be forgiven for being in a bad place.

Arrow - 'Suicide Squad', 'Birds of Prey', 'Deathstroke', 'The Man Under the Hood', 'Seeing Red' and 'City of Blood'

Holy shit we watched a lot of Arrow this weekend.

I might accept, at a stretch, that Codename Mockingbird is the real Amanda
Waller's daughter. I guess CCH Pounder was tied up with NCIS New Orleans.

Secret squirrels non pareil ARGUS (arguably the Arrowverse equivalent of SHIELD, or possibly UNCLE) recruit John Diggle - via his ex-wife Lilah - for a mission to If-you-squint-it-doesn't-look-exactly-like-Starling-City-stan. The target is a drug trafficker and arms dealer with an interest in WMDs (revealed as the buyer for the prototype earthquake machine) and his team consists of Lilah and the 'Suicide Squad': Convicts Deadshot, Bronze Tiger and Shrapnel, but not their cell-block mate, an unnamed 'trained therapist' with a high pitched voice and an ongoing rights issue.

The primary purposes of the episode seem to be to remind us who ARGUS are and to mess with Diggle's moral certainty. While Waller and Lilah fail to convince him that drone-striking a party is the equivalent of what he and Oliver do in Starling City, Deadshot's genuine nobility, and the revelation that he has a daughter he avoids because he knows he's a bad person. Bronze Tiger turns out to be a highly reliable psychopath and Shrapnel gets to show how the head bomb works. All in all, it's a bit filler, and I was disappointed that having ended last episode with Diggle knocked out by unseen assailants he was just fine at the start of this one.

In a break from standard, Laurel does not completely suck in
this episode.

At the end of the episode, with his Bratva contacts having failed to find Slade Wilson and then been murdered, Oliver calls on Waller, with whom he apparently has a past*, for help and learns of the mercenary Deathstroke.

'Birds of Prey' is another filler-heavy episode, mostly revolving around the return of Helena 'Huntress' Bertinelli (or as Felicity likes to call her, 'Oliver's psycho ex-girlfriend hell-bent on revenge against her father.') Laurel gets to woman the fuck up after her whiny bitch from hell act of past weeks, not just kicking some goon butt with the Black Canary, but eventually blackmailing the DA into giving her her job back. Roy, meanwhile, is going a bit loco, and Oliver instructs him to stay away from Thea, which fully succeeds in getting her kidnapped by Slade Wilson.

"Are you high? I have the strength of twenty men!"

In 'Deathstroke', Slade holds Thea captive long enough to get Oliver riled, then tells her that she is Malcolm Merlyn's daughter and lets her go. It's telling of the Queen family's relationships that she believes him without question. This sets her against Oliver and her mother, but the incident also provokes Oliver to temporarily make Isabel - remember her? - acting CEO, which she uses to become permanent CEO because she's working with Slade. Also, Quentin Lance - increasingly for me the true hero of this season - is arrested for conspiracy for working with the vigilante.

In 'The Man Under the Hood', Team Arrow take out Queen Consolidated's Applied Science building to prevent its use for mass producing Mirakuru, but Wilson responds by breaking into the Foundry and stealing the skeleton key, then swiping an experimental multi-recipient blood transfuser from Star Labs' Starling City branch, nearly killing an incredibly sweet and young looking Caitlin Snow and Cisco Ramone in the process (what a difference a year makes.) This is bad, but based on something Ivo told him on the island, Oliver knows there is a cure for Mirakuru, and Felicity asks Caitlin and Cisco to work on it.

Oliver tries to assassinate Slade while he is weak from the transfusion, but finds he is using Roy, and while he and Diggle rescue Roy and Diggle kills Isabel, Slade has his army and uses his own blood to revive Isabel.

There's actually a name for this move, it gets used so much in
comics. These days it's more often girl lifts guy, but crazy Roy
rocks the classics; even the unfortunate ones.

Laurel, having learned the Arrow's identity from Slade, tries to give her father the leverage he needs to get out of jail, but he refuses, as the Arrow matters more to Starling than who he is under the hood. Instead, Laurel just blackmails him out, because she's getting good at this.

In 'Seeing Red' Roy recovers from his 'surgery' in the full grip of Mirakuru madness. As Slade sees and hear Shado telling him to kill Oliver, so Roy hallucinates Thea telling him this is all her fault and she needs to be murdered, because Mirakuru is a dick. Eventually, Roy is brought down and Sin - Sara and Roy's friend who has been popping up again lately - stops Sara killing him, instead putting him in a serious coma until a cure can be made.

"Is this just a Mirakuru thing?"

Back on the island, Roy and Anatoly get the old Japanese sub working and one of the other prisoners sacrifices himself to pilot a kamikaze torpedo and blast it free of the rocks. He gives Sara a picture of his daughter before he goes; it's a picture of Sin.

And then Slade captures the Queen family. Oliver refuses to choose between his mother and his sister, so Moira - who in another flashback turns out to have bought off a girl Oliver knocked up - makes the choice for him and is run through the heart to save her daughter.

"Well; sure glad we don't look stupid in this..."

Which brings us to 'City of Blood', as the now unopposed Sebastian Blood takes office as Mayor and unleashes the Mirakuru Corps to provoke the level of blind civil obedience needed for the sweeping reforms he feels the city requires (militarised police, curfews, a partial return to feudalism and so on.) Oliver is ready to sacrifice himself to Slade, but his team drag him back to his feet and Laurel uncovers Blood's secret identity, which allows them to identify his agenda and Oliver to realise that he can't put an end to Wilson's plans** by dying.

Unfortunately, an attempt to bury the Mirakuru army under an overpass is thwarted by the appearance of Isabel, wearing a part-face version of the Deathstroke mask (leaving her mouth exposed and sadly making her look a bit more like a fetish hooker than a super assassin, although the rest of her costume is basically practical,) determined to even the score with Diggle. Meanwhile a Mirakuru thug attacks Police HQ, and we end with basically everyone fucked and the Army of Blood (so many possible names) marching into town like the cosplay parade at a Jason Vorhees convention.

* Interestingly, Hanna assumes this to be a romantic past, presumably because Waller looks like she would have been about twenty if she met him on the island.
** The arch villain of this series is called 'Mr Wilson'. That's a bit awesome.

Doctor Who - 'The Magician's Apprentice'

“I try never to understand, it’s called an open mind.”

We open on a terrible war, where soldiers with longbows face laser biplanes and blood-curdling 'hand mines', and a child's only hope of rescue is a madman in a blue box.

A mysterious being called the Colony Sarff is seeking the Doctor, to bring him to an old enemy. On Earth, Missy stages a grand display to attract UNIT so that she and Clara can team up to find the Doctor, who has sent her his last will and testament. The Doctor knows that the end is coming, and is willing to face it, but he wants to face it alone. His friends will never allow that and his enemies know it, and when you have the Doctor's friends you have his hearts in your hand. Killing him is easy, but what about destroying him.

The Good

• Against my every expectation, the returning Missy was not annoying as all hell, her arrogance, viciousness and total sense of superiority all the more apt to the Master for not being justified by her total control of the situation. This actually made me review John Simm's Master and realise that the problem even with that incarnation was that the Master's defining trait is that his reach always exceeds his grasp. He schemes and plots, and could easily dominate any planet he chose; it's his determination to rule the universe that sees him fail by allying with bigger and nastier creatures he is never quite smart enough to control.
• Clara; also not annoying. Yay!
• The irresponsible party doctor with his tank, dude.
• Speaking of the Master's return to form, Davros is also back to a strong suit - needling the Doctor and bringing out his worst as only he can. Also, his dialogue is some seriously creepy serial killer shit that would not be out of place in Hannibal.
• The creepy, creepy hand mines.
• The not-spoiled reveal of Davros.
• "I don't have a screwdriver anymore." Given how hard it's been leaned on, that's a powerful statement, and hopefully one that will be held to for at least a while.
• Classic Daleks, and all the callbacks to 'Genesis of the Daleks'. Continuity is not always Doctor Who's friend, so it's a brave pitch, and so far it's paying off.
• Good to see the Sisterhood of Karn still getting their props.

The Bad

• nuWho's continuing obsession with the deconstruction of the Doctor. It's almost the writers more than Davros who want to destroy any sense of moral certainty in the character.
• Zapping Clara. Zapping Missy might have been for realsies, but glooping them both pretty much gives it away that either there's some trickery going on or that there's going to be some wibbly wobbly timey wimey done. Or not; I stand willing to be surprised.

The Ugly

• The Doctor is pointing a Dalek gunstick at a child. This is what they call a Hail Mary, and depending on where they go with it... It could go very badly wrong.

Theorising

So, I'm assuming that Davros is pulling some smoke and mirrors game here; quite possibly angling to demolish the Doctor's rectitude in front of his companions. As much as I'm not a fan of the amoral Doctor, it would be interesting to see how they handled Missy's reaction if the Doctor did turn out to be just like her after all.

Top Quotes

• “Tell me the name of the boy who isn’t going to die today!” Of course you realise this makes Davros The Boy Who Lived, and the Doctor is clearly He Who Must Not be Named...
• "Oh, don’t be disgusting, we’re Timelords, not animals. Try, nanobrain, to rise above the reproductive frenzy of your noisy little food chain, and contemplate friendship." Okay, it's a bit of a sop, but I'll take what I can get.
• "A daffodil isn't a broadsword, but I still won the last round." Appropriate enough from the man who once bested Robin Hood with a spoon (although at least he didn't cut his heart out with it.)
• “Did The Doctor tell you that? Because you should never believe a man about his vehicle.”
• “Hunter and prey held in the ecstasy of crisis, is this not life at its purest?” Nice to see the spirit of ruthless social Darwinism alive and well.

The Verdict

I confess, I am still not a huge fan of Moffat's determination to drag the Doctor down and make him some sort of grim antivillain. On the upside, his long-standing and absolute hatred of the Daleks is an order of magnitude better than last season's ridiculous hate-on for all soldiers (see last season's reviews for further ranting on that.) Overall, I'm liking this one, and I am more keen for the rest of the season than I was on Friday.

'The Magician's Apprentice' goes to a very dark place. It will be interesting to see where 'The Witch's Familiar' and the rest of the season take us. From the official hints they're lining up some dramatic 'the Doctor unleashed' business, although form suggests that there will be some filler fluff in there as well, which may be the best or the worst of the season.

Score - 8/10

Arrow - 'Tremors', 'Heir to the Demon', 'Time of Death' and 'The Promise'

"...and that's a terrible name, because tigers aren't bronze." Oliver may be
back with Sarah, but we still love you, Felicity.

With Arrow Season 4 on the horizon and largely spoiled for Season 3 by The Flash, I finally get back to mid-Season 2 of the second best Batman show on TV (the best is not the one with actual Batman - or at least Bruce Wayne - in it.)

In 'Tremors', Roy's training is interrupted when someone breaks Bronze Tiger out of jail to help steal Malcolm Merlyn's prototype earthquake machine. Roy's anger issues threaten to let the machine slip away, but when it is activated, Oliver is able to appeal to Roy's love for Thea to snap him out of his rage. The catch: Oliver has to do it, not the Arrow, so now Roy is in on the secrets. Amanda Waller reappears to recruit Tiger for her squad, and once more the leggy young woman playing her makes me pine for CCH Pounder. I like to think that they have cast Waller so far against type because if you can't get Pounder, why approximate.

The League of Assassins is hardcore Batman plot. The show is
barely pretending anymore.

'Heir to the Demon' sees Sara Lance summoned back to look out for her sister, who is angling hard for angry, drunken super-bitch of the year. It turns out that in part this is because she has been poisoned in order to lure Sarah out of hiding (although mostly it's because she's a crashing bitch; her writing this season is tooth-grinding.) The lurer in this case is Nyssa, daughter of Ra's al Ghul and titular 'heir to the demon', and Sara's former lover before all the murderin' rubbed the glamour off being in the League of Assassins. Nyssa targets the Lance family, but when Sara opts to poison herself instead of coming back, releases her from the League. Dinah and Officer Lance (Oliver continues to call him Detective, which is actually quite adorable) are delighted, but Laurel is a thundering bitch about it, declaring all of the problems of everyone anywhere to be Sara's fault and refusing to go with her dad to AA (admittedly he kind of stuffs up by tricking her to a meeting) because no-one there can possibly understand her traumatraumatrauma.

Arrow renews its commitment to equal opportunity fan service.

'Time of Death' piles in some non-Batman references, with a break-in at Kord Enterprises (Ted Kord, the original Blue Beetle) orchestrated by meticulous mastermind William 'Clock King' Tockman, a bona fide Green Arrow villain whose technical wizardry - aided by a Kord Enterprises digital skeleton key - outmatches Felicity, which coupled with the appearance of Sara leaves our favourite blonde feeling like a fifth wheel. When Tockman manages to disable the Arrow Cave's mainframe, Felicity puts herself in harm's way to stop him, and lets her inner badass out of the cage.

Sooo awkward.

The episode also features the most awkward family dinner in history, with Laurel seething with resentment, Quentin desperately hoping that something might reignite with Dinah (it doesn't) and Sara bringing Oliver along in the belief that it will somehow help to show that they're already at it again (it doesn't.) Oliver delivers a scathing verbal beatdown after Laurel storms out, pointing out that while he screwed up on an epic level and cause huge amounts of pain, a lot of her current problems are her own doing and she can't just keep blaming him, or Sara, or her father.

He has his own family issues throughout this. Walter (yay!) persuades Moira to run for Mayor against Blood, and they pay off her OB to keep the secret that Malcolm Merlyn was Thea's father. Unfortunately, they use an account that Felicity has been tracking, and despite Moira's assertion that it will make him hate her as much as anyone, Felicity can't keep that secret and Oliver severs all ties with his mother, maintaining appearances for Thea's sake, barely.

Also awkward.

In 'The Promise', Slade Wilson finally shows his hand, making a contribution to Moira's campaign and charming both Moira and Thea while Oliver seethes. Alerted to his presence, Sara leads Team Arrow in a full court press, but Diggle is kidnapped before he can shoot Slade in the head.

More importantly, this episode is the big flashback. Oliver, Sara and Slade make an audacious assault on Ivo's freighter, but when Slade learns that Oliver 'chose' for Shado to die instead of Sara, he goes off the res. Sara escapes with a few of the other prisoners to the island, while Slade cuts off Ivo's hand and holds Oliver captive, promising he will die when he knows true despair.

Arrow Season 2 continues to improve on Season 1's sometimes shaky pacing, and builds a stronger backstory for Oliver than just 'there was this island'. Manu 'Azog' Bennett provides a heavyweight threat, just as charming as Malcolm Merlyn, but far more physically convincing, either as the titanic masked killer or the smooth businessman rocking his piratical eyepatch and talking art. The addition of Sara Lance, while not unwelcome, serve to further illustrate the immense pointlessness of Laurel, to the degree that part of me is convinced that she is actually resentful not that her sister is sleeping with Oliver, or that her family forgive her for disappearing for five years and coming back with ninjas, but because the writers care so much more about her. As of 'Time of Death' she is at least attending Underwritten Characters Anonymous with her dad, so maybe there's hope yet.

TV Round-Up - Agent Carter, Wayward Pines and Dark Matter

Symbolism!

I've been letting the TV reviews slide a little of late, so here's some catch up.

The season finale of Agent Carter, 'Valediction', delivered hard, from Howard Stark's return to save the day, through his failure and Peggy Carter's quiet triumph, defeating Dottie in combat before talking the hypnotised Howard down before Jarvis had no choice but to fire on his plane.

Stark had a lot of nice moments, playing up his own attachment to Captain America, the only good thing he ever helped to create, and finally realising that he needed to destroy his 'bad babies' rather than hoarding his mistakes. I was impressed by the doomsday weapon of choice, the rage gas proving not to be a deliberate invention but an accidental one intended to allow soldiers to operate on minimal sleep. Howard Stark is far more interesting as a flawed genius whose good intentions always end up creating weapons (which is of course a fine parallel to his son, and a family trait which culminates in the birth of Ultron) than as a father of monsters. Sousa also gets a much deserved hurrah, disabling Ivchenko while wearing earplugs.

We end with Thompson accepting all the credit, because he's a douchebag, if not without redeeming features, and Carter's recognition that what matters is that she knows what she is worth. It was also good to see the strengthening friendship between Carter and Jarvis, which has been a delight all season.

"The hell just happened..."

After a strong opening and an excellent couple of revelatory episodes, Wayward Pines sort of lost its way in the latter half of the season, leaning heavily on a contrived conflict between Ethan and Ben - engineered largely by the almost pointlessly Svengaliesque schoolteacher - and the emergence of the upperclassmen of the Wayward Pines Academy as the Midwich Militia, breaking into the Sheriff's office to execute insurgents in the name of the 'rule of law'. The Academy's curriculum is clearly short on illustrations of irony.

When Ethan reveals the truth to the people, Pilcher shows his true colours as a control freak and shuts down the fence, intending to start over with the next batch in storage. Ethan and Kate lead the population to safety and Ethan sacrifices his life to allow Kate, Theresa and Pam to build a better Wayward Pines, only for an epilogue to reveal that creepy, sociopathic youth has had its day as Ben awakens from a coma to find the town just as locked down as before, with added lynchings and a messianic statue of Pilcher; the kind of pleasant small town you hope will soon be eaten by the deformed cannibal descendants of humanity, because fuck those snotty little American Psycho wannabes.

Never trust anyone who wears a business suit on a spaceship.

In Dark Matter, it's time for a heist. Rescued by 'friendly' corporation Mikkei from a distinctly unfriendly flotilla, the crew of the Raza are encouraged to consider joining another crew for a vault job. Two doesn't trust the offer, but is overruled by the boys, because they're idiots. The heist primarily serves to establish Five as a full member of the team, rather than 'the kid', while the sudden but inevitable betrayal is used to expose Two's true nature as a largely indestructible superwoman. No, seriously; in addition to shrugging off the zombie plague and healing in hours, she can now add 'surviving in hard vacuum' to her achievements.

The poor Android, meanwhile, creates a holographic version of her default programme to monitor her for errors, and then gets ambushed and deactivated again, since she's basically too badass for the rest of the crew to be in peril if she's not out of it.

I'm not sure if Dark Matter would hold out for a second season, but it's been enjoyable enough. I am definitely looking forward to the finale of Dark Matter and a new season of Agent Carter, but honestly I couldn't care less if Wayward Pines got renewed.