The Flash - 'Family of Rogues'

"Is that what I think it is?"
"I dunno; what do you think it is?"
"A big blue wobbly thing in space."

It's actually quite surprising that the recent STAR Labs security upgrade didn't reveal the honking great wobbly blue unstable event horizon in the basement. I mean... you'd think.

Professor Stein claims to be recovering from his seizure, but Jay insists on doing most of the work on building a 'speed cannon' to enable objects - and depowered speedsters - to pass through the breach into Earth-2. While he's about this, the rest of Team Flash are asked by Lisa 'Golden Glider' Snart to find her kidnapped brother, someone having jumped them during a heist. Barry finds Snart pulling a job with his father, Lewis Snart. Lisa refuses to believe that he would work with their bullying, abusive monster of a dad, but a headless corpse provides the answer: Lewis has a way to inject a thermite charge into someone's head, and if Leonard won't work with him, he'll blow up Lisa's brain.

Those things on the floor are frozen laser beams. That sigh you hear is science
taking its own life in despair.

To summarise the summary of the summary: Lewis Snart is a colossal dickbag. Also Michael Ironside.

With the tech guy's head asploded, Barry infiltrates Snart's team as a replacement, using his speed to make up for lack of criminal chops when he is dragged along on the actual job. Meanwhile, Cisco works to remove the bomb from Lisa's head without setting it off. Barry catches a bullet (literally, snatching it out of the air in the way that makes physicists sob and nerds yell 'Speed Force' as though that were an answer indistinguishable from magic) but prevents anyone dying, then once Lisa is safe, Snart Jr turns his old dad's heart into a snowball.

'Family of Rogues' shines a bit of a light on Leonard Snart and the past that led him to become a cool, calculating control freak. It also shows that he has a softer side - as well as protecting Lisa, he is clearly outraged at the idea of Lewis's plan just being to gun down the guards - and a hard edge; Lewis's murder is carried out with reptilian sang froid, just in case we thought he was going to look like a good guy anywhere but standing next to Vandal Savage. Lisa also gets a little more depth, with some sincerity behind the femme fatale flirting with Cisco and as much drive to protect her brother as he has to protect her. This is a good episode for Cisco, not just getting to date (well, kiss) the metaphorical Catwoman, but running rings around Snart by unveiling a cold gun tracker and new thermal threading to let Flash's suit shrug off the effects of the gun.

In subplot land, Barry gets digits from Patty in a adawkward scene at the coffee shop. Ball's in your court, Allen. Caitlin also gets a little flirty with Jay, who eventually decides not to return to Earth-2 just yet. Stein has another seizure, and this time his eyes turn white and he shoots blue Firestorm flames before collapsing. Elsewhere, Barry advises Joe to fess up to Iris that he lied about her mother dying, and just about everything else to do with her mother, and it's good advice that is actually followed (woo!) Maybe someone is finally learning that in the Arrowverse, secrets are bad, yo.

And then someone comes out of the breach and - dun dun dah! - it's Harrison Wells!

Meet the new villain; same as the old villain?

Doctor Who - 'The Woman Who Lived'

“Enemies are never a problem; it's your friends you have to watch out for.”

The Doctor interrupts a highwayman at work, but the Knightmare is actually the woman formerly known as Ashildr, and she and her mysterious partner are searching for the same alien artefact as the Doctor. After eight hundred years of life, the lively girl has become a hardened woman who embraces the transitory highs of adventure over the crippling loss that any meaningful relationship with a mortal must become. going by the name Me, she is seeking a way out, and if the Doctor won't provide one, what lengths might she go to?

The Good

• The scene with Lady Me's diaries was good, and honestly I could have stood the series taking a little more time over her evolution.
• Once again, Maisie Williams is excellent, and she makes a fab team with Capaldi. She plays Me's strength and fragility with probably far more gravitas than the script deserves, even through the lighter aspects of the story.
• The reasoning behind the Doctor's rejection of Me as a companion is harsh, but at least somewhat thought out.
• While it was never really explored, I liked the idea that she'd never found anyone 'good enough' to share eternity, which I presumed not to be because she was always better than anyone else, but because eternity is a long time with anyone and there are no do-overs.
• While overall a pretty generic rogue, and desperately underdeveloped for such a pivotal role, Rufus Hound played Sam Swift's desperate gallows fooling to the hilt.

The Bad

• Is a possibly-immortal roguish manchild really what Me needs to complete her life?
• It's always weird when Doctor Who is being down on the idea of a life of adventure, and even if he doesn't want to travel with an immortal, you'd think that the Doctor could stand to drop Me off somewhere she could hitch a ride on a space freighter or snag a vortex manipulator to open up her horizons, instead of insisting she wallow through 15,000 years of human history on foot.

The Ugly

• I don't care if they're really both hundreds of years old, the idea of Jack Harkness hitting on Ashildr is squicky. The idea of him 'getting around to her' is downright offensive (although some people have read this merely as expressing the likelihood that they will meet one day.)
• "Purple, the colour of death," and "The light of immortality!" Is this a thing? Is this some sort of space metaphysical constant that immortality is shiny and yellow, while death is purple?

Theorising

Are we going to see more of Ashildr (in principle I support her right to be called 'Me', but it's just confusing)? I hope so, but then again... I want them to get it right if they do, which is an increasingly desperate hope in nuWho.

Top Quotes

• "All the other names I chose died with whoever knew me, Me is who I am now. No one's mother, daughter, wife. My own companion. Singular. Unattached. Alone."
• "How many have you lost? How many Claras?"

The Verdict

Like The Girl Who Died, The Woman Who Lived suffers from its reconfiguring of the new two-parter format. It really could have done with being two parts on its own, and the rushed resolution detracts from the potential impact of the character work. It's saved from disaster by some good moments and bravura acting, but overall is suffocated by its constraints.

Score - 5/10

Arrow - 'The Magician', 'The Secret Origin of Felicity Smoak', 'Guilty', 'Draw Back Your Bow' and 'The Brave and the Bold'

You could accurately rename pretty much any given episode of Arrow 'A Shot
in the Dark'.

Okay, so another bumper crop of Arrow watching this weekend, trying to get caught up to Season 4. I apologise if I lose track of where subplots and flashbacks go.

In 'The Magician', Nyssa reveals that Sara was in Starling to check up on renegade Assassin Malcolm Merlin, once known as the Magician*. Nyssa assumes that Merlin killed Sara and is out for blood, Oliver wants to be sure they get the right guy and not keen to start killing people again. Laurel decides that this makes him a half-assed wimpodite, because if he really loved Sara he'd be shooting anyone who even might be guilty.

After a strong spell, I'm really disliking Laurel 'No one has suffered by me' Lance again. Nyssa may feel that anything short of vengeful murder is weaksauce, but she never condemned Oliver for killing people who hadn't murdered someone she personally knew and cared about.

Hey kids! It's Ra's al Ghul!
They have this big reveal of him like he's going to turn out to
be someone we know, but... I mean, we already knew he was
Ra's al Ghul. Is the shock that he isn't Liam Neeson?

Merlin swears on Thea's life that he didn't do it, but that doesn't stop Nyssa using Thea as bait to get to him, only for Oliver to get in her way. The return of Merlin to Starling tests Oliver's resolve, and he tells Thea that Merlin is alive, while still holding a fair bit back.

Then Nyssa goes back to Nanda Parbat (which is basically Petra with some extra minarets photoshopped in) where Ra's al Ghul is all 'Sara wasn't one of us, but we will get Merlin for breaking the code and who does Oliver Queen think he is to say we can't assassinate anyone in Starling City?' which is actually something of a theme.

Quentin Lance still doesn't know that Sara is dead for realsies now.

They actually make a really good fist of making Emily Bett
Rickards look, if not quite like an actual college student, then
certainly like a Hollywood college student.

'The Secret Origin of Felicity Smoak' introduces Felicity's mother, a Vegas cocktail waitress, and something of her history as a goth hacktivist. A supervirus that the young Felicity wrote is being deployed by one 'Brother Eye' to hold Starling to ransom, and she has to find a way to stop it while also wrestling with family issues and her non-relationship with Oliver and what it might be getting in the way of (which is itself complicated because although Barry Allen has first refusal and they're adorable together, Ray Palmer is in the same series.)

Anyway, the day is saved despite some crazy ex hostage taking thanks to a Palmer Tech superwatch and crazy ex imagining that it was ever a good idea to tie Felicity to an active computer terminal. Felicity also gets to kick a little ass, which we always like to see.

There's some business around here with Thea getting Verdant up and running again, and hiring Roy as her assistant manager.

I'm going to go out on a limb
and assume we won't be
seeing this costume.

'Guilty' is focused on Laurel's trainer, Ted 'Wildcat' Grant, former heavyweight boxing champ and, it turns out, vigilante. He's being framed for murder by his ex-partner, by an astonishing coincidence at the same time Roy is freaking out over dreams in which he sees himself murder Sara. These turn out to just be traumatic images triggered by the fact that he murdered a policeman in the grip of mirakuru rage, which doesn't help him much, but it is nice to see someone handle a problem like this by opening up to his friends and partners and asking for help and counsel.

But also awesome.

And Oliver knocks out Grant with a boxing glove on an arrow, which is actually even dumber than a purpose built boxing glove arrow.

Grants partner is caught, but later murdered by a female archer calling herself Cupid, and in 'Draw Back Your Bow' we learn that this is Carrie Cutter, an ex-cop with severe psychological issues who has fixated on the Arrow since he saved her from the patented Mirakuru throat-lift, but has no time for this namby-pamby 'no killing' lark.

There must be young medical residents across Starling City
specialising in the previously underrepresented field of arrow
trauma.

Cupid represents a recurring pattern in Arrow, that there is apparently a plateau beyond which expertise increases only slowly, so that, for example, Sara is about as badass as Olly despite a two year lag in training, while Cupid outdraws Roy and Olly can stand up to Malcom Merlin or Slade Wilson.

Anyway, we thankfully avoid any damsels in distress through this, and end with Carrie off to join the Suicide Squad, despite being 'even crazier than the last woman' on the team.

Whether Oliver can beat Barry or not, it's telling that the
Scarlet Speedster even feels the need to prove it.

Finally, 'The Brave and the Bold' teams up Team Flash and Team Arrow, following from 'Flash vs. Arrow' on the sister show. It makes a big thing of the strengths and weaknesses of Oliver's determinator stance - extreme measures are needed to deal with those who see things in extremes - and Barry's upright heroic approach (although this serves to remind me that in Season 2 of The Flash, Barry is 2 for 2 on straight up murder) and the fact that the metahuman threat in Central City makes things seem like more of a game.

The Australian Secret Intelligence Service: Breeding
sociopathic mercenaries with eclectic weapon selections
since 2012.

They still dub the villain 'Captain Boomerang'.

Boomerang himself is another nod to Oliver's past with ARGUS. A former Suicide Squaddie and rogue ASIS operative (seriously; what the hell are the Aussie's teaching their spec ops?) he's gunning for Lyla, but more importantly represents the blowback from Amanda Waller's take no prisoners approach.

Our flashbacks show Oliver bonding more closely with his minders in Hong Kong, and being taught to hone his memory and get all torturey in the name of the greater good. In the latter case he fails to extract without torture details of a bomb which destroys part of Hong Kong. Waller tells him the blood is on his hands, and not - say - on the hands of the woman who put a rookie in charge of the interrogation to prove a point. I feel that while one shouldn't like Amanda Waller, one should at least be able to admire her; I don't admire this interpretation. She's not quite smart enough.

* In 'The Brave and the Bold' Cisco notes that metahumans and codenames make everything seem more like a game. I wonder if the same is true for the League of Assassins?

The Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt

I don't think I've encountered anything this yellow since Season 1 of Utopia.
That was also less funny than The Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt.

The Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt is a sitcom created by Robert Carlock and unstoppable comedy machine Tina Fey, with the 13-episode first season released on Netflix in a oner; like Daredevil, but with more jokes.

The eponymous Kimmy (Ellie Kemper) is one of four 'Indiana mole women' rescued from a bunker where they had been held for fifteen years by charismatic preacher Richard Wayne Gary Wayne (Jon Hamm), who decides to move to New York City using her share of the 'Mole Fund' donated by the public. Before long, she finds herself sharing a flat with flamboyant gay actor Titus Andromedon (Tituss Burgess), renting from insane septugenarian landlady Lillian Kauschtupper (Carol Kane) and working for socialite Jacqueline Vorhees (Jane Krakowski) as a sort-of nanny.

That's the sit; the com arrives in the form of a barrage of short exchanges and one-liners, mostly revolving around the culture clash between the worlds of the four regulars and in particular Kimmy's attempts to deal with the world after fifteen years of isolation and no post-eighth grade education that wasn't received from a manipulative jerk who taught her about Jesus's crazy brother Terry. Kimmy herself has an utterly unbreakable (roll credits) air of optimism that powers through obstacles and shrugs off her own misunderstandings. She is an absolute innocent, and yet in her way more worldly than her friends.

Each of the characters is drawn as a sketch and then fleshed out, mostly in the form of jokes, such as the revelation that Jacqueline is a Lakota Sioux who rebelled against her parents and Titus' constant struggles with his insecurities. They also have Titus sing at every opportunity, since Burgess has a lovely tenor. Carol Kane's completely deadpan delivery is amazing, even if I did occasionally think Kimmy had fallen in with the Penguin's mum. The minor characters are also wonderful, if less deep, and if not every bit works the show takes the tried and tested approach of just having so many of them that you're rarely kept waiting for a laugh. The pace is actually so frenetic that its hard to keep up with at first, with the upshot that binge watching is a great help, letting your brain get into the right rhythm; the The Wire, but with more jokes.

The Flash - 'Flash of Two Worlds'

It takes a lot of work to pull off that hat.

Jay Garrick makes his pitch: He's the Flash from another world who fell through a breach created by the singularity during a battle with his nemesis, Zomm. In the process he lost his access to the speed force. Many are swayed, especially when a stealth polygraph confirms he's telling the truth and Caitlin confirms that he is a) still showing signs of accelerated healing and reduced heart rate and b) a bit fine. Barry is suspicious, however, and refuses to trust, even when Jay warns him that the latest villain to call him out is a man from his world, known as Sand Demon (Cisco is put out to have metahumans who already have their names) whose body disperses into sand-like particles.

Also having some trust issues is Joe, who isn't sure why perky patrol officer Patty Spivot wants on the anti-metahuman taskforce just as everyone else is quitting. Spivot has almost metahuman levels of pep and combines excellent technical police work with science cred (she admits to reading Barry's CSI reports for fun,) and is nerdy enough to hit it off with Barry, so she's either here to stay or evil. She gets a big tick in the pro column by getting kidnapped by Sand Demon.

Iris convinces Barry to move past the damage Harrison Wells/Eobard Thawne did to his ability to trust and work with Jay. This - with some help from Cisco's newly discovered ability to perceive past events - lets them track Sand Demon and confront him, with Jay teaching Barry to shoot lightning and then acting as a distraction while he frees Patty. Then Barry...

Okay, so for the second week running, Team Flash come up with a plan that doesn't just result in the death of the villain, but goes in with the specific intent of horribly killing them. This is even more of a hurdle for me than the Pipeline.

Joe accepts Patty onto the taskforce when he finds out her father was murdered by one of the Mardon brothers pre-powers. Consequently, she feels that someone needs to be acting against the bad people who have now got metahuman abilities. Stein and Cisco develop a tracker which reveals fifty-two dimensional breaches, including a whopping one right under STAR Labs, and Stein confronts Cisco about his gift, agreeing to keep it quiet for the time being. Finally, we see Earth-2's STAR Labs, and its founder, Harrison Wells.

Wells casts a long shadow this episode, and not just with Barry's trust issues. Cisco's reaction to his powers is coloured by the fact that Wells claimed they were a gift from him, and everything Wells did was evil in Cisco's eyes. Whether Earth-2 Wells is also actually Thawne and thus Zoom, or the real Wells or what remains to be seen, but I have no doubt he'll have some impact on Earth-1.

Arrow - 'Sara' and 'Corto Maltese'

Emily Bett Rickards goes for the... whatever the American equivalent of a
BAFTA is.

Team Arrow has lost a friend, and so they spring into action determined to find the one responsible, an expert with a bow and arrows. "There aren't that many of us," Oliver insists. You kidder, Olly.

This particular archer appears to be assassin Simon Lacroix who... just uses a bow because... he's Canadian? The Kool Aid Man is red? He escapes from the Arrow and Laurel insists that next time she's coming along with her law degree and crackerjack blackmail skills, because she hasn't been a complete idiot for a while. Meanwhile, Felicity has a bit of a meltdown and confronts Olly for his apparent coolness; he explains that he has to keep it together so that everyone else gets to grieve, which is in its way fair but also part of his martyr complex. Ray Palmer is more sensitive, spotting that Felicity's anger is not really directed at his full court press to get her to work for him at Queen Consolidated.

Eventually, the Arrow captures Lacroix and Laurel tries to execute him before being talked down. I suspect that this is, like, important, not least because it so directly mirrors her talking Sara down from killing Helena Bertinelli last season.

"You're not weak, Thea; you've just been underwritten."

Grieving inside, Olly tries to get in touch with Thea and Roy finally admits that she didn't just leave, but ran away from all of them and their lies, which leads us into 'Corto Maltese' and Olly, Roy and Diggle's field trip to retrieve Thea from the titular fictional island (DC's go to South American trouble spot,) not knowing that she is there to train with her father, Malcolm 'Mr Honesty' Merlin.

While they are there, Lyla asks Diggle to contact an ARGUS asset who has gone dark and check everything is okay. The agent asks Diggle to help out with preventing the sale of an ARGUS agent database, but turns out to be selling it and just wants the code key Lyla gave Diggle to prove his identity which can unlock the database (worst electronic security solution ever.) Roy and Olly help out, using homemade bows. Olly also uses a handgun, to Roy's astonishment.

The hotel bed bow; as cool as it is unlikely.

They stop the sale and the rogue agent explains he wanted a way out of ARGUS after the terrible things Waller had him do. This fits not only with last season's ARGUS adventures, but with a flashback in 'Sara', during which Olly is ordered to assassinate Tommy Merlin to stop him tracking Olly down, instead engineering a fake kidnapping to make him believe that Oliver accessing his email was just bait for a trap.

The team are rather less successful, at first, in persuading Thea to come home, but Olly tries a unique approach and tells the truth, beginning with how Robert Queen really died. This moves Thea enough to take a leap of faith, and Merlin lets her go, either for some nefarious reason of his own or just because he believes that Oliver will eventually drive her away again; or both.

For an action series, Arrow has quite a substantial female
following. I'm not sure why... Oh, right.

Back in Starling, Laurel is getting the vigilante buzz, which her father can't understand because she still hasn't told him Sara is dead. How is she not getting this? She was on the other side of the lie train for so long, you'd think she'd have sussed out the series' thesis that lies are bad, yo! This leads her to ask Oliver to train her, but he refuses because plot needs to happen and so instead she turns to Ted Grant. Grant is a boxing trainer she tried to strong arm over a suspected false testimony he claims was to keep a good kid from getting chewed up by the system. He also offered to train her as an outlet for her anger, an offer she accepts.

And finally, Felicity agrees to work for Ray Palmer, as long as she doesn't have to make coffee, ever, and is surprised to be given her own PA and Oliver's old office in which to work. Her first job is recovering a hard drive from the destroyed QC Applied Sciences Division (which you may recall someone blew up last season.) Palmer is impressed, but seems worryingly interested in the experimental weapons part of the database.

'Sara' is a pretty good grieving episode, but loses some traction from the simple fact that the world is now ludicrously full of mad skilled archers. Also, points off for not having Roy breaking the news to Sin. 'Corto Maltese' is very much about driving the arc plot forward and heavy on the action. With no other prospects, I'm wondering if Amanda Waller is going to be the arc villain this time out, or just a recurring dubious ally.

Oh, and Nyssa al Gul shows up at the end demanding to know where Sara is.

Doctor Who - 'The Girl Who Died'

“The universe is full of testosterone. Trust me, it's unbearable.”

In the wake of another act of insane heroics, the Doctor runs into Vikings while cleaning his boot and discovers that they are in the process of being harvested by a deadly warrior race called the Mire. This is unpleasant, but all in all pretty harmless, until a girl named Ashildr decides to pick a fight and leaves the Doctor caught between two unpalatable alternatives: Allow a village of non-combatants to be slaughtered by blaster-wielding maniacs, or make the Mire think that Earth is dangerous enough to be worth destroying.

The Good

• Maisie Williams is a performer well worth the price of admission, and Ashildr channels the writer's inner Who fan more subtly than Osgood or even O'Donnell.
• The fate of the harvested Vikings was pretty grim, and somewhat reminiscent of the 456 in Torchwood: Children of Earth (which notably featured future Doctor Peter Capaldi and regular monster Nicholas Briggs as government employees.) Clara's reaction meanwhile was a key indicator that she probably ought to be spending less time with the Doctor.
• It was good to get a call-back to the face question, and honestly just to have the Doctor reminding himself that he is the good guy.
• I really liked the revisiting of the whole 'the Doctor speaks baby' idea, especially approached in a less zany fashion. "Turn your face to me mother, because you are beautiful," was a lovely line.

The Bad

• In places the text got a bit too meta, with the references to the single place in time and people not getting to have names. I think it's good to recognise the limits of your format without deciding to practically write a song about it.
• How widely available is this Mire medical tech? It seems to be a pretty standard piece of kit for them, but the Doctor acts as if making someone functionally immortal is new and appalling. Does it just do that for humans and not Mire? Why? Am I overthinking again?

The Ugly

• Helmets with horns on? Really?

Theorising

So, we're definitely building up to some drama around the departure (probably death, at least on some level) of Clara, which is a shame because a lot of this series is reminding me that what I really like to see in a Doctor Who episode is a story about the Doctor going to a place and doing something there. Thirteen fifty-ish minute episodes is easily consumed by arc plot, and I'd honestly prefer to focus on an interesting set up and resolution for each story

Top Quotes

• "People talk about premonition as if it's something strange. It's not; it's just remembering in the wrong direction."
• "Mother, I hear thunder. Mother, I hear shouting. You are my world, but I hear other worlds now. Beyond the... folding of your smile... is there other kindness? I'm afraid. Will they be kind? The sky is crying now. Fire in the water."
• "I've got too much to think about without everybody having their own name, so it's Lofty. You're Lofty, you're Daphne, you're Noggin the Nog, ZZ Top... and you're... Heidi."
• "I've always been different. All my life I've known that. The girls all thought I was a boy. The boys all said I was just a girl. My head is always full of stories. I know I'm strange. Everyone knows I'm strange. But here I'm loved. You tell me to run, to save my life. I tell you that leaving this place would be death itself." - Ashildr reflects on the condition of the young Doctor Who fan, but also comments on the nature of the series in some ways. Why do the extras always fight so hard? Because they only have one episode to live in.
• "Oh, dying is an ability, believe me." Coming on the heels of 'Before the Flood', this appears to be another theme, presumably building up to Clara's departure.

The Verdict

'The Girl Who Died' is a decent one-off story, with its 'cliffhanger' less about 'OMG what happens next?' and more 'and then in a thousand years time, once Ashildr had gotten really hacked off with this immortal gig...' It also furthers the arc themes of hybridisation and defying death without needing a recurring villain to pop in during the epilogue and exposit like a minor Shakespearean character summing up the action for the easily distracted.

It suffers, however, from the introduction of the Mire as one of the greatest warrior races in the Galaxy, presumably somewhere near the head of Division One with the Draconians and Sontarans rather than the Premier League with the Daleks and Time Lords. It's hard for these new boys in town to cut much of a dash in a single episode of getting their arses kicked by mediaeval Norse farmers, especially dressed as they are in rusty Judoon cast-offs.

Score - 6/10

The Flash - 'The Man Who Saved Central City'

I see no possible way this could go wrong.

It's some time after the near destruction of Central City by black hole (and yet Starling City still whine about their earthquake machine incidents) and the mayor plans to honour the Flash, the titular man who saved Central City. Barry Allen is troubled, however, cutting himself off from Team Flash and reluctant to appear at the ceremony. While he stabilised the black hole, it was closed when Firestorm separated at the event horizon and newly married Ronnie Raymond was lost. Barry feels like a phony, so he's doing an Oliver Queen and trying to lone wolf the hero game while also repairing buildings damaged in the crisis.

These things never work.

This dark night of the soul is interrupted when a huge guy who looks like some dude that he murdered attacks the ceremony and punches out the Flash, growing even bigger when Joe tries to use Cisco's anti-metahuman 'boot'.

Headed by Iris, Team Flash reconvenes to approach the problem, including Professor Stein. They determine that the metahuman is gaining strength by absorbing radiation, and use this to track Atom Smasher (a name coined by Stein and earning him a huge hug from Cisco.) Barry tries to take Atom Smasher without backup, and gets mauled for his trouble.

Finally, he allows that he needs his friends, and visits the person he has been most avoiding: Caitlin Snow. She assures him that she doesn't blame him for Ronnie's death (she blames herself, because this is the Arrowverse and that's what heroes do) and together they watch Harrison Wells final message, which includes a confession to Nora Allen's murder before joining the rest of the team to defeat Atom Smasher by... luring him into a nuclear plant and bombarding him with too much radiation for him to absorb so that he, um... dies of massive radiation poisoning.

Okay. So... Team Flash just straight up murdered a guy. Sure, he was a crazed and almost unstoppable metahuman, but this is a whole new level of cold.

As he dies, Atom Smasher says that he was gunning for Flash because 'he' promised to take him home if he did. Flash wants a name, and what he gets is 'Zoom'*.

Team Flash celebrate the release of Henry Allen, who drops a bombshell by announcing his intention to leave Central City to allow Barry the space to 'be what you're becoming'. At the party, Stein proposes a toast in Hebrew - kadima; forward. Then the team gets Star Labs set up as Flash HQ with upgraded security, only for someone to walk straight in and announce that his name is Jay Garrick, and their world is in danger.

Season 2 Team Flash: Joe, Barry, Iris, Cisco, Caitlin and Stein.

So, we have another Reverse Flash as our season villain, and another Flash in the mix (his iconic helmet having already put in an appearance in the Season 1 finale,) plus quite possibly some multiversal shenanigans. It was good to see that The Flash is still distinguishing itself from Arrow by having its characters not wallow in their self-loathing. There were also hints of Cisco's nascent powers in the form of a brief vision, and I wonder if this won't also relate to the introduction of the multiverse in some way.

* Presumably related to Professor Zoom, another alias of one of the many comic continuity Reverse Flashes.

Dominion - 'The Narrow Gate'

Symbolism!

In the town of Mallory, Michael learns that Serious Leader Lady - I don't know if it's just that I'm not good at remembering these characters' names or if the show just doesn't mention them much - is not just the confessor of the town; she's their scapegoat. Having heard all of their confessions - apart from Harper, who was murdered for keeping Michael's wings a secret - she is to sacrifice herself and so take the sins of Mallory to the grave and keeping the protective fire burning. After a bit of soul-searching - some very sexy soul-searching, apparently - Michael volunteers to take her place, having recovered his faith thanks to Serious Leader Lady's grace and goodness.

This is contrasted with a flashback to the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah, depicted as an angelic military campaign in which Michael and higher angel Axe-Crazy McPsychoael set out to bring fire and the sword against Gabriel's recommendation of using the amphorae, a weapon of mass destruction which unleashes darkness and insanity. Michael chides Gabriel for never getting his hands dirty; Gabriel chides Michael for never getting his hands clean. During the battle, Gabriel is forced to kill a fleeing Sodomite or Gomorran with his own sword, but Michael casts Axe-Crazy McPsychoael out of his body for being way too into the slaughter, and asks Gabriel to do the same to him having recognised his own fall from grace. Gabriel refuses, and Michael swears off slaughter.

Alex descends into the underworld, or at least the asylum-pit of crazy eight balls under New Delphi to retrieve the copper disc key that was stolen from Julian. He retrieves the key and also finds General Alan Dale (retired) who was condemned for shooting a Delphian eight ball. During the fight he evicts another lower angel, but the host is killed before they can escape. Alex demands the promised alliance between New Delphi and Alan Dale's release as part of that, so that's all good, except that it turns out Julian is Axe-Crazy McPsychoael's new host and he's keeping one of the amphorae in the basement.

Meanwhile, Gabriel prepares for war by sending one of his higher angels to assassinate Claire, and in Vega Claire tries to crack down on the nascent rebellion with the aid of new character Grumpy McTech Bear, but only uncovers sympathisers in her own guard.

So much symbolism.

In Mallory, Michael takes on the burden of the town's sins - which pass to him from Serious Leader Lady as an oddly pretty ball of light - then stabs himself. Being an archangel, he basically just naps through his touching funeral then busts out of the grave, tells Manly Suspicious Pants that he's swearing off murder again but will make an exception if he finds him being anything but lovely, and flies away.

'The Narrow Gate' gets seriously in on the flashback game and does a lot to build up the relationship between the archangels, as well as providing background for Axe-Crazy McPsychoael, former Michael groupie and dark mirror of his mentor's flaws. It's another strong episode, but without Alan Dale, Evil Giles or even Evelyn in evidence this week, Claire can't carry Vega alone; she's just not interesting enough, and her switch from virtuous schoolmistress to ruthless political kneecap shooter means she isn't even very sympathetic. I guess Grumpy McTech Bear is intended to help out there, and looks promising if he can hold up in his own right.

Arrow - 'The Calm'

Damnit! I call tease!

Starling City is virtually free of crime, thanks to the Arrow and the efforts of a revitalised SCPD under the guidance of newly-minted Captain Quentin Lance. Unfortunately, the fact that substantial parts of it keep being invaded or falling over means that it is also largely free of industry, investment and population.

A new Vertigo tries to muscle in on the underworld by taking on the Arrow, spooking Oliver out of pursuing a relationship with Felicity by getting a budget Scarecrow act on and showing him that his greatest fear is Oliver Queen. Between Felicty getting hurt in a bazooka attack, Lance practically having a heart attack on the job and Diggle and Lyla's baby girl being born, Oliver starts to wonder if he shouldn't be putting people back at arm's length.

Meanwhile, Felicity has been putting together the process for Oliver to regain control of Queen Consolidated, only for their bid to be hammered by amiable genius inventor Ray Palmer, whom I would probably suspect of being the bad guy for the season if he wasn't a) Ray Palmer and b) in a couple of crossover episodes to The Flash. He gets into a doomed hack off with Felicity, but gets Queen Consolidated with his proposal to save not only the company, but the city as well.

That's right, season launch poster; a total mystery.

And Sara/Canary drops in briefly to say hi to Laurel and then get shot with Arrows by a mystery woman with a voice synthesiser like her own and Oliver's.

Oh, and Barr Allen turns up to ask for advice (for which see episode 1 of The Flash.)

Doctor Who - 'Before the Flood'

“Who composed Beethoven's 5th?”

The Doctor's ghost appears in 2119, presaging his death in 1980, where he, O'Donnell and Bennett are checking out a Cold War replica of a Russian town. While Clara, Cass and Lunn struggle to survive, the Doctor has to face the fact that he can't save himself, and maybe won't be able to save anyone.

The Good

• The whole thing of the Doctor and Clara putting people's lives at risk is much easier to stomach when a) someone calls them on it and b) they don't deny it.
• It was great to see Cass ably avoiding becoming a victim.
• The bootstrap paradox ending was good use of time travel.
• The Fisher King was pretty spooky, if a little stiff. I guess we can put that down to having been mostly dead all day.
• I really liked the guitar arrangement of the theme tune, which was somewhat reminiscent of the version for Big Finish's 'Horror of Glam Rock'.

The Bad

• The timey-wimey was a little strained here, and the Doctor's total dedication to saving Clara whatever happens had a whiff of bootstrapping the arc plot's central conflict. On the plus side, it's less offensive than last season's soldier bit.

The Ugly

• The Tivolians annoyed me in 'The God Complex' and are as annoying here. Still, I suppose that is the point.

Theorising

The Doctor is talking to us again. We've not seen this particular behaviour since 'Listen', which is an episode with a few unanswered questions yet.

A little spoiler, perhaps, as O'Donnell mentions an incident we haven't seen yet. Somewhere between Harold Saxon and the Moon exploding lies the Minister of War. Is that a throwaway line or something definite for this year?

The 'Next Time' preview featured a race of the deadliest warriors in the Universe, which is presumably a title hotly contested with the Daleks, Cybermen and Sontarans. This is perhaps another emergent theme for the series, and makes me wonder if the Fisher King didn't see himself the same way.

"Aren't you tall."

Top Quotes

• "You robbed those people of their deaths. Made them nothing more than a message in a bottle. You violated something more important than time. You bent the rules of life and death. So I’m putting things straight. Here. Now. This is where your story ends."
• "I used to be in Military Intelligence. I was demoted for dangling a colleague out of a window." Damnit, I liked O'Donnell, but I suppose that was the point. They killed the corporate dickhead last week; it had to be someone we liked or we wouldn't have cared.

The Verdict

Did I mention before that I like the two part structure? I'm not sure this was quite as good as its set-up, but it had a lot going for it, and seemed to be building towards the arc themes of the season as well. That's something else I'm liking - arc themes rather than arc plots, per se.

Score - 7/10

Doctor Who - 'Under the Lake'

Alien top hats. Weird.

“So we are fighting an unknown homicidal force that has take the form of your commanding officer and a cowardly alien, underwater, in a nuclear reactor. Anything else I should know? Somebody have a peanut allergy or something?”

Travelling in search of adventure, the Doctor and Clara stumble into a haunted underwater mining platform. At first quite calm, the ghosts show them a mystery spaceship and then quickly turn murderous. The Doctor and Clara will have to work with the surviving crew of the base to work out what the ghosts want before they kill them all.

The Good

• A classic Who set-up, with a decent cast of supporting characters including a deaf-mute CO and a corporate idiot, makes for a promising start.
• Despite a shortage of really quotable quotes, the dialogue was zippy and the interaction with Clara remains good.
• The empathy flash cards were, in quick succession, funny, silly, and an effective reminder of the Doctor's ongoing alienness. Interestingly, I've also seen the humanity of this least human of Doctors praised, and that's quite an achievement. Conversely, the scene where the Doctor cautions Clara not to 'go native' in the TARDIS was a nice reminder that she is not exactly a paragon of humanity at this point.
• Away from empathy, Peter Capaldi does some excellent 'don't stop to think about it' exposition.
• The twist that it isn't daytime, but the station's daytime mode that disabled the ghosts was a lot of fun.
• Points for not feeling the need to spell out why Lunn wasn't killed.
• Points also for the Doctor not leaving the entire crew to die for being icky soldiers, and indeed for the fact that - against my worse expectations - he never neglected anyone else to save Clara and got them killed because of it.
• The cliffhanger was pretty badass.

The Bad

• Not only does Thoros of Tivoli look weirdly Victorian undertaker for an alien, he is crepily reminiscent of those faceless top-hat dudes in 'The Name of the Doctor'.

The Ugly

• Doctor Who's glass ceiling of death remains firmly in place, with another black man rising to a command position only to die first. On the plus side, the remaining crew are not all white.

Theorising

So, the two-parters provide ample theory-bait, at least in the short term, but there's not a lot of arc material appearing here, and I think that could be deliberate. On the surface, it looks as if this series is swinging towards self-contained two-parters instead of one-offs and arcs. I quite like the thought.

Within this two-parter the big question is: "What happened in the past and how terminal was it, long-term?" I presume that this is the reason for being so clear that, no, these are ghosts, somehow, not copies or echoes, but real live ghosts, as it were. Now, of course there's a trick, because there are loads more episodes to go, but I'm actually pretty excited to find out what it is. There is also the question of who might survive; always a tough one. I suspect that at the very least Lunn will sacrifice himself by looking at the words.

Top Quotes
You're probably expecting the 'kiss it to death' line in here, but I found it somewhat overdone myself.

• "Thank you, but I actually don't need your help. I can speak sign. Go ahead. (pause) No, no, actually, I...I can't. It's been deleted...for semaphore. Someone get me a selection of flags."
• "You – whenever I step outside, you’re the smartest person in the room."
• "Two weeks of Mysterious Girl by Peter Andre, I was begging for the brush of Death’s merciful hand." 

And the Doctor's empathetic flashcards:

• “I completely understand why it was difficult not to get captured.”
• “It was my fault, I should have known you didn’t live in Aberdeen.” 
• “I didn’t mean to imply that I don’t care.”
• “No-one is going to be eaten/vapourised/exterminated/upgraded/possessed/mortally wounded/turned to jelly. We’ll all get out of this unharmed.”
• “I’m very sorry for your loss. I’ll do all I can to solve the death of your friend/family member/pet.”

The Verdict

Another strong entry in a series that seems determined to shake off bad baggage. I think that, while they did make the Daleks look a little incompetent, the first two episodes scored a hit by having two classic enemies - three if you count Davros as separate from the Daleks - without it being a huge song and dance. Not the end of the universe; just another slightly apocalyptic dust up. The trick in 'Under the Lake' is going novel. Yes, it has a lot in common with any number of base in peril stories, and in particular 'The Impossible Planet', but the ghosts are different enough and the sense of dread subtle enough to work. The fact that the whole thing could so easily have been a single parter, but still fed organically into a cliffhanger was especially impressive.

Score - 7/10

Dark Matter - Episodes 12 and 13

Wil Wheaton's most famous advice as a human is 'don't be a dick'. Ironically,
being a dick is exactly what he excels at as an actor.

The crew of the Raza, their supply of friends in sharp decline, accept a rescue mission from their dodgy fixer which turns out to be a trap; plus ca change I hear you say. In this case, the lab to which they have been sent is the place where Two/Portia was created by a team of scientists led by smug snake Wil Wheaton. She escaped and her creators now want to cut her up and find out what they did right when they made her. The crew plan a rescue, but first they have to disable the field which prevents Two being her usual kickass self.

This is what we call a Mexican standoff.

At the end of Episode 12, the Android is again disabled (seriously, you'd expect her to wear some sort of armoured vest by now since every time she gets popped, stabbed or cattle-prodded in the chest) and in the season finale the crew realise that it must have been one of them who did it. Cue a serious Mexican standoff as people decide whom they do and don't trust. Four is a cold-blooded killer, Two is an artificial person, One is an impostor, Three is a mercenary's mercenary and it turns out that Five probably wiped the crew's minds after she heard Two and Three talk about killing someone.

So, naturally, we end season 1 with all of the crew taken into custody by the space police except the traitor, Six. Dun-dun-Da! On the one hand, it's the only twist that is an actual twist; on the other, it makes very little sense. Six has not only been consistently the most decent and team-oriented of the group, he's also as far as we know the most wanted.

That slightly weak ending aside, the season has been pretty good, and I am interested to see how - if at all - they explain the heel turn in season 2.

Penny Dreadful - 'Little Scorpion'

After last week's 'experiment', Sembene explains the transformation to Ethan through some fairly bullshit pseudo-tribal ecology ("the leopard consumes the monkey and becomes both leopard and monkey...") Sir Malcolm is increasingly lah-dee-dah about anything that isn't Evelyn Poole, even dismissing Vanessa's collapse at the party to hysteria and shaving off his beard and power moustache.

"Sheep's blood - because I'm worth it."

With London looking increasingly dicey, Vanessa and Ethan head off to the moors, for study, contemplation, sexual tension and angst. She ventures into the Book of Vile Darkness and he murders sheep and trees while they both dress like something out of a knitwear catalogue. They trade shooting lessons for dance classes and almost get it on during a thunderstorm before Vanessa decides that they're both too dangerous. This pastoral idyll is disturbed by a run in with the dickhead landowner who burned her friend, provoking Vanessa to magically murder him with his own dogs to avenge the Cut-Wife, slightly before Ethan can shoot him, partly in a failed attempt to stop Vanessa becoming a killer and partly because he was a complete dick. Seriously, like... beyond dickish.

This was adorable, and thus doomed.

Speaking of beyond dick, Dorian Gray is apparently over Angelique and homing in on the amnesiac innocence of Lily. Because London is fucking tiny, he takes her to the waxworks where John Claire works, so we presume violence may ensue. It does, but not entirely in the expected fashion. On the way home, Lily stops into a pub to pick up a random bloke for sex and murder, the gruesome waxworks apparently awakening her inner creature.

Back in the plot, Lyle and Frankenstein discuss the whole great beast, Devil, Ogdoad thing they've got going on. Honestly, the Egyptian thing is pretty stretched at this point; we're in full-on Abrahamic dualism mode and everything else is window dressing.