Doctor Who - 'Face the Raven'

Poster (c) Stuart Manning

“You think a Cyberman fears a merciful death? Peace on this street depends on one thing. To break it, in any way, is to face the raven.”

This review will contain some spoilers. There is just no way around it.

The Doctor and Clara are called back to Earth when their friend Rigsy acquires a tattoo that seems to be counting down. To save his life, they need to pierce through veil after veil of secrecy, infiltrate a street that doesn't exist, solve a murder that never happened and defy a death that can not be cheated.

And perhaps this time there will be no running, no last minute saves. Perhaps this time the Raven will have its due.

The Good

• I love the idea of Trap Streets; always have done, from Harry Potter to Neverwhere. This one was sort of like an alien version of London Below.
• It was a good twist that the trap was specifically intended not to harm anyone, and that the harm came instead from their attempts to defeat the perceived harm. That, more than Clara's recklessness, was the cause of the ultimate tragedy.
• Speaking of, props for accurate use of classical tragedy: Hubris, check; nemesis, check.
• There are good deaths and there are bad deaths. This episode was a good episode to die.
• Rigsy's memorial was a gorgeous touch.

The Bad

• The integration of Ashildr/Me is... less than stellar, utterly reversing much of her development from 'The Woman Who Lived'. The only real purpose to the Mayor being Me instead of someone largely unrelated is that Clara believes she can trust her.
• Why are there Judoon policing the Street? Earth is outside their jurisdiction, and besides; what do they do if law rests on Me and the Quantum Shade?
• How do you create a trap which is predicated on the need to use the TARDIS key to open a lock? Where do you copy the key from? And what if it's changed shape since you made your trap?
• The trap feels unnecessarily complex, as they always do. The Doctor is actually spectacularly easy to catch; just difficult as all get out to hold. This feels like an awful lot of work for the simple part of the scheme.

The Ugly

• The dragged out, repeated shots of the raven dissolving into Clara was just a bit too much, transforming pathos into bathos.

Straight-up gorgeous.

Theorising

Well, they have really gone to town in convincing us that Clara is actually, proper dead. I would not be surprised at this point if she wasn't, but I would be disappointed.

So, who has captured the Doctor? Honestly, I gots nothing. Old or new, classic or recurrent Moffat? Could be anyone, especially given the array of old monsters on display in the Street. Actually, part of me suspects from the teleport bracelet and the set that this is the encounter described by Missy in 'The Witch's Familiar', but that it won't play out quite as she told it.

It feels a little too soon for speculation about the new companion, but this would seem to rule out Me (who was already an outside bet due to filming commitments for Game of Thrones and the whole 'Data aging' problem.)

Top Quotes

• "If you want your extremities to stay attached stand absolutely still. If not, we can provide a small bag, you can take them home at the end."
• "Infinite lifespan, finite memory. It makes for an awkward social life."
• "I give myself a title for the same reason you do, Doctor. Something to live up to."
• "The Doctor is no longer here. You are stuck with me. And I will end you and everything you love."
• "You will not insult my memory, there will be no revenge. I will die, and no one else here or anywhere will suffer."
  "What about me?"
• “You’ll find that it’s a very small universe when I’m angry with you.”

The Verdict

'Face the Raven' is a very good stand-alone adventure, and a decent arc tie-in as well, especially for an episode that was apparently reworked to include those arc elements. The Quantum Shade is a bit of a gimmick to provide an inescapable death, but I can work with that. It's not like Who is a show that normally works without reliance on gimmickry.

As Companion departures go, it makes me far less angry than Donna and was less horrendously overblown than Rose. Perhaps this will be the Adric of our times.

Score - 8/10

The Librarians... - '...and what Lies Beneath the Stones'

In my head, Jake's Grandpappy is Sam Elliot.

The Junior Librarians are summoned to a construction site where a trickster spirit has been released and is intent on causing chaos. Unfortunately it feeds on lies, and lies abound, especially in the shady dealings of construction manager Isaac Stone and his relationship with his estranged son Jake (yep, our Jake.)

While Jake plays deliberate third fiddle to Cassandra and Ezekiel (introducing the latter under one of the pseudonyms he himself uses for publishing articles on native American anthropology,) the trickster thrives on the conflict between Isaac and protestors who believe he is violating a sacred site. Ultimately, Jake recognises the nature of the shapeshifter and the Librarians attack it with truths, most tellingly Jake's confession (to the shapeshifter itself) of the fears that led him to hide his genius from his father, who now blames Jake's bookkeeping for the family firm's decline. Armed with truth, he forces the trickster back into its prison and the three Librarians seal it in with truths that affirm their bond as a team.

In the end, Jake never makes his peace with his father, even recognising the shapeshifter because his father would never say that he loved him, but it doesn't matter. As he says: "The truth is, I don't need your approval anymore."

And of course I love that the title of the episode is a pun.

MVL of the Week

This is the first strong team episode of the season, but with all his daddy issues, Jake is far and away the MVL. Aside form the character development, it is his area of expertise that makes all the difference here.

Honourable mention to Cassandra, however, both for her outpouring of truths to keep the door open, and for her adorkable TV habits:

"You know that thing where you're watching TV and you subconsciously compute the size of the set based on the height of the actor and the number of steps it takes them to walk the width of them? Like how Nathan Fillion is six foot two and it takes him 43 steps to walk across Serenity so you know the spaceship is 204 feet across?"

"No. No-one knows that thing."

Also, a shout out to Ezekiel's truth, that he once stole things on Her Majesty's Secret Service.

Arrow - 'The Offer', 'Suicidal Tendencies', 'Public Enemy', 'Broken Arrow', 'The Fallen' and 'Al Sa'him'

Bit of a change of pace, I know.

Okay, so... It's been a while, and we've watched a lot of Arrow, so I'm just going to kinda flit through an eventful run of episodes because I can't entirely remember how it all lines up.

Oliver rejects Ra's al Ghul's invitation to become his heir, but it turns out that asking was a kind of courtesy and Ra's sets about destroying the Arrow. Assassins in Arrow costumes start dropping perps across Starling City, which together with the increasing obviousness of Felicity's ongoing feelings for Oliver precipitates a showdown between Oliver and Ray in which ATOM gets its ass kicked. On the upside, Ray is convinced that the Arrow is okay when he isn't murdered, and later teams up with Oliver for some hero lessons and in order to save Felicity during the takedown of Deathbolt (the guy I didn't recognise from the 'Rogue Air' episode of The Flash), a metahuman who isn't linked to Central City and the particle accelerator accident.

Felicity ultimately, with a push from Ray, chooses Oliver, because if polyamory were an option the season would run about 30% shorter.

"The telephone is so impersonal. I prefer the hands on touch you only get with
hired goons."

Oliver is unmasked as the Arrow thanks to a tip from Ra's al Ghul to Captain Lance. Lance is in a receptive mood having learned that basically everyone has been lying to him and concealing the fact of Sara's death, but I am still struck by the willingness of Arrow characters to accept the damning factoids handed out by their kidnappers.

Oliver hands himself in, but then Roy appears in the green costume and takes the rap in order to atone for his cop killing. Before anyone can do anything, he's shivved in jail, but it turns out that he set this up with Felicity and Diggle, and he was 'killed' by a mate of Diggles in order to vanish him from prison while 'killing' the Arrow. Lance still raids the basement of Verdant, however, and seizes all Team Arrow's stuff.

In flashback, Oliver tries to save Maseo, Tatsu and Akio from General Beastmaster's plan to, well, murder Hong Kong using the Alpha-Omega virus, but they can not prevent the release and Akio's vaccination doesn't take. Trauma ensues.

'Suicidal Tendencies' sees the return of the Suicide Squad, or at least Floyd Lawton and new assignee Cupid. Floyd gets his own flashbacks to the PTSD which alienated him from his own family, and ultimately makes the supreme sacrifice by redirecting Cupid's obsession onto himself, and then gives his life - apparently - to get Lyla and John back to their daughter. Oh! They also get married, with Oliver as best man and Ray as emergency officiant, and when ARGUS cover up that the senator they went in to rescue arranged his own abduction and a near massacre, Lyla quits.

I am really unconvinced by the practicality of the tassels on this new uniform.

Ra's plays his trump card by straight up murdering Thea Queen, but offering to bring her back via the Lazarus Pit if Oliver accepts his offer, which he does. Felicity gets all well-meaning femme fatale, drugging Oliver with a post-coital drink and trying to exfiltrate from Nanda Parbat while he's out, but he comes to and insists that they go free while he returns. He is then subjected to mind-altering training (see his apparent murder of Diggle left.)

Nyssa is pissed at Laurel, whom she is training, for not telling her that Oliver accepted the offer, pointing out that seriously, this is the same shit you pulled on your Dad and look how well that worked. She explains that as rival claimant to the title, he will bring as many assassins to Starling as it takes to bring her down. This Oliver does, kidnapping Lyla to get Team Arrow to step off and so triggering Team Arrow to realise that they have truly lost Oliver, and that their future plans can not include him.

Fortunately for Nyssa, Ra's may not be dad of the year, but he wusses out of having Oliver - that is to say, al Sa'him (the Arrow), as 'Oliver Queen lives only in the past' - kill her. Instead, he decides that his daughter and his heir will be getting hitched, before al Sa'him breaks utterly from his past by wiping out Starling City with the Alpha-Omega bioweapon.

Oh, and there are a couple of mentions of the current Ra's al Ghul's rival, Damien Dark (Daark? Daahk?) who ran off with some Lazarus water and formed his own organisation, a Hive of scum and villainy (the same term, Hive, being used for and by Floyd Lawton's original employers.)

Thunderbirds are Go - 'Falling Skies', 'Relic'; and 'Breakdown'

Spidertank, Spidertank...

The Hood tries to destroy an orbital hotel built using Brains' new nanoconstruction methods. The boys go on a personal mission to extract their father's bestie from a defunct moonbase. And Virgil swings into action to rescue a driven researcher from a collapsing glacial cave.

Thunderbirds are Go continues to build on its world after the mid-season break, introducing the concepts of an ongoing search for new - or rather ancient - biopharma resources in a dwindling environment, and a labour market sufficiently slack that self-building space hotels aren't being occupied by angry shop stewards. There's not much more character work - the other brothers tease Gordon mercilessly about Lady P; Kayo's relation to the Hood is still a secret; we've yet to see the alleged Thunderbird Shadow in use - and no-one gets to flirt with Theresa Gallagher in these three episodes. I'm disappointed by the lack of Eos; it felt like she could have been a much-wanted extra female voice, if only technically. Still, Thunderbirds are Go continues to be a decent little action series.

Pledge Break - Episode 1

It's a historical episode, and that means dress-up!

As I mentioned earlier today, my buddy James 'Gonzo History' Holloway is doing a podcast about Doctor Who with his childhood Who-pal Jesse Merlin. Once I'd got over my hump about the fact that he didn't ask me*, I figured I ought to review the podcast.

Holloway and Martin, who sound a little like a music hall review act, are intelligent and engaging presenters. Pledge Break - the title refers to the public broadcasting funding drives that were a defining feature of my own early Doctor Who viewing** - transcends simple episode recaps or wiki research with the depth of the presenters knowledge and experience.

Martin, self-described actor and bass-baritone - knows the production history and notable production staff, and understands the filming methods. Holloway has a deep grasp of the historical period (the earliest Gonzo History productions were a series of zines about the Crusades and the comically despicable thugs wot fought them) and their discussions combine these two areas of expertise well. The easy camaraderie and engaging, informal style make for easy listening. Definitely one to watch***.

* I'm good. I'm cool. I'm totally angling for a guest appearance; maybe Pyramids of Mars?
** I first watched Doctor Who on public broadcasting on the opposite coast to Martin and Holloway, which is why my Doctor is Tom and not Peter.
*** Well... listen to.

The Flash - 'Enter Zoom'

So, it turns out that how you get away with a costume like Zoom's is to be a
monstrous colossus who is way too scary to make fun of.

Barry is cooking up a plan to lure Zoom into a trap. By having Dr Light pretend to have beaten him, Team Flash will draw Zoom out and dart him with speed inhibitors like those the Arrow used on Reverse Flash last season. Unfortunately, Light escapes* and so a plan is hatched for Linda Park to impersonate her double and pretend to defeat Flash.

In the first instance, the plan goes awry and Zoom doesn't show up, but then he does appear and kidnaps Linda. Barry is able to save her from a fall, but then the fight against Zoom... does not quite go to plan. Barry throws a lightning bolt, which Zoom catches and returns, before beating the absolute shit out of Barry then racing around Central to display the Flash's broken form. Seriously; Arrow may spend most of its time wanting to be Batman, but Zoom kinda wants to be Bane. In evidence I enter that Barry's back appears to have been broken in his fight.

One thing that becomes clear here is that Zoom is a fucking monster. He is huge and brutal in a way Reverse Flash never was, as well as capable of catching every bullet fired by a dozen cops emptying their sidearms one-handed.

Also, on current evidence not reading Patty in is going to prove a big mistake, because she's way too smart to stay in the dark for long and if she works it out herself, she's just going to be pissed off.

* If only someone had foreseen that Light could become invisible. Oh, wait, Patty did and Joe blew her off.

Pledge Break

My homie James Holloway (of Gonzo History fame) has produced a new podcast in which he looks at classic Doctor Who episodes from his perspective as a historian and historical storyteller and from that of his buddy Jesse Merlin as an actor.

It's called Pledge Break and episode one looks at partial William Hartnell story The Crusade. You can click on the pic to go to the episode, or visit the podcast blog at https://pledgebreakpodcast.wordpress.com/

Where those hands go next could have dire implications for the future of
Doctor Who as family broadcasting.

I have not had a chance to listen myself, but James is always good value on historical topics and I've never known him to half-arse anything, so I feel confident in recommending the show. I will also add a short review once I have listened.

Doctor Who - 'Sleep No More'

These retro posters are created by designer Stuart
Manning. I figured he definitely deserved a name drop.

“Nononono. You don't name things. I'm the Doctor; I do the naming.”

On a research station near Triton, a rescue team of Indo-Japanese marines are dispatched to investigate the sudden silence of the Le Verrier research station, home of the revolutionary Morpheus system. Their story, recorded and collated by Professor Rasmussen, unfolds as they explore the station and encounter strange monsters, and two intruders named Clara and the Doctor.

The Good

• 'Sleep No More' is a massively conceptual episode, but unlike the deeply ho-hum likes of real-time episode '42', it works its concept, found footage in this case, superbly. In particular, it plays with the format by introducing the editor of the footage as a character, and then uses an initially intrusive voice over as a mechanism to subvert expectations.
• The story is genuinely creepy, and plays with mundane things in fashion of the best horror.
• The final reveal is both a good horror twist and good Who.
• There are some excellent performances, especially from Reece Shearsmith, who could have turned the whole thing into a campy mess by playing Rasmussen just a very little bit more OTT. 
• I'm not sure why an Indo-Japanese military commander would be quite so Newcastle, but maybe the Great Catastrophe was bigger than explained, and it actually made for an interesting dichotomy between the military affects and clearly informal air.
• 474 was a tragic lunk in the great Whovian tradition of Toberman from 'Tomb of the Cybermen'. She was also, as a note, the first Doctor Who character to be played by a transgender actor.
• The world-building by hints - Indo-Japan, the ritualised comms prayers, the total work ethic - was more evocative than a lot of direct exposition.
• The reveal of the 'cameras' was superbly done.

The Bad

• Perhaps out of consideration for the sensibilities of younger viewers, I felt that there wasn't quite enough terror in the episode. That is, the characters never seemed scared enough for the situation. Perhaps this is just because found footage has a tendency to push trauma to 11.

The Ugly

• No glaring ugly.

Theorising

Will the Sandmen reappear? Given the apocalyptic ending, it would seem likely, but with the gimmick blown could they ever be as good?

Top Quotes

• The Doctor: [People] never put the word “space” in front of something just because everything’s all sort of hi-tech and future-y. It’s never space restaurant or space champagne or space, you know, hats. It’s just restaurants, champagne or hats, even if this was a restaurant.
  Clara: What about space suit?
  The Doctor: Pedant.
• Nagata: Could be anything. Meteorite strike. Space pirates.
  Clara: Ah! See. Not just pirates. Space pirates.
• "After the Great Catastrophe there was a tectonic realignment. India and Japan, they, ah, sort of merged."
• The Doctor: Sleep is vital. Sleep is wonderful. Even I sleep.Clara: When?The Doctor: Well when you’re not looking.

The Verdict

A solid one-off episode with a good Whovian concept and a strong use of the found footage technique. While eventually justified, Rasmussen's voice over is initially quite irritating and distancing, but it all comes together fro the climactic scene.

Score - 7/10

Supergirl - 'Stronger Together' and 'Fight or Flight'

CSI Starling Central National City. Seriously, is Metropolis the only city in
the DCU without 'City' in its name, and that on a technicality.

After a pretty storming pilot, Supergirl settles into her main 'with an intro spiel' run with 'Stronger Together', an episode which both continues the series set-up and affirms the writers' feelings about secret identities, as seen in the currently-unconnected Arrow and The Flash.

Already struggling with the demands of superheroism in a world that expects her to instantly be as assured as Superman, Kara also faces off against a Hellgrammite, a super-strong alien insect shapeshifter that eats DDT. Her desire to be a hero clashes with DEO protocols, with Alex and especially Henshaw wary of letting an untrained superhuman asset loose on the world. Their reluctance is somewhat justified, as in the episode finale Alex ends up killing the Hellgrammite, while Henshaw steps in with a Kryptonite blade to stab Aunty Astra when she kicks Kara's ass.

The series has boldly averted the problem of Supergirl being too powerful by
having her really kinda suck.

The title comes from her explanation of the crest of El and its motto - 'Stronger Together'; and not hope after all. It represents her fusion of the influences of James and Winn - Team Supergirl, if you will - and Alex and Henshaw at the DEO, and the fact that she is relatively open about her identity with her friends, as opposed to the brooding, destructive secret-keeping of especially Arrow. It is also reflected in that finale, in which she and the DEO stand against someone who would have wiped the floor with them on their own.

The episode bridges into 'Fight or Flight' with Kara agreeing to an interview with Cat in order to protect James Olsen's job. She chokes hard, accidentally reveals her relationship with Superman and bugs out, leaving Cat to pen an expose that is more J Jonah Jameson on Spiderman than Lois Lane on Superman.

The revelation also attracts one of Superman's enemies, Reactron, who decides to seek vengeance for the Man of Steel's perceived crimes against him by murdering Kara. To do so, he has to kidnap billionaire industrialist hunk Maxwell Lord to fix his suit. He almost succeeds, but Superman intervenes thanks to a call on Olsen's wristwatch communicator (he really is Superman's pal.) Determined to stand on her own, Kara goes after Reactron again, coating her hand in molten lead to rip out his power core, which is pretty damn dumb.

In the b-plot, Kara decides to ask James out - prompted by Alex - but finds him chatting to Lucy Lane. I swear, the acceptance of polyamory would let Arrow, The Flash and Supergirl run new episodes back to back in 90 minutes. With adverts.

Oh, and Henshaw's eyes glow red. Not sure what that's about. He may be an alien, but he also might be a robot.

The Librarians... 'and the Broken Staff'

"He's afraid of fire, right?"
"In the movie!"
"It's not the same as the book?"

With his book recovered and his sprite in his control, Prospero seeks only to replace his broken staff in order to regain the might he enjoyed in fiction before his author had him repent of his power. While Flynn and Eve race to recover the pieces of the staff from the house of John Dee, the younger Librarians hit the stacks, but when Prospero tries to claim a new staff from the Tree of Knowledge at the heart of the Library itself, the battle moves to home ground and a shocking secret is revealed.

Essentially the second half of the opening two-parter, '...and the Broken Staff' continues the set up of our new seasonal antagonist and his cohort of fictional badasses (or, as Moriarty dubs them, Team Fiction.) Moriarty is very much the life and soul of this partnership, for while Richard Cox's Prospero is gravelly and seething, David S Lee's Moriarty is a perfect counterpoint, joyous in his affable villainy while clearly marking up each snippy summons from his master in the vengeance column of his ledger. The other two fictionals to appear this episode are the Queen of Hearts from Alice in Wonderland (as distinct from the Red Queen; doing well, The Librarians,) a cackling, psychotic caricature, and Frankenstein's creature, who is erudite, not remotely afraid of fire, and is dissuaded from a life of mayhem when Ezekiel suggests a good plastic surgeon could let people see the man behind the scarred exterior.

Noah Wylie is still very centre stage in this one, leaving the other three Librarians to do their things around the periphery, but at the end he decides to head off to look for artefacts that are missing from the library, while Team Library focuses on new clippings and the missing pieces of the Library itself, apparently yet to realign with the main structure's dimensional ontology.

MVL of the Week

In a new feature, I will be putting forward my vote for most valuable Librarian each week (not including Flynn.) This refers only to the three Librarians proper, since Eve beats them all most weeks and if she doesn't, Jenkins does.

In '...and the Drowned Book', the award goes to Cassandra, who effortlessly extracts the pearl earrings that Ezekiel has been trying to charm from an Italian heiress all night simply by getting her to listen to the cries of Ariel in the storm through headphones.

In '...and the Broken Staff' Ezekiel pulls it back with his knowledge of the Library's security measures.

"Does no-one else read the security manuals?"

Honourable mention to Jake for knowing the difference between the Red Queen and the Queen of Hearts.

The Flash - 'The Darkness and the Light'

"There. Sure glad I don't look stupid in this."

And lo, it came to pass that another metahuman villain got chucked at the Flash through the Breach. This time, it's Doctor Light, the Earth-2 Linda Park and a cross between the villainous and heroic Doctors Light in the comics.

Jay Garrick insists that Light isn't a killer and can be reasoned with, while Earth-2 Harrison Wells - dubbed 'Harry' by the team - is just as insistent that anyone sent by Zoom needs to be taken out hard. Much is made of the conflict between Harry and Jay in this episode, with Harry apparently overcompensating for not facing up to his responsibility for the existence of metas in Earth-2 and angry as hell at Jay for not taking out Zoom (who, it is small surprise to see in the stinger, has kidnapped Harry's daughter.) Harry wants Barry to take out Zoom; Jay thinks that he isn't ready.

Barry tries to talk to Light, especially when he realises she is his ex-girlfriend's double, but letting that slip prompts her to go after Linda Park, intending to replace her in order to hide from Zoom (who will clearly not realise the switch has been made if Light burns Park to a crisp in front of her friends and co-workers. Light ends up in the Pipeline, because we're still using the illegal black site, but not before she kills someone, to Barry and Jay's horror.

Yeah... I got nothin'. I wish I hadn't used the MST3K joke on
Light's helmet now.

Barry goes on a literal blind date with Patty, having been dazzled by Light's powers, but it's nice to see that a) he turns up instead of crying off and b) she works it out. While the devaluing of secret identities is a bit of a running gag in the Arrowverse, I hope that Patty isn't kept in the dark for too long, because I don't want to go through another 'you kept secrets from me' episode. We get enough of that in Arrow.

Harry also outs Cisco as a metahuman using his meta-detecting watch, leading Barry and Caitlin to dub him 'Vibe'. Despite the Killer Frost rumours, Caitlin is not yet registering as meta. Getting to use his powers for good (to track Light) gives Cisco the confidence boost to chat up the new barista at CC Jitters without sounding like a creepy stalker, and he actually gets the phone number for Kendra Saunders... the future Hawkgirl.

Doctor Who - 'The Zygon Inversion'

“Why does peacekeeping always involve killing?”

Kate Stewart is dead. Clara is dead. The Doctor is about to be blown out of the sky.

As the radical faction of Zygons moves to destroy the cease-fire and force their peaceful brethren into a genocidal war against humanity, Osgood and the Doctor struggle to find a way to stop them, while Commander Bonnie wrestles with Clara's mind link as she searches for the Osgood box.

Will there be truth, or consequences?

The Good

• The contingency plan set up by the Doctor didn't involve actual death gas.
• Kate Stewart is not a complete incompetent.
• I like Osgood still.

The Bad

• There's something about this episode that jars, and I think I know what it is. This whole 'good Zygons and bad Zygons' thing is admirable in the message front, but... The problem is that it's not really true of the old Zygons, the bulk of whom were something like aggressively expansionist warrior-colonists, and as soon as you start to assert that it might be, you have to start looking at every other alien hat in nuWho and wonder why the Daleks, the Cybermen and even the Mire can be considered as irredeemable warrior races, but not the Zygons? Given how many changes were made to the Zygons, they might as well have been a new race, so it feels odd to use them when what was wanted wasn't really Zygons.
• The built in zap guns. Zygons sting, they don't zap, and switching out to a lightning projector that turns people into sparky burned candyfloss deadens the more horrific aspects of the series, a move all the more unaccountable in such a bleakly political episode.

The Ugly

• Kate Stewart increasingly seems like the daughter that the Brigadier would have raised if he'd never met the Doctor. The older Brig mellowed and while still a soldier at heart and willing to kill if it were necessary, he had more of the Doctor's mettle in him. Kate's absolute killy-killy stance is a narrowness that her father grew out of long ago.
• "The important thing is that Osgood is alive." Bollocks! You don't get off the hook that easily and stop talking to the audience and telling us what a favour you're doing us.

Theorising

So, Clara is clearly on the out, since they won't shut up about the potential effects of her loss, but I'm feeling less enthused about the series, so my theorising is way down.

Top Quotes

• "You know, I'm over two thousand years old. I'm old enough to be your messiah."
• "There's nothing in them, just buttons."
• Osgood 1: I'll answer that question one day. And do you know when that day will be?
  Osgood 2: The day nobody cares about the answer.
  I'm kind of already there, if I'm honest.

The Verdict

Meh.

I mean... yeah, I struggle to come up with anything much more than this. The Zygon Inversion had some awesome ideas, but was hampered by attempting to do a non-Zygon story about Zygons, and frankly by tacking its forgiveness message to a child-kidnapping mass-murderer. The Osgood Box resolution was pretty neat, but then had to be linked to a device from The Day of the Doctor which made it clear that the Doctor has no respect for Kate Stewart's ability to learn and grow.

Score - 4/10

The Flash - 'The Fury of Firestorm'

Feeling so blue without you...

This week, the search is on for a new co-Firestorm, as Martin Stein's half of the matrix begins to run out of control.

Caitlin finds two people who were exposed to the matrix during the accelerator catastrophe, both of whom have promisingly alliterative names. Henry Hewitt is a high-flying scientist, whole Jefferson Jackson is a high school dropout and mechanic, which for Caitlin is a no-brainer, since she's looking to find someone to fill Ronnie's shoes. Barry is less sold on science is all, and insists they at least contact both candidates. Jackson is not keen, so Hewitt gets a tryout, but the fusion fizzles, leaving him enraged, bitter, and just a bit combustible.

That is not a good smile.

Elsewhere, Joe introduces Iris to her mother, but Iris shoots Francine down. Francine comes back with her trump card: She is dying. And at Mercury Labs, Harrison Wells is seen nicking stuff from their Applied Sciences* division. Joe asks Patty not to mention this to Barry.

When Jackson doesn't jump at the chance to be a superhero, Caitlin bites his head off. With Stein in critical condition, however, she realises that she was in the wrong and apologises, realising that Jackson didn't drop his college offer because he gave up, but because with a busted knee and no football scholarship, he couldn't afford to exploit his academic gifts. Hewitt comes after Jackson and Caitlin, but seeing how desperate Stein's condition is, Jackson relents and they two fuse naturally to become a new Firestorm, who works with Barry to wear down Hewitt. They don't even murder him, instead locking him in the pipeline until he agrees to keep mum. Honestly, he was a bit of a jerk, but this still seems a little harsh.

Stein and Jackson head off to train their combined powers, while Iris once more shoots her mother down. She has confirm Francine's illness, but also learned that has at least a half-brother, and knows that it would kill her father if he has a son he wasn't there for.

Until now!

In a subplot, Barry has been flirting awkwardly with Patty as she asks for his help with a possible 'man shark' case. Joe encourages him to go for it, so he pops over to see her. Sadly, the man shark angle hasn't been coming to anything.

MANSHARK! Hahahaha! Oh, it is glorious.

And then Wells zaps the Manshark with a ray gun and swans off like a magnificent bastard until Barry catches up to him. I seriously suspect that this might actually be Earth-2 Harrison Wells and not Zoom after all.

* Apparently DC corporate speak for 'superweapons for purely peaceful purposes.'

The Librarians... and the Drowned Book

"Well, there's something you don't see every day."

The Clipping Book summons Flynn and his fellow Librarians to a single event at the museum where he once worked. What connects a shipwreck, a Milanese chess set, a weather monitoring centre and a pair of pearl earrings*? What role is played by the smooth talking academic and the affable old caretaker**? And can the Librarians overcome their desire for independence and work together to overcome the threat***?

Our season 2 opener (SyFy UK once more poopoos the idea of running the two-parter back to back as the stateside broadcast does) is once more Flynn heavy, capitalising on Noah Wyle for as long as they can budget for him. The centrepiece is the flirting and bickering between him and Eve, the latter showing her chops as not only the muscle, but the glue that holds a team of intellectual egoists together. The other three Librarians are as charmingly dysfunctional as ever, with Cassandra still conjuring complex hallucinations to deduce that a scientist is going to accidentally turn herself into a goat, Jake the secret sophisticate, and Ezekiel creating apps for his phone to access his Clipping Book and the Library's magic door.

Amongst our weaponry are such diverse elements as pistols, science guns,
magic and snarky looks.

For most of the episode, the four Librarians solo it and are so distracted by squabbling that they completely fail to stop the rogue fictionals achieving their goals, before working together to stop a monster storm (or, if you will, tempest) using magic doors and a second sun. Hopefully we'll manage a balance between last season's no Library and regular Dei ex Libris conclusions, but this one was rather fun.

The Librarians are back. I am so happy.

* Shakespeare.
** They're fictional characters, brought to life and bent on world-domination.
*** Sort of.

Supergirl - 'Pilot'

I like to open reviews of a new show with an ensemble cast shot, but
apparently the non-Supergirl cast of this show can fuck off, so here at least is a
picture with Melissa Benoist (Kara), Chyler Lee (Alex Danvers) and David
Harewood (Henk Henshaw).

Sent from the dying planet Krypton to protect her infant cousin Kal, teenaged Kara Zor-El does a minor Buck Rogers, getting knocked into the Phantom Zone for twenty-four years and landing to discover that Kal-El has already become Superman and acquired a near-permanent backlighting effect so that he could be any given Superman or none. It's not like it matters, we know who Superman is, the city-trashing, neck-snapping jerk.

Raised by the Danvers family (played in a masterpiece of stunt casting by former Superman Dean Cain and former Supergirl Helen Slater) grows up to be normal, essentially denying her powers, until a plane crash almost kills her sister Alex and she flies into action. Soon, she finds herself caught between her desire to do good and be a hero and Alex's employers at the Department of Extra-Normal Operations, who believe that all aliens are a threat, in part because a Kryptonian prison slipstreamed out of the Phantom Zone behind Kara's pod, packed to the gunwales with antagonists of the week.

Fair play, the hair and glasses transform is pretty good here. I
do wonder why she wears glasses as Kara though, since she
wasn't planning on being a superhero ever.

Aided by her friend Winslow (Jeremy Jordan) and hunky, confident, African-American photojournalist James Olsen (Mehcad Brooks), and harangued by her boss, media diva Cat Grant (Callista Flockhart, netting a totally unearned star billing,) Kara struggles to do good in a world that might not want her, against enemies who blame her mother for their incarceration.

Supergirl is a decent enough start to a series, and props for going straight in and beginning with 'Right; you know who Superman is, yeah?' Although without ever using the names Clark Kent or Superman. The show is linked to Man of Steel by factors such as terrestrial mistrust of Supes and reference to the 'S' as the crest of the House of El rather than 'S for Super', and the Arrowverse by writer Greg Berlanti. The level of sunshine suggests that National City is closer to Central City than Starling or Metropolis.

Oh, Silver Age.

<== Clearly separated at birth.

Benoist is the heart of the show, and brings the requisite combination of determination and fun to the role. We might be too jaded to believe a girl can fly these days, but if she did then Benoist sells that she'd really enjoy it. The support is generally good, albeit one note at this point. The pilot is very much Benoist's show, so Alex is worried big sister, Henshaw angry military man, Olsen hunk-casual and so on. I'm delighted by the non-issue of casting Jimmy Olsen as a handsome, self-assured black man, rather than a big nerd or colossal toolbag. And he's clearly still Superman's Pal (although honestly Superman is a bit of a jerk for sending some guy to watch his cousin without telling her.)

Currently, the villain of the week format looks dominant, but the personal subplots aren't too soapy, potential love triangle notwithstanding. The fact that the big bad is Kara's aunt is a bit convenient, but I suppose by the end there were probably only about a dozen people on Krypton and most of them were in the House of El. I'll definitely see ow it goes from here.

Doctor Who - 'The Zygon Invasion'

“This is your country. Protect it from the scary monsters. And also from the Zygons.”

Since the brokering of a peace treaty, twenty million Zygons have been resident on Earth, in permanent human form. Now, the death of one of the Osgoods has led to an irreparable breakdown in communication. The younger Zygons are growing restless and yearning to be the foetus-like pink mushroom lizards nature intended them to be, and if the humans are in their way, the humans will have to be removed.

The Good

• Osgood! I mean... I'm in two minds. Despite the apparent ongoing unity of the Osgoods, what we know is that this isn't the Osgood who was killed for cheap effect in War in Heaven, so it's not that that has been undone. That Osgood was cool, and then she died, and she's still dead and Donna is still a deadbeat. No, I'm not letting it go any time soon.
• Doctor Who still lacks emotional truth, but it does at least have rocket launchers now.

The Bad

• The Zygons are no longer reliant on a human body print, nor, it would seem, on the lactic fluid of the Skarasen. In short, they aren't really Zygons anymore.
• Oh, yay. Huge numbers of children kidnapped and apparently murdered. FAMILY VIEWING!
• So, the Zygons are Muslims, and immigrants, and leary British ex-pats, all rolled into one?
• Bonnie the Zygon?

The Ugly

• I feel annoyed that a hideous, genocidal weapon is Harry Sullivan's legacy in nuWho.

Theorising

So, Z-67 was mentioned a few too many times not to show up again, possibly in the form of an anti-human variant, because irony.
Sadly, I doubt we will be seeing an appearance by the Skarasen.
I am assuming that Clara isn't quite dead, simply because it would be so weird to murder her off screen.

Top Quotes

• "There will be truth, or there will be consequences." Say what you like, Kate Stewart; it's a decent catchphrase.
• "You start bombing them, you'll radicalise the lot. That's exactly what the splinter group wants." The typical subtlety of a Doctor Who moral.
• "I thought you didn't like being President of the World."
  "No, but I like poncing around in a big plane."
• "Yes. We know who you are." I'm not convinced the Doctor turning into Harriet Jones is a good thing.

The Verdict

This was a pretty meh episode, which really ought not to be the case in an episode which has children being kidnapped and the Doctor's companion apparently dedded by the dreaded Zygons within five minutes of the credits. A part of the problem lies in its attempt to up the stakes by changing how the Zygons work, such that... they're not really Zygons anymore. Another is the ham-fisted metaphor, and yet another the fact that UNIT are once more portrayed as complete incompetents, with no-one on task who falls between the extremes of trusting the obviously untrustworthy Zygon duplicate and being a cliche-spewing bomber of hospitals.

Score - 5/10

Arrow - 'The Climb', 'Left Behind', Midnight City', 'Uprising', 'Canaries', 'The Return' and 'Nanda Parbat'

I'm weirdly fixated on the Simon Cowellness of Ra's al Ghul's high-
waisted pants.

We really excelled ourselves this week in Arrow catchup, so I'm not even going to attempt my usual level of detail.

'The Climb' is the mid-season finale. Ra's al Ghul delivers an ultimatum - deliver Sara's killer in 48 hours or the League will start slaughtering innocents in Starling City. Unfortunately, this coincides with Oliver learning that the killer was his sister, acting under the influence of a drug administered by Malcolm Merlin, who really, really sucks as a father. The purpose of this was to push Oliver into confessing to the killing and challenging Ra's to trial by combat on a sacred mountain less than a day's travel from Starling City. The idea is that when he kills Ra's all blood debts are erased and Merlin (or is it Merlyn? I'm never quite sure) will be free and clear. Unfortunately, Oliver gets run through and kicked off a mountain.

"What do we call the show now?"

Fortunately, one of the League members is Oliver's ARGUS partner from Hong Kong, Masaeo, who calls his estranged wife Tatsu to 'bring him back to life'. This goes with the flashbacks, in which Oliver protects Masaeo and Tatsu and their son Akio while they pursue Chen Na Wen and a stolen supervirus that could be used to wipe out a city, but references to an event which led to the breakup of the couple suggests bad things may happen yet.

Brock attempts the patented Mirakuru throat-lift.

In 'Left Behind', we follow mostly Team Arrow, considering whether to go on without Oliver, which they eventually decide to do, and Malcolm Merlin's negativity be damned. This involves them deciding to stay the course against ruthless, bullet-proof and inexplicably London gangster Brick, played by Vinnie 'No Accents' Jones*, across three episodes ('Left Behind', 'Midnight City' and 'Uprising'.) Brick begins by stealing evidence files so that the criminals put away with the help of the Arrow over the last eight months have to be released, then takes over the Glades by kidnapping city Aldermen and threatening Councillors until the Mayor declares the district off-limits to police.

Set a mob to catch the Mob, I guess.

Elsewhere, Felicity learns that Ray is seeking to become, well, Iron Man, using miniaturised versions of QC Applied Sciences' military equipment built into a suit of high-tech armour called ATOM - Advanced Technology Operating Mechanism** - and that his motivation is the throat-lift murder of his fiance, Anna, during the Mirakuru siege. His inability to do much to protect either the city or Felicity from Brick kicks him into obsessive overdrive on this project, but despite Felicity's concern, it is his insistence that he is not doing this for revenge, but to protect those he cares about that prompts her to get the band back together after their collective long night of the soul and rally the largely honest and by now deeply, deeply pissed off citizens of the Glades (including Sin and Ted Grant) to take on Brick's gang in 'Uprising'.

'Uprising' also gives us some of Malcolm Merlin's backstory, and reveals that it was actually Brick who killed his wife and thus precipitated the Undertaking. In the end, it is Merlin who takes Brick down, but Oliver returns in time to demand he be handed over to the authorities.

This leads us into the shenanigans of 'The Return' and 'Nanda Parbat'. Thea refuses to go on the run with Malcolm, even after her cute DJ boyfriend tries to murder her for Ra's al Ghul***. Oliver comes clean about being the Arrow and she takes it really well; much better than learning that her dad hid this from her when he was telling her her friends and family were unreliable asshats. Reluctantly, and against the collective wisdom of Team Arrow, they agree to train with Merlin to learn to take down Ra's al Ghul, because after all this time they still buy the whole 'you must become him to beat him' schtick that they discredited at the end of last season. Speaking of Deathstroke, Merlin sends the Queens back to Lian Yu for some survival bonding, then breaks into the ARGUS black site and lets Slade Wilson out of his cage in an attempt to force one or both of them to embrace their killer instincts.

Another 100% successful rescue.

Thea is pretty steamed about this, and more so when she learns that the reason he wants to run and Oliver is willing to work with him is that she's on the hook for Sara's murder, having physically done the deed. Thus, while Laurel tries to take on Merlin solo (because where revenge is concerned, she is deeply stupid) Thea shops him to the League, because apparently they're in the bloody phone book****. This provokes Olly to try to rescue Merlin, partly because he knows it will eventually eat away at Thea that she sent her dad to die, be he ever such an arse, and partly because he's struggling with the knowledge of how utterly he got owned.

He and Diggle get captured, but in a jack move, Ra's al Ghul asks Oliver to take his place at the head of the League. Eventually they're just going to give up pretending they're not making a Batman series and start calling Olly the Dark Knight.

Nanda Parbat - Basically Petra with a dome on top.

My big problem with this whole arc is not that it's rehashing the discredited 'you can only defeat your opponent by fighting as he does' concept from last season, but that Oliver is putting up so little resistance to the idea. Yes, Olly has basically trained to bring a bow to a swordfight, but you know who that favours? The guy with the bow; especially if, as is the case with Oliver's magically expanding bow (seriously, it disappears into his hand when collapsed now,) it can block a sword and clock a dude in the face with no loss of effectiveness.

Anyway; we've got about seven or eight episodes left to go, and then we'll be watching Season 4, possibly even as it is aired.

* Interesting, if slightly disappointing, sidenote - Wikipedia includes Brick on a list of black supervillains.
** In another nod to other things in the comics, the QC name for it was OMAC.
*** I get that the League are big on cover, but how much call is there for slammin' DJs in Nanda Parbat? I mean, slightly more since Merlin shot this one, I guess...
**** In fairness, her mum could just have had a note in her contacts list.