A Midsummer Night's Dream

This is what scholars call a radical interpretation of the text.

This review contains spoilers for the play and for this production in general.

I'm sure that as soon as it was announced that Russell T. 'Doctor Who' Davies would direct a new version of A Midsummer Night's Dream, somewhere in the darkest recesses of Daily Mailtown some blind, mad ultraconservative seer began howling that it was the beginning of the end for Shakespeare and all Shakespeare would henceforth be gay (like that's never been done before.) When it was revealed that it would indeed feature a lesbian kiss, the same corners of the internet frothed predictably, and I just want to remind them that in Shakespeare's time the pay would have featured a lot of dudes kissing dudes. I'm just saying.

It's not a conventional setting.

Anyway...

Tradition is that Dream be set in a time and place redolent with romance. The golden age of Hollywood, 19th century Tuscany, fin de siecle Paris or even, should inspiration fail entirely, a blend of mythical Athens and late 16th Century England. Davies opts for that most romantic of milieus, a near-future fascist Athenian dictatorship, one masked Vigilante short of V for Vendetta, where moonlight flits are planned on touchscreens and Duke Theseus' intention to wed Hippolyta is an act of conquest against a woman kept under tighter security than Hannibal Lecter.

The Mechanicals: Fisayo Akinade, Javone Prince, Richard Wilson, Elaine
Paige and Bernard Cribbins. Not in this shot, Matt Lucas as Bottom.

John Hannah plays Theseus as a sneering villain, lording over his captive bride (Eleanor Matsuura,) yet in fear of her contained power, forcing her to read her romantic lines at gunpoint from an autocue. Egeus (Colin McFarlane) and Demetrius (Paapa Essiedu) are clearly both part of Theseus' establishment, while Lysander (Matthew Tennyson) is a bespectacled academic fleeing this harsh regime with Hermia. Hermia and Helena (Prisca Bakare and Kate Kennedy) are well cast, with a clear six inch height difference and Helena not portrayed as the minger.

Titania's fairies sport pretty butterfly wings, and they will fuck you up.

Beneath these worthies of course are the mechanicals, with their play. A wonderful mix of old luvvies and newer talent, headed by Matt Lucas' Bottom (as it were,) they bring the necessary quality of absolute sincerity to their roles. In the finale, Davies chooses to interpret Theseus' criticisms as barbed heckling, with the dark visual addition of the Duke crossing each player who answers his heckles off his ipad, contrasting their honest love for city and Duke with his utter disdain and disregard for their lives.

And then there are the fairies. Maxine Peake is a strident, muscular presence as the Amazonian Titania, while the often lissom Oberon is played by Nonso Anozi (something of a favourite in my house, thanks to his appearance in Cinderella.) The lesser faeries are a wild mob, and unlike many version, end the play by literally invading the palace of Theseus to overthrow the tyrant, not for a night of wildness, but for good. The design of Athens is nifty, but the design on the faeries is triumphant, blending elements of Middle Earth, Braveheart and Lost Boys.

Also awesome in Dracula, playing an atypical Renfield.

Shakespeare's text was a gentle rebellion - as a royally sponsored playwright he'd have been a fool to get too anarchic - but Davies is working in the twenty-first century, so he can go the whole hog, and the wild, vital fey bring Athens a release from the oppression of Theseus by delivering a wedding gift of a fatal coronary. This liberation is made literal in Hippolyta, whom Titania frees from her straight jacket (and the straight jacket of society,) to reveal her as Titania's faerie love; a reveal presaged by rearranging some of Oberon and Titania's lines.

Hiran Abeysekera as Puck is pretty good too.

So, yes; Davies does gay the thing up (also throwing in a little extra mix up with the flowers,) but it's no bad thing. It's there in the text that love is a mercurial thing after all, and that the only bad love is unrequited love (Lysander is a lover without paternal approval, which was a pretty solid no-no at the time of writing.)

Is it flawless? No. Honestly, Oberon shoots at least two more lightning bolts than are truly needed, and the music - heavily inspired by Carl Orff - is a tad overwrought at times. Despite this, it is a beautiful, marvellously energetic reinterpretation of a classic, with a deserved place in the canon of interpretations.

Dominion - 'A Bitter Truth'

"Yeah, man; I'm gonna borrow my dad's sun chariot and tear up this town!"

Okay, so it's been a while since I cracked out an episode of Dominion, so just a reminder of where we were: Claire is becoming a moderately inept tyrant with the assistance of Grumpy McTech Bear (real name Gates,) Whele is going mad and locked up on a bogus charge of sleeping with the enemy, Michael has found God, Gabriel is all pissed at the universe, and Alex, Noma and Reisen are negotiation with insaniac secret higher angel Julian.

In New Delphi, Reisen distracts Julian while the others snoop. They find an army of near-catatonic 8-balls in the basement, and when they get caught Julian uses the amphora to coax a weak lower angel into the recently-evicted Pete. He tries to do the same to the others, but Noma boots her would-be possessor and pops her wings, allowing them to overwhelm the guards. She identifies the amphora as an ancient, Angelic WMD and Julian as a dyad, a hybrid of human and angel (as opposed to a lower angel possessing a human, or a higher angel in its own physical form.)

Gabriel and Michael hook up on the ridge above New Delphi and get maudlin over the news that Uriel was killed in the bombing of the Eyrie. They argue their philosophical differences and who exactly God's last message was meant for, but agree that they want Alex out of New Delphi and figure on using Gabriel's remaining armies to get him.

"This could be the beginning of a beautiful friendship."

In Vega, Claire consults with Grumpy and they get sealed in when a Higher Angel attacks. They escape, but Claire uses the attack to persuade Grumpy to come out of hiding and be a more active supporter of her cause. Meanwhile rebel leader Zoe kidnaps Whele, planning to broadcast his murder as a rallying call, but he persuades her first that he can get her a broadcast centre, and then that his access codes will still get them into secure areas. All of this is really just an opportunity for him to talk and thus persuade Zoe to buy into his doublethink, and by the time he shoots the taunting halluicination of his son in the heart, she's pretty much ready to sign up to the rebranded Team Whele.

For all that I've neglected it, Dominion continues to be better than it has any right to be, mostly on the strength of its acting. Even Alex isn't completely annoying this season.

Penny Dreadful - 'A Blade of Grass'

"Miss Ives; how do you feel about bottle episodes?"

We're almost to the middle of the season, which means it's time for Vanessa Ives backstory theatre (traditionally a strong point of the show,) and this time we're also doing a bottle episode.

Vanessa plumbs her memories of the asylum where she was committed following her breakdown, to experience the gamut of Victorian mental health treatments - force feeding, hydrotherapy and so on - in the care of the rigorously scientific Dr Banning and a kindly orderly who will one day be transformed into the murderous juggernaut we currently know as John Clare.

The episode begins with John - for want of a better name; he isn't allowed to give one for reasons of protocol - trying to persuade Vanessa to eat, and we see the relationship between them begin to evolve as his kindness wears down her walls and he begins to fall in love with her. He tells her of his family and his son's sickness, which requires him to work in such a cruel place, and it is clear that he believes in the methods of the doctors even if he doesn't understand them. Still, he warns Vanessa that if she doesn't act as if she were 'normal', she will be subjected to trephination, a procedure even he recognises as crude.

"So, you feel you are under attack?"

Then, as she begins to tell John her story, things get weirder. Dr Seward tells her that she is not able to pull her out of the trance, and John is possessed by Vanessa's tormenting angel. Dubbing himself Lucifer he strikes at her with barbs and accusations and professions of love. Then another arrives, a presence which also manifests as John and clearly overwhelms and terrifies Lucifer; the presence of Dracula. This is a terrific moment, with Rory Kinnear compelling as the two vast presences, the lords of spirit and flesh, and Eva Green once more turning in a powerhouse performance, by turns repulsed, enthralled, cowed and finally, triumphantly defiant. Moreover, the fact that Lucifer cowers in the presence of his flesh-bound brother - Dracula claims that Lucifer has become nebulous, deprived of belief - sets aside any nagging worries that going from fighting the Devil to fighting Dracula would be a step down for our protagonists.

While Patti LuPone provides admirable support, this is Green and Kinnear's show, and provides considerable substance for Vanessa's next meeting with John Clare. As for the other characters... Well, who knows; there are no subplots at work here, just a tour de force two-and-a-bit character bottle drama which maintains the standard of past backstory episodes.

Damnit. I think I might actually like this season of Penny Dreadful.

Limitless - 'Sands, Agent of Morra'

If the whole episode had been a
motion comic, it might have been
the best thing ever.

Brian's quiet evening of watching and rigorously analysing Game of Thrones ("So, if the cute guy with the beard and the sword beats the ice zombies he still has to beat the other cute guy with the beard and sword?") with his sister Rachel is interrupted by the arrival of Sands, with a bullet in his side.

Thus begins 'Sands, Agent of Morra', a blockbuster romp as Brian is dragged along on a trail of murders with a single commission from Sands: Find his old MI6 handler before he can be blackmailed into murdering all of his old teammates. In the meantime, Rebecca and the team are tracking a kidnapped child; there couldn't possibly be a connection, could there?

Apparently Rebecca is punching a Russian bear. Not sure why.

This episode does a lot to humanise Sands, while still portraying him as a dangerous bastard. As ever, however, the highlight of the episode is its narrative device; in this instance, the comic book covers and pages which illustrate Sands' backstory and incidental aspects of the story. They are a perfect way of framing Sands' larger than life history and cold brutality.

Second Chance

Tech Genius, PA, People Genius, Bad Cop, Granddaughter, Good Cop (I'm not good at character names in my initial binge watching.)

Grumpy, disgraced ex-sheriff Jimmy Pritchard is killed in a break in, but his body is swiped by scientific genius Otto Goodwin for use in an experimental cellular regeneration treatment intended to save his sister Mary, his only link to the world. The regenerated Jimmy appears to be his son's age and is built like a brick shithouse, with added super science badassness, so on learning that his killer was a corrupt Fed and his son's partner, he breaks out of the lab to help in the case, with his new super-physique and old-fashioned perp-punching methods.

I guess the casting call asked for 'Male, late 30s, really comfortable floating
naked in a tank a lot.'

Thus begins Second Chance, a Frankensteinish new crime series, in which Jimmy partners with his son, Dupre, to use his new life to bust scumbags. He is backed up by the Goodwins' tech and money, in return for donating his blood to treat Mary's cancer. It's not terrible, but it doesn't quite stand out from the herd, which is presumably why it was cancelled. I'm three episodes into the only season and will probably watch, but not review, the rest.

12 Monkeys - 'Bodies of Water'

"Since I haven't been involved in the plot, I've been much happier."

The future; it's not what it used to be, as the Army of the 12 Monkeys pulls the fabric of time apart.

In 2016, Jennifer Goines is doing well. She's healthy, wealthy and medicated, looking forward to a bright and virus-free future. Unfortunately, time has other plans, and when 2044 Jennifer admits that her ability to see all of time has faded with age, a traveler is sent to interrupt 2016 Jennifer's routine, and at her older self's insistence, it's Cassie's turn to deal with her.

On top of their mutual antagonism, Jennifer and Cassie have to contend with the Army, who have been keeping tabs on Jennifer, and who still have plans for Cassie, even if they do not fully understand them. The cycle is broken and Olivia's faith in the witness is failing, although the Pallid Man remains firm. Cassie pays another visit to the cedar and pine hut to meet the Witness, who communicates through scrawled messages on the walls; as you do when you're some sort of messed up arch-primary. Fortunately, Jennifer comes through aces, memorising the Army's crazy quilt of destiny before rescuing Railly and stabbing Olivia in the gut and precipitating a changing of the guard as the Pallid Man takes charge.

Management 101.

In 2044, Ramse and Cole decide that they need to eliminate Deacon, handing him over to an old enemy. He comes back, however, bloody and beaten, and oddly impressed and willing to start over.

'Bodies of Water' is a weird episode, even by 12 Monkeys standards. Not only does Jennifer begin to hallucinate her dead mother, but all sorts of people are drinking red forest tea and tripping balls through time.

12 Monkeys continues to impress me with its ability to evolve its concept each time it runs the risk of getting stale. It changes up, moving its model of time travel forward and shifting the goalposts to keep its protagonists - and now to an extent its formerly all-knowing antagonists - guessing.

Game of Thrones - 'Blood of My Blood'

"I have an army."
"We have a church."

Bran has visions of the Night King and of the Mad King's assassination by Jaime Lannister. The wights catch them, but are saved by a mysterious rider in black with a flaming flail.

In Braavos, Arya Stark opts not to kill the actress, and flees the House of Black and White, with the Waif all-too eager to deliver her severance package. At chez Tarly, Sam introduces Gilly to his kin; a loving mother and a hate-filled misery of a father. Gilly drops the W bomb to upset Daddy, and Sam decides that fuck it, he's taking Gilly and little Sam with him, and the family Valyrian blade for good measure.

In king's Landing, Jaime and the Tyrells make a show of force to rescue Margaery from the Sparrows, only for the High Sparrow to pull a jack move. Margaery's atonement was completed by persuading Tommen to embrace the power of the faith, which includes booting Jaime from the King's Guard and sending him to join Walder Frey's forces besieging the Blackfish at Riverrun. Frey himself berates his staff and tells them to drag Edmuir Tully up to Riverrun as a hostage.

"It's been... tough."

Meera and Bran's rescuer explains that he was summoned by the Three-Eyed Raven, by which he means Bran. He reveals himself to be Benjen Stark, stabbed by a White Walker, but 'saved' by the Children of the Forest, who stopped the ice with a blade of dragonglass to the heart. Isn't modern medicine wonderful.

And on the march back to Mereen, Danaerys nips off and picks up her dragon, giving a triumphant speech rallying the Dothraaki to her cause. It's a huge success, because let'd face it, it's hard not to be convincing on the back of a dragon.

'Blood of My Blood' moves a lot of plots forward, in particular getting Arya out of what seemed like a never-ending cul-de-sac, and is a largely upbeat episode in which, actually, no-one dies. I'm sure next time will be a blood bath, but it was good to see the show not falling back on pure shock value.

Preacher

"Um... something about God."

An invisible force descends from space and begins inhabiting the bodies of religious leaders - an African priest, a Russian-Orthodox minister, and Tom Cruise - granting them momentary rapture and then making them explode.

As two mysterious men track the force across the globe, Texas preacher Jesse Custer is rethinking his calling in the face of his appalling sermonising skills, his complete lack of faith and the dilemmas of life as a preacher with a history of violence. Things are complicated when an old friend drops in - figuratively speaking - and an Irish vampire drops in literally, leaping out of a plane to land nearby. Just as he is thinking of quitting, the force enters him, but he does not explode. Unless, he finds a new sense of mission, and gains the ability to compel people to follow - very literally - his every word.

Preacher, based on the cult comic by Garth Ennis, is the pilot episode for a series now picked up for a 10 episode season beginning in June. It rather incongruously stars Dominic Cooper (English) as the Texan preacher Custer, Lucy Griffiths (English) as his right-hand woman at the church, Ruth Negga (Ethiopian-Irish) as Custer's erstwhile colleague Tulip, and Joseph Gilgun (English) as Cassidy. There may be the odd Texan in the supporting cast, but I guess we can chalk that up to human error.

The world of Preacher is one that would gel neatly with that of Constantine, although I doubt we'll see him show up in Arrow any time soon. With his shady past, full and manly beard and smoking habit, Custer is superficially a lot like Constantine himself, but he lacks the swaggering arrogance and the details of his story are clearly quite different, even if those details are yet to be made clear.

While I can't speak for the adaptation, the pilot at least blends humour and violence well, with just a hint of future theological subtext. And it's definitely a hell of a lot better than Lucifer.

The Magicians - 'The World in the Walls'

"You're a nutter, Harry."

Ah, it's the "Oh, the whole fantastical turn your life took was just a psychotic break and you're in an asylum" episode.

Quentin wakes in an asylum and is told that there is no Brakebills, no magic; that he had a psychotic break, started calling his dad the Beast and then tried to kill him. All the people he thinks he knows from Brakebills are there, but altered: Eliot and Alice are both delusional fellow patients, the Dean is a doctor and Penny is a stereotypical Indian orderly. Julia comes to visit him, but acts suspiciously and denies any knowledge of magic. When he manages to pull off a small magical effect, she insists that she can't see it, but lets slip that she knows it was fireworks.

It turns out that Julia and the 'level 50' Hedge Witch Marina have cast a spell to trap Quentin in a nightmare. He is able to summon aid by filling his mind with Taylor Swift (in the form of a music therapy session that belongs in a particularly dark episode of Glee) to antagonise the real Penny into coming into his mind to slap him around. This turns out to be just as Marina planned, however, as the only way to undo the spell is for the Dean to summon a being from outside the grounds, thus requiring all the wards to be lowered. This means that Marina and Julia are able to sneak in and steal back the memories taken from Marina when she was expelled just before graduation.

Julia goes to the physical cabin to make sure that Quentin comes through, which also requires him to take on a character from Fillory and learn that sometimes the only winning move is not to play. Quentin gets a ticking off from the Dean for not telling him that Julia had retained her memories, while Marina decides that Julia doesn't have 'the stuff', and on regaining her memories cuts her off from magic.

'The World in the Walls' continues to develop the depth of The Magicians, in particular the characters of Julia, Quentin and Penny this week. Penny and Quentin get to be active agents really for the first time, we see the darker side of the Hedge Witches, and we get a musical number. The series has definitely landed.

Bitten - 'Prodigal'

Despite the tough blonde in a library-with-cage, this is not Buffy.

Elena returns to the Danvers house at Stonehaven, and we get some flashbacks explaining that she was turned by a bite and brought to the house by Clay, her boyfriend at the time. She clearly has big feels for Clay still, but it's easy to see why she would want to get away from his nutso alpha machismo.

The pack gathers - Daniel the alpha, Clay the enforcer, Elena the tracker; Italo-American chef and his son and Pete the Roadie - and as Elena reminisces about her former role as archivist, we also learn that the Danvers' 'noble pack' are the rulers and enforcers of werewolf law, holding the 'mutts' in check. One of her jobs used to be keeping track of the mutts, but that's sort of lapsed in her absence. Given that we also learn that she's the only know female werewolf ever, the family sure feels like they think secretarial work is a woman's purview. Oddly, that wasn't why she left, but over her guilt when she killed an anthropologist who had found a werewolf and planned to start leading werewolf hunting safaris.

"So... Fanservice then?"
"Yeah, but equal opportunity."

The pack bond over combat practice and Elena gives Clay an earful for petting her in wolf form. They track a bit then change into unflattering stolen clothes, but the mutt eludes them and kills again, this time a child, which I suspect may allay some of Elena's conviction  on the no killing front.

Bitten firmly establishes its commitment to equal opportunity fanservice this episode. It also sets up a fairly unique relationship between the leads, with constant changing and running together leaving everyone in the pack entirely comfortable with each other's nakedness - except perhaps Elena with Clay's.

Supergirl - 'Manhunter'

"I used to be Superman, you know."

It's troubled times for our hero, with J'onn in a cell at the DEO and Alex in imminent danger of sharing a treason charge.

Enter Colonel James Harper, a patriotic douchebag who used to shoot the breeze about killing aliens, commies and traitors with the real Hank Henshaw, so you can see that he might not be well disposed towards the alien who took Hank's place and face for ten years.

Essentially, this is all about the flashbacks, as J'onn reveals the details of his meeting with Jeremiah Danvers and Henshaw's attempt to destroy and dissect what Superman dubbed 'the most powerful creature on this planet'. This, coupled with his schooling of evil Kara last week, really brings home how well the series has done in limiting his role and power to keep the spotlight on Kara. In her interview, Alex explains how she went off the rails, faced with her step-sister's power and her father's disappearance, until J'onn/Hank brought her into the DEO and gave her a purpose.

Harper of course feels that Henshaw had the right idea, and when his aide - the re-enlisted Lucy Lane - realises that, polygraph or not, Alex is lying about her knowledge of J'onn's identity, she gets put on the Cadmus bus with him. Short on options, Kara makes an appeal to Lucy, revealing her secret identity and asking for Lucy's trust. It's a hail Mary, but it pays off, and Lucy helps her to hijack the Cadmus bus before it can reach America's favourite evil government superlab. J'onn surgically edits Harper's mind, and at the same time sees Jeremiah alive at Cadmus, so he and Alex go on the lam while Lucy takes over at the DEO.

Oh, and Siobhan seeks revenge by trying to frame Kara for sending an abusive email to Cat, but Wynn does a typing analysis to show it was her. This leads to a drunken rooftop confrontation, in which Wynn tries to explain why he wasn't willing to back her as far as criminal defamation and mail fraud, and Siobhan takes a fall, but levitates herself off the pavement with a road-cracking scream.

Oo. Flash crossover next episode. I wonder if Siobhan is a symptom of crossworlds metahuman spillage.

I continue to be very impressed with Supergirl, which has been working its butt off to prove that a superhero show doesn't need a male lead, and as I say, has done an excellent job of keeping J'onn from taking too much spotlight, with all the power he has. It has also showcased a range of female villains with way more too them than just 'Hi! I iz sexy villain.' Okay, Indigo was kind of trampy, but that's a deliberate character flaw.

Powers - 'Mickey Rooney Cries No More'

Retro Girl (Michelle Forbes), Christian Walker (Sharlto Copley), Deena Pilgrim (Susan Heyward), Calista Secor (Olesya Rulin), Wolfe (Eddie Izzard) and Johnnie Royalle (Noah Taylor)

Walker and Pilgrim, kind of oblivious to their rather symbolic names, continue to search for Calista, the sole witness to the death of Olympia. As the case progresses, they learn of a link to a power-enhancing drug called Sway, and things come to a head in a clash for Calista's loyalty in Johnny Royalle's club in which Retro Girl and Walker both spectacularly lose their shit and thus the argument.

"No one escapes from Chorh-Gum Prison!"

Meanwhile, in supervillain jail, Iron Man expy Triphammer and the captain of the Powers Division are experimenting with a power-suppressor, but it tends to make people explode more than is entirely desirable. They persevere since the current best model is that being used on super-regenerative power-stealer Wolfe; performing an aggressive prefrontal lobotomy once a month in order to keep him from regaining control. In the long term, this method works out about as well as it deserves to, and we close on Wolfe Tai Lunging his restraints and eating his doctor.

Not just a dickhead.

Powers exists in the uneasy interface between
superhero and gritty crime fiction, and so far is holding its own. Supers range from wannabe kids to a-list celebrities and out and out villains. So far there is no Mr Fantastic or Superman to unbalance the whole order of the world, so the Powers just change the way certain things are done. Despite the insistence of some of the characters, however, there aren't many actual heroes on show. Everyone has an angle.

In fact, easily the best scene in the episode comes when Walker and Pilgrim confront a young celebrity power, Zora, over the death of a minor power who was using sway. She loses it when Pilgrim and her agent argue across her, and Walker has to talk her down. There's a lot of dickishness all around in Powers, and it's nice to see a moment of kindness and empathy; perhaps the most heroic action we've seen thus far.

Also, Eddie Izzard is eating people. How weird is that.

Supergirl - 'Falling'

So adorable. So a set up for heartbreak.

National City loves Supergirl in a big way. Cat goes on a talk show to talk about how awesome and kind she is, and to prove it Kara drops out of the sky to help a fan out against bullies. They're laying this on with a trowel and everything else is peachy - Siobhan is boinking Winn so he's less mopey and she's less of a bitch, Lucy Lane has quit and left, opening up a possibility for James and Kara, and Hank is this close to making first base with Senator Usedtohatealiens, so clearly some shit is about to go down.

And lo, while rescuing a fireman trapped under heavy debris, Kara is exposed to red Kryptonite. Cue the evil.

Okay, seriously; even if she super-speed stole the dress, where did she get the
time and money for that hairdo?

Of course, I say evil, but it starts with snarky assertiveness and uncharacteristically sexy threads, before escalating to letting criminals go, getting Siobhan fired and trying to mount James on a nightclub dancefloor while simultaneously badmouthing his ex. From there it's just a long, downhill slide to accusing Alex of killing Astra from jealousy of Kara's real family, throwing Cat off a balcony for shiggles and deciding that she's through with this hero bullshit. This prompts Cat to go on air and announce that Supergirl is no longer safe, leading to the heart-rending scene of the little girl from the intro binning her Supergirl costume.

Hank and Alex identify the source of the problem and Max Lord fesses up to creating the stuff to use on Non. He seems genuinely repentant that it has affected Supergirl, and volunteers to create an antidote, while the Senator pushes for Hank to get mediaeval on Supergirl's ass.

Seriously; did she make this one? Does red Kryptonite make you evil and
craftsy?

Dressed in a sassy new super suit with more than a touch of Astra's style about it, Supergirl smacks around the DEO troops. When she goes after Alex, J'onn steps in, morphing into his true form and going toe-to-toe with Kara until Alex is able to zap her sister with Lord's antidote gun. With Supergirl contained, J'onn morphs back into Hank and lets himself be taken into custody. Senator Hatesaliensagain is well disappointed.

Kara makes what apologies she can, but is haunted by the knowledge that whatever changes were made to her brain, the dark thoughts were in there. James takes a leave of absence, Alex is preoccupied with Hank's predicament and Winn is trying to get in touch with Siobhan, so unexpectedly it is Cat who provides a sort of comfort, telling her (as Supergirl) that it won't be easy to win back the city, but if anyone can, it's Supergirl, and that it's okay to fail as long as you get up again and don't let failure be your life.

Now, full disclosure, I fucking hate red Kryptonite episodes and I can't stand the middle third of Spiderman 3 for that reason (the rest of the movie I hate for different reasons,) but 'Falling' was done surprisingly well. No-one who should know better was ever significantly drawn to evil Kara, and while recognising her as a threat, no-one wanted to instantly write her off either (well, apart from Siobhan, but she's full of hate and ambition.) Sadly, the deactivation of Hank means we're likely to see Sam Lane large and in charge, which is always pretty depressing, but here's hoping that won't last too long.

Legends of Tomorrow - 'Leviathan'

19. I will not have a daughter. She would be as beautiful as she was evil, but
one look at the hero's rugged countenance and she'd betray her own father.

It's go time, as the Legends take on Vandal Savage at the height of his power.

Evading triple-A from Savage's troops, the Waverider puts down outside Vancouver London where the crew come into contact with refugees from the city's destruction. Some suggest that Rip could go in and get his family out, but this is apparently one of the things that time is set upon, and each time he has tried this they have been killed before reaching the Waverrider. I suspect Time Master fuckwittage myself, since I'm more or less convinced at this stage that they are the real villains.

Rip takes the more violent half of the team - as Roary puts it, the killer, the klepto and the pyro - to infiltrate the Star City Stepney Rally*, where we learn that Savage has adopted the US Marine Corps' 'hoo-rah' as their version of 'zieg heil' and has a sexy blonde lieutenant who makes Snart despite their cunning plan of standing in the front row of the parade and whispering while Savage talks, but doesn't say anything. Roary and Snart trip Hunter to create a distraction while they snatch Savage, but more guards appear and they are forced to retreat.

Bling!

Snart and Roary go into the citadel to steal a bracelet from the blonde, and I just have to say that in terms of dialogue, they're killing it this episode, from Snart assuring Sara that he won't tell her the plan is to go in and steal the bracelet off he wrist, to Roary assuring Cassandra Savage - for lo, to the Devil a daughter** - that they risked their lives for it because it really works with his outfit. They nick the bracelet and the daughter, to Rip's predictable weary despair as yet another mission ends up with someone kidnapped to the Waverrider. Meanwhile, Kendra figures that she can use the bracelet by melting it down to coat Carter's mace.

Martin and Jax don't get to Firestorm up this week. Instead, they focus on offering humanitarian aid to the refugees, including sheltering them in the Waverrider when Savage sends his superweapon Leviathan, a giant fucking robot, to recover his daughter. The robot shrugs off Waverrider's weapons and throws the ship to ground, taking Martin out of the action and leaving them with half an hour before they get stepped on.

See androids fighting...

Kendra joins team hit things to take out Savage, aided by Cassandra, who has been convinced by Snart that her father really is evil and released the virus which killed her mother. They take on Savage and his guards and she dings up the immortal one but good. Back at the ship, Jax runs jumper cables into the Atom suit and Ray reverses the polarity (seriously) to take on Leviathan.

Kendra gets Savage on the ropes, but he is rescued by a masked guard whose helmet falls off at the critical moment to reveal... Carter! Savage explains that he has 'locked' Carter's mind so that he can never become Hawkman, and only he can unlock it, winning him a space in the brig and a fine opportunity to Hannibal lecture the crew.

Ray does a little better, and with moral support from Jax punches Leviathan's head clean off. Unfortunately his triumph is capped by effectively being dumped for someone Kendra doesn't know and who doesn't know him and dear lord do I want to see Kendra being something other than a weapon in a love triangle. She really ought to be a primary agent in this series, but she only joined the crew following Carter, 90% of her decisions have been related to Carter and/or Ray, and most of her actions in the show have involved her failing to do the one thing she was recruited to do***.

As the crew flits off to I don't know when to do I don't know what with Carter 2166 and Vandal Savage, Kendra remains one of the few really weak links in a series beginning to find its gear. Coming in towards the end of the series, the ability to actually do something about Savage makes the conflict more meaningful and removes the sense of futility which hamstrung earlier Legends vs Savage episodes. While Firestorm got backseated, everyone else got to do stuff and the dynamics are slotting into place. I still think that most of the stories desperately wanted to be two-parters, but such if life, and hopefully these last few episodes will carry on what we've seen here.

* Once more Vancouver, and the same set of steps where Thea Queen and John Diggle killed a League plaguebearer.
** But not either of his comic canon daughters, possibly for rights reasons, or because they wanted her to flirt with Snart instead of Sara.
*** The show is actually giving me Danger 5 flashbacks. "Make out with a nurse, prevent an outbreak of hawk-monsters, and for God's sake, kill Vandal Savage."

12 Monkeys - 'Emergence'

Ramse was less than happy to get stuck with a random suit instead of a sweet
tailored number like Cole's.

With temporal anomalies sweeping through history, Jones sends Ramse back to 1944 to assist Cole and Railly in preventing the paradox which caused the damage. Unfortunately, while he arrives in good time he is immediately hit by a car and is unable to reach the asylum in time to warn Cole or alert events. Although he does encounter the female Messenger, he is unable to convince her that the Witness sent him, or to overpower her. Events play out as before, Crawford Jr. is killed and the paradox rips through time.

In 2044, an increasingly fraught Jones seeks guidance from Jennifer Goines. Using a hallucinogenic tea brewed from reddened leaves, Goines shows Jones the moment the first monkey became self-aware. Jones defies the idea that evolution is made of moments instead of continuity, but Goines likens human understanding of time to a line of ants; hundreds of ants, each aware only of itself and those immediately in front and behind. Only an ant who steps out of the line, a Primary, can see the line. Apparently they are also necessary to stop time losing track of itself, and the Messengers are targeting Primaries in order to break time.

Most of the blood has washed away...

While Railly hates on Ramse some more, Cole goes looking for the Messenger, who also survived the blast, teaming up unexpectedly with the Fed who took a dislike to him and briefly arrested him and Railly before Ramse rescued them. Agent Gale turns out to be a huge HG Wells fan, and gets hold of the whole time travel idea very quickly. They question the Messenger, who is surprised to have survived, saying that 'Father made us too well.' She tells them that the Army will end 'time's cruel destruction' and then breaks loose, but doesn't kill Cole because the Witness has forbidden it.

The time travelers return home, letting Gale see them splinter out. They discuss how screwed they are, while Gale leaves the photo in the hotel room as a clue leading back to its own creation. In 1971 the dying Messenger bids farewell to her son, and in 2016 the Pallid Man - heavily implied to be the son, explaining some of his nigh-superhuman characteristics - scarred but not killed by Cole's own paradox, watches Jennifer Goines check into a mental health clinic.

'Emergence' is a companion to 'One Hundred Years' in a sort of expanded version of the two halves of Season 1's 'Atari'. It gives a different view on the events of the previous episode, and changes their final outcome without actually affecting the events themselves. Ramse's attempt to call Cole, prevented by the nurse, proves that he was present all along, so no retcons for you, 12 Monkeys. Perhaps most interestingly, the plot is increasingly moving away from the plague, with a strong suggestion that the only reason for the plague was to force Jones to send Cole and Ramsey back in time. The Witness's plan is apparently pretty cray-cray, and I admire that in a TV villain.

Penny Dreadful - 'Good and Evil Braided Be'

"I am so fucking British."

Kaetenay and Sir Malcolm take the racist express to New Mexico in search of Ethan, who is now dreaming of his sort-of father showing up all bloody faced and yelling incoherently, which can't be good.

Rusk and the Marshals look over the scene of Ethan's escape. On the edge of town, Ethan tries to impress on Heckaty-poo the merciless nature of the desert and himself, but the latter is undercut when he's the one who gets upset by her murdering a man and his wife for horses. She lays it out that she's intent on following or leading him into hell to become the Devil's hitman or whatever with her as his worst gal, and is willing to murder literally everyone in the world for that to happen.

They flee across the desert, pursued by Rusk and the US Marshals. The latter are pretty useless, firing wildly at Ethan from half a mile away, stopping when they finally realise that there's a woman with him. Rusk is all poo-poo firearms, and cautions the Marshal that he might want to start believing in the occult. I really hope he doesn't die like a chump, if only because the Marshals are bigger arseholes than he is and I begrudge them the satisfaction.

Kaetenay and Sir Malcolm find the dead ranchers and are concerned about the company Ethan might be keeping.

"Well, this can't be good."

Back in London, Vanessa works some mojo on Dr Seward to try to convince her that her 'delusions' are the real deal; so far it seems like a no-score draw. Vanessa then goes on a date with Dr Sweet which leads to a circus mirror maze, where everyone else disappears and weird-looking-skinny ghoul gets all up in her face, telling her the master was with her 'in the white room where there is no day or night'. She decides she's too dangerous for Sweet to be around and dumps him.

John Clare is back in London. He sees Vanessa meeting Sweet and looks wistfully happy for her before heading off to look for his former family. After roughing up the current owner of the building, he finds them in a slum, his son dying of cholera, and like any good dad starts mugging passing strangers to give them money. Maybe next he'll start cooking high grade meth.

Sweet/Dracula pummels his goon for scaring off Vanessa and lets the other ghouls tear him apart in a feeding frenzy. The super-strength punch is an impressive and restrained use of practical effects to display Dracula's casual power, and the piranha pile is creepy as hell.

As David Balfour descends back into raving madness, Frankenstein proposes to use his research to make Jekyll's serum permanent.

No, I'm not including a picture of the bloody three-way. This
isn't that kind of blog.

Lily and Dorian bring Justine further into their plans, explaining their intention to basically murder and terrorise their way to secret power with an army of invisible women of the street, poo-pooing the gentle methods of the suffragettes. They give Justine the opportunity to kill her former tormentor, which she does, before engaging in a gore-slicked three way with her benefactors.

I know I've criticised the show for being sex negative before, but I'm not entirely convinced that one murder would really undo all of the psychological trauma of a decade of brutal abuse. Of course, it's equally possible that Lily and Dorian don't give a rat's arse about their recruit's psychological health.

Vanessa has Seward hypnotise her to recover memories of her time in an asylum, where the orderly who brought her food was the future John Clare (dun-dun duh!)

Season 3 of Penny Dreadful continues to be a massive improvement on what went before. Okay, Dorian and Lily are still pretty gratuitous, but at least they have a point at last. It is also hard to see how - if at all - the separate plotlines will come together, but time will tell.

Powers - 'Like a Power'

Ah, the glamour of superpowers.

Full disclosure, I'm not hitting Powers, an adaptation of a Marvel Icon (the company's creator-owned line for keeping top writers in-house) comic series about a world where superpowers are just part of the status quo, at full speed. I missed the first episode, so I was sort of playing catch up through this one.

Charlie Walker is a detective with the Powers Division, a section of the LAPD dealing with superpowered crimes. Himself a former power, he is partnered with a rookie named Deena Pilgrim to investigate the murder of a superhero named Olympia, linking his death to a drug named Sway and a young woman named Calista Secor. Also involved are superpowered criminal Wolfe, who among other things stole Walker's powers, Walker's former partner Retro Girl, and dodgy teleporting power Johnny Royalle.

Powers is a grungy, street-level superpowers story, with noirish elements of constructed identity and mysterious pasts. Across these mean skies a man must fly who is not himself mean and all that. The characters are pretty much cyphers so far, but a lot of that is deliberate - we're kind of coming in in media res after all - and some is probably due to missing the pilot. The cast are pretty good, but the sense of the plot is as yet sketchy (again, that's partly the noir influence and partly missing the murder of Olympia, on which much of the current movement hangs, entirely.) It's got definite potential, anyway, and is better than the first original drama commissioned by the Playstation network necessarily deserves to expect.

The Flash - 'Invincible'

"Bored now."

The Legion of Zoom is on the march, tearing up Central City, but it turns out that the problem with recruiting every meta on the block and killing most of them after one failure is that pretty soon you have a legion of losers, and the newly re-empowered and spiritually invigorated Flash is cleaning them up by the bucket load. Unfortunately, there are a lot of them, so Harry and Cisco begin working on a way to use the variant frequency of Earth-2 matter to build a city-wide stun blaster.

Zoom is working on a plan so fiendish, so diabolical, that he won't even tell his last remaining half-way decent disciple what it is, just that she gets to knock down buildings. Said disciple is Black Siren - the Earth-2 doppelganger of the late Laurel Lance, rocking the Dark Willow look - whose metahuman sonic abilities can not only take down the Flash, but level whole buildings.

As things get worse, Wally steps up to fight, regardless of the risks. Jesse shares his feeling that they ought to be doing something after being hit by dark matter, but Harry channels this into putting her mind to work on the stunner.

With Barry needed to create a sonic barrier that will reflect the blast back on itself at city limits, Cisco and Caitlin have to distract Black Siren by cosplaying at Reverb and Killer Frost. They delay her, but she cottons on fast, and despite a brief display of Reverb's blasting power from Cisco, they are saved only by the stun wave, which drops every meta except Zoom, who flees through a breach.

The gang's celebrations are interrupted, however, when Cisco vibes the destruction of Earth-2, and then Zoom turns up, kidnaps Barry's dad and then murders him in front of Barry in an attempt to prove that they are alike; that witnessing the death of a parent will turn the Flash into another Zoom.

So, that was a lot to drop in an hour, although I suppose the show has to compete with Arrow's Armageddon. Its answer to that gauntlet appears to be Crisis on Some Number, Countable or Otherwise, of Earths, and may bring Supergirl's National City to Earth-1 now that they share a station as well as creators.

Sleepy Hollow - 'One Life' and 'Incident at Stone Manor'

Pinboard with strings; a sure sign of a disordered mind.

It has been a month since Abbie disappeared (and waay longer since we last caught an episode of Sleepy Hollow,) and Ichabod is clearly fixated on getting her back. Jenny and Joe try to get him to focus on the work, although a part of that is Jenny working through her own guilt that Abbie was lost in saving her from death.

After Agent Foster interrupts his latest attempt at contact, they are both contacted by a spectral force, which uses mirrored brands to urge them to open a gateway through a mirror, which allows an onryou - a Japanese spirit of vengeance, here manifesting as a murderous J-horror reject drawn to desperation - to enter the world and kill some folks (not that anyone seems to have heavy feels about that.) They track the creature to SAC Reynolds' cabin, where they are able to kill it, and Foster gets a brief Team Witness Orientation.

"Well... shit."

Meanwhile, Jenny and Joe track down Helena Blavatsky's map and engage in skulduggery to extract it from douchey artefact retrieval guy. They hope to use it to locate Pandora and the Hidden One, who are mostly being all abusive codependency in this episode, but instead discover that, as a result of a beacon created by Pandora to turn Sleepy Hollow into an all you can eat god buffet, weird creatures from all over the world are coming to town.

Also, Joe and Jenny kiss. Aww.

The episode title comes from a largely unconnected flashback to the loss of Betsy and Ichabod's eager young partner in espionage, Nathan Hale. I confess, until he actually did the quote the name meant little to me.

"You're doing something different with your hair."

Anyway, 'Incident at Stone Manor' catches us up with Abbie, who is going a bit crazy playing imaginary Crane at homemade chess in a derelict palace in the inescapable land of desert ruins. At Jenny's suggestion, Ichabod attempts to locate her using astral projection, which involves Joe helping Jenny to steal a lighter from her father and Ichabod doing an impressive job of impromptu carpentry.

While he's away, Foster comes looking for advice on a case which has mystical gubbins written all over it - a murder at an exclusive school with a missing gargoyle. This leads to an amazing scene of Jenny and Joe filling in for the missing Abbie and Ichabod. They mention Ichabod and his lessons from the past, but it occurs to me that they haven't yet told Foster - at least onscreen - that Crane is from the eighteenth century.

Cheap, importded Euro-evil.

Anyway, there's some friction twixt the newly encredited Foster and Jenny - who seems to feel that Foster is being brought in as 'replacement Abbie', but Joe smooths things over and together they trap a living gargoyle imported by the British to establish their evil cred during the War of Independence in a block of concrete, with just enough sticking out for the construction crew to get really curious and chip it out.

With the influx of demons slower than expected, Pandora tails Ichabod through the ether and interrupts his reunion with Abbie. Abbie tells Ichabod that six weeks in the world has been ten months for her (which presumably means that the Hidden One was actually trapped, from his perspective, for hundreds of thousands of years; no wonder he's pissed,) and shows him an archive of carvings telling the story of the Hidden One. Then Pandora cuts his tether, threatening to leave Abbie trapped and Ichabod lost unless Abbie agrees to bring the Eye of Providence back to the world. Realising that eventually she will weaken, Abbie smashes the Eye to pieces, because she's a baller.

Pandora storms out, but Ichabod also had time to tell Abbie that a cutlass she found in a tree was Betsy Ross's, so she knows that there is a way out. Weaving her own rope, she abseils into a hollow tree and emerges from a river in time to form a new anchor for Ichabod; huzzah! So, the gang's all here, but Pandora gives up some of the godly strength that her husband gave her, in order to boost the signal, so they'll need all hands on deck.

Sleepy Hollow continues to be a second string watch, with its monster of the week format and slightly weak arc plot (possibly still be editorial mandate.) Pandora and the Hidden One are basically too enigmatic to be very interesting, and I would rather have seen more arc or less. New season of The Musketeers starts next week, so this may go back on reserve for a while.

Arrow - 'Monument Point'

"Ladies and gents, Mr Vinnie Jones."

It's all go in the antepenultimate episode of Season 4, as Damien Darhk aims to set off a global thermonuclear holocaust, and the only man who can stop him is Felicity's dad, Noah Kuttler.

HIVE dispatches Brick (Vinnie Jones) to kill the Calculator, whose work forms the basis of the Rubicon's code. Team Arrow rescue him and set him the task of preventing the end of the world - as we will later see on The Flash, just one of this month's armageddons - but for that he needs top-drawer PalmerTech tech, and wouldn't you know it, Felicity has just been fired by the Board for trying to introduce altruism into the mission statement and neglecting her CEO duties on account of secret apocalypse.

It's that man again! (Now you know why I didn't use the ITMA
caption for Brick.)

Meanwhile, Malcolm Merlin tries to reconcile Thea to her place on spaceship HIVE - with the loss of his power over the League of Assassins he's bought entirely into HIVE's new scorched earth interpretation of the mission - but this particular edition of Malcolm and Thea's awkward reunions is interrupted by the arrival in the Genesis Vault of Lonnie Machin, still intent on rewenge against Darhk. Given her past experience with the man and that whole thing where she sort of lit him on fire and created the scarred and twisted ball of rage that is Anarky, Thea is roped into catching him.

Felicity and her dad bust into PalmerTech and steal most of what they need, but the race to stop Rubicon is just piling up complications. The latest is that even once the code is compiled, they need to run the anti-programme from a massive server farm, and defend it against HIVE's troops once they get things running.

"...and also the Green Arrow."

Lyla calls in all the ARGUS dudes at her disposal. Our heroes set up a perimeter around the server farm and a massive battle ensues as HIVE's finest attempt to storm the facility and kill Noah Kuttler. Given the practical limits on mass fights scenes on a television budget, the show does pretty well here, with doubtless some significant doubling up of masked HIVE and ARGUS goons to pad the numbers. It's not quite Season 2's tunnel fight, but then that was in a finale and we still have two episodes to go on this one.

I'm pretty sure that three section staff expanded from Lonnie's
regular cattle prod, much like Oliver's bow folds up and goes in
his pocket.

Meanwhile, underground, Thea tries to talk Lonnie down and Malcolm shoots him to prevent him blowing up the dome's air processor. With that vengeance thwarted, Lonnie turns to his 'mother', Thea, despite not recognising her at first without the mask. He comes after her in person, and although she ultimately defeats him the cost is high.

Well, Alex is apparently dead. I feel kind of bad not caring about a character's death, but Alex barely qualified as a character even before he became a brainwashed Stepford husband. I figure Malcolm will have him stuffed and propped up in the kitchen and no one will notice the difference.

Fathers and daughters. You know how that works with me,
yeah?

The Kuttler/Smoak double act does the business. Noah takes a bullet for his daughter, establishing his 'not a complete tool' credentials, but they manage to prevent the launch of all but one missile, targeted at the city of Monument Point. Unable to stop or destroy it, and with Supergirl on a different Earth for the time being, Felicity can only try to divert the missile by disrupting its GPS. She is successful, but is only able to divert it a short distance, destroying the town of Havenrock.

All told, it's not a bad result, but it's devastating for Felicity, and moreover means that a part of Darhk's plan is completed. While atomic devastation was its own point in HIVE's Genesis programme, the death toll was also intended to feed Darhk's power through the idol. Having been tracking leylines in the background throughout the episode, Oliver and Diggle eventually arrive in the nexus chamber beneath City Hall, to find Darhk surrounded by a field of energy.

After a slightly up and down season, much of it spent dealing with the fact that, hey, there's magic, yo!, Arrow hits one out of the park with 'Monument Point', pulling together the disparate plot threads and delivering a mega-stakes pre-finale. We love Felicity in our house, and this is a very Felicity story without calling on non-family relationship drama, providing a chance for Emily Bett Rickards to exercise her look of desolate horror. The only real bum note remains the flashbacks, which continue to parallel the real action instead of connecting to it, as in previous seasons.

We follow this with... Oh, wait. We're actually up to date for once, so no binge watching for us this week.