Voltron: Legendary Defender

Being made of cats, the most powerful weapon in the galaxy has no need of
opposable thumbs.

Another Netflix original spectacular, Voltron: Legendary Defender is a reboot of the classic Voltron series, about five young heroes who pilot robot lions that combine into a giant robot to fight aliens. I don't know much about the original beyond that, so this is all new to me.

Season 1 introduces us to our five pilots. First a trio of cadets in the Galaxy Garrison: Lance is a hotshot, wannabe fighter pilot; Hunk a big, affable engineer; and Pidge a young technical prodigy and just really, really obviously a girl (to the point that I was quite confused when Lance and Hunk called her 'him'.) They are joined by former star cadet Keith, and legendary pilot Shiro, who went missing along with Pidge's father and brother some years earlier. Together they find the blue lion, which takes them to the Castle of the Five Lions to meet Princess Allura and her adviser Coran, the last survivors of a civilisation that used the great warrior Voltron in battle against the Galra Empire 10,000 years ago.

Clockwise from left: Hunk, Coran, Allura, Lance, Keith, Shiro and Pidge.

The five humans search for the remaining lions and become the Paladins, champions of order and decency. They face a couple of Galra monsters while the castle is repaired so it can fly, and then take the fight to the enemy. They liberate a Balmera - a living planetoid and source of vital energy crystals - from Galra miners, and infiltrate a shipyard, but when Allura is captured they have to risk everything on a rescue mission.

Coming from some of the creators of Avatar: The Legend of Korra, Voltron: Legendary Defender is both a love letter to the action cartoons of my youth, and a vastly superior interpretation of those same cartoons. In addition to a slick combination of hand-drawn and computer generated animation, it features strong - if not always subtle - characterisation and action scenes which effectively move beyond the standard model of 'fight as lions, fight as Voltron, sword and win.' The season has a downer cliffhanger ending, and I hope there will be more, although presumably not for a year or so. Curse this watching stuff close to the time of release!

Since they all fly, I did wonder why the Black Lion is the only one with wings, but it turns out they form Voltron's shield.

The Musketeers - 'The Hunger' and 'Brother in Arms'

"Oh look, trouble. My hubbie must be back in town."

Buckle your swashes and swash your bucklers, for a double bill of The Musketeers.

D'Artagnan is disappointed that a morning with his wife involves less fooling around and more fetching the garrison grocery order. This inevitably runs them into trouble, as the Duke of Beaufort announces that his grain has been stolen and an angry mob of already hungry Parisians turn on a nearby camp of war refugees. D'Artagnan rallies the cadets to defend the camp, but the Red Guard appear to round up the usual suspects, including D'Artagnan. It quickly emerges that the Duke is in cahoots with Feron and Grimaud - although he despises the latter - to disappear the grain, using the refugees as scapegoats, then resell it to the King at double the price.

Remember, all sympathetic supporting male characters in this series a) are
doomed, and b) must have hot relatives the Musketeers' age.

The Musketeers sally forth to try to prove the innocence of the refugees, including Sylvie, an outspoken young woman who is initially distrustful of any soldier. As the Red Guard and their plant in the camp work to incriminate the refugees, Aramis and Porthos trace the wagon used in the theft and Porthos finds the stolen consignment. It's always good to have a reminder that this Porthos isn't a fool.

Captain Marchaux kills the plant and blames him for everything. The Duke doesn't get his payday, and Feron narrowly dissuades Grimaud from murdering him for being a snobby tosser. The refugees are released, but not before Sylvie's father dies in custody. All in all, a distinctly qualified win. Grimaud pops up to taunt the Musketeers in person, and Aramis and Porthos recognise the horse he took from a wagon owner he murdered. We also see the first rumblings of popular revolution, as the refugees espouse opposition to the absolute monarchy which destroys lives with its wars.

The Queen is unhappy to see her son encouraged to play with murderous
psychos.

This latter theme is continued in 'Brother in Arms'. The Musketeers are sent to retrieve the King's rebellious brother , the Duke of Orlean, from exile, only for him to flip out during a rest stop and stab three dudes after he misses his wallet. The pub where this happens is a veterans' bar, populated by disgruntled, pensionless ex-soldiers, who demand justice of the aristo-hanging variety, and are of course to be disappointed.

Feron and Orleans machinate to have the veterans made an example of for daring to be stabbed by a man of quality, while Treville and the Musketeers try to maintain the rule of law and spirit of justice. There's a lot more rumbling against the King, and Sylvie pops up again, as a friend of the soldiers'. It all winds up with a hostage situation and the Red Guard attacking the Musketeers surrounding the tavern, precipitating a fight in which the Musketeers join the rebels and let them off at the end of it, doubtless leading to further consequences along the line.

Sylvie and Athos look like they're going to hook up, probably about thirty seconds before Milady returns.

"Are you getting that 'King's Landing' feeling?"

Orleans ends up in the Bastille, since his wallet contained not money, but incriminating letters, but the political game ends poorly for our heroes. The King clearly suspects that his son might not be his son, but dotes on the boy as his legacy to the neglect of all else. As we, Treville and Feron discover this episode, this is because he has contracted the White Plague (tuberculosis, I think,) and will be dead within the year. The game is now to hold the loyalty of the Dauphin, and with the boy apparently poisoned against his mother, it doesn't look good.

Season 3 is obviously going for a darker vibe even than Season 2, and a sense of impending disaster only cemented by the Omen-like creepiness of the Dauphin (which may be more to do with the wig than th lad wearing it.) For this, it's kind of odd that there was no more comeback from the fact that the Musketeers killed several Red Guards while defending accused traitors. You'd think that might at least rate a scolding, although perhaps it was forgotten what with the whole 'uncovered a plot to overthrow the King' angle.

Preacher - 'Monster Swamp'

Cassidy's daywear is a delight.

Okay, it's been a few days and the rambling, Cohenesque nature of Preacher can make it hard to get my recap straight, but here goes:

We open on women in their underwear fleeing men with guns. One of them is cornered and shot with what turns out to be a paintball pellet, this being a spot of 'harmless fun' between the workers of QM&P and the staff of the Toadvine Whorehouse, the brothel where Tulip hangs out (in a non-professional, mostly poker-playing capacity) between gigs. Unfortunately, a sinkhole then swallows up the unfortunate young woman, leading to a heartfelt eulogy from Quincannon:

"Thank you all for coming out today. There are some lessons to be learnt. First, you boys need to watch the roughhousing. 'Cause this is what can happen. And, uh, you ladies, if you're gonna be out here in the middle of the night, you need to watch where you're walking."

Tulip is frankly steamed at this, but we'll get to that later.

Cassidy tries to warn Jesse that there are government clones from Heaven coming to try to remove the thing inside him with a chainsaw, but being Cassidy he's not that clear about it, and Jesse is preoccupied. Jesse has PLANS (TM). Inspired by flashbacks of his father beating him for smoking and confronting - unsuccessfully - Quincannon, he asks Emily to announce a raffle with a big screen TV as the prize; he wants to get lots of people into the church for something special.

Miles, the Mayor of Annville, confronts Quincannon and asks him to consider a deal with an environmental group called Greenacres (whom Donnie had previously offered to rough up,) but Quincannon pisses in his briefcase. In a later meeting with Custer, the shamelessly faithless Quincannon agrees to a bet: He will attend church on Sunday, and if he leaves an unbeliever, he gets Jesse's father's land. Miles, meanwhile, babysits for Emily (and it's kind of telling that the Mayor of Annville moonlights as a babysitter.) She blows off his advances, then tells him he has to be out by morning, which HUZZAH is a personality beyond 'Custer's loyal helpmeet'. It's a tiny moment, but adds layers to the character.

"Well, that hit the spot."

Cassidy tells those two guys that he will bring Cassidy, but he needs money to induce the Preacher, whom he claims has a substance abuse habit. The two guys discuss whether they should trust Cassidy, or call in on their old-fashioned field telephone. They decide against the latter, as they aren't keen for their superiors to know that they are on Earth without leave, or why. They're right not to trust Cassidy, however, who takes their money and is immediately seen getting high and laid in the Toadvine Whorehouse.

At around the same time, a wake is being held for Lacey the dead prostitute, including an hour 'on the house'. Tulip is hacked off, and hearing loud music decides to go upstairs and clobber the man who chased Lacey into the swamp. She smacks him around and throws him out the window, only to find that it's actually Cassidy, who now has a piece of glass in his throat. She rushes him to hopsital, wracked with guilt, and even grants him a final kiss, only for him to ditch her at reception and turn up in the blood bank, gorged and healthy. Classy, Cassidy. Classy like Cersei Lannister.

We finish up with Custer's sermon. He tells the congregation that the world is fucked because of their selfish sin, but that he will bring them all to salvation and the service of the Lord, starting with Quincannon. Quincannon rejects his call to serve God, until Jesse hits him with the Voice, provoking him to agree that yep, he'll serve God. Sure. I can't help but feel that once more, Jesse may come to regret his loose phrasing.

"Do you see the light!"

And then the angels' phone rings.

'Monster Swamp' continues the trend of meandering plot threads which dance and intertwine, but rarely actually touch on their way to a singular conclusion. It's pretty clear now that those two guys are angels, and that their attempt to recapture the entity is unsanctioned because they haven't told their superiors that they lost it yet. Jesse has decided that he has the gift in order to save Annville, by hook or by crook. On the other hand, it's still not clear what's going on with Greenacres (I'm going to go out on a limb and guess that they aren't all sweetness and light, because I don't believe that such a thing exists in this sepia toned purgatory) and Quincannon, or that cowboy from episode 2 (even if you know from passing knowledge of the comics who and what he is.) 

Honestly, I don't see this as a problem; it's not that sort of series. Its pacing is odd, but deliberate. It rambles because it means to ramble, not because the makers don't know what they're doing.

Ruff-Ruff, Tweet and Dave

Left to right: Ruff-Ruff, Tweet and Dave

My daughter's latest TV obsession is not, thankfully, Harlan Coban's The Five, but CBeebies' Ruff-Ruff, Tweet and Dave, a brightly coloured, highly repetitive observation game featuring the three title characters - a red dog, a yellow chick who claims to be capable of flight despite the absence of mature primary feathers, and a blue panda who can't teleport* - and their day care minder/imaginary friend Hatty the Hamster.

"Yes, I'm wearing a flower pot. Deal with it."

Each episode, Hatty greets the audience, then visits Ruff-Ruff, Tweet and Dave. They discuss something, then ask Hatty what today's adventure will be. He waves his top hat, which transforms into a more apposite form and pops out a card telling them that they will be going on an adventure directly related to their recent discussion.

The three then jump in their 'rolly-pods' - fancy looking go-carts - and descend from the perilous mesa where they live, followed by Hatty in his bubble copter, and all enter the Spin Again, a spinning top shaped flying machine which whisks them off to some magical land. Here they are faced with a number of problems, and this is where the meat of the show comes in.

From 'A Music-Making Adventure', of course.

At each point of decision or contention, Hatty feels a game coming on, his hat pops out a card in a flurry of gigles and bubbles, and the friends exclaim 'Game time! Game time!'** Hatty asks the question on the card and each of the three suggests an answer. Based on the preceding segment, the viewers are invited to choose which of the three answers is correct. The genius of this is of course that, while they are solving the problem, the children watching only need to pick one of the same three names each time, so there's no stumbling over phrasing or trying to correctly pronounce new words.

Arya is not perfect on this, but she is pretty good, and it does seem to be doing wonders for her observation. In addition to the regular questions, I quizzed her on what each character keeps on their bedside shelf at the end of each episode - a point that is never dwelt on or even mentioned explicitly - and she was three for three.

I'm not going to lie, my point of saturation with Ruff-Ruff, Tweet and Dave is much lower than for, say, Sarah & Duck, but I can dig it, and by pausing the playback I can make sure that she's doing the interaction thing, as well as talking to her about the show, which I try to do anyway.

* I'm colour blind, okay; he looks purple to me. Not that anyone gets me on this one.
** Except the one time that the episode was apparently running long and they didn't, and don't think Arya wasn't all over that little time-saving exercise.

Game of Thrones - 'The Winds of Winter'

It was often noted that Cersei Lannister had a smile that could light up a
building.

And so after ten weeks we come once more to the season finale of Game of Thrones and the start of the waiting and speculating season. 'The Winds of Winter' was a big, extended episode, so I'm likely to stray a little from the precise order of events.

We open on a long, disarmingly sedate montage as the Sparrows gather for the trial of Queen Cersei and Ser Loras Tyrell. There's quite a crowd, but no sign of the Queen Mother joining them in her super-slinky black number, while the Zombie Mountain detains the King. The Grand Maester is murdered by Qyburn's 'little birds' (thanks Game of Thrones, my life was really missing scenes of knife wielding small children swarming like rabid weasels,) and despite an heroic effort by the mortally wounded Brother Lancel a cache of Wildfire is detonated beneath the High Sept of Baelor. Margaery realises in the nick of time how fucked they are, but the High Sparrow refuses to let anyone leave and...

Well, you know how I dubbed the walk of shame in 'Mother's Mercy' as 'causes of the Great King's Landing Fire?'

Called it!

For those keeping score, we can scratch a few names off the card. Margaery and Loras, the High Sparrow, Mace Tyrell, Kevan Lannister... in fact pretty much anyone in King's Landing who wasn't on Team Cersei, which really just leaves Ser Gregor and Qyburn, as while Cersei lords it over the Septa who shamed her and brings in Ser Gregor to do horrible things to her (keeping it classy, Cersei,) Tommen takes a walk out of a window, completely overcome with horror.

Later, when Qyburn shows Cersei her son's body, her reaction is cool and collected, as she orders him burned and his ashes buried in the ruin of the Sept with his grandfather, brother and sister. This is where we see just how broken Cersei has become, numb even to the loss of her last surviving child, where her burning maternal protectiveness was once her sole redeeming feature.

"What do we pay you for?"

Jaime and Bron drop in on the Twins (that's Chez Frey for those who had forgotten, not a kinky assignation, although Jaime does hook Bron up with one of those.) Walder Frey is in fine fettle, although Jaime acidly points out that the Lannisters gave him the Riverlands, and what was the point if they have to swing up every time someone rebels? Jaime is clearly not happy about how things ended up at Riverrun, and in particular finds Walder's scorn for the Blackfish hard to stomach. For all he may have said about just wanting to get back to King's Landing and Cersei and not caring how it happened, it's increasingly clear that Jaime Lannister really would like to be the good guy, however doomed that quest.

Speaking of hard to stomach, not long after Jaime leaves, an unfamiliar serving girl brings Walder a Titus Andronicus special; a pie made from his odious sons. Then she pulls off her face and tells him that she's Arya Stark, and the last thing he will see is a Stark, smiling down at him. And it is, and it's almost as creepy as Cersei.

"You're in the Great Game now, and the Great Game is terrifying."

In Mereen, Danaerys prepares to sail, and breaks the news to Daario that his contract with the show is up. She's leaving him to administer the city and the rest of the renamed Bay of Dragons, in order to appear absolutely divine and regal, and yet and at the same time very pretty and rather accessible to the potential allies who might want to get a marriage in. She then talks to Tyrion, admitting she is scared how easy it was to dismiss Daario. She appoints Tyrion Hand of the Queen, once more proving that she has the rare ability to draw absolute sincerity from him. It's probably the most effective of all the show's shorthands to convey the ineffable air of Targarinity. Hell, it works so well I find myself having to caption that picture with an actual episode quote.

In Dorne, Oleana Tyrell meets with the Sand Snakes to discuss the possibility of revenge. Varys appears and promises her 'fire and blood'.

This season's wow shot comes as Sam and Gilly reach the Citadel in Oldtown.

"It's only a model."

As they approach, they see white ravens streaming from the tower, which aficionados know means that the Starks are officially wrong for the first time in over a decade. They run into trouble with the desk clerk, as Maester Aemon's sickness meant that he never reported the change of Lord Commander, so Sam's letter of introduction is met with skepticism. Also, Gilly and Little Sam are forbidden to pass the front desk, which takes a little from the wonder that is the vast library.

North of the Wall, Benjen drops off Meera and Bran, explaining that while he still fights for the living, he is dead and so can not yet cross the Wall. Bran touches the Night's Watch's weirwood tree and goes back to his vision of the Tower of Joy, following his father into the chamber where Lyanna Stark lies in her 'bed of blood', bleeding out after the delivery of her son by Rhaegar Targaryen: Jon Snow.

"Only the true King of the North denies his regality!"

In the North proper, Jon and Sansa play hot potato with the lordship of Winterfell and Petyr Baelish makes his move on the redhead. She walks away, which is a risky strategy at the best of times, and discusses trust with Jon. As they stand on the wall with snow falling around them, he notes the arrival of the white raven, letting them know that winter is here. There follows a meeting of the lords of the North, where a lot of back and forth about what is and isn't over - and Jon and Sansa's debate - is shortcut when Lyanna Mormont gets up, shames her older, male colleagues and declares for Jon Snow, the King in the North. Despite the recent track record of Kings in the North, this goes down a storm. Sansa seems pleased, but is also aware of Littlefinger staring poison daggers. I would honestly not be surprised to see her assassinate him early in Season 7. Jon may need her newfound savvy, having given the other Red Woman the boot on the basis that she arranged the murder by fire of a child. I can not quibble this decision, however useful she might have proved, and the same would be true of giving Littlefinger the terminal elbow.

"Cue the music."

Danaerys and her armies set out across the sea in the Iron Fleet, while Jaime returns to King's Landing to find Cersei having herself crowned Queen.

Once more, for those keeping score, that's Danaerys, Jon, Cersei, Littlefinger and vaguely Euron Greyjoy, so we're basically back to the whole 'War of Five Kings' situation, just with two of them Queens and one too canny to declare until after he's won. I'm glad we've seen such progress after fifty-five hours and 24 minutes of show, documenting years of in-universe time.

Actually, time is an interesting point here, as we see Arya back in Westeros and Varys not only meeting with Oleanna (itself long enough after the fire for the news to reach Dorne, a message to be sent inviting her to visit, and for her to travel to Dorne from Highgarden,) but back in Mereen in time to join Danaerys' posse as they stare forward from the forecastle of her dragon-prowed flagship. Clearly the action of this episode actually takes place over several weeks, if not months (although note also that the ruins of the Sept are still burning at the end.

It's been a mixed season this one, with the second half eschewing much of the really gratuitous unpleasantness and shock value that dogged the first. It also seemed determined to pare the ensemble down from the massively multiplayer setting of the books to a more manageable number of TV protagonists by getting shot of the characters they didn't have much planned for: Rickon and Osha, the Blackfish, the Boltons, 80% of the named population of King's Landing, and possibly even Walder Frey, although Ramsay and Walder might just have reached their payoff stage. The remaining players are still a very strong collective, although this season's standout was 10 year old newcomer Bella Ramsey, playing the no-nonsense Lyanna Mormont with a grit belying her age.

Season 7 is touted to be seven episodes long instead of ten, perhaps as a result of this truncated line-up, and it will be interesting to see if they do tighten things up now that they've pretty much killed off all the loose ends but Gendry.

Powers - 'The Raconteur of the Funeral Circuit'

Consequences.

In a break from action TV tradition, this episode of Powers deals with consequences. It also makes it clear that incidents like Wolfe's prison break are rare, as the Powers Division holds a wake for the fallen and tempers flare.

Walker is caught between the taste of his old powers and his role as a mundane officer, while some of those who lost partners start to talk about using the drainer to torture Wolfe, or to wipe out the Powers altogether. Meanwhile, Pilgrim's dad, a vice captain, uses the occasion to press the flesh and tell his old stories, acting the life and soul of the funeral while glossing over the parts of his anecdotes where he disappeared large sums of money while his partners' bodies were cooling because of his mistakes. And then there's Hartley, the Iron Man of the setting, getting drunk while he muses on the limits of the drainer. There's Retro Girl, classy and appropriate, and Zora, strictly there on her agent's advice.

Johnny tries to remove the Sway from one of the Simons, but another gives Calista a dose of Sway to unlock the powers she believes she has; whether from kindness or spite is unclear. Meanwhile, just outside the police station, Calista and Krispin - the weirdly preppy kid, who turns out to be the son of Zora's agent and Walker's deceased partner, so I did miss a bunch of stuff in episode 1 - tag the wall and film a car crash caused when a Power tries to stop them. Krispin's online anti-Powers buddy Kaotic Chick doctors the video to look like people were killed and uploads it, to Calista's anger.

Walker and Retro Girl pick Hartley off the floor of the Powers Division's drainer cage. Well into his cup, he tells them that something big is coming; something called Black Swan. Pilgrim breaks with her dad, and then Wolfe announces that he has repented, seeing his evil when his powers were taken, and wants to have them permanently removed.

'The Raconteur of the Funeral Circuit' plays to Powers' strengths, which is to say not showing much in the way of superpowers, but talking about their consequences.

12 Monkeys - 'Hyena'

It's telling how much more with it Jennifer looks when adopting this Patty
Hearst persona.

As promised a few weeks ago, Jennifer takes the fight to the streets, forming her own army named for the natural predator of the monkey - the hyena.

Look, if you're Jennifer it makes sense.

'A wise man once told me, "There are many endings, but the right one is the one you choose."'

Despite cautionary words frmo Jones and Cole, Cassie and Ramse are locked into their new goal: Find Titan, kill the Witness. When Cole goes to ask Jennifer about the third targeted Primary, he agrees to ask her about Titan. She tells him that she doesn't know who the third is, only the Tall Man knows that, and that only death awaits at Titan. For whatever reason, he tells Cassie and Ramse that Jennifer didn't know Titan at all, then sets off to join the younger Jennifer in 2016.

It's Chris Heyerdahl, and he isn't dead by the end of the episode!

Meanwhile, Hannah - or 'Zeit' as Jennifer has always called her - tells Cassie and Ramse that there is a man who might know about Titan; a sort of living database called the Keeper. He is a collector of knowledge and deals only in truth. They set out to find him and get captured and strapped to a polygraph to exchange truth for truth. In particular, he wants to know why they hate each other so much. He rejects Cassie's claim that she hates Ramse because he was willing to let millions die for the sake of his son, and ultimately both admit that they hate each other because at some point Cole has chosen the other over them*. In exchange, the Keeper gives them a heavily redacted document referring to Titan in 1961 East GHermany, and a scientist named Kirschner. Not much, but enough for a mission.

It's like recruiting your paramilitary organisation from mental patients with
antisocial behaviour disorders was a bad idea somehow.

In 2016 (arriving to the strains of the theme tune from the movie version of 12 Monkeys, which is hella weird,) Cole meets the Hyenas, a gang of heavily-armed women with antisocial personality disorders whom Jennifer has liberated from mental institutions to help her take down the Army of the 12 Monkeys. As their leader, Jennifer is a cool, suave revolutionary in control of her surroundings, using a planted cellphone to eavesdrop on the Tall Man and having taken down almost all of Markridge's pague labs. Yet all is not well, and the arrival of Cole immediately creates friction, especially with Jennifer's number two, Vanessa.

The Tall Man is clearly troubled by the Hyena's success. Olivia, alive but wheelchair-bound, reminisces about 'Mother' (not, I think, a shared birth mother, and it's interesting that previously they talked about her father as some sort of founder of the Army) and tells him that the Witness lies, which causes him to flip out and nearly kill her.

Okay; not one of my better theories.

Hmm, the Witness is a manipulative time-traveler with a complicated plan who lies on an almost axiomatic level...

The Hyenas have also tracked down Peters, the scientist who made the virus and whom Cassie told to disappear, which he appears to have done by moving in which his brother and getting a job as a janitor in a hospital. They grab him as he is tinkering with biologicals, and he explains that he is working on a vaccine for the plague virus in secret. The Hyenas want to kill him, but Cole wants to set a trap for the Tall Man so that he can learn the identity of the final Primary. It's after the trap has been set that the Hyenas rebel, deciding that if they kill the Tall Man, everything will be tickety boo. It's not an unreasonable conclusion, given that they don't know about the red forest, although it's reached more as a result of Vanessa's seething resentment of Cole and the fact that the army is held together more by devotion to a charismatic leader and a singular goal than by a robust ideological framework.

Cole and Jennifer escape and capture the Tall Man, torturing him for the information they need in a particularly brutal fashion. It's weird and uncomfortable watching Cole embrace his inner scavenger again, even against his father's killer, but it seems to work in the end. The Tall Man is tough as nails, but finally reveals a) that the final Primary is in upstate New York in 1957, b) that he firmly believes that there is nothing Cole can do to prevent the Paradox, as it has already happened, and c) that he has embraced technology sufficiently to know that he was being bugged and turn the tables on the Hyenas by planting a bomb in the hospital, which kills Peters, the Hyenas and hundreds of innocents. Then one of his goons arrives and he escapes, so all in all a great success.

Cole reassures Jennifer, who is thunderstruck by her actions leading to so many innocent deaths, and he passes on the words of wisdom she related to him at the start of the episode. He heads back to 2044, but almost immediately shows up at the door of the hotel room again, looking pretty messed up.

And in 2044, Hannah and Jones start to bond a little. Jones tells her about her father, and we cut to 2016, where said father - whose previous work was cut off on account of a dead bodyguard showing up in his lab - is recruited by the Tall Man to work on a contingency project so vast they call it Titan.

All in all, 'Hyena' is a very strong episode, both for the action-packed events in 2016 - huge props to Emily Hampshire's performance once again - and the more character-driven developments in 2044. The episode once more kicks our heroes to the curb just as they were starting to get a handle on things. In retrospect the Hyenas were pretty much doomed from the start, but there was enough of a hint that they were the Daughters to be that their death en masse was a shocker. Curiously, despite his supposed ongoing importance, Peters' death caused no temporal ripple, which means that the Army must already have another way of getting their virus back. Perhaps the most baffling thing is that Elliott Jones is somehow involved in creating Titan almost forty years after the date Ramse and Cassie have retrieved. As ever, while much is revealed, most of it is more mystery.

* Actually, some people speculate that the person Cassie cared for who chose Ramse is Aaron, who defected to the Army, and she was certainly pretty steamed already when she confronted him at the original time machine.

The Magicians - 'The Mayakovsky Circumstance'

"Welcome to McBrakebills sir or madam how may I serve you today."
"I'm lovin' it."

Following on from last week, we see what happened to the students after they got goosed.

As a flock, the freshmen fly to the Antarctic, where a near-identical Brakebills house (it's like it's the same set with a blue filter) awaits, along with the possibly insane Professor Mayakovsky, a magician of great power and obscure methodology. He takes away their voices and tasks them to complete a series of spells without incantations, then begins instructing them in mind control, despite the fact that to do so runs against the previously taught ethics of magic (never practice on living beings.) During this time, Quentin and Alice exchange a lot of furtive looks, prompting the Professor to suggest they just screw and get it over with.

After they find it difficult to manage the mind control task, Mayakovsky locks Quentin and Alice out in the snow, forcing them to work out how to shapeshift into foxes. They have fox sex, because turning into stinky verminous carnivores really floats their collective boat, apparently.

Everyone booze up and riot.

Meanwhile, Eliot and Margot are preparing for their annual trip to a sun, sex and sorcery trip to Ibiza, which includes both an opening orgy and presenting gifts to the organising faculty.

Brakebills!

Actually, I should remember when being outraged about Brakebills student-staff relations that, despite being indistinguishable from TV high school students (because TV,) the characters in the show are at least all grad students.

Anyway, to impress the faculty they translate a spell to make magical gin, with help from passing stranger Mike, to whom Eliot takes enough of a shine to provoke uncharacteristic jealousy in Margot. Naturally, it turns out the the spell actually summons a djinn, which impresses on Margot and responds to an unspoken wish that Mike would 'go back where he came from and suck on some other knob' by making him tongue the front door handle. The Magicians gets weird sometimes.

In Antarctica, Mayakovsky tells Penny to lose the anchor tattoo and has him travel around to see where he ends up (home, desert, volcano.) Meanwhile, Penny and Kady reconnect as she lets her mental wards down, but this allows Mayakovsky to see what she's been doing. When they try to steal her one big score to break away from Marina, the Professor stops her and gives her the option to leave instead of going back to Brakebills to face the music and take Penny down with her. He also breaks the news that her mother is dead.

Speaking of that, Julia is picked up by her sister when the police determine she probably didn't make someone's organs liquify, who tells her that she needs to get help or their mother will have her committed to save face.

Actually, despite being quite such a bright blue, it's a moth. My bad.

The freshmen return home, sans Kady. Penny is mad as hell, since the note she left suggested that she just took the thing he nicked for her and scarpered. Quentin thanks Mayakovsky for his teaching. Eliot opts to stay with Mike, but promises Margot that nothing and no-one will come between them, so Margot takes a keen fellow student named Todd to Ibiza. Mike sees a butterfly on a mirror and his eyes glow blue, so that's not good.

The Magicians is kind of weird, you know. It's sometimes sombre, sometimes whacky, and always with this muted colour palette that suggests it ought not to be quite so filled with sight gags about oral sex and humping spell books. Quentin remains a somewhat unengaging lead and I'm not really sure what's going on with Julia. It feels like they're speeding through a lot of material with her in a very short time. Eliot continues to be awesome, and is no longer merely an informed bisexual. I will be deeply saddened if he gets eaten by moths, since it will make the series about 40% less engaging.

Supergirl - 'Better Angels'

"I'm as mad as hell, and I'm not going to take it any more."

Wrapping up this season's run of DC finales (I'm not counting Gotham, which is clearly a different universe,) is Supergirl's 'Better Angels'.

Kara and Robo-Alex fight, with Alex's Kryptonite exoskeleton and sword overwhelming an opponent who really, really doesn't want to hurt her, but thankfully not-dead J'onn drops in with Mama Danvers, who is able to connect with Alex, not only freeing her from Myriad's control, but providing proof of concept for Cat Grant's hail Mary. Supergirl broadcasts her message of hope, and boom, Myriad goes bung. Villains defeated and home for tea and crumpets.

Except that that's all in the first five minutes.

This. Just... this.

Sam Lane rearrests the injured J'onn and Superman remains in a coma and just out of shot for legal reasons. Apparently the show got the rights to occasional name drops, texts from Clark, and use of Superman in long shots, close ups blurred out by lens flare, and boots-only coma shots. Worse than that, Max Lord interrupts a Danvers family moment to tell them that Myriad is in overload and will make every human head on the planet explode in a few hours.

Kara says goodbye without saying goodbye to her friends, knowing that she probably can't take Non and Indigo alone. Fortunately, J'onn is willing to step to the plate, despite his injuries and arrest, and the two of them take on our villains at the wreck of Fort Raz, their base of operations, undetected because the military reactivated its cloaking device when they realised that they couldn't move it. Nice move, Army guys!

I really enjoy this show.

With the fate of the entire planet on the line (for the second time in as many weeks, although I guess they never knew about the multiversal destroyer in The Flash,) Kara and J'onn cowboy up for a desert double showdown: J'onn vs Indigo and Kara vs Non (achievement unlocked: designated girl fight averted.) J'onn takes another stab to the chest, but manages to rip Indigo in half, while Kara pulls out all the stops to pwn Non in Kryptonian eye-beam wrestling, burning out his eyes. Yeah, you read that right. Hot catsuit villain is pulled in two at the waist in a shower of Brainiac pixels and Non's eyes get incinerated. This shit is fucking hardcore.

Learning that the engines on Fort Raz can't be fired without the now defunct Indigo (or possibly at all; it's conceivable she was intending to strand Non on a dead world with her just to spite him for not listening to her earlier,) Kara intends to push it into space, stranding herself without gravity to push against or oxygen to breathe and this is kind of mind blowing, because apparently Kryptonians are earthbound in this continuity. That's kind of huge, as Superman has traditionally swanned around on the Moon without ill effect, flown between worlds, and in the classic Superman movie was apparently able to let Lois breathe in space. Fortunately, Alex is able to fly Kara's pod to save her, J'onn is pardoned by the President, he and Alex are reinstated at the DEO and Hank/J'onn gives a speech about how secrets are the enemy over a montage in which Sam Lane secretly slips Max Lord some alien tech to monkey with.

Well, this season is clearly ending on a happy note with no cliffhanger
whatsoever.

Cat gives Kara a promotion, complete with a new office, and an invitation to write her own job description in lieu of a payrise. She even gets Kara's name right. The extended Supergirl family - minus Clark, of course, although he is awake and texting - meet for dinner at the apartment, James gives Kara his 'favourite Supergirl photo', which is of course of her as Kara, and then another Kryptonian pod crash lands, carrying a cliffhanger ending.

I have really enjoyed Supergirl Season 1. It was a bit awkward at first as it found the right tone and took the anvils off its feminism, but over all it has been pretty kickass. Melissa Benoist's Kara is delightful, and the supporting cast have been a lot of fun. The love triangle was resolved just short of becoming utterly unbearable and OMG Martian Manhunter! I've particularly enjoyed watching the balance of power, with J'onn a strong supporting presence, but never overshadowing Kara. I particularly enjoyed a scene in this episode where Kara delivers to the injured J'onn the forehead kiss which father figures traditionally bestow upon daughters. To get to that from the antagonistic early relationship which morphed into J'onn acting as a superhero mentor without diminishing his character was quite an achievement.

With Wonder Woman on the way and Captain Marvel in the distance, Supergirl has landed DC the first great female superhero of 21st century live action entertainment, and made some amends for Legends of Tomorrow's Hawkgirl being so much the Load.

Game of Thrones - 'Battle of the Bastards'

Another great stride for Westerosi feminism.

So, tonight we have battles.

In Slaver's Bay, the forces of the Masters are besieging Mereen, despite Tyrion's attempts to put a positive spin on his regency. Three representatives come to lord it over Danaerys, but she tells them they are discussing terms for their surrender. They laugh, because they really haven't been paying attention, and she leads a three dragon wedge to burn some Sons of the Harpy and utterly annihilate the Masters' flagship. Tyrion explains that one of the reps will have to die for breaking their word, and when the two 'highborn' try to thrown their lowborn comrade under the dragon bus, Grey Worm kills them instead. Then Yara and Theon turn up, offering their ships, and Danaerys and Yara get flirty about feminism before shaking on their new alliance.

Well, this is going to end well.

Which brings us to the main event, the titular 'Battle of the Bastards', as Jon Snow and his allies move against Bolton-held Winterfell. Outnumbered, Jon offers single combat, which is of course rejected. He ad his advisers plan, and Sansa gets really pissy that he didn't ask her for her opinion. This seems odd, since he doesn't explicitly ask anyone else's opinion either, and she's standing right there all the way through and could have said something at any time. She's also mad that he hasn't waited for more troops, although he has no idea that there might be more coming, because she hasn't told him she asked.

She is spot on that Ramsay is a better manipulator than Jon is, and that there is basically no way they are getting Rickon back alive.

The episode does not skimp on its battle scenes.

Sure enough, the battle begins with Ramsay letting Rickon run towards Jon, before bringing him down with an arrow, thus goading Jon into a foolish charge against his entire army. You can basically see Ser Davos and Tormund beating their heads against the wall as they run in after him.

The two sides' cavalry clash, while Bolton archers pepper the melee with indiscriminate fire. Less willing to hit their allies, Snow's archers and infantry close in, only to be surrounded by Umber footmen with long spears and tall shields, who press in like the walls of a trash compactor. Jon is almost trampled in a final rush to try to fight clear of the Umbers over a literal mountain of corpses, while Tormund is beaten down by Smalljon Umber.

Seriously; no skimping.

And then, at the eleventh hour, the cavalry arrive - again, literally - in the form of the Knights of the Vale. The knights carve through the Umber troops and Tormund turns the tide on the distracted Smalljon, biting his throat out and stabbing him repeatedly in the head.

Ramsay retreats to Winterfell to wait out his enemies, only to discover that giants are a game changer in sieges. Sadly, the terribly injured Wun Wun is at last shot dead by Bolton. Ramsay offers Jon his single combat, bow against sword, but Jon takes the arrows on a shield, runs Ramsay down and beats him bloody. Restraining himself from cold-blooded murder, Jon has Ramsay tied up in the kennels where Sansa looses his own starving dogs on him, teaching Ramsay the ultimate limit of his reign of terror.

And then she walks away. And smiles. Earlier in the episode, Danaerys points out that she, Tyrion, and Yara and Theon are all the children of evil men determined to do better. Sansa's father was the best of men, and she seems to be going the other way. Not that one can entirely blame her, given what she's seen of the world since she was a romantic girl dreaming of marriage to her handsome prince, bounced from one brutal sadist to the next, barely protected by cripples, bastards and broken things, and taught repeatedly that honour, virtue, compassion and goodness are weapons to be used against you.

Oh, and speaking of good men, Ser Davos takes a walk before the battle, discovering two shallow graves, and partly exposed in one of them a burned toy stag. This is likely to end badly for someone, but whether Ser Davos or the Red Woman remains to be seen.

The Musketeers - 'Spoils of War'

NuMusketeer - Way more metal.

After a long break, The Musketeers are back for one final season of derring do and buckling swashes.

WAR!

Sorry. Yes, France and Spain are at war after the whole Rochefort double agent queen ravishing and just about everyone spending time on the block farrago, and Athos, Porthos and D'Artagnan are on the front lines being goddamn manly. Aramis is not, however, having followed through on his promise to God and taken orders, or at least preparing to. It turns out that the Abbot of his monastery is keeping him at lay minister and orphan-teacher level until he can get over himself enough to stop yearning for battle and let his beard get at least a little scraggly.

This is not suitably humble facial topiary for a man of God.

The Musketeers pull victory from the slavering jaws of defeat when they destroy a Spanish gun emplacement without artillery support, due to the delay of their ammunition supplies. Said supplies are then swiped by a band of mercenaries led by one of the primary villains of the season, a brooding fellow named Grimaud who gets framed with ravens and appears and disappears in the fog like he's some sort of freaking wizard. Athos spots him on the battlefield right about when he's kidnapping their general to help with the heist, and there seems to be some sort of recognition there.

There's no explicit link, but I'm already thinking of him as
'Dark Athos'.

Back in Paris, a newly fancified Treville is first minister, leaving his chief of staff, Constance, to manage the Musketeer garrison and trying to keep his cadets out of trouble with the Red Guard, under their new leader Philippe, Marquis de Feron and governor of Paris, played by Rupert Everett with a heavy, sagging face, lank, black hair, a severe limp and a painkiller dependency, all of which suggest total evilness. He is, it emerges, the King's sort-of-acknowledged bastard half-brother, and thus entirely trustworthy. He is also, it seems, moonlighting as a racketeer and fight club organiser, and effectively ruling Paris as his own fiefdom as long as the King is too busy spoiling 'his' son rotten to take an interest.

Evil.

Grimaud take the stolen weapons to a nearby monastery to await his Spanish buyers. He murders the Abbot just to prove his evil cred, and rounds up the monks while Aramis gets the war orphans out of the way. A young lad named Luke who dreams of war and all kind of reveres the Musketeers has a beef with Aramis for being too timid. He makes a break for it after ringing the bells, and meets up with the other Musketeers, on the trail of the weapons. Luke leads them in via a secret tunnel and they are reunited with Aramis, to the delight of all except Porthos, who is clearly feeling a bit abandoned by his wingman.

The Musketeers help Aramis to get the monks and orphans clear of the monastery in a massively truncated Great Escape sort of deal. Some of the mercenaries catch up with them, but Aramis proves he's still got the stuff, enabling to bond with his difficult pupil before heading back to mend bridges with Porthos by helping him steal a cart full of weapons and blow up a bridge.

The King makes the mistake of thinking that he can rock a
Van Dyke as well.

Back in Paris, Constance, Treville and Cadet Redshirt (who is totally going to die in about episode eight to signal that shit has got real, probably at the same time that Feron manages to get Constance arrested on some trumped up charge of being competent while female) set fire to the uniforms of Red Guards using a bath house in order to humiliate them and level the playing field after a number of cadets have been hammered in Feron's fight clubs. It's weirdly Revenge of the Nerds.

The Musketeers, including Aramis, report back to Treville, apart from D'Artagnan who goes to 'report back' to his wife by dropping his gear all over the floor and letting her catch him half-naked in a bathroom. I'm more than half convinced he must have been standing at the sink, washing his hands for like an hour and a half waiting for her to get in.

Fancy.

Treville reassigns the Musketeers back to Paris to counter Feron's machinations, to which Feron is all 'snark, snark, rickety old losers.' Feron, if I've not communicated this adequately, is a dick. He is also, just in case we had any doubt, working with Grimaud for reasons of, as far as we can tell so far, evil.

'Spoils of War' brings the Musketeers back to our screens in a high budget spectacular, with battle scenes, explosions and just way more homoerotic tension than previous seasons. Seriously, for a series about the manly camaraderie of men in tight leather, The Musketeers has always been rather modest in its subtext, but Feron, Grimaud and the captain of the Red Guard are significantly tense and there's definitely something more loaded betwixt Porthos and Aramis since the separation.

9th-level Seamstress/Fighter

I definitely approve of the fact that there's some actual character progression on display. Perhaps Aramis's doesn't stick, but D'Artagnan is more completely part of the gang, Constance is settling in as Musketeer den mother and Treville is delightfully out of his element as First Minister of France. Our new villains are all pretty strong, with Grimaud in particular verging on the preternatural, although yet to be tested in combat against our heroes. Feron drops neatly into the same groove as Richelieu as the all-but-untouchable powermonger, while Grimaud is obviously the more direct threat. He also has a certain physical resemblance to Athos and comes from the same sort of background as Porthos, so there may be some interest there.

Notably, Mamie McCoy is (at least for now) out of the credits, so no idea if or how Milady might appear again.

Arrow - 'Lost in the Flood' and 'Schism'

Malcolm Merlin ups his game in the quest to claim the title 'father of the
year.'

Heading into the last two episodes of Arrow Season 4, we find the team more than usually fractured.

Thea manages to get a message out before Malcolm recaptures her and gives her the yellow pill. Oliver and Diggle prove no match for the nuclear-powered Darhk, but he leaves them alone to die in fire wallowing in their failure to prevent his glorious yadda yadda yadda.

Felicity manages to backtrace the message from Thea and they find the entrance to the 'ark', where Lonnie is still seeking his revenge and Darhk has recruited Felicity's ex Cooper Seldon to reactivate Rubicon. Curtis drops in to help out, and despite early advances by Seldon is able to exploit a security lockdown to jam Rubicon indefinitely with what is essentially a DDOS attack. Curtis's reaction to realising that Noah is that Noah Cutler is priceless, and in fact Curtis is a champ in an episode which threatens to get way angst-ridden.

Soooo awkward.

Thea is brainwashed, but only for a while, and after a confrontation with a family living in the ark, who explain that Darhk gave them the only hope they had ever know, while all Green Arrow and especially Spartan (Diggle being in a bad place) have brought is fear. Perhaps to counter this, they go all out to stop Lonnie murdering the family Darhk and blowing up the Ark. Unfortunately they kind of screw that one up, Ruve Adams is stabbed with an arrow Lonnie pulls out of his arm and a stray arrow triggers a cascading, catastrophic failure in the dwarf star alloy power systems they nicked from Ray Palmer. It is, however, our heroes who lead the evacuation.

Donna Smoak gets tetchy about Felicity's double life, which is a bit rich as it emerges that Noah didn't walk out on them, Donna walked out on him, taking Felicity with her. Maybe she was right about him, but it's still yet another of those big old secrets that haunt the Arrowverse. Anyway, she convinces Noah to leave Felicity alone, which proves less than helpful when Darhk shows up, steals the jamming laptop and kicks everyone's butts until Thea threatens to fillet his daughter.

Okay, it's super weird how much of this episode happens during the daytime.

Which brings us crashing into 'Schism', in which nuclear Armageddon is on again. Perhaps I'm jaded from The Flash's multiversal megabomb gambit, but this one never really feels... serious. Perhaps its because we know that a) the world will not end in fire, as there are now four series in the CW DCverse picked up for another season, even if they don't find a way to transit Supergirl to Earth-1. Zoom's threat seemed more real since at worst he would have wiped out the multiverse leaving Earth-1 untouched or possibly triggering a crisis.

Oliver gets some inspiration from Felicity and Curtis and then gives a big speech on a car to call the city back from the brink of mass hysteria. The lair - including Felicity's computers - is shot up by Ghosts, but with a little help from Malcolm 'YoYo' Merlin they regroup and split into teams. Thea and Merlin take Felicity to confront Seldon, while John holds the fort and Oliver goes after Darhk with his newly restored sense of hope. Felicity talks Seldon down and he gets remote-killed by Darhk, but together with a mob of citizens and former Genesis devotees, Oliver nullifies Darhk's magic and battles the ghosts, ultimately defeating and killing the leader of Hive, having realised that he is just too dangerous to capture.

Absent friends.

John and Thea both contemplate their threatening of civilians and declining sense of self, and head off to work out who they are. Diggle rejoins the military; less sure about Thea. Oliver is also unsure, but Felicity tells him that is because of who is is. He is a person in schism, both the killer and the bringer of hope; the Hood and the Green Arrow. Fired from the police, Lance heads off with Donna, leaving just Oliver and Felicity (and Curtis, perhaps) in Star City to hold the fort. In a final twist, Oliver gets a new way to bring hope, as he is sworn in as interim mayor of Star City.

'Lost in the Flood' and 'Schism' manage to pull together the central theme of Season 4 - hope defeats death - but don't quite manage to escape from the fact that the season as a whole was uneven. A big part of that has been the rocky character writing. While individual moments have been good, consistency has been lacking. By the end of 'Schism' Felicity is apparently completely over... everything. The weirdness with her father, with Oliver, with having indirectly been part of choosing which tens of thousands of people died, is apparently forgotten. Likewise, while Thea's trauma over 'creating' Lonnie Machen is powerfully played, when he's not onscreen it sort of gets forgotten.

The re-re-destruction of the lair, the mass departure and Oliver's enmayoring all point to a bit of a soft reboot for Season 5, so hopefully they'll pull it together, and finally wrap up the goddamn flashbacks as well. Oh yeah, flashbacks. Tiana gets all glowy-eyed and vengeance obsessed because she's drawing power from the idol without protective tats. She kills Reiter, but tells Oliver to kill her before she goes nutso. Then he calls Amanda Waller for a brief cameo before setting out to fulfill his promises to Tiana, become a senior member of the Bratva and get back to the island in time for Season 1.