The Librarians - '... and the Reunion of Evil'

Ezekiel is left holding the baby...

I'm now two episodes behind on watching The Librarians and three on reviews, so let's fix the latter at least.

In The Librarians '...and the Reunion of Evil', Jake and Cassie are on a mission to retrieve a powerful mystical gem from a glacier. They get into fight with an unidentified rival collector, and when Cassie busts out the magic to help with the extraction, the Gem of Angrboda becomes lodged in her chest, which surely can't be good. Meanwhile, back at the Library, Eve and Jenkins entrust Ezekiel with caring for the Loch Ness Monster's egg, as part of Eve's drive to push the Librarians to be more than they are in case she isn't around some day.

Grounded by a blizzard, Jake and Cassie head for shelter in a mountain hotel and are obliged to pretend to be part of a convention, which turns out to be a reunion of disaster-causing, body-snatching Frost Giants. Jake has fun blending in during the drinking and boasting parts of the act, but when it becomes apparent that a) they are here for the Gem and b) that Cassandra glows when the Gem is named, they try to book, only for the rival collector to appear and turn out to be the Frost Giant that Jake is impersonating.

...while Jake and Cassie get the cold shoulder.

Bound for human sacrifice, Jake - who has been arguing against the use of magic all episode - uses his allowed final words to urge Cassie to go for it. They break loose, and despite some trouble focusing the doors make a spectacular escape with the Gem, presumably dealing a serious blow to the Giants ability to cause chaos in the world.

Baby Nessie hatches and is adorable, and the question of whether magic is good or bad is left up in the air. I like that the show is remaining ambiguous about the use of magic, with neither side clearly wrong or right. Magic is useful, but it is dangerous; Cassie is somewhat shooting in the dark, but that's in part because Jenkins won't let her access any resources to guide her learning. Otherwise, this is a fun episode which continues to foreshadow some manner of major upset in the series.

MVL of the Week

It's a tough call this week, with both Jake and Cassie getting their share of good moments. Ultimately, I'm calling this one for Jake, both for recognising the value of Cassie's magic in a pinch, and for sticking to his concerns after the fact: "It's the 'not bad' parts that make people think the 'bad' parts really aren't that bad. It's dangerous. Yeah, magic got us out of trouble today. But it's also what put is in it, too."

The Flash, Arrow and Legends of Tomorrow - 'Invasion!'

Believe it or not, this is not a good thing.

So, there was 'Medusa', and now we begin the real-deal; the mega-crossover of the four CW DC shows with episodes of The Flash, Arrow and Legends of Tomorrow all entitled 'Invasion!'(1)

Barry's contemplation of unemployment is interrupted when a space ship crash lands in the park during HR's 'STAR Labs Museum' presentation and a bunch of super-strong aliens known to Lila as 'Dominators' go rushing off into the shadows. Lacking experience in this field, Barry recruits help. First Oliver, John and Thea - the latter coming out of retirement, because aliens, right - from Star City, then Sara, Stein, Jax, Ray and Mick from the Legends, leaving Nate and Amaya to mind the Waverider. Finally, with help from the recalcitrant Cisco, he breaches the dimensional barrier and brings Kara across from Earth-38. Meanwhile, the President is kidnapped by aliens and a mysterious and very senior agent tells Lila she ought not to cross him by trying to deal with the situation.

Bloody aliens and their mind control. It's like X-COM all over again.

The team quickly runs into trouble when Oliver nominates Barry for project lead, but has to prompt him on just about everything, which at least prevents Barry from formulating any plans. Oliver suggests that they train against Supergirl. He asks her not to hold back and she doesn't, basically trouncing everyone in short order, because Supergirl.

Then Stein and Jax share the recording of future Barry, which it turns out warns them not to trust current Barry on account of his Flashpoint shenanigans. They agree to keep it secret until after the crisis, but Cisco spills the beans because he's understandably pissed that people just keep on giving Barry a break when he screws up. Learning that his attempt to save his family killed Cisco's brother, disappeared Sara Diggle(2) and all sorts, everyone except Oliver, who arguably has something of a vested interest in promoting a forgiving attitude to major fuckups, decides they don't want to work with him, instead going in without Barry or Oliver, which results in badness. The team have no real cohesion, Mick insists on calling Kara 'Skirt', the President gets vaporised and the team all get mind controlled into attacking the supergroup's temporary HQ.

Fortunately, Oliver is able to hold off the others while Barry goads Kara into chasing him and inadvertently blasting the mind control device. Unfortunately, POTUS is still in the wind, as it were(3), and moreover John, Sara, Ray, Thea and Diggle are almost immediately teleported away to who know's where.

Uh-huh.

Well, 'where' turns out to be a blissful, sun-drenched Starling City, where Oliver is about to marry Laurel Lance and take a job at Queen Consolidated, Thea is a successful nightclub owner, Sara is back in town for the wedding, Ray Palmer is engaged to Felicity Smoak, who moonlights as the assistant to the vigilante known as the Hood, aka John Diggle. Malcolm Merlyn is a good family friend, although sadly Tommy couldn't get away from his work as a doctor in Chicago(4).

Did we mention this is also their 100th episode of Arrow?

Gradually, the captives all become aware that something is wrong with their world and remember reality. Meanwhile, Felicity brings in Barry, Kara and Cisco to assist NTA in locating the missing team members. They take down a doctor with tech-based electrical powers to retrieve a component - and give Kara and Barry a chance to prove to Wild Dog that they aren't just fronting on being heroes - in order to link to a piece of alien machinery and find their friends... in outer space.

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

The captives, with varying degrees of reluctance - Thea in particular is very tempted to remain - decide to break out through the one incongruous structure in the city; the Smoak Technologies tower. They fight their way past basically every major villain they could get back for a cameo and escape into the alien ship, then into a shuttle, and are finally rescued by the Waverider.

Back at home, Stein also realises that the young woman he has been remembering since interacting with his younger self, the one that he is certain that he loves, is not some trophy wife; she is his daughter. This is pretty traumatic for him, since he never had children before. The problem is compounded when Stein begins working on a nanotech solution to the invasion and Caitlin naturally brings in Lily Stein to help, since she's a brilliant nanotechnologist (and happens to share a lot of Caitlin's style.)

Abomination!

Moving up into the finale, Mick, Nate and Amaya take Cisco and Felicity back in time to kidnap a Dominator from the first encounter where a small force of the aliens wiped out an army unit in Oregon in 1951. They themselves quickly get abducted, however, when a creepy government agent bags them and the alien and begins torturing the Dominator. Felicity and Cisco break the team out and they rescue the Dominator, unwilling to allow anything to be tortured. In thanks, the same Dominator in 2016 tells Cisco that they are here for Barry. They see metas as a threat, and Barry's temporal shenanigans are more than they can overlook. Therefore they are going to wipe out the metahuman population with a special bomb that is... kind of selective, but not very.

The creepy senior agent - who is creepy goverment agent from 1951 all growed up - insists that Earth will keep to its treaty with the Dominators whatever happens, but as Stein allows himself to bond with Lily, they create a device that will cause intense pain to a Dominator. In a final showdown, the team fight the invaders while Supergirl - to whom Oliver was earlier a complete dick - and Barry slap devices on all the Dominators on the planet, while Firestorm transmutes the meta-bomb into water. The Dominators bug out and its home for medals and champagne (literally; the new President attends the celebration to hand out secret gongs and creepy agent is sent off to Alaska.) Kara is given a dimension-hopper and everyone goes home.

This is a top-ten answer to the question 'you and whose army?'

'Invasion!' is a hell of a thing. It's not as joyous as 'World's Finest', because virtually nothing is, but it's a pretty solid, if atypical, adventure. By modifying the team in each show they make sure that everyone does something and the screen is never over full. By changing the pace for a slower second act, it keeps the action and drama from outstaying its welcome. It mixes and matches the teams well, with the only real false note being Oliver's sudden dickishness to move Kara out of the middle act of Legends of Tomorrow. The crossover also serves to restore people's faith in Barry; even Cisco, who realises that with the best will in the world, he changed things when he went back in time. I'm not ready to forgive him for Sara, however, and if Stein is later forced to go through with his original plan of erasing Lily from the world, I'm going to cut a fool. Figuratively speaking.

And yes, Kara is OP. Of course she's OP; she's Supergirl.

(1) Yes; with the exclamation mark.
(2) I'm not letting this one go either.
(3) Because he's a vapour. Too soon?
(4) Ah; actor's new job humour.

Supergirl - 'Medusa'

"Are you all shipping me with Mon-el?"

Alien diseases and soap opera abound in this week's installment of Supergirl, 'Medusa'.

Alex tries to come out to her mother and friends at Thanksgiving, and to keep James and Winn from stealing her thunder by coming out as Guardian and his man in the van, although in the end it all gets interrupted and Eliza's big take away from the dinner is that Mon-el and Kara make a cute couple, and I guess it's time that our female lead began defining herself by her romantic life again and James and Winn got to be pissy, jealous man-children. Okay, granted I'm envisioning a worst case scenario here; work with me, it's my buffer against disappointment.

Mon-el is exposed to a virus called Medusa that Hank Henshaw stole from the Fortress of Solitude and released in the alien bar. Kara discovers that the virus is Kryptonian, and learns - once she gets past her hacked robot butler - that her father created it to be used in defending Krypton. The virus is lethal to all non-Kryptonians (except for humans; presumably Cadmus altered it for that one,) and Cadmus plan to aerosolise it worldwide. Eliza is tasked with finding a cure while Kara fights off an attempt by Cyborg Superman to steal a reagent from L-Corp. She saves Lena's life, but Lena rebuffs her when she tries to convince her that her mother is evil, and opts to side with Lillian and hand over the reagent.

During the middle of the episode, Mon-el kisses Kara, perhaps thinking that he's dying, and despite earlier implying that shah; he can do better. It's all a bit rushed and meh, which is not something I would say about Alex's eventual coming out, which Chyler Leigh and Helen Slater nail. Alex's fear that her mother will be disappointed that she doesn't have a 'normal life' is such a believable fear, as is a scene where she admits to Maggie that she started to wonder if it was all about Maggie, before realising that this is all about her; that this is her normal.

Kara and Hank confront Lena and Lillian. Kara chases a missile and J'onn embraces his transfused White Martian DNA to give Cyborg Superman the kicking of a lifetime. David Harewood is chewing the scenery somewhat as J'onn flips out, but makes up for it with his 'well, fuck me then' expression as Hank sees the alien 'monster' actually become one. Kara fails to stop the missile, but does deliver an epic KO teamup hit on Hank. Luckily, it also turns out that Lena doped the reagent and called the cops, because she's dramatically quixotic that way. The day is saved, Lillian is arrested, but Hank escapes.

"Wanna do a crossover?"

A couple of times through the episode, a wobbly hole in space appears, and in the stinger Barry Allen and Cisco Ramone emerge in Kara's loft. Barry tells her that they need her help.

'Medusa' frankly fails to deliver on the 'four-episode crossover' front, and has far more Kara/Mon-el than I like, which is to say any. I'll say again that I don't believe that Kara needs a love interest. It doesn't help that moving to super-powered white bread Mon-el from black everyman James Olsen has unfortunate implication both in terms of racism and exceptionalism(1), but more than that, Mon-el is a jerk and nothing we've seen so far suggests that Kara woudl go for the bad boy type. I can see the two making really good friends, but it feels that a romance would require one of them to make character-breaking compromises, and it would be bad if that were Mon-el and just awful if it were Kara.

(1) It smacks of the mentality that insists on pairing Superman and Wonder Woman in alternate continuities because they're a match in power(2). I far prefer that arm's length Wondie/Bats relationship in the old Justice League cartoon.
(2) Unless you're Frank Miller and think that Wondie should be a snarling man-hater unless tamed by Supes' godlike force, and I really hope for your sake that you're not.

A Brief History of Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency

The shiny brass plaque of
professionalism.

"Let us think the unthinkable, let us do the undoable, let us prepare to grapple with the ineffable itself, and see if we may not eff it after all."

- Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency, Douglas Adams
In his brief half-century of life, the writer Douglas Adams produced both less than one might imagine given the depth of his influence on western SF culture, and more than a lot of people know. A good fifty percent of his actual published writing and at least ninety of his enduring legacy is encompassed by the multi-media, multi-canoned Hitch-Hiker's Guide to the Galaxy franchise, and a good deal of the rest (of the former, if not the latter) by the two novels and incomplete fragments of the third in the Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency series.

An odd beast, the original novel is a mash-up of two Doctor Who scripts - Shada, which was never completed due to industrial action, and City of Death, which was filmed in Paris as a cheap holiday for the cast or something and is remembered as one of the all-time classics - with all-new characters save only for Professor Chronotis, an eccentric and possibly immortal Cambridge academic whose rooms are in fact a time machine. Central to the narrative is Dirk Gently - originally named Svlad Cjelli - a self-styled holistic detective whose method of solving crimes by seeking the interconnectedness of all things closely resembles a mixture of grotesque emotional manipulation and dumb luck. He returned in a sequel, The Long Dark Tea-Time of the Soul and a third novel, The Salmon of Doubt was at the work in progress stage when Adams died, although it is telling of the weight of his own legacy that he had expressed doubts as to whether it wasn't actually another HitchHiker novel.

Thus the entirety of the Dirk Gently series was a pair of modestly received novels with way, way more ideas than either story or character. Not to say that they were bad, although in truth I've never got on with Adams' novels as well as I have his screen and radio writing; something about the pace of reading makes the flaws in his characters - and especially his female characters, although fair play, Kate Schechter in Tea-Time is one of his better efforts - that little bit more glaring perhaps.

The Electric Monk is one of many key concepts dropped from
most other adaptations.

It took a long time for Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency to get adapted, but by heck it's making up for lost time now. First up, namesake Dirk Maggs came off his adaptation of the remaining Hitch-Hiker novels on a high and went straight into producing a radio adaptation of the two novels starring Harry Enfield as Dirk Gently (and the late Andrew Sachs as Professor Chronotis, which is slightly disconcerting as he played the villainous Skagra in the audio revival of Shada, who murders that version of Professor Chronotis, a retired Time Lord.) Debuting in 2007, twenty years after the publication of the novel, to a mixed reception, I personally felt that they did an excellent job of capturing the feel of the novels, and in fact it was only on listening that I really understood how the end of the first novel worked(1).

It was intended that the same crew would then tackle The Salmon of Doubt, but for Reasons(TM) it never happened. Either causally or consequentially, Dirk Maggs left Above the Title Productions to found his own production company, and I guess that Above the Title was left with the rights to the third series, but not the driving force.

The property then languished for all of two years, before BBC4 hit us with Dirk Gently, a pilot for a proposed series starring Stephen Mangan as Gently. This series departed dramatically from the novel in a number of ways, not least by making the bemused everyman character Richard Macduff almost as much of a dick as Gently himself, as well as removing Professor Chronotis, the Electric Monk and about eighty percent of the hardcore weirdness and front and centering Gently's secretary's pathological fixation on her employer in a way that, astonishingly, resulted in a worse-written female character than the one in the novel. There was also a bleakness to it that seemed at odds with a certain sense of wonder, or at least the search for wonder in a life that insists on making marvels commonplace, that feels key to Dirk Gently as a character.

In the series Dirk Gently, Dirk Gently runs a
holistic detective agency.

Once more speaking purely from my own perspective, I was not a fan of the pilot, although I felt that the series was improving before it got canned after three episodes, pulling in ideas from the two novels and removing some of the antagonism from the Macduff/Gently relationship to make the characters a little less abrasive. The overall response was positive, but not enough for BBC4 to overcome the BBC's natural and deep-seated aversion to producing non-Doctor Who SF programming. There's something fundamental in the BBC psyche that seems to insist that SF and fantasy programing is intrinsically silly and shouldn't be taken seriously, with the result that the Corporation produces almost nothing in these fields that is not on some level parody, and if it does will ensure that such programmes are derided as 'trashy fun' at best in their official listings magazine.

But you know who isn't ashamed of making SF? That's right; America. Thus it is that Dirk Gently has been exported, courtesy of IDW Publishing, who began running their Dirk Gently comic strip in 2015 and collaborated with BBC America and Netflix to bring him back to the screen in 2016, this time played by jobbing thesp Samuel Barnett. It is notable that in both media, Gently remains unassailably British (of possibly Transylvanian extraction,) although they are set in the US. Apparently something about the character resists characterisation as anything but a middle-class white Brit. Fair play, Barnett manages to combine wholesome and creepy to great effect. The rest of the cast are right at home in the new territory, however, and the original supporting cast are gone along with the matching plots.

That hair though...

Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency is an eight-part serial, in which Dirk teams up with Todd, a downtrodden bellhop played by Elijah Wood, to investigate the murder of a billionaire, the disappearance of his daughter and all manner of associated weirdness. It has time travel, body-swapping, gunfights, a holistic assassin who follows the same pattern of beliefs as Dirk, but is possessed of a deep certainty that the world guides her to kill those who need to be killed in some way, and a shark in the body of a kitten. Once more then, the original story is jettisoned, and the writing style is sufficiently different to that of the original that it is really glaring when they drop in something lifted directly. The series casts Gently as one of a number of individuals with a unique and erratic connection with fate, which is rarely of any great advantage to him, but which he hopes may be of help to others. He's younger in spirit and less cynical than earlier incarnations, with his constant manipulation due more to deeply flawed social skills and possible autistic tendencies(2). Todd is an intensely dislikable character, which provides little contrast with Gently, but is worked for an effective antagonism as both work towards their eventual redemption.

Of course, I'm not sure that redemption really suits Gently; it sort of hinges on a sense of shame that the original character certainly never showed much sign of, given his struggles with guilt in The Long Dark Tea-Time of the Soul. I'm also dubious as to whether British absurdist SF benefits from gun battles, and vice versa. I didn't hate the series, but it feels as if - and the same is true of Dirk Gently - it's not actually Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency so much as a very different thing using a lot of the same ideas.

In the series Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective
Agency, Dirk Gently does not run a holistic
detective agency.

I miss the original storylines in the TV versions, and what replaces it never has quite the same timbre of weirdness; that is, they're weird, but it's their own kind of weirdness, in an adaptation of a novel whose native brand of weirdness feels at least as intrinsic to the work as any of the characters. Neither series has been terrible, but neither series has been, deep down, Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency because neither of them has, deep down, really had a Dirk Gently to its name.

Dirk Gently was born as a human expee of the Doctor, and perhaps as a result is almost as hard to get a solid handle on as the Time Lord himself. It's hard to say why some Doctors work for us and some don't, but we all(3) have distinct ideas about when a Doctor 'isn't quite right'. I'm not sure that there is yet a definitive interpretation of Gently. They all have something, but none of them have everything. Enfield was excellent, but ultimately lacked a final quality of essential vigor, perhaps a consequence of picking a proven comic talent over an untried youth. Mangan's Gently was as coolly manipulative as any Sherlock, but more obsessive in his pursuit of answers than driven by an often-inappropriate joie de vivre in discovery. Barnett's is more of an enigma, even to himself, and probably the most complex of the bunch, possibly even including the novels, which are as I say notable move for complexity of ideas than of character. The thing of it is... Dirk Gently is not a character who is an enigma to himself, at least not knowingly so. Anyone who can pursue investigations by following random strangers and have the neck to charge for it can't be consciously harbouring any serious doubts as to their calling.

For myself, and for what it's worth, I would rate the various media as follows:

1. The radio series. I like audio, and I like Adams on audio especially.
2. The novels. I know it may be sacrilege, but see above re me and Adams' novels.
3. Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency.
4. Dirk Gently. 

(1) It helps to know that 'Kubla Khan' is a fragment, but Adams himself has admitted to not being able to quite fit the end together when he went back to it.
(2) It's not explicit, and there are few people - even fewer in fiction - who don't fit one or more criteria or definitions of autism.
(3) All encompassing here the particular subset of Doctor Who fans.

Class - 'Nightvisiting', 'Co-Owner of a Lonely Heart', 'Brave-ish Heart', 'Detained', 'The Metaphysical Engine, or What Quill Did' and 'The Lost'

Well, that didn't take so long, did it.

The first season of Class is not long, and having missed it until close to the end I had to kind of spam it before iplayer cut me of.

'Nightvisiting' sees the dead coming back to visit the living, not as ghosts but as the puppets of a tentacular entity that feeds on loss. Tanya's dad is played by Kobna Holbrook-Smith, who reads the Rivers of London books for audio. This episode also sees the genesis of a relationship between Ram and April, and Mathieuz moving in with Charlie (and Quill.) It's a strongly acted episode, which serves to strengthen the team bond and at the same time push Quill further to the outside.

We follow this with a two-parter - 'Co-Owner of a Lonely Heart' and 'Brave-ish Heart' - in which the Shadowkin strive to reclaim their King's heart from April, but only succeed in strengthening the bond, causing April to grow shadowy scimitars and menace her estranged father, who has just been released from prison after nearly killing her and her mother as a byproduct of a vehicular suicide attempt.In the end she travels to the world of the Shadowkin through the rift and defeats the King to take his place. On Earth, however, a plague of carnivorous blossoms threatens all life, and the Governors - represented by the new headteacher - try to pressure Charlie into using the Cabinet of Souls to destroy them. Fortunately, April's new army of Shadowkin do the business before being dismissed and ordered to destroy all paths to Earth.

In 'Detained', the team are locked in during detention and then isolated by an alien prison meteorite which forces them all to confess their deepest guilty secrets, which pretty much ends them as a team and puts the mockers on Ram and April's relationship when they both affirm that he loves her more than she loves him. Its okay as bottle episodes go, but at the same time Quill is darting through imaginary places to get her control parasite removed in 'The Metaphysical Engine, or What Quill Did'. This is a strong episode, benefiting from the focus on Quill, who is if not the most interesting of the characters, by far the most fun.

Finally, in 'The Lost' the Shadow King uses his connection to April to launch an invasion, first murdering those close to his previous thwarters, including Ram's father and Tanya's mother. with no other way to save Earth, Charlie opens the Cabinet of Souls, unleashing the spirits of the Rhodian race to sacrifice themselves in destroying the Shadowkin. Charlie himself is saved, but April is killed taking the Shadow King with her, until suddenly the Shadow King sits up and speaks with April's voice.

The series was, in the end, surprisingly short. It was far stronger than Torchwood's freshman year, although the final revelation that the Governors are planning for 'the Arrival' on behalf of the realy-good-once Weeping Angels is a Hail Mary and a half. While the monsters of the week were hit and miss, and the Shadowkin lost most of their punch after the pilot, the characters really made the series work. While Quill was the stand out with her non-human bluntness, the younger characters were convincing, well-acted and relatable, with realistic relationships in unrealistic situations. 

DC Catchup: The Flash - 'Shade' and 'Killer Frost'; and Legends of Tomorrow - 'Compromised' and 'Outlaw Country'

"Don't let the robed followers and creepy mask fool you; I'm a solid guy."

We continue my epic, two week DC catchup with The Flash.

In 'Shade', Barry must contend with a metahuman apparently composed of pure shadow. Shade is hella lame, serving primarily as a backdrop and distraction as Wally begins to have the Flashpoint dreams and Caitlin continues to Frost out, not helped by Cisco vibing the future and seeing the two of them engaged in a superpower showdown. Did I mention that I'm not a fan of this predestined to be evil thing? Also, the fact that the team is still being pulled apart by secrets, because my god people can you not learn from your repeated mistakes in this area? Seriously; I want to get Grover and Big Bird in to give these clowns a few rudimentary life lessons, 'cause damn.

Half-saveloy, half-guitar. Definitely not Sauron.

Anyway, Wally gets mad because Joe doesn't seem to trust him with powers. Joe has a fair point that it's different than for Barry because Alchemy is involved and we all know that he's up to some shit, especially when Barry explains what happened to Flashpoint Kid Flash. Eventually, Wally makes good, suggesting that they let him go to Alchemy and track him. This leads to a confrontation. Alchemy's laser stick is broken and when Wally picks up his magic rock he is encased in a pillar of stuff. Alchemy assures them that they do not know what they have done, just as an invisible speed monster attacks and pins Barry to the ceiling, announcing itself as Savitar, God of Speed.

So... It's another, even eviller speedster. Whoop. And cliffhanger.

"Don't make me cut a bitch."

When Barry gets his arse predictably pummeled by Savitar - named, we are told, for a Hindu god of motion - it falls to Caitlin and Cisco to rescue him, with Caitlin thus falling prey to her crazy, pale-eyed alter ego in the opening section of 'Killer Frost'. Angry that Cisco pushed her to reveal her secret before she was ready, Caitlin drops Barry in it by revealing that Cisco's brother was alive before Flashpoint.

The rest of the team go after Alchemy by tracking his cult, but they are more scared of Alchemy than the cops, and more scared of their 'Dark Lord'(1) than of his prophet. Caitlin breaks into the precinct to try and muscle the location of Alchemy so that he can take away her powers (assuming he can even do that without turning her into a paediatric opthalmologist) and ends up abducting Julian for... reasons. Flash comes to pick her up and talk her down, knocking out Julian in the process. He's able to bring Caitlin out from behind the Frost, but Julian only agrees to cover for her if Barry quits as CSI, because he doesn't believe that forensic analysis is a good match with moral relativism. As much as he's depicted as an arse, I actually find it quite refreshing that someone is willing to call Barry on his bullshit, where most other people eventually just forgive him to get that woobie look off his inoffensive face.

Of course, he's also Alchemy... or something. Savitar speaks to him and urges him to become Alchemy again and he's got the costume in the lab, but... I don't know. Something about the exchange suggested to me that Julian hasn't been Alchemy for a while, and I wonder if there isn't more going on here.

Cue the music.

First of our Legends of Tomorrow episodes is 'Compromised', in which the team argue the morality of historical manipulation while following Nate's new temporal seismometer to try to prevent an impending timequake in the 1980s. Regan and Gorbachev are this close to signing their landmark disarmament treaty, but one Damien Darhk is shoving his oar in, becoming a senior White House adviser in order to blow up the conference and make sure there are still plenty of nukes to go around when it's time for his big plan to go down.

Mick tries - and fails - to groom Ray as the new Snart, and their first attempt to infiltrate the conference fails when Sara takes a run at Darhk and then Ray crosses the cold gun's stream with Mick's heat gun in the spirit of not following the rules. Nate and Amaya go looking for the 1980s JSA, but discover that they all went missing in Russia in the 60s, except for Obsidian, who wasn't trusted because he was gay and blames Amaya for leaving in search of revenge. Still, he has enough clout to get them into a state ball, where Ray disarms a bomb by being himself and dismantling the cold gun for parts, while Jax and Stein try to stop young Martin's selfishness ruining his marriage - and his determination to impress Darhk getting him killed - and Sara reclaims an artefact that Darhk has traded for state secrets before telling him she won't kill him; she'll let him live to fail. Sara also sees Thawne rescue Darhk, confirming that the time traveler is a speedster. Thawne also whips Darhk away in a time sphere, presumably for the purposes of shenanigans.

Cue different music.

'Outlaw Country' then takes the Legends back into the wild west and the life of one Jonah Hex. They save Hex from a lynching and learn that his old nemesis Quentin Turnbull - the man who destroyed the town that Rip Hunter wouldn't save - has taken over the area after mining something powerful that a time traveler was trying to dig up. This something turns out to be dwarfstar, the super-rare, super-dense super-metal that powered the original Atom suit and which, coating a bullet, can put a hole in Nate's steel form.

Sara butts heads with historical misogynist Hex. Ray has to talk Nate through an attack of self-doubt, while Amaya tries to persuade Mick to let her train him to harness his rage instead of always being led by it. Meanwhile, Stein is suffering headaches and visions of a woman he doesn't know but feels that he loves, making him wonder if his involvement in his younger self's life may have imperiled the future of his marriage. At last, Nate goes head to head with a train full of dwarfstar to keep Turnbull from founding his own country and the Legends nick off with the mined metal, so maybe Ray will be back in that suit after all. First, however, he makes a superhero suit for Nate, and Sara tells them that they're heading to 2016 when their friends are in trouble.

All of which will bring us to the start of the big event; the three-and-a-half part 'Invasion' storyline. Catch you next time for that one.

(1) But not that Dark Lord. Or that one. Or that one.

DC Catchup: Arrow - 'So it Begins' and 'Vigilante'; Supergirl - 'Changing' and 'The Darkest Places'

So It Begins

Okay, so it's been a busy week or so, but illness has allowed me to get caught up on my DC viewing. Please excuse me if I lack my usual thoroughness.

We'll begin with Arrow, a little against tradition. 'So it Begins' sees Prometheus step up his direct campaign against the Green Arrow. He begins murdering apparently random targets with a trademark dart, but when Team Arrow investigate it turns out that the names of the victims are anagrams of names from The List, and that the darts have been made from metal reclaimed from the Arrows used throughout Oliver's career. This means that Prometheus knows that the same man was behind all three masks - the Hood, the Arrow and the Green Arrow - and as Oliver struggles to reconcile his team to his earlier ruthlessness(1), it becomes clear that he knows who that man is.

"Nice mask."

In 'Vigilante', Star City develops another of its periodic crimefighters. Vigilante is an extremist with advanced combat skills and a badass and only slightly silly suit. He is not, I am sorry to say, a cowboy; he's one of the other Vigilantes. They fail to stop him, and indeed only Oliver can match him. He's got that whole 'you're a half-measure' thing going on that the Punisher hit so well in season 2 of Daredevil, so that's a lot to match up to.

In flashback city, the Bratva sends Oliver to blow up a casino owned by his enemy, Dolph Lundgren(2), but when he gets caught he learns that they are making a deal with him instead. Oliver gets into a relationship with journo-woman(3) and Evelyn turns out to be working with Prometheus, which is a shame for the only woman among the recruits, but explains why she hasn't been allowed to use her Canary Cry.

Cool suit, but the bike screams midlife crisis.

In 'Changing', Supergirl is confronted by an energy-eating parasite that becomes a near unstoppable behemoth when it simultaneously drains power from Kara and Hank, the latter being so badly hurt that he needs a blood transfusion from M'gann Morzz. Enter Mon-el, who has been working as a freelance debt collector of sorts, and Guardian, James Olsen's superhero persona. With a protective suit, high tech shield and man in a van (Winn moonlighting,) Guardian in particular has no powers to steal and helps to bring the enemy down. They also seem to be pushing a little Mon-el/Kara action, which does not make me happy, and neither does the way that Kate shoots down Alex's advances. Alex is pretty teed as well, given how damned flirty Kate's been up until now, including when she was in a relationship.

I'll be honest, the whole 'impersonating Superman' angle is unlikely to crop up
in this case.

Then, in 'The Darkest Place', Mon-el is kidnapped by Cadmus to lure Kara into a trap. She is bushwhacked by the real Hank Henshaw, now 'enhanced' as Cyborg Superman. The head of Cadmus is exposed as Lillian Luthor, mother of Lex and Lena, who forces Kara to Solar Flare into a special helmet which absorbs the energy; no doubt for purely peaceful purposes. Trapped, weakened and with Mon-el succumbing to a Daximite's vulnerability to lead, of all things, the two are rescued by Jeremiah Danvers, but he isn't able to escape with them.

Meanwhile, J'onn realises that he's been transfused with White Martian blood, confronts M'gann and they go at it, despite her insistence that she isn't like other White Martians. I'm guessing a telepathic bond is off the table.

Okay; it's late, so let's hold onto The Flash and Legends of Tomorrow for another time.

(1) Strangely he never mentions that he actually killed relatively few people, but that most of his extortion victims instead were murdered months later by Malcolm Merlin.
(2) The character has a name I can never remember and holy shit, it's Dolph Lundgren.
(3) as above, but not played by Dolph Lundgren.

Star Wars Rebels - 'An Inside Man'

"Welcome to Lothal."

The Rebels are going home, returning to Lothal to meet up with their local contacts and swipe plans from an Imperial factory. They make contact with ex-governor Ryder Azadi during a tense speeder chase, and learn that the Resistance, although small, is doing well thanks to their infiltration of the factory, ensuring that there are fatal flaws in all of the locally made equipment.

Kanan and Ezra are smuggled into the factory as workers, but unfortunately this coincides with an inspection by Grand Admiral Thrawn, who quickly deduces the cause of the equipment failures and announces a new programme under which all workers will test everything they build, with a demonstration which costs the life of a Rebel contact. While they do manage to secure the plans, the two Jedi are detected, escaping only with the help of a diversionary attack and a surprise ally; the inside man of the episode title: Fulcrum, aka Agent Kallus.

"Did I mention art?"

This is another episode which manages to give the Rebels a win without slamming Thrawn's credibility. They capture the plans for his new weapon - and points for the fact that the TIE/D Defender is Thrawn's kind of weapon; a precise, flexible force multiplier rather than a one-off supergun - but he weakens the Lothal rebellion, noses out the likelihood of a traitor, and discerns the Ghost crew's attachment to Lothal from their starbird emblem. Thrawn's long-game mentality really helps him to not outlive his welcome, but there's a lot of credit that has to go to the writers and showrunners on this one.

Professor Elemental and his Amazing Friends

Image (c) Professor Elemental

"Here's a thing," a certain flame-haired lady in my life said to me. "That splendid chap, Professor Elemental is looking for respectable correspondents to review his new LP." Well, I argued that I'm more of a TV and movie reviewer, but she talked me into sending my visiting card, and the result is this review of Professor Elemental and his Amazing Friends.

As the title suggests, many of the tracks are collaborations with different artists and producers, which mixes up the sound between offerings from Elemental and primary collaborator Tom Caruana and remixes of a couple of older songs. There are also a fair few references to superheroes and comics, and the bookend tracks 'Intro' and 'Outro' present as the opening and closing of an animated series.

Despite the Professor's retro stylings and trademark steampunk nonsense ('Mechtoria', 'Put Up Your Dukes' and 'All You Can Eat' are particular standouts in the field of steampunky nonsense,) the album does have a deeper dimension, with a running theme of equality and individualism. The steampunk aesthetic presents less as the romanticising of the past than as a rejection of the stagnation and corruption of modern life, and nowhere more so than in 'Bare Witness', a sincere diatribe against a money-driven society and music industry. 'All In Together' is an anthem for the weird and wonderful, as in its own way is 'Theme Music (Extended version)', a step-climbing, fist-pumping mini-epic and my own favourite on the album.

'Theme Music' and 'Inn at the End of Time' both reference many, many other works, with the latter being a delightful trip through SF nostalgia and the former a barnstorming catalogue of comic-book name drops. '101 Questions' is mostly a bit of musing on life and word play, but also takes a few shots at the toxic right. There are also a couple of skits - 'I Had a Hat' and 'Laughing Gas' - and the short instrumental 'Sweet Sue', which are amusing oddities, although by their nature likely to have less replay value than the regular tracks. For the rest, well I've cranked through it five times for the purposes of this review, and I'm not sick of it yet.

There's also the disco-themed 'Bee Gees Ain't Got Nothin' On Me', which may just be the first falsetto-chorused disco hip hop track of the 21st century.

This isn't going to be the album to break the Professor into the mainstream, but then I rather doubt that was the intention. For Elemental fans, steampunks and the assembled ranks of weirdoes, adventure nerds and miscellaneous geeks yet to be exposed to his work, however, it's a rousing assortment of midget gems (Elemental once more resists the lure of the extended mix, overlong middle-eight or interminable drum solo, with 'All in Together' topping out at 3 minutes 40 and only that and 'More of What You Asked For' breaking 3:30) to pick you up when you're down and cheer you on when you're up.

Disclaimer: I was sent a free copy of this album in exchange for an honest review.

Class - 'For Tonight We Might Die' and 'The Coach with the Dragon Tattoo'

Tanya (Vivian Oparah), Charlie (Greg Austin), Miss Quill (Katherine Kelly), April (Sophie Hopkins) and Ram (Fady Elsayed)

Welcome to Coal Hill Academy, formerly Coal Hill School and (give or take a road) the first location to appear in the TV series Doctor Who. It is also quickly established in the new spin-off series Class to have a rate of staff turnover and student disappearance equivalent to similar institutions such as Sunnydale High(1), Wexler College and Miskatonic University(2).

No... Rhodian. With an h.

Coal Hill students April 'the nice one', Tanya 'the smart one' and Ram 'the sporty one' are drawn into events surrounding an alien invasion, as the semi-corporeal Shadow Kin come searching for an exiled alien prince, currently enjoying the school's famed alien exchange programme as Charlie 'the posh outsider'. The last survivor of the Rhodians, he is protected by official worst teacher ever Miss Quill, who is actually the last of the Quill, a race who shared the planet Rhodia with its eponymous rulers, but were defeated in an attempted revolution not long before the Shadow Kin arrived to destroy the planet.

The Shadow Kin attack the prom, and the mismatched quartet have to defeat the monsters with the assistance of the very reluctant Miss Quill and special guest star the Doctor. During the fight, Ram's leg gets cut off and the rift in space-time caused by an excess of artron energy at the school can not be fully closed, and so the Doctor charges the four, plus Quill, and Charlie's boyfriend Matteusz 'the one from the conservative religious family who doesn't get regular billing', to guard the rift in his absence; because that's totally not a job for UNIT or anything. Where's Torchwood when you need them(3)?

Guns are seldom a sign that your prom game is on point (4)

As an opener, 'For Tonight We Might Die' is pretty solid, although wearing its influences on its sleeve does not help to escape their shadow (as it were.) Just because the characters call the rift a Hellmouth doesn't mean that a show about a high school where bad things break through the portal in the basement doesn't have a lot of Buffy(5) nostalgia to work through. Where it scores in this regard is in the character relationships, which are the show's own deal. April has a crush on Charlie, but he's gay (and an alien, which of course means incredibly blunt,) and she is also one of Tanya's only friends, because Tanya is the daughter of a helicopter gunship Nigerian mum and two years ahead at school. Tanya's other friend is Ram, but they only talk via Skype because he's all cool, but the fact that he begins in a fairly serious relationship with a girl who gets stabbed in the opening episode gives him a lot of angst and motivation to work with.

"You do know your mirror's broken."

And indeed all of the characters have their tragedies. Charlie is the last Rhodian, April's life is consumed by caring for her disabled mother and we learn in episode 2 that Tanya's father was killed. Even Quill, whose primary role is to be the snarky, mean, borderline abusive teacher that real teachers dream of being in their bad moments, is the last of her race and trapped as a slave to Charlie in punishment for her actions as a Quill terrorist; or, as she insists, freedom fighter. It's interesting that we aren't given enough information to know which is a more accurate name. Even the Doctor only feels that she needs further punishment because she throws another kid under a bus to protect her charge.

The episode title is surprisingly literal.

We follow the opener with 'The Coach with the Dragon Tattoo'. Ram is trying to move on by not talking and throwing himself into is sport ball, which is tough, having watched his girlfriend get stabbed through the heart and then incinerated, and then lost a leg and had it replaced with a prosthesis from an old TARDIS storage locker. Unfortunately, the coach has an oddly mobile tattoo of a dragon and people keep being skinned alive by some... thing.

After throwing the team together in the opener, this episode is all about making sure they have an ongoing reason to work together besides 'the Doctor told us to.' Ram in particular has no interest in joining the Scooby Gang and protecting the world from the things that come through the Bunghole of Time(6). He has no interest in anything, least of all discussing what happened, and the only person he will talk to at all is Tanya, who doesn't try to get him to open up, besides explaining that her own father was killed and she knows it takes time to deal with that.

So far, Ram is 2 for 2 on getting covered in blood.

It turns out that the dragon in Coach's tattoo is trapped there, and the deaths are caused by it mate killing people so that it can drink their blood to survive. The episode is really about Ram, however, and his struggle to deal with the loss of his girlfriend right before his eyes. It's done pretty well, although probably much too quickly. We end the plot with Ram counselling the dragon to accept the new reality and make it work, suggesting rather literally tanning the Coach's hide as an alternative to killing for him on pain of him scratching up his skin(7). This not until after it has killed the assistant coach, a cleaner and the head teacher, and destroyed a robot OFSTED inspector belonging to 'the Governors', mind you.

Ninja mates.

Ram finally opens up to his dad and we see him making progress, and our unit is more or less formed. While there is some busywork to this, however, the episode in and of itself is still pretty good. While still a terrible teacher, I can't think there can be many in the profession not cheering when Miss Quill hurls a stapler and a torrent of abuse at the infuriatingly silent OFSTED inspector.

Class has made a strong opening, probably stronger than Torchwood, which had a troubled first season and was only truly strong for its second(8). So far, it's blended character and plot well, although even in a high school there is an upper level of drama beyond which the sense of realism is gone, even if that level is anecdotally supportable. I've only got the episodes on iplayer, so expect more reviews soon; before they're gone.

(1) And as freakishly grown-up looking.
(2) Parallels that the show is not shy in referencing.
(3) Not something I ever expected to be asking.
(4) But I mean, seriously; Charlie barely looks younger than Quill.
(5) Or Vampire Diaries, or Black Hole High for that matter.
(6) Thanks, Tanya.
(7) What is it with NuWho and assuming that a person - in particular a woman - reduced to a vaguely communicative object is in some sort of good place?
(8) Children of Earth has the team launch a knuckleheaded attempt to harangue an alien off the planet which gets Ianto killed and leaves Jack with no choice but to sacrifice his own grandson, while Miracle Day had an overlong arc plot and a load of aggressively unlikable new characters.

The Librarians - '...and the Fangs of Death'

"This can only end brilliantly!"

With the ultimate battle 'twixt good and evil in its opening stages, Flynn has a dream which seems to point at the critical player being Charlene, the Library's erstwhile accountant. He and Eve track Charlene to a Mayan cult's temple, where they are worshipping her as a goddess thanks to some mystical malarkey she's pulled off to make them think she's a Mayan goddess (which is a bit creepy, really.) Unfortunately, the cult are then wiped out when Apep drives them to infighting and kidnaps Charlene. asked why she is so important, Jenkins explains that Charlene is a Guardian; the first Guardian to the first Librarian, the now departed Judson.

Flynn tries to use the Annex Door to track Charlene, but his hack doesn't hold. The four Librarians make it through to a supercollider bunker in Canada, but Eve is locked out, eventually arriving outside the facility with Jenkins. While the Librarians struggle against unstable reactors and Egyptian werewolves led by Anubis, Eve and Jenkins encounter Apep himself, possessing a guard in order to ensure that all the Librarians are in place before springing his trap. The Librarians must face an all-but unbeatable foe, with Flynn starting to fall to pieces when it looks as if Charlene may already be dead. While they eventually emerge victorious, the cost is high, and although Flynn confides in Eve that the last battle is upon them, he leaves her behind for her own protection and sets out to seek for Charlene alone.

MVL of the Week

In a somewhat dark episode, Ezekiel can usually be relied on to bring the fun, but this week he's infected with Anubite lycanthropy and acts as the inside man in the pack even as he heads towards an irreversible transformation. Fun Ezekiel is great, but there's something about serious Ezekiel that nails LotW (see also '...and the Point of Salvation'.)

Legends of Tomorrow - 'Abominations'

"Our plan worked poifectly."

The Legends are catapulted into danger once more, when they intercept a distress signal from a time pirate(1) who has crashed after stealing an experimental bioweapon. Thy track the signal to the American Civil War. Ray gets his licks straight out of the gate as Sara benches him and then cuts off his comms. The rest of the team find and torch the crash time pod, but the weapon is already loose, transforming confederates into barely stoppable zombies, which manage to kill a vital Union spy whose resultant failure to bring Confederate battle plans to General Ulysses S. Grant(2) costs the Union the war, creating the risk of a temporal aberration and divergent timeline. For want of a nail and all.

Despite the risks, Jax and Amaya go undercover in the spy's place to infiltrate a cotillion and steal the plans. Jax is initially resistant to risking the mission to rescue individual slaves - while Amaya is oddly weak on the whole 'stick to the plan' angle for a member of a wartime paramilitary/espionage unit like the JSA - but soon discovers that the lot of a slave in a southern plantation under threat from abolitionists is worse than his own experience of 21st, 20th and even 18th century racism could have prepared him for. Stein - largely immobilised by his fear of zombies - is nonetheless momentarily overwhelmed by the depth of Jackson's feelings of despair.

But when things look too heavy, there are always zombies.

Meanwhile, Sara and Nate try to persuade Grant that there is a zombie menace(3), which Sara does by fetching some zombies, as the proof of the pudding is in the shambling. The camp is almost overrun, but Nate acts as bait to lure the zombies into an explosive trap, Steeling himself to survive the blast. Back on the Waverider, Stein must face his fears to provide an infected Mick with an antiserum whipped up by Ray before he eats them both.

On the plantation, Amaya rescues Jax and the break out all of the slaves as zombies attack. As he goes in to get the plans, he offers an alliance with the landowner in common cause, but the man rejects the idea of arming his slaves, moments before being eaten by zombies. Luckily none of those present at the cotillion was a pivotal historical figure, and Grant receives the plans in the name of the deceased spy. As they head off, Grant counsels Sara on the burdens of command, Stein comforts a shaken Jax, and Rory tells Ray that being the outsider can be great, and gives him a gift from the greatest outsider he ever knew: Leonard Snart's cold gun.

I admit, I did not see Ray's reconstruction going that way, although I was interested to read that he might originally have been intended to be Ted Kord, only Arrow couldn't get the rights. It may be then that they are going to be swinging him towards gadgeteering instead of shrinking.

Overall, this was another decent episode, although the more light-hearted elements of this week's plot sat a little at odds with the weight of the Jax and Amaya segment. The show frequently confronts historical prejudices, but this is one of the worst and it felt odd for them to go hard at it while romanticising the Union quite as much as they did. It felt as if the monster plot could have been better integrated, especially with the potential application of custom bioweapons to race metaphors, and as it was it created an unhelpful distance from the power of the human plot.

(1) He mentions a ship called the Gauntlet, and I would not be surprised if we saw that again.
(2) Fun fact, the S is for Hiram; sort of.
(3) Although as Nate points out, the word zombie is well short of common currency.

The Flash - 'Monster'

This week's theme: "Hi Mom" reveals.

It's all go at STAR Labs, as the team struggles to settle new arrival 'HR' Wells, and Cisco adapts to having Barry as his temporary roomie.

Caitlin meanwhile goes out of town to ask her estranged mother, Dr Carla Tannhauser, for help in managing her Killer Frost 'condition'. Tannhauser runs some tests while mother and daughter rub each other the wrong way, until Tannhauser's lab assistant Nigel decides to try to hold Caitlin against her will in an attempt to make a name for himself. This goes about as well as any plan which has 'hold dangerously powerful metahuman against her will' as step one could be expected to go, but in talking her out of literal cold-blooded murder, Tannhauser reignites that mother-daughter bond. Unfortunately, her research shows that the more Caitlin uses her powers, the harder they will be to control or remove.

"So... kaiju."

Back in Central City, they're having the worst kind of trouble; Kaiju trouble. A huge and yet elusive monster is stomping around town making a nuisance of himself. Barry tries to work with Julian to crack the case in order to break the ice between them, but his Flash-related absences and pro-meta stance anger Julian, a former military man(1) who despises metas because so many of them choose to use their incredible gifts for small-minded, selfish ends, while even good ones like the Flash make human authorities complacent.

They do manage to work out that the monster seems to be controlled from a central point, but it's only when the Flash tries to Empire Strikes Back it that they discover there is no monster; it's just a hologram. The Flash races to the control station in time to prevent Julian shooting the 'meta', who is just a disaffected kid with a lot of tech. This incident cracks Julian's surety and he and Barry start to bond. Aww. At STAR Labs, the team realise that HR isn't a scientist at all; he's an author of 'scientific romance' and self-proclaimed muse, who worked with a partner in his own universe, and kinda sorta fled because people worked out that he was taking credit for someone else's work. The team nonetheless keep him on because Tom Cavanagh's contract game is on point.

Much like Supergirl's 'Crossfire', 'Monster' uses a slight A-plot to support an episode of strong character work, and overall the A-plot itself was strongest. HR is still very annoying, but maybe he'll get better now, and the settling of the dynamic between Barry and Julian hints at a more interesting and nuanced progression than was threatened. I'm not as keen on the push to turn Caitlin into a villain, in part because, power tends to corrupt aside, I've never been a fan of morality-defining superpowers (except in the case of Brandon Sanderson's epics, since in that case it's kind of the point of the entire thing,) and if you can have good or bad speedsters, why not good or bad cryokinetics? After all, working out his Vibe powers didn't turn Cisco into Reverb.

(1) With, one hopes, an appropriately tortured backstory.

Supergirl - 'Crossfire'

Hahahahahahahahahaaahhhaahhaa! Yes.

It's time to nerd up, as Kara introduces Mon-el to the world as 'Mike of the Interns', a blatant Clark Kent knock-off with a crappy job at CatCo and a pair of her spare glasses. This goes about as well as you might expect introducing an unrepentant, reckless hedonist into a routine work environment would go, and before long he's handing off his work to Kara's replacement, Eve Teschmacher(1), having noisy sex with Eve Teschmacher in the supply closet and getting himself invited to Lena Luthor's gala by being Kara's friend. It's clear that he's a terrible intern and hates working at CatCo, which makes Kara sad.

Man... these alien guns do not benefit from a still close up.

Meanwhile, there's trouble brewing, as bank robbers start showing up with alien weapons, zapping Supergirl and generally being dicks. Almost immediately, Cadmus pops up and is like 'see; what did we tell you? Aliens, yeah.' They are also acting like dicks. Unsurprisingly, they are the ones who supplied the robbers, but cut ties when the gang want to rob Lena's gala, for which Lena has asked Kara to put her in touch with some super security (cue 'Operation Doubtfire', which goes off with a refreshing lack of hilarity.) Winn hides under a table and discovers that Lena is using a gizmo to disable the alien guns. Winn and Lena get the thing working, Supergirl punches faces and all ends happily.

'Crossfire' is not a strong episode, but it has some great moments. Overall the plot is thin, and serves more as a frame to hang some character work on. The Doctor is a genuine idealist, if a bloody-handed one, but it's her final reveal as Lex and Lena's mother(2) that lifts the character somewhat above the generic. No such save for the gang, who are entirely forgettable; to the point that it's hard to care much when Cadmus remote kills them at the end.

Aww.

In terms of our heroes there are two great character bits and one that doesn't go so well. Kara and 'Mike' is beautifully handled, with Kara never seeming like a tightass bully for trying to get Mon-el to conform to her ideals, and Mon-el managing to come across as genuinely unclear why anything he's doing is wrong rather than being a deliberate dick. Some hints aside, I really hope they aren't pushing a Kara/Mon-el relationship, but much more successful - if a little quick - is the progression of Alex and Maggie's relationship, with Maggie being dumped between episode so that Alex can recognise and acknowledge that the reason she has never found the right man is that for her, there is no right man. It's deftly handled, which alas is more than can be said for James's subplot.

After trying to help out in an early heist and seeing his dad's camera run over by the villains, James Olsen decides he's going to use his black belt to fight crime in a suit that he asks Winn to make for him and which, after some franly token reluctance, Winn agrees to make, It's not a bad idea to give James something new to do, but damn this is coming out of nowhere. Perhaps it's because he's stuck behind a desk instead of out taking pictures, but apparently his early-onset midlife crisis is going to be vigilantism. I did not see that coming, largely because prior to this episode it really wasn't; he hasn't had enough screen time this season for it to develop, which is a shame because it really could have been done organically.

(1) Who, yes, was Lex Luthor's sidekick in the Donner Superman.
(2) Point of note - although Lena is established as adopted and apparently at odds with her mother on the subject of aliens, the good Doctor makes no visible distinction between Lex and Lena in terms of her desire to protect them.