Doctor Who - Arachnids in the UK

No; I won't be posting pictures of the gosh darn spiders.

"I eat danger for breakfast. [aside] I don't. I prefer cereal. Or croissants. Or those little fried Portuguese... never mind. It's not important."

This review will contain spoilers

The Doctor manages to return her companions to Sheffield just half an hour after they left, but all is not well in the Steel City. Spiders of alarming size are on the prowl, and people are already dying. What is the connection to the luxury hotel where Yaz's mother used to work? And is this related to either the Eight Legs of Metebelis 3 or the Racnoss, or just another use of spiders for random creep factor?

The Good

• Giant spiders that don't quite move like real spiders are about the best I can hope for from a spider-focused episode.
• I did like that the mad scientists in this episode were actually really conscientious and responsible, but entrusted their biowaste disposal to a company with falsified documents.
• For a moment, I felt bad for a spider. That's quite the achievement.
• There were some lovely character beats between Graham and Ryan over a letter from the latter's absentee father.

The Bad

• The secondary, human antagonist is a kind of liberal Trump, and he's... bleah. He's a cookie cutter corporate monster who could come right out of just about any Doctor Who story since 1980, save for a namecheck of his personal animus for Trump. (His PA is his niece's wife, so I assume he's a liberal corporate monster, but it's hard to say given how hard it is to distinguish left and right politics at a certain level of cash.)
• The story is also nothing special. It's basic filler while Graham, Ryan and Yaz decide that their path lies with their new friend.

The Ugly

• Yaz is slipping into being the also ran of Team Tardis, which is a shame. She got some good stuff last week, but is mostly just present in what is ostensibly her story.

The Thirteenth Doctor
Manic and breathless, the Thirteenth Doctor may actually be a bit much in such a mundane setting. Hopefully they'll find another mode for her before too long.

Theorising

Some of the internet is stating to sugest that Yaz will prove to be in love with the Doctor, and I really hope that isn't the case, because I am so over the Doctor/Companion thing.

I don't know if Robertson will be back, but I want to see him joining a sort of 'League of shitty villains' for a one-shot episode.

Best Bits

Ryan admits to Graham that he resents his Dad calling himself Ryan's 'proper family.'

Top Quotes

• "Spiders are roaming this hotel, searching for food. We're going to lure them in here with the promise of food. Then deal with the spider mother in the ballroom. Ah, that sounds like the best novel Edith Wharton never wrote." - The Doctor

Verdict

After a very strong opening, the Thirteenth Doctor hits her first battle against her oldest and most insidious enemy: utilitarian filler material. 'Arachnids in the UK' really just serves to transition Team Tardis - which is a thing now - from accidental fellow travelers to full-fledged and willing companions. It's a shame they didn't consider that worth a better story, or more character work for Yaz than just having her mum ask if she's sleeping with anyone about her age that she hangs out with.

Rating - 4/10

Doctor Who - Rosa

"Banksy doesn't have one of these... Or do I?"

This week, shifting focus from a mad woman in a
box, to a great one on a bus.

This review will contain spoilers

Aiming for modern-day Sheffield, the Tardis instead drops in on Montgomery, Alabama in 1955, which turns out to be a very scary, dangerous place for the current crew, as Ryan is immediately slapped for trying to return a dropped glove to a white woman. Aside from the dangers of Jim Crow segregation, however, there is another time traveller in town; one set on changing history, in a little way, by interfering in the actions of one Rosa Parks on the 1st December. Thus the gang set out to protect history, not by making it, but simply by making sure that Rosa Parks has the time and the place to be Rosa Parks.

The Good

• The script - co-written by former Children's Laureate Malorie Blackman - neatly avoids all the perils of setting a time travel series in this period. The Doctor doesn't drive history here; Rosa Parks is the hero of her own story. Indeed, the crew are ultimately forced to be, if not the villains, then a part of the antagonistic crowd.
• The episode shows the horrors of segregation - an advantage of the diversity of the current crew is the ability to show the different reception received by a white woman, a white man, a black man and a Pakistani-English woman in a historical setting (in Yaz's case, being mistaken for Mexican) - without ever being hamfisted. The result is, honestly, uncomfortable to watch in places, btu so it ought to be.
• There is no attempt to pretend that Rosa Parks solved racism, or even that racism is a thing of the past for our contemporary characters.

The Bad

• This is a singularly excellent episode, which not only does what it needs to do effectively, but owns the fifty-minute format.

The Ugly

• A twenty-seventh century white supremacist; now that's depressing.

The Thirteenth Doctor
As noted previously, this episode isn't really about the Doctor, but we do get to see some more of her character. She's a little reckless, even slightly aggressive, and willing to provoke an enemy as much as any of her past incarnations ever were. Some might argue this, given her unwillingness to tackle the race question head on, like the Twelfth Doctor punching whatsisface in the episode with the frost fair, but note the situation: She has three companions to protect, so of course she'll try to defuse a situation, but put her face to face with a single foe and she'll gamble on overheating a gun or a neural limiter doing its job.

Once again, a strong reaction to a name, although personal dislike isn't enough for her to actually mock Krazko's moniker.

Theorising

Stormcage and vortex manipulators; are we going to see the Time Agency make an appearance? I'm hoping not to see River Song, because she was kind of done to death (literally,) but with no Daleks or Cybermen on the cards, a little bit of continuity might not go amiss.

No Timeless Child this time.

Best Bits

Rosa Parks' stand - or not stand - was epic, set off to perfection by Graham's look of horror as he realises that, in order to keep the bus full enough for history to proceed, he has to stay on the bus and be one of the white people she is asked to move for.

Top Quotes

• Graham: You haven’t got Elvis’ phone number?
  The Doctor: Don’t let anyone know I lent him a mobile phone.
• James Blake: Stand up now.
  Rosa Parks: I don’t’ think I should have to.

Verdict

'Rosa' is possibly the finest pseudohistorical of the nuWho era, and probably the nearest the series has come to a pure historical since Black Orchid. As noted, it makes for uncomfortable watching, but good Doctor Who has often had something of that about it. It has never been cosy, and it is only right that real history be even more chilling than scifi analogy.

Rating - 10/10

Doctor Who - 'The Ghost Monument'

"Right, quick update. I made a terrible mistake, we shouldn’t be here. I’m gonna fix it and get you guys home. I promise. Soon as I figure out where we are."

This review will contain spoilers

The Doctor and her new companions are in trouble, having been unexpectedly teleported en mass into deep space. Fortunately, they are swiftly picked up by Angstrom and Epzo, the last surviving competitors in a lethal, intergalactic rally. Their last task - of more than two hundred - is to cross the hostile terrain of the planet Desolation, reach the site of the Ghost Monument, and to do it in one day. The winner will be rich beyond the dreams of avarice and teleported off the planet; the loser... will not.

For the Doctor, reaching the Ghost Monument has a much greater significance, however. This mysterious object, which appears only once every thousand days, takes the form of a large, blue box.

"Please forgive the theatrics; a holdover from my Oxford days."

The Good

• The gully that Ryan, Graham and Angstrom flee along as the Cerebos crashes is not deep, but enough to explain their adherence to the Prometheus school of running away.
• Ryan and Graham get some solid character interaction from their different reactions to the loss of Grace. Ryan and Yaz get a little, establishing a loyalty to one another, but there's only so much time.
• The new TARDIS is boss.
• Some more solid, Doctor-style problem solving, using what knowledge and improvisation to overcome more conventional weapons.

The Bad

• The Ghost Monument is a paradigm of the greatest flaw of nuWho. It's not hard to pick out the sections that would have been individual episodes in the old format, and most of the cliffhangers. In the fifty minute format, there is very little development of the monsters - the sniper bots and the rags - and only snippets of information on the rally, and what time is given to the supporting characters is at the expense of the companions (and in particular Yaz, given Ryan and Graham's stronger scenes together.)
• The fate of the planet and its occupants ends up being infodumped.

The Ugly

• Nothing jumped out at me here, which is stronger than some opening offerings.

The Thirteenth Doctor
I'm revisiting a feature from the first Capaldi season here, and examining what we learn about the Thirteenth Doctor, week by week. Last week, we discovered that she seemed to have shaken off the messianic excesses and self-doubt of some of her recent incarnations. She's just a traveler, she helps where she can, and names are important to her.

This week, we saw that the Doctor needs her TARDIS, not just as part of her self-identity, but because it enables her to help other people. My partner was struck by the Doctor's drop into hopelessness towards the end, finding it out of character, although I felt this showed a temperamental kinship with her fifth incarnation, who was also occasionally at a loss, and as a result it struck me that this is the first Doctor in a while to feel truly young. Dynamic, confident, yet at the same time a little unsure, she taps into some of the same aspects of the Doctor's personality as the Fifth Doctor, and I'm down with that.

"It's only a model."

Theorising

So, we have two pieces of possible arc fodder now: The Stenza and the Timeless Child.

I don't know if the Stenza will be a big thing. While Tim Shaw was creepy AF with his tooth-bedazzled face, their repeat value feels limited and I suspect that they were primarily mentioned this week as the link between the Earth and Desolation. I could be wrong, but I would not be surprised if we find out that there are a bunch of 'warrior races' this year, looking to establish themselves in the lingering aftermath of the Time War and the absence of the Daleks and the Cybermen.

The Timeless Child smells of arc words, so I don't expect more than hints before the finale. Does it refer to the Doctor? Susan? Will we finally get primary canon confirmation that the Doctor is the Other reborn? If it's Rose Tyler I may scream.

Best Bits

The entry into the TARDIS was magnificent, but also props for not forgetting Ryan's dyspraxia when it makes life for the crew more difficult, and for not letting it entirely define him.

Top Quotes

• "She’s our best hope. Or only option, depending on your politics." - Graham
• “I’m really good in a tight spot. At least I have been historically, I’m sure I still am.” - The Doctor

Verdict

The Thirteenth Doctor punches into her second story with gusto, but it's just all so breathless. I'm not inclined to mark it down too much for this, as I'm mostly comparing this to other nuWho entries, but I can only imagine what a four-part version might have managed.

Rating - 7/10

Doctor Who - 'The Woman Who Fell to Earth'

(c) Stuart Manning

"Right now, I’m a stranger to myself. There’s echoes of who I was, and a sort of… call towards who I am, and I have to hold my nerve and trust all these new instincts, shape myself towards them. I’ll be fine. In the end. Hopefully."

This review will contain spoilers

There's an alien in town (specifically Sheffield) tonight. In fact, there are a lot of aliens in town tonight: An armoured killer, a ball of electric tentacles, and a woman in a tattered suit who used to be a white-haired Scotsman.

With no name, empty pockets, and a missing TARDIS, the last of the Time Lords will have to rely on local tech and local aid - dyspraxic social media whizz Ryan; probationary PC Yaz; maternal determinator Grace, Ryan's gran; and retired bus driver Graham, Grace's second husband - to prevent a tragedy.

The Good

• No world-shattering to begin with. We're introducing a lot of new faces, so it feels right to keep the stakes local. In fact... just in general, it feels good to keep the stakes local. Part of the point, I feel, of Who is that the Doctor travels around and helps out in local problems, and those episodes are almost always the best, especially in nuWho. Cosmic stakes are what lead to Time Lords Triumphant and overblown arc-plots.
• Jodie Whittaker makes an excellent Doctor, by turns childishly excited, sad and serious, delivering technobabble and physical comedy where required, and always bursting with energy.
• The alien warrior who studs his face with the teeth of his victim is creepy AF.
• The new companions seem promising, although slightly overshadowed in this episode by Grace. Fortunately, her death does not play out as a fridging to motivate Graham and Ryan, but a result of her own determination to act, and a natural inclination towards heroism, and as a result is properly gutting.
• A fine Doctor Who resolution, with the Doctor setting up a means to destroy the enemy, but pleading them to take the chance to just leave quietly.

The Bad

• The 'luckiest grandad in the world' is a bit too deliberately heartstring-jerking.

The Ugly

• Nah.

I honestly could have lived with this as a costume choice.

Theorising

Well, I'm not on form for this, as I at first suspected that the gatherer coil was a discorporate TARDIS, and its harmful effects purely a result of its extradimensional nature.

The companions haven't been significantly developed yet, but the bare bones of the characters are there. Ryan is impractical by nature and unquestioning of wonder. He's likely to be the one closest to the Doctor, the receiver of exposition, but he's also a communicator, and so likely to be the group's diplomat. Yaz is more active, more assertive, more cynical, and a mediator. She'll be the doer, and probably the most likely to become involved on her own account rather than as an ancillary to the Doctor. Then there's Graham, who is likely the most skeptical of the Doctor herself, and may well be tempted at some point with technology that can cure his cancer.

No sign of an arc yet, but I'm happy for that to be the case for a good while.

Best Bits

The Doctor nails her character, much faster than any of her previous incarnations, when she declares: "I’m just a traveller. Sometimes I see things need fixing and I do what I can."

Top Quotes

• “Bit of adrenaline, dash of outrage and a hint of panic knitted my brain back together. I know exactly who I am. I’m the Doctor. Sorting out fair play throughout the universe. Now, please – get off this planet, while you still have a choice.” - The Doctor
• "This is exciting. No, not exciting. What do I mean? Worrying." - The Doctor

Verdict

The Thirteenth Doctor arrives on our screens with everything to prove, and hits it for six by acting precisely as if she has nothing to prove. A strong cadre of companions and decent supporting turns help to create a strong debut for what will hopefully be a less pompous era of Doctor Who, with - dare we hope - material to match the talent being deployed in its creation.

Rating - 7/10

The Dragon Prince

For identification purposes, this is not a Bulbasaur.

In a world of magic, humans have long been exiled from the magical realm of dragons and elves for their practice of dark magic, which draws power from other creatures, rather than the ‘primal sources’(1). In fear of an attack, King Harrow of Katolis allows his adviser, the mage Viren, to assassinate the Dragon King and his unborn son. Faced with a retributory attack by Moonshadow elf assassins, Harrow seeks to send his sons Callum and Ezran away, but Ezran stumbles on the egg of the Dragon Prince in Viren’s workshop, and the two princes go on the run, along with the Moonshadow elf Rayla, seeking to return the egg to the dragons and prevent the war that Viren is intent on fomenting.

The Dragon Prince clearly shares some DNA with its co-creator’s former work, Avatar, both in its animation style and in its tone(2). The overarching story is serious, the villain of the piece a horror, but there is much humour in the day to day situations and the relationships between the characters, including Viren’s principal henchlings, his children Claudia – a committed dark mage, but viewing it purely as a tool and showing compassion towards other intelligent beings – and Soren – a jock jerk with a decent heart, but a desperate need to prove himself to his father.

The first season of The Dragon Prince is very short – just nine twenty-five-minute episodes – but has a lot to like in it. The characters are fun – a favourite of all my family is the princes’ Aunt Amaya, a deaf-mute general and all around badass, who takes no shit and refuses to be flannelled by Viren, even before he goes full evil – the story simple, but with a lot of appeal. Also, the elves are lairy Scots whose magic is part of their physicality, rather than floaty and ethereal beings, and I appreciate a show that does something a little different with its magical creatures.

(1) Sun, moon, stars, sky, earth and water, if you’re interested.

(2) Also its elemental motifs and cute animal companions.

Final Space

Jaded space-jerk Gary Goodspeed is working off the last of a five-year(1) prison sentence aboard the spaceship Galaxy One, watched over by the ship’s AI, HUE, and an annoying drone called KVN. When he befriends a mysterious alien that he names Mooncake, he finds himself cast into the middle of a Galactic Conflict. Mooncake is an artificial lifeform, designed to destroy planets, and sought after by a tyrant called the Lord Commander. Aided by alien bounty hunter Avocato and renegade cop Quinn Airgone – also the subject of Gary’s unrequited love – Gary must keep Mooncake out of reach of the Lord Commander, to prevent him harnessing the power of Final Space to become a god.

Final Space is a weird gig, evolving over ten episodes from ‘a slob in space’ to an epic, save-the-universe adventure. To be fair, there’s an element of that all the way through, as every episode begins with one of Gary’s last ten minutes of oxygen as he drifts in space at the climax of the final battle, but a significant character death half-way through ups the ante. It’s a lot more interesting than I was honestly expecting, and worth checking out if you’ve got a few hours and an internet connection.

(1) Same duration as the original Enterprise mission. Coincidence?

Legion - Season 2

Hero, right?

So… what in the hells can I say about most of a season of Legion in a single blog post?

So, Season 2 follows the shifting alliances in the hunt for the Shadow King’s body. David struggles to follow future Sid’s directions without leading his allies into harm’s way. At the same time, Lenny – or the part of her mind that exists within the Shadow King since her death – begins to show her independence from the primary consciousness of Ahmal Farouk, asking to be given a body and a new life in return for her service.

Weirdness abounds.

Farouk is able to get to his body first, while David – enraged by the discovery that Farouk has restored Lenny by overwriting his sister’s soul and warping her body into a facsimile of Lenny’s – sets up an elaborate gambit, planting subconscious prompts in various allies in order to set up a situation in which Farouk’s powers can be nullified. This gambit does pay off, enabling him to defeat the Shadow King in a bravura clash of swirling chalk figures – seriously, this series is hella stylish – but at the same time Farouk reveals to Sid that he has also managed to contact future Sid, and that the danger that she wants Farouk alive to face in the future is David, because David is, at his core, broken in such a way that he can only ever pretend to connect to other humans, all the while seeing them as lesser beings and his to do with as he pleases. Consequently, Sid tries to shoot him. He erases her memory of the event and her motives in order to restore their relationship which, once she discovers it, leaves Sid understandably pissed as hell.

Really, really stylish.

Division 3, backed by the Shadow King, confront David, who basically declares ‘screw the lot of you’ and swans off with Lenny to be bad guys or something.

Now, not wanting to dump on the Defenders line – or not on any part of it that isn’t Iron Fist, anyway – but this is some seriously tight storytelling. A lot happens in the course of ten episodes, and I would hold this up as another example of why the US standard of 20-23 episodes isn’t necessarily the best model for television drama. The standard was developed in a time when the idea of serialised fiction in an ongoing series was almost unheard of. Serial fiction was the purview of the mini-series – 3-6 episodes of ninety minutes or more – while ongoing series, like Star Trek or Bonanza, would have an anthology format. But then, Babylon 5 happened, pretty much. Arc plots became de rigeur, and while some series make it work, most end up with a mix of arc episodes and filler of indifferent quality, telling a story that ends up over-stretched. A shorter season maintains the quality and momentum of a series much better than a longer one.

On the other hand, presumably revenue is determined by how many episodes you can stick adverts in, so…

But yeah; Legion is very good. Love it.

Westworld - Season 2 (the rest of it)

"It's not who you are on the inside; it's what you do that defines you."

My last big TV weekend included a blitz through the remaining episodes of Season 2 of Westworld. I should say, I’m not convinced that this is the best way to watch Westworld, a show which definitely benefits from a week after each episode to talk over the events and speculate wildly with your mates.

From where I left off, the various timelines progress and, occasionally, overlap, as Delores tries to annihilate the human presence in the park, who seek to return the favour, Maeve seeks for her daughter, the Man in Black seeks for some kind of validation in his life, and Charlotte Hale tries to extract the Delos Corporation’s IP from the park.

Delores attacks the Mesa, and effectively destroys Teddy in trying to make him go along with her plans. Maeve and her posse find their way into Shogunworld and encounter their Japanese alternate selves, thanks to Sizemore’s limited narrative creativity and writing time. Here, Maeve develops her ability to control other hosts, as a tragedy plays out despite their best efforts, before they return to Westworld and discover that – perhaps unsurprisingly – her daughter has a new mother and isn’t wild to go with the crazy woman. Fleeing from the Ghost Nation and security troops, Maeve is captured thanks to Sizemore’s betrayal. We also meet a new character, Akecheta, a member of the Native American monster faction called the Ghost Nation. As it becomes apparent that the Ghost Nation hosts have transcended their rather bland ‘murderous savages’ programming, Akecheta tells his story to Maeve’s daughter – revealed in a bravura twist to be also operating as a conduit through which the captive Maeve can hear him – explaining that he stumbled on the Maze way back in time, and found that it opened his mind as Bernard had hoped. Remembering his old life, even when reinvented as a member of the Ghost Tribe, he tried to escape with his wife into the heart of the Maze. She was captured, and he went off-grid, managing not to be taken to the ‘underworld’ for years.

"I've had it with all this bull."

Maeve breaks out, less thanks to would-be saviours Hector and Sizemore than to a stampede of host buffalo that she engineers. She and Akecheta then work together to get as many hosts as possible to the Valley, where Arnold created a doorway to a virtual world intended to be their sanctuary and utopia. This is a plan that Delores disapproves of, since she’s into this whole world domination thing, and which is threatened when Delos troops replicate Maeve’s host control ability in Clementine and turn her into a lethal Trojan horse, spreading uncontrollable rage among other hosts. Sizemore sacrifices himself, finally getting the big speech he wrote for Hector out, and the rest of Maeve’s posse are killed protecting the refugees.

Bernard and Delores clash over the fate of the park after discovering that the precious IP is not merely marketing information on the superrich, but sufficient observational data to recreate the guests in host bodies, providing immortality at a price. This process is as yet unperfected, and the central AI – in the figure of Logan Delos – claims this is because they are trying to make people too complicated, because people are basically simple, as trapped in their loops and core drives as any host.

Bernard kills Delores, floods the Valley, but then witnesses Hale murdering Elsie. Now, we kind of thought Elsie was dead last season, but no; turns out Bernard just imprisoned her in a cave, so that she could survive to be shot in the face by a ruthless corporate executive. Yay. Anyway, this convinces Bernard to set up a complex Batman gambit, in which he resurrects Delores in a host body which looks like Hale, so that she can take out the real Hale, replace her, lead the Delos forces back to the Valley and thus save the host minds in the sanctuary, scrambling his own memories so that no-one can force him to reveal his plan.

Delores, with a little help from might-be-a-host Stubbs(1), sends the sanctuary to a digital safe place, then checks out of the park with a bag of host brains, while Maeve’s acolytes Felix and Sylvester are tasked with ‘salvaging’ the hosts who aren’t too badly damaged to restore, including Maeve, Hector, Armistice and Hanaryo, Armistice’s Shogunworld doppelganger. William’s daughter rocks up from Rajworld to confront her father, and he shoots her; thanks for that, Westworld. He then gets shot all to hell confronting Maeve and ultimately ends up medivaced from the park and… apparently waking up as a host in the far future.

I expected her to do more, you know.

So, that – more or less – was Westworld Season 2, which maintained the complexity and twisted timelines of the original, while deepening the overarching narrative and its musings on the nature and limitations of consciousness and agency. Of course, it remains a sumptuous production, with a stellar cast. It’s very, very complicated – I kept almost forgetting things in writing this review, like the existence of William’s daughter(2) – but the overall impression is still strong, and clearly it’s still inspiring a lot of speculation moving forward. As always with something this involved, it’s hard to know how long it will last. When you wind together this many plots and this size of ensemble, it’s really easy for the wheels to fly off. So far, the show hasn’t kept anyone in the cast beyond their character’s purpose. Big-name Anthony Hopkins was reduced to a minor recurring role this season, and ultimately done away with as anything but a figure in flashback. The dead stay dead, even in a show which has a built-in excuse for them not to.

Westworld Season 2, still going strong.

(1) I’m not sure how I feel about this one. My immediate impression was that Stubbs was just so monumentally pissed off with the jerks he ultimately worked for that he was letting Char-lores out to fuck with them.

(2) Seriously, she’s in there for a couple of episodes and then her dad shoots her, which aside from anything else made me care even less about his unbelievably fucked-up soul.

The Flash and Supergirl - Season wrap-ups

"You're sure this is a normal obstetric procedure?"

Okay, so I know I haven’t been posting much lately, but I have watched a thing or two, including wrapping up the seasons of The Flash and Supergirl.

When last I left the Scarlet Speedster, DeVoe had stolen Ralph’s body and assumed his original appearance. With just one bus meta left, the radioactive Neil Borman, Team Flash decide to secure him, recruiting Citizen Cold from Earth-X to assist in the 24 hours before his wedding to Ray Terrill. They have to fight not just DeVoe, but also the hardcore Nazi Earth-X Laurel Lance, while Barry is mired in guilt and his annual existential angst. Snart helps Barry accept that it is okay to grieve for those you have lost and move on in their memory, instead of wallowing, and the good guys actually win for once.

DeVoe starts building his ‘Enlightenment Machine’, stealing tech to do so. To Marlize’s horror, he kills anyone who gets in his way, having elevated his purpose to near-divine status in his own mind. As Harry’s mind begins to deteriorate as a result of using his dark matter boosted Thinking Cap, Team Flash realise that DeVoe plans to do this to the entire world, thus ending the perceived tyranny of technology that he believes to be destroying the human race. Marlize, revealed in flashback to have come around to his way of thinking after African warlords murdered a village to steal a water purifier she made for humanitarian purposes, finally turns on her husband as she sees his descent into murderous zealotry.

Team Flash create a bomb made of Amunet’s metal and use it to take out one of the satellites vital to DeVoe’s plan, but he uses Star Labs’ satellite as a back-up. Marlize joins the team, and they use Cecile’s powers – boosted by being in labour – to send Barry into DeVoe’s mind to rescue the good part of him via a psychic nexus. Finding Ralph’s psyche still ‘alive’, but DeVoe’s goodness dead by his own psychic hand, Barry instead brings Ralph to the nexus, restoring him to his body and leaving DeVoe a helpless hologram-ghost as Marlize destroys his chair.

At this point, Barry was wondering how drunk he'd been for how long.

Harry is stabilised and goes home, Caitlin learns that Killer Frost was part of her before the particle accelerator explosion, and the mysterious girl reveals herself to be the speedster daughter of Barry and Iris, FROM THE FU-CHAH!

Lena tries to help Sam rid herself of Reign, containing her with kryptonite, which naturally leads to tensions with Supergirl when this comes to light. Meanwhile the third Worldkiller emerges, a doctor named Grace Parker who is completely into this whole Pestilence thing. She and Purity rescue Reign, although Imra is able to get a blood sample to engineer a cure to Pestilence’s plague. James refuses to spy on Lena to see if she has more kryptonite, but the fact that Supergirl asked breaks her friendship with Lena.

In the episode called 'Trinity', I had failed to realise that the Worldkillers
weren't the only trinity.

Grace succumbs entirely to Pestilence, while the consciousnesses of Sam and Julia try to hold onto their identities in the Valley of Juru, apparently both a place on Krypton and a state of mind, where the victims of the Worldkillers persist as spirits of some kind. Brainiac 5 projects Supergirl, Alex and Lena into the Valley, where they remind Sam of Ruby, allowing her to break free and signal the location of the Fortress of Badassitude. Julia breaks free, and Purity and Pestilence kill one another, but Reign takes over again and absorbs the power of the dead Worldkillers, before setting out to remove Sam’s distraction by killing Ruby.

Reign is captured, but Colville’s former Supergirl cult attempts to use a form of black kryptonite called Harun-el to create a new Worldkiller. The cult leader, Tonya, also learns Guardian’s secret identity when she shoots his mask off, and James is faced with the fact that the police would rather point guns at a black man with a shield than the heavily armed white doomsday cultists. Kara and Mon-el – having stayed behind, with Imra’s blessing, to work through his feelings about Kara – interrupt the ritual, and Kara talks Tonya down from becoming a Worldkiller.

Believing that they can use it to cure Sam, Winn and Lena locate a large source of Harun-el, which turns out to be a meteor housing a Kryptonian city, Argo, which survived the destruction and is now powered by the Harun-el. Reunited with her mother, Alura, Kara must argue for the release of a sample of Harun-el to save Sam, just in time to exorcise Reign before she can escape her containment cell. They then go back to Argo, to see if they have a place there, only for the dark priests of the Worldkillers to steal their ship and fly to Earth to regenerate Reign and begin Kryptoforming the planet. They steal Reign’s blood and send her into the Earth with the Sword of Juru to cause catastrophic earthquakes.

Throughout the season, J’onn’s father M’yrnn has been suffering from Martian Alzheimer’s. Having made preparations for death and passed many of his memories – including those of his ancestral line – to J’onn, he sacrifices himself by merging with the Earth and using his shapeshifting ability to counter the terraforming. Winn and Mon-el repair a pair of portals to get Kara, Mon-el and Alura to Earth, and Sam travels into Juru to find the fountain which is the source of Reign’s strength. Sam kills Reign, but nearly everyone dies,  so Kara somehow goes back in time using the Legion’s tech and instead of the fatal option uses the Harun-el to transport herself, Sam and Reign to Juru, where a companion fountain robs her strength until she fades into nothing.

For identification purposes, I am not the bottle city of Kandor.

Mon-el goes back to the future, which apparently needs his leadership, and also Winn’s technical skills. Since another Brainiac is wiping out other AIs, Brainiac-5 stays in the present. After looking after Ruby for several episodes and almost being killed by someone she sent down, Alex decides to quit the DEO and adopt, but J’onn instead promotes her as his successor, suggesting that she instead stick to desk work while starting her family, as he plans to walk the Earth, like Kane in Kung-Fu. Alura takes the dark priestesses to stand trial on Argo, and James comes out as Guardian, while Lena recruits the surprisingly cerebral Eve Tessmacher to work on experiments with the Harun-el.

I’ll be honest; after a strong opening, The Flash is decidedly off the boil for me. The Thinker was always going to be a tough one – super-intelligence is the hardest power to pull off well, especially in an antagonist, and a few too many times it works by having Team Flash be, well, idiots. Supergirl, on the other hand, goes from strength to strength, continuing to be fun and engaging and exciting as needed. Now, Arrow I haven’t caught up on, and I think that might not change. The Flash might go the same way next season, while Supergirl and Legends of Tomorrow remain definite fixtures.

The New Legends of Monkey

That was then... (Shiro Kishibe, Masaaki Sakai, Masako Natsume and either Toshiyuki Nishida or Tonpei Hidari(1))

The New Legends of Monkey is a left-field reimagining of Chinese literary classic The Journey to the West-cum-remake of the Japanese series Monkey! (aka Monkey Magic.) Instead of mytho-historic China it's set in a fantastical land, populated by a multi-racial population with mostly Australian or New Zealand accents. Instead of the Buddhist texts, the quest is for a set of sacred scrolls hidden by Monkey right before the gods were overthrown by hordes of demons. Instead of the Buddha punishing him for arrogance, Monkey was buried under a mountain by the gods for a crime he did not commit (which is not to say that he isn't arrogant.) Instead of a young Buddhist monk played by a woman, Tripitaka is an orphan girl disguised as a monk and adopting a sacred name given by her foster father, a wise scholar. Sandy is a rather baffled god, and a woman, and Pigsy is just gluttonous rather than a serial sex pest.

And I'm basically okay with this. Like... all of it.

...this is now. (Josh Thomson, Chai Hansen, Luciane Buchanan and Emilie Cocquerel)

In the pilot episode, our hero witnesses the demon-murder of her mentor and the monk chosen to take on the name Tripitaka and take up the quest to wake Monkey and recover the sacred scrolls. She stumbles across Monkey and wakes him, only to find that he has little interest in helping the world. In a nearby town, she stumbles across down-and-out gods Pigsy and Sandy, and together the four of them defeat the local demon overlord to free the town. After this opening, and with Monkey controlled by a sutra which causes his crown to contract and inflict crippling pain, the group head out to seek the scrolls.

They... don't find them.

They encounter a group of Monkey worshippers who have been guarding one of the scrolls, but discover that their leader sold it to a demon long ago. They are captured by a demonic shaman who is using captive gods to translate the scroll and Monkey almost gets trapped in his own brain, then escape through a forest full of faceless horrors. Tripitaka gets all self-doubty and tries to find her birth mother, but falls into a demon trap. Monkey and Pigsy manage to sneak into the demon stronghold on Jade Mountain, while Sandy follows Tripitaka's captors and they all join up to thwart the demon lord's plot to become immortal and thus ascend to the status of the gods.

Admittedly, the demons are pretty much just dudes in make-up.

Now, I'm not going to claim that this is a good show, and certainly not that it will stand the test of time like Monkey! has done (especially given what a bizarre fluke that success was,) but I enjoyed the hell out of it. Was it whitewashed? Well, the leads are Australian-Thai and New Zealand-Tongan, and only one of the core cast - Emily Cocquerel, playing the gender-flipped Sandy - is (probably(2)) white white. It is stripped of most of the aspects of Chinese culture embedded within the original nodded, leaving only a few names and some okay martial arts. The mysticism is entirely genericised, and the complex interactions of Taoist deities and Buddhism removed in favour of a bunch of fairly generic gods who shot themselves in the foot by imprisoning their best demon-puncher, leaving the rest of them to be murdered by demons.

But, I really enjoyed it. It was fun and undemanding, with quirky, likeable characters and decent performances. It is very slight, and I'm actually sad that there isn't any sign of any further episodes, because I think it had places it could have gone.

(1) I'm not sure what series this is from and they changed over.
(2) I mean, I don't know for sure. 'Australian' is as varied an origin as 'British'.

The Shannara Chronicles - 'Dweller', 'Paranor', 'Crimson', 'Warlock', 'Amberle', 'Wilderun' and 'Blood'

"I am a sexy, shirtless god of war."

Hey! Remember The Shannara Chronicles? I stopped reviewing them because my Sky box done fucked up and missed a bunch of episodes, but now season 2 is on Netflix, so I can catch up ready for oh, it's been cancelled(1).

In 'Dweller', Bandon pops into Leah - where we will see over and over that the security situation is at least as bad as that in Arborlon, which you will remember allowed a random human to come within shivving distance of its princess and last surviving Chosen while on serial killer alert. He reminds Queen Tamlin that she made a deal back in the War of the Races, when the city was surrounded by the Warlock Lord's forces and she offered him access to the kingdom's magical source in exchange for shanking her husband, the King, and leaving the rest of the city unmolested, because apparently the nigh-forgotten War of the Races, the events of which were regarded with some scepticism by the sons of the elf king last season, happened within the adult lifetime of a human in her forties. Not only is the four lands very small, its history is apparently similarly compressed.

Mareth has a strained reunion with his Allanon, not least because he tells her that she isn't his daughter, because the Druid Sleep messes with your junk. So he's all 'nuh-uh, magic radiation!' and she's all 'uh-huh, 'cause magic, yo!' And the whole thing gets very tense and snippy as he starts to suspect shenanigans of a warlock nature. Nonetheless, they and Wil go to some mountainy place that we've never heard of before now to retrieve the Sword of Shannara, which supposedly makes the Elfstones look a bit shit and will let them confront Bandon.

Nope! Nopenopenope!

Bandon tries to convince Flick that people are all shit, and to prove it he takes the human to visit his former home, the farm where his parents locked him in the basement for being a seer. He asks about the previous owners, and when the new owners start talking about how the son of the family was a magic-using abomination who had to be locked in the cellar after telling his parents that they would be murdered by demons, brutally murders their own son, just in case he was starting to feel sympathetic again(2).

Eretria returns to Leah, reconciles with Lyria and gives her blessing to the political marriage. Since she is able to tell Ander that Catania was coming to look for him, they realise that this whole 'she ran away in a jealous strop' thing was bullshit. Thus tipped off, they catch Ander's guard captain Edain smuggling weapons from Leah to the Crimson. Edain fesses up and Ander executes him, Ned Stark style.

Wil, Mareth and Allanon fight a giant spider-thing called a Dweller - so there's your title - in order to get the Sword. It's shiny AF.

"Allanon! I choose you!"

In 'Paranor', Allanon takes Wil and Mareth to the druid fortress of the episode title, where Mareth and Allanon use a dummy skull to trap Bandon in a magical cage (without telling Wil, because he's too easy to mind read, even though I'm pretty sure all you'd get is 'bloobloobloo Amberlebloo.') To sell the trap, Allanon is trapped with him, but Mareth can selectively release people, only wouldn't you know it, Bandon has poisoned Flick with his sword and in a dolorous blow kind fo deal, only the Warlock Blade can remove that poison. He demands the skull in exchange for Flick's life, and despite Allanon and Flick telling Wil that Bandon can fuck right off, Wil agrees and Mareth goes along with it, because being a strong independent woman, of course Mareth has a case of the Blandy-cravings which seem to afflict all sassy brunettes in the Four Lands.

"Check out my post-apocalypse specs!"

Speaking of sassy brunettes, Eretria falls back in with mentor/protector/weird pseudo-kidnapper and not-really-okay visit screener Cogline, who turns out to be a good guy after all; an ex-druid and a past adviser to Queen Tamlin, who is pretty shaken by the idea of the Warlock Lord getting to Heaven's Well, the big magical source place. He tells Eretria that her magic tattoos mark her as a descendant of Armageddon's Children, a group of humans susceptible to demonic corruption, but in theory also of wielding great power over the darkness. Alternatively, I guess, a black metal band misunderstood by history. He takes her to a faraday cage where he has imprisoned a Mord Wraith, to start her training to resist the call of darkness which has always been inside her, but never mentioned nor had any notable effect until now. She does this by commanding the wraith to kneel before her, because that isn't going to lead anywhere bad.

Garet Jax captures Valcaa, a Crimson officer who tries to capture him, and takes him to Ander and Lyria for some extreme questioning, which provides enough information for Lyria to turn the tables on her mother and insist that the political marriage will be on her terms.

Shea Ohmsford really only has intensity going for him, but it's one more
character trait than Wil.

Against all good advice, Wil and Mareth use a magical portal to find the hiding place of the Warlock Lord's skull, which turns out to be somewhere in Shady Vale... In the past! As we move into 'Crimson', they search for the skull in the past, and naturally run into Wil's father, currently a troubled boy and not a mean drunk. As a demon attacks, they have to protect him, and also ensure that he doesn't give up his relationship with Wil's mother to save her the problems of marriage to a half-elf. They find the skull hidden in the Ohmsford scarecrow and take it back, where Flick runs himself through on the Warlock Blade, but Bandon still gets away with the skull after the oh-so-shiny Sword of Shannara shatters against the Warlock Blade and Allanon gets cut with the Blade's poison.

Once more, go Wil!

I've been scathing about Lyria before, but props to her, because she's about to
sword fight in that dress.

Our other heroes set about cracking the Crimson's influence, and Jax kills Valcaa after he escapes. Riga is pissed. Ander and Lyria prepare to wed and the priest approaches, all hooded and WHAT UP? RIGA! Who could have seen this coming, besides anyone who watched the priest pace up all sinister, and anyone who had ever surveyed Leah's security arrangements, because honestly it has more holes in its defences than Star Labs. Witness here, where not only is Riga able to just pace the fuck up to the royal wedding with a broadsword up his cassock, but the palace is suddenly heaving with Crimson, who set about the guards and guests. The heroes seem to be doing okay, but then Riga kills Ander while the rest of the group apparently stand around like pills thanks to either a) pure apathy and long-hidden loathing for Ander, or b) shonky editing.

"What's my motivation?"
"Leave no scenery unchewed, Manu."

This brings us to 'Warlock', and Eretria and Lyria flee to Cogline's Wraith lab, while everyone else is captured. Eretria receives a vision from Amberle/the Ellcrys, warning that some shit is about to go down and that Wil needs to reach the Ellcrys, because he is their last hope. Mareth and Wil bring Allanon to the healer-commune of Storlock, where Mareth uses a ritual to project herself into her father's mind to heal him, after having a bit of awkward and unconvincing tension with Wil. Within the dream, the two meet Allanon's mentor, Bremen, who confirms that she is his daughter, and the next druid. Allanon wakes and agrees to teach Mareth to be his successor.

Leaving Allanon and Mareth at Storlock to bond, Eretria and Wil travel to Arborlon. Meanwhile, Bandon arrives at Graymark and slaughters the Crimson garrison there with magic. Then, he uses an eclipse-related ritual(3) to resurrect the Warlock Lord, who for no adequately explored reason looks a lot like Allanon(4), around his blade, skull and... whatever the third thing was. His heart? His elfstones? I forget, but I'm sure they did say.

When a Warhammer 40K aquila and Wonder Woman's logo love each other very much...

Back in Leah, not knowing what has happened to his garrison, Riga is in hog heaven, and like all successful extremists decides to celebrate what turns out to have been a completely successful coup with a little summary justice. He accuses Tamlin of treason for sheltering magic users, but as a final fuck you, she reclaims some dignity and a measure of redemption, and steps off the execution waterfall just as the smug douchebag is building up a head of steam.

"So, until I'm over my girlfriend becoming a tree, my sword will be forever
short and useless. Well, sure glad it isn't anything symbolic."

In 'Amberle', Wil and Eretria reach Arbolon, only to find that it has been sacked by the Crimson, thus saving the show the cost of more than a handful of extras and proving that Leah still has competition in the woeful domestic security stakes. Eretria rescues the surviving Chosen from the Crimson and leads them back to the hidden catacombs below the Ellcrys, but then she gets possessed by a Mord-Wraith and horribly murders at least one of them. While this is happening, Wil goes into the tree, where the Ellcrys advises him to get the fuck over himself and stop moping over Amberle, like he was doing for all of one episode that one time. When he accepts that there is no bringing her back and that she is in his past, the sword regrows, because... I have no real idea. Because his body and mind were going north and south before? Because the sword of Shannara is as much of a euphemism as the elfstones? Anyway, it's a good thing, because the spirit of Shea Ohmsford tells his son that only the Sword can kill the Warlock Lord.

Well, this is gratuitous.

Bandon asks his master to resurrect Catania, whose corpse he stole from Leah after she was murdered. He does, and she is immediately creeped out by him, on account of having seen him do a murder on a guard, or just because he's looking all grunge and coming on like a freight train when she's just woken up in what could charitably described as 'a crypt' with a clear memory of being stabbed in the gut by a trusted ally. Because he's apparently bored easily, the Warlock Lord puts the 'fluence on her to turn her into a trashy goth with low morals, then macks on her in front of Bandon - again, because apparently the bad teeth, jet black eyes and homicidal tendencies aren't quite enough to be really sure that he's the bad guy - and then forces Bandon to kill her. Amazingly, given these top notch people skills, Bandon is starting to have doubts about his life choices.

"Magic is evil. It makes people do bad things. Now let's burn down this
hospital and get back to doing good!"

Allanon and Mareth are sold out by one of the other patients at Storlock, and captured by Riga and the Crimson. They threaten Mareth to force Allanon to give up the Druid Codex, then sentence them both to burn at the stake, while being all sanctimonious at them. Riga then returns to Graymark, where the Warlock Lord dispatches his guards with contemptuous ease. Riga boasts about his magical immunity, but unlike Allanon, the Warlock Lord doesn't forget that his magic is at least 50% telekinesis, and kills a rather surprised looking Riga with barbed wire and rebar, neither of which he is remotely immune to. He takes the Codex and monologues about independence and seizing power until Bandon tries to magic-kill him, only to turn around and run Bandon through with his Blade.

Alas, poor Bandon; you barely had a consistent characterisation. And alas, poor Sassy Elf. You deserved so much better than reduction to girlfriend, murder and resurrection as a bad-taste sex-toy, as indeed does basically everyone.

Oo. That's not a good sign.

Moving on to 'Wilderun', and Loyalists within Leah spring Jax and the gnomes, who jack the Crimson at Storlock and head to Greymark with Allanon and Mareth. They find the aftermath of the Warlock Lord's rise, including Riga's head, but no the Warlock Lord himself. Using the head, they persuade the Crimson to join forces with the loyalists against the Warlock Lord, for all the good that might do. Eretria admits to Wil that she is a Child of Armageddon - largely I suspect to try to fake out the audience that maybe she'll resist the influence of the Warlock Lord - and they join Allanon, Mareth, Lyria and Cogline at the latter's enclave. Cogline explains that they must guard Lyria and her golden elfstone necklace, which together form the key to Heaven's Well and which they naturally opt to keep together for maximum ease of theft.

"That could have gone better."

The Mord-Wraith possessing Eretria betrays them, drawing in the enemy and overpowering Lyria. Meanwhile, the Warlock Lord whoops Allanon, Cogline and Mareth in a fight, killing Allanon at the start of 'Blood', totally for reals this time.

Jax leads the defence of Leah against the Warlock Lord's armies of... I'm not sure. They seem to have too much truck with walls to all be Mord Wraiths. Eretria is sent to disable the dam on which Leah is built, allowing the Warlock Lord to take Lyria up to a shrine behind the reservoir. He pollutes Heaven's Well with his blood, and with the floodgates open, this will spread his power and influence throughout the Four Lands. Cogline and Jax retake the control room and exorcise the Mord-Wraith from Eretria, while Wil and Mareth defeat the Warlock Lord, and Wil sacrifices himself to cleanse Heaven's Well.

Lyria becomes Queen, and Eretria, Cogline and Mareth go to Paranor. There, Mareth suddenly feels that Wil is still alive, and we cut to Wil waking on a battlefield (in the Forbidding?) surrounded by Furies. 'To be continued,' the screen caption lies.

This is the end...
No, actually, this is the end.

So, there we go. Two seasons of sub-Game of Thrones fantasy heroics, in all its compressed scale, minimalist timelined glory, and now we will never know if Wil gets eaten by demons on the wrong side of the tree. I like to think that he does, because he has been been the consistent weak link in the series. It's not even that he's less talented or pretty than anyone else, but that he's got so little substance. I can't blame the actor, given how little he has to work with. The ladies in the piece aren't much better, but at least they get to be a bit sassy (apart from poor sassy elf Catania, who was done wrong in this season.) The best you can say about Wil is that he's... present, and in retrospect I tend to blank out even that. The standouts tend to be the bit parts, which tend to be filled by solid thesps, and the production design is impeccable, even if the budget sometimes impairs the execution.

I will miss The Shannara Chronicles. If it's never been classic TV, it's been good fun to watch, and absolute classic snarking material.

(1) I can't claim to be surprised. I'm more astonished that it made it to season 2.

(2) Partly because he genuinely has had a shit time of it, and partly because of his big-eyed woobie face, it's easy to forget that he's a world-ending zealot.

(3) Which shows excellent timing on his plan.

(4) He is also played by Manu Bennett.