The Librarians... - '...and the Hidden Sanctuary', '...and a Town Called Feud', '...and Some Dude Named Jeff', '...and the Trial of One' and '...and the Echoes of Memory'

It is with a heavy heart that I turn to this review, of the final five episodes of The Librarians. The word is out and the series has been cancelled, but at least it got a suitable send off.

Normal.

'...and the Hidden Sanctuary' sees Cassandra taking a sabbatical in the safest town in America, to ty out what a normal life feels like and decide if it might be for her if she had to quit the Library to prevent a civil war. Unfortunately, while the town is almost impossibly safe, her arrival seems to coincide with a breakdown of its perfect order. With the help of a young boy who has realised since moving to the town that something is very wrong, but all the adults too scare to speak about it, she discovers that the town is protected by a bound faerie. Unfortunately, her arrival by magic door has fractured the binding, releasing the now heartily pissed of faerie. Only Cassandra has any chance of stopping the rampage, but first she'll have to convince the town that stoning her won't solve their problems.

"Does it say 'colonel' anywhere on my uniform?"

Then it's time for Jake and Ezekiel to explore the threat of civil war, as they travel to a town called Feud in '...and a Town Called Feud'. Feud is a town that thrives on Civil War tourism, especially around the bloody rift between two brothers, one a Rebel and the other a Union man. The owner of the local museum is determined to reunite the two halves of a locket symbolising their broken fraternal bond, but the ghosts of the dead seem set on perpetuating the struggle. Yet as the Librarians are caught up in the hauntings, all may not be as it seems. Meanwhile, back in the annex, Cassandra treats Jenkins to high tea and they look for more information on the Library civil war, which convinced Cassandra that there truly can be only one.

"Clean up, aisle seven."

Before we hit the big finish, it's Jenkins' - and John Laroquette's - time to shine, in '...and Some Dude Named Jeff'. Jenkins wakes up in a basement room, while his place in the annex has been taken by a slacker named Jeff. Jenkins discovers that Jeff has been studying the Librarians and idolising Jenkins for months, before finding a spell book on the internet which allowed him to Freak Friday his hero. Unfortunately, the book is also one of the most dangerous in existence, and Jenkins must call on the courage and resourcefulness of Jeff's D&D group to aid him in penetrating the Library's back door, in order to find Jeff and reverse the spell, before a monstrous force can destroy... well, pretty much everything.

This could be going better.

With the critical equinox closing in and no decision as to who will anchor the Library to humanity alongside Baird, the Librarians enact a spell to cause the Library to choose in '...and the Trial of One'. Unfortunately, this trial is to the death, and the three Librarians are forced to face their worst nightmares. Escaping these requires them to surrender the memory of their friends, thus allowing them to fight to the death. Baird is able to break out of her own nightmare to aid them, but the Library - perhaps already drifting away from humanity, because it's being a real dick about the whole business - has decreed that the trials will be completed, two Librarians will be killed, or else Jenkins will die. Despite their best efforts, the Librarians can not overcome the Library, and the enacting of this penalty ultimately drives all three to resign.

The Librarians?

Finally, '...and the Echoes of Memory' (and to an extent the final scene of '...and the Trial of One') reveals that Nicole Noone has been playing a long game all along. She kidnapped Flynn and faked his resignation, as well as engineering the loss of Jenkins' immortality to provoke the others to leave, so that she can rule a world in which the Library never was. Such a world is a dystopian mehhole of conformity and bureaucracy. In this monochrome nightmare, Baird struggles to hold onto enough memory of the Library to recruit the three Librarians, find Flynn and somehow undo what Noone has done before it becomes irreversible.

And so, it ends. It ends, in fact, with a reversal of time which undoes most of this season's action, although I like to think that most of it plays out anyway, and especially that Jenkins is still DMing for Jeff and his mates, because that shit was adorable. I also like to think that they were able to convince Derrington Dare that he was full of it, tweak the nose of the Saint of Thieves, and just straight up punch Rasputin in his face. I kind of want to write the revised events as fanfic now, because... I won't deny it, I'm going to miss The Librarians, in all its whimsical and closely plotted glory. It's been a highlight of the television calendar for the last four years, and now it's gone. On the other hand, at least it didn't outstay its welcome and fade away into something I wasn't sorry to see end.

TV Roundup: iZombie - 'Looking for Mr Goodbrain'; The Magicians - 'Cheat Day', 'The Cock Barrens', 'Plan B', 'Word as Bond', 'Lesser Evils', 'The Girl Who Told Time', 'The Rattening', 'Ramifications' and 'We Have Brought You Little Cakes'; Emerald City - 'Lions in Winter', 'The Villain That's Become' and 'No Place Like Home'; Dark Matter - 'Being Better is so Much Harder'

Quite a big one this time out, as I spent the past weekend doing some catchup.

Half outed as a zombie, Liv tans and dies and she looks weird.

First up, two episodes of iZombie season 3 that weren’t out when I did my big marathon. When Ravi’s ex-boss/anger hookup turns up murdered, Liv eats her brains and turns into a bar-crawling sex addict, as well as being haunted by memory flashes of Ravi’s O face. Under the influence she has sex with Chase Graves, ruining her budding relationship with that one Philmore-Graves soldier, and meanwhile Ravi’s indiscretion with a hack journalist and faux zombie truther leads to D-Day coming ahead of schedule. Major becomes a zombie again after a zombified ex-prepper suicide bombs his farewell bash, killing most of the squad and his ex-zombie new girlfriend. 

With the world falling apart and D-Day closer than ever, Graves’ PA initiates the Doomsday scenario, releasing Aleutian flu into the city so that Philmore-Graves can spike the vaccine with zombie blood and then offer conversion to the sick, creating a critical mass of zombies to declare to the world. It’s a bold and radical shift in the direction of the series, and I am perhaps more curious than excited to see where it goes from here.

So, this shit is horrid.

From there we move to the closing chapters of Emerald City, 'Lions in Winter', 'The Villain That's Become' and 'No Place Like Home'. These truly are the closing chapters, as the series was cancelled after one season, and finally bring Dorothy up to full spin. Lucas/Roan and Sylvie both give her the heave-ho in favour of Glinda, but persuade the Witch of the North to give her a job caring for the child-soldier witches who have burned out under her demanding training regime. Dorothy gets hacked off, unlocks the power of East’s elements by hmrrmphm and escapes. She goes back to the munjakin, having worked out that the chief’s imprisoned wife actually created the stone giants.

 

Yeah, so... Eamonn is the Cowardly Lion analogue, having killed Ozma's
parents while wearing his lion hat and cloak or something.

West invests Ozma/Tip with East’s magic, because that was totally a thing, right? Then they recruit a bunch of battle witches from… that place, and take over Emerald City while the Wizard is off warring with Langwidere, who tries to keep the guns she promised to make for him. The Wizard’s commandos take Langwidere hostage and Jack accidentally shoots her in the head, before discovering that in fact she was a robot made by Jane. He goes a bit loco and tries to kill the wizard, then Jane reveals herself as Dorothy’s mother, the witches attack, Sylvie crumbles the Stone Giant, but Dorothy activates the giant in Emerald City to smash that thing that is important to Glinda and…

All right, clearly, I’m not remembering this series very well. I was never all that taken with it, but it held my curiosity at least. However, I can’t say I’m gutted to see it go.

Next, I finished up Season 2 of The Magicians, and by finished up I mean 'watched the majority of.' Having lost pace after Episode 4, I got caught up on Episodes 5-13: 'Cheat Day', 'The Cock Barrens(1)', 'Plan B', 'Word as Bond', 'Lesser Evils', 'The Girl Who Told Time', 'The Rattening', 'Ramifications' and 'We Have Brought You Little Cakes'. This is basically three seasons of crazy in a nine episode marathon, so I don't think I'm going to try to do anything more than the highlight reel.

God foetus isn't keen on being aborted, it turns out.

Quentin tries to vanish into obscurity and ends up getting very drunk and having ill-advised shapeshifty sex with Emily Greenstreet, the girl whose affair with Professor Mayakovski ended in Alice's brother being niffined. Julia finds the Hedge Witch who formerly banished Reynard and learns that she used the power released by the birth of the child he got on her (by rape, of course, because Reynard is a douchebag) to fuel the spell. Julia discovers that she has the potential to do the same, as she is pregnant.

In Fillory, Eliot is attacked by a pro-Fillorian assassin(2), and Margot insults a visiting diplomat – Prince Ess of Loria – when he shows up to demand a royal wedding. She has sex with Ess, but when Penny discovers that they have not been transported to the titular Cock Barrens, but merely illusioned away, she gets mad and declares war. The gang reunite to carry out a bank heist, during which Eliot's dopelbanger is killed by a security Magician, but escape with sufficient funds to bankroll Fillory's army and pay for Julia to have Reynard's child exorcised. Unfortunately, the operation also excises Julia's Shade, and thus indirectly leads to the extermination of a forest of pro-Lorian talking trees. With the kingdom up in arms, Eliot sees no alternatives but devastating war or personal combat with the King of Loria. Fen is able to give him a sword and a spell to make him a master swordman, but the Wellspring is still kind of fucked and so magic is failing erratically.

 

Total sucker fro a decent musical moment; you may have noticed.

Julia and Kady track down Reynard's son, a senator and presidential hopeful, and bring him to Brakebills. Learning that Niffin Alice has been caught in the demon trap on Quentin's back, Julia tries to force him to release her to attack Reynard, but it all goes wrong when Reynard uses the Beast's time-freeze on them and the senator surrenders himself to save the others. With niffin Alice wearing on his body, Quentin releases her and takes the chance that she might go psycho on him. She doesn't.

Margot uses a spell to give Eliot a musical boost by getting the court to perform 'One Day More' with him on the way to the duel, then negotiates with the fairies to get the Wellspring cleaned. The opening bid from the fairy ambassador is the Wellspring for the child of Eliot and Fen makes her scoff, which insults the ambassador so much that there can be no further discussion of terms. Eliot wins the duel, but spares the King of Loria on learning that monarchs are allowed a wife and a husband. He also has Margot locked up on discovering the deal that she made (which he does after Fen is dragged off by the fairies.)

 

An actual fucking dragon.

Quentin and Julia visit the Underworld – with the help of a dragon voiced by Igrid Oliver – where the dead members of Free Trader Beowulf help them reach Elysium to rescue Julia's lost shade. There they discover that Our Lady Underground is real, and is in fact Persephone, currently absent from duty. Julia opts to rescue Alice's shade instead of her own, enabling Quentin to restore Alice to life, much to her annoyance on account of how as a niffin she basically knew everything.

Penny signs up with the Order who run the Library of the Neitherlands in order to relearn magic after having his hands restored. A Hedge Witch curses a book he retrieves in order to force a Librarian to take something out of the Poison Room, the rare book section, which also holds a volume on god-killing. With the help of a fellow reluctant librarian he gets into the Poison Room via the fountains, only to find out that it is literally poisoned. Still, he gets the book. The senator realises that his life is a lie, and that Reynard has murdered his wife to punish him for talking to Julia and Kady. Distraught, he uses his inherited trickster powers to force Kady to kill him and ritually steal his power to make a godkilling bullet, only for Julia to not use it when Our Lady Underground turns up and makes an appeal for her son's life. Persephone returns Julia's shade and Kady is understandably pissed that this was the finale to all the shit she had to do to set up the kill shot, including murdering a decent man and getting Penny a terminal dose of magical poison.

The other ram god; a different kind of dick.

Just as all seems well, everyone in Filory gets turned into rats and Eliot is expelled. Tracking down the first and last portal to Fillory, they find it in the keeping of the supposedly dead Ember, who explains that he agreed to get out of the Beast's way and is trying to work on a new, better world. All that is going wrong in Fillory is down to the chaotic Umber getting bored and having no ordered god to balance him. In a last ditch effort to have magic not end, the gang bring Umber and Ember together. Umber kills his brother and sets out to destroy Fillory, but Julia binds the death energy of Ember into a blade with which Quentin slays Umber.

In punishment for this, the greater gods of the cosmos shut off magic altogether. Only a few inherently magical beings remain, one of them – the Lamprey – set on revenge against Alice for something she did as a niffin. Julia, however, is still able to conjure a spark of magic, for reasons unknown.

 

The Great God Luigi.

And there's a tonne of stuff missing from that, like Josh being hired to use culinary magic to make the Fillorians like Eliot and ending up king of a drugged-up court with everyone else missing, to Margot going into the fairy court to try to retrieve Fen and the baby and then losing an eye as the cost of coming back, and, oh yes, the fairies taking over Fillory at the end.

The Magicians remains a pretty unique piece of television, with its magical themes juxtaposed with a washed out colour scheme and downbeat central thesis that magic doesn't complete you. Professor Mayakovski suggests that life is inherently shit, and that magic is a way of making it one minute iota better; still shit, but just marginally less so. Season 2 also opens out the world and reveals that the titular magicians, classically trained or otherwise, are all just small potatoes in a cosmos where universal forces(3) will straight up cut you off from magic if you stab their children (even if those children have been murdering their own brothers and acting like colossal dicks to the world(4).)

We've got a season 3 coming in, so presumably magic will come back in some way as otherwise the show would now be called The Management Accountants or something.

 

Five got badass.

So finally, for now, to the first episode of season 3 of Dark Matter. In the wake of the bombing of the corporate summit and the theft of the blink drive, Truffaut, Five and the Android end up under fire in the Raza, while Three ends up with an Enemy Mine sort of scenario as he and a GA cop fight off a security drone in a disused warehouse, and Two and Six are stranded in the crippled Marauder. Meanwhile, Ishida Ryo – the badass formerly known as Four – releases an old teacher from prison to be his adviser, angering his axe-crazy captain of the guard who feels that treason against the throne should be punished, even if it was against the Emperor you lately helped to assassinate and replace.

The rest of the crew eventually reunite, after Two has hallucinated a pseudo-Sapphic farewell from Nyx – now confirmed dead – and discuss options. Three wants to do pirate shit. Six wants to hit Evil Corp from the shadows. Two wants to go after Ryo. And Five... Five has created a virtual version of Three's late ex Sarah. Can't imagine that going wrong.

Dark Matter continues to be an also-ran for me, Season 3 losing further ground to my space opera of choice, Killjoys. It's not that anything about it is actively bad, but surprisingly little happened in this episode except that it got everyone back together and tried to make me feel bad about the death of a character I felt basically nothing for.

(1) Oh, The Magicians. You do you.

(2) A member of Fillorians United, or 'FU fighter'. Honestly, they could have done worse with an organisation called FU.

(3) Which, somewhat bizarrely, manifest as the very humanocentric image of a plumber.

(4) In a voiceover intro to the final episode, Umber explains that basically he's pushed and prodded to make a lot of shitty things happen, including the rattening, expelling Eliot for trying to make Fillory actually work, and making the River Watcher pissy enough to curse Penny up good.

Sense8 – ‘Who am I?’, ‘Obligate Mutualisms’, ‘Polyphony’ and ‘Fear Never Fixed Anything’

"Who am I? Do you mean where I'm from? What I one day might become? What I do? What I've done? What I dream? Do you mean ... what you see or what I've seen? What I fear or what I dream? Do you mean who I love? Do you mean who I've lost? Who am I?

"I guess who I am is exactly the same as who you are. Not better than, not less than. Because there is no one who has been or will ever be exactly the same as either you or me."

Okay, so... I'll be honest, I didn’t; review the first three episodes of this series before because I figured we'd binge through the season and I'd do it in a oner. Then the news of the cancellation and unresolved cliffhanger hit and we lost momentum. Now there's the promise of a last hurrah and resolution, so... Here we go.

Season 2 of Sense8 retains much of the feel of Season 1, with our multicultural cluster of Sensates(1) each doing their own thing, but there's a much stronger arc feel, not least because three of our characters are deep into the arc so that their thing is arc thing.

Will and Riley are still hiding from Whispers, with Will playing cat and mouse as each tries to locate the other. Whispers pins them down to Iceland, thanks to an elaborate ruse with yoghurt and seagull soundtracks, while Will ultimately gets the drop on him, allowing the cluster to set up a meeting with one of his superiors. Unfortunately, Whispers reverses the advantage by murdering his boss after he makes a deal with the cluster, forcing them back on the run but leaving Will with actual blockers instead of heroin.

Never alone.

Capheus is going about his business, but having attracted the interest of a journalist has become quite a celebrity, even beyond his neighbourhood. He is approached to consider running for office, and while he protests that he is not a politician, he is told that people don't want a politician; they want a leader. He goes to the journalist, possibly for advice, but is driven off by her jealous colleagues, who hint that he is a fiction she created and crudely asserting that his interest must be carnal and is thus hopeless, because she is gay(2), leaving him a little adrift.

Wolfgang and Felix hover on the edges of a potential gang war, and are unexpectedly offered a club to run. The owner's secretary makes eye contact with Wolfgang and starts turning up naked and sexy in his brain, revealing herself as part of another cluster, one apparently aligned to some extent with BPO for protection. I practically punched the air when Wolfgang actually told his cluster-mates about this instead of keeping it as a pointless secret.

Kala remains somewhat disconnected, although her pharmaceutical knowledge is key to understanding the blockers, and she begins to discover not only that her father-in-law's religious intolerance is deep-seated and hateful, but that her husband is more interested in making delivery dates than providing good quality drugs.

I'd completely forgotten that Sun fought the same cop on a roof in her
underwear.

Sun is forced to escape from prison after her brother hires guards to murder her. She goes on the run with the old lady who killed her abusive husband, although her partner in crime then hands herself in so that Sun can get away. Sun goes into hiding with her old martial arts teacher, who is then visited by what seems to be an honest cop, who fought Sun in their student days and was roundly thrashed.

Nomi remains in hiding with Bug, doing the cluster's hack work, until Bug suggests a way around her problems. Reaching out to 'the Guy', he arranges a meeting in a cinema showing one of Lito's films (giving us a lovely scene in which Bug remotely fanboys at Lito,) with a contact who shows in a V for Vendetta mask and offers 'e-death' – Sense8's version of The Dark Knight Returns' clean slate – in exchange for an unspecified but non-tawrdy future favour. Nomi's records and warrants promptly vanish.

Seriously, I'm pretty sure everyone else in the bar just saw Lito neck eight
tequillas.

Lito's career founders as he is typecast as doomed, gay characters, causing him to reject an invitation to be president of the Sao Paulo Pride Parade. He also reminisces about one of his first gay lovers, a photojournalist who turns out to have been part of Angelica's cluster and a victim of BPO's purges. Lito returns to the bar from last season to drink shots with the cluster (not sure how that works to an outside eye) in part in memory of Jonas, who is killed having outlived his usefulness. The bartender tells him that Lito's kiss inspired him. He proposed to his boyfriend and they have enjoyed the best year of their life. This not only shows Lito what he can achieve as a gay actor, but propels the cluster into their next big act of rebellion.

Their last run at Whispers revealed how big the organisation is, which they realise means that there must be lots more Sensates out there. Thus, Riley agrees to DJ a gig for one of her old contacts, in order to put the message out. Three conspicuous figures – one in saffron robes, one some sort of biker and Sylvester McCoy in a Barber hat – see the gig, and Riley draws McCoy to 'visit' the stage, prompting him to flee, but getting their message out before she and Will escape along the Thames ahead of Whispers and his goons.

Man this season is a rollercoaster ride, with first the cluster and then Whispers getting the whiphand week by week(3). Next episode is going to be a downer by that pattern, but on the upside, Sylvester McCoy!

(1) Although this term is actually dropped for the most part in favour of 'homo sensorium'.

(2) She may well be, but the immediate read of this is 'won't sleep with us'.

(3) Or however often we manage to catch it.

Hunters - 'The Beginning and the End'

Earth's only line of defence is so gloriously low-tech.

Ironically, given its title, the pilot episode of new and already cancelled alien hunting series Hunters begins at neither the beginning nor the end, but in the middle, with a man manipulating music files on a computer while a naked woman lies hogtied in a cage next to hutches full of rabbits.

So, this is the bad guy, okay. The heroes may be asshats, but this dude keeps naked ladies in cages.

Flash back 72 hours and we get to see a bit of the captive, Abby Carroll, living her normal life with her FBI husband, Flynn and their foster daughter whose dad was Flynn's late partner. Damn this guy's family life is complicated. I bet he's really deep and interesting, says the imaginary viewer for whom this show is being written. Abby is kidnapped by the bad man, who just to drive the point home gets all close in and rapey before incapacitating the half-deaf woman with a sonic weapon.

To find Abby, Flynn is roped into the Exo-Terrorism Unit, a group of cross-agency, slightly international alien Hunters working out of a 1990s police procedural set, using sonic weapons adapted by those used by the 'Hunters', their human-looking alien quarry. He works with ETU agents Regan and Riggs to try to catch our bad man - I think his human alias is McCarthy or something - but they fuck it up, largely because they are fuck ups and incapable of maintaining any kind of tactical formation.

So, are we clear on who the baddy is?

And therein lies the real problem. The leads are a bunch of fuck ups, lacking not only redeeming features, but also convincing reasons to be on this team. In terms of character, Carroll is a growly misanthrope who loves only his wife (and possibly the foster daughter, while also feeling unable to look after her properly on his own,) Riggs is Australian and Regan is impulsive, and probably an alien. The Hunters are pretty one-note - they really have to be to hold onto the bad guy flag against this bunch of chuckleheads - with their human appearance, animalistic snarling and rapey, big game hunter overtones. Maybe there will be more nuance later.

Limitless - 'My Name is Rebecca Harris', 'Finale: Part 1!' and 'Finale: Part 2!!'

"Stop me if this sounds crazy..."

So, with Limitless cancelled (boo!) I'm just going to wrap up the final three episodes together.

In 'My Name is Rebecca Harris', Rebecca gets her turn in the spotlight, as she finally confronts Brian over his actions and connection to Senator Morra. It's not the ideal time for Brian, who has just realised that Sands has Piper, and thus the ticket to immunity, but there it is. Things being what they are, he comes clean to Rebecca and tells her everything. He asks her to let him work this last case and hits her with the big one: Sands killed her father.

Not knowing who, or how, to trust, Rebecca drops Brian's pill and together they embark on a Rebecca-narrated adventure to decrypt Huston's burn book and thus get the dirt to nail Sands. Rebecca on NZT is ludicrously badass, blocking the pain of a gunshot shoulder and putting a bullet down the scope of a sniper's rifle as she does it,  Not that Brian is completely out of the loop, cobbling together an ECG capable of allowing a comatose man to give some form of testimony. It's a good episode for bringing Rebecca properly back into the mix, although less happily it ends with Brian's immunity fading and thus his removal from the FBI.

The bugger of it is, I know what I was on.

So on to 'Finale: Part 1!', in which Brian is working as a store clerk while Nas and the team try to crack down on a tidal wave of NZT hitting the streets. Brian is working the case in his garage, but his family are more interested in critiquing the grammar of his moniker for Sands' shadow group - 'The Legion of Whom' - than helping him to find Piper.

Sands is in jail, but not talking, and the DEA's point man on 'Apocryphon' - the street name for NZT - is a slimy douchebag. So, Brian buys some street NZT, shoots down the '10% thing' and creates a mobile which explains everything and leads him to Clay Meeks, a chemist who may be the eponymous Apocryphon and who straight up ninja vanishes when cornered. The FBI meanwhile are chasing a different lead and round up a group of suspects, only for DEA douchebag to bomb the prisoner transport - taking out what turns out to be the last of the now-absent Morra's loyal following - and free Sands in the chaos, because evil!

"Good series, but the comedown's a bitch."

'Finale: Part 2!!' ramps up the stakes, as Brian risks his life continuing to take NZT as he tries to fathom the Legion of Whom's objectives. It's actually really simple of course: They need money, and plan to get it by setting up and knocking down a treaty between Greenland and Canada in order to profit in a massive trade short.

By having people shot, in case this all felt too... low key.

With his health collapsing and hallucinations of Piper alternately pleading for rescue or turning into rabid harpies who try to eat his face, Brian finally tracks the NZT production facility and Rebecca gets her moment to confront Sands, shooting him when he tries to do the same to her. Piper is gone, but makes a last minute appearance at Brian's parents' house with a permanent immunity shot to set up new tensions for the Season 2 that wasn't, and that's a huge shame.

I suspect that a couple of things at least were zipped through when the show was cancelled, in order to provide closure, and that quite possibly in the original version Sands got away. It meant that 'Finale: Part 2!!' was a bit of a rush, but still with all the strengths of Limitless - the leads and their chemistry, Brian's mental workings (including a workshop of superhero identities,) and oh yeah, getting through the whole thing without Brian and Rebecca either kissing or getting inappropriately jealous of each other's love interests (even the ones who turned out to be dicks.)

I'm not going to lie. I love shows where men and women work together and share close friendships without having to sleep together. I liked that in Supergirl, Wynn got over his disappointed crush (even if it was by sleeping with a future supervillain.) I was mildly outraged to learn that Kim Possible and Ron Stoppable eventually became a canon couple, because God forbid that we suggest to our children that a boy and a girl could be friends and work together without dating.

So yeah; that was Limitless, and I would be happy to post cat pictures or make clay models as part of a petition to bring it back.

Limitless - 'Bezgranichny'

Borscht.

With everything collapsing around him, Brian sets out to find the one person who might be able to help him escape from Morra's grasp: Fellow NZT user Blair Piper.

Using a pair of pills swiped from Mike and Ike he tracks her to St Petersburg, and springs her from prison with the assistance of George R R Martin. She is in reach of perfecting the enzyme which suppresses NZT side-effects, but needs samples of a rare flower, which she was trying to steal from the private seed vault of a Russian oligarch when she was arrested.

After a week of prep and fun, they make a second attempt on the vault. Piper tells Brian that the past week was not 'real'; real is the people they are on NZT, and he ought to embrace this. It seems that she has embraced it all too much, when the heist goes awry and she rabbits with the prize, leaving him to be bagged by the Russians.

With this look, it is clear that Piper is the Root of this series, but not as cool
as Root.

Meanwhile, Rebecca is trying to track him down, and finding it hard to face the hostility of his family. She likes them, liked Brian, and clearly struggles to cope with being accused of causing his change in personality when she herself has been betrayed because of it.

Fortunately for Brian, Piper has a change of heart and George R R Martin comes through like a boss. He sets out for home with a hope of freedom and reconciliation, even as Sands receives pictures of Brian with the supposedly dead Piper and Brian's sister tells Rebecca about Sands' visit to the safe house.

It's kind of hard to see where Limitless is going at this point. It's all getting rather heavy, and even if Brian 'wins', how will we ever be able to get back to Happy Fun Brian? Because I really hope we do, and since the series has now been cancelled, I hope we end on an up note. It feels as if Limitless might have been better served without the overarching conspiracy from week 1; if Morra had seemed less dodgy for longer, allowing the series to play more to its strengths. As it is, the arc has always seemed at war with the weekly premise, and that has sadly never been completely reconciled.

Second Chance

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

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

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

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

Atlantis - 'The Dying of the Light' and 'Kin'

Things are not going well.

Tensions are high in the heroes camp. As Pasiphae subjects Atlantis to a rule of iron, Jason is consumed by the revelation that he is her son, losing his compassion and coming to blows with the grieving Hercules. Injured and then captured after a friend betrays Pythagoras, he is forced to fight for his life in Pasiphae's brutal gladiatorial games. In desperation, Pythagoras - who is basically the hero of the show in all but name by this point - seeks the advice of the new Oracle, Cassandra, and is led to Jason's father, the leper Aeson, who may be the only person who can reach the good still in Jason.

Now, honestly, there is a problem here. Medea explains in 'Kin' that those touched by the gods are drawn to each other, but it's all a bit sudden, and the idea that this magnetic pull a) depends on knowing that Pasiphae is his mother and b) can totally reverse his personality, yet c) be overridden by a hug from his old Dad. I'm not saying I'm not in favour of some paternal props, but it's all a bit quick. I guess they're cramming before they run out of series. Thus, within the space of a three episodes we've gone from Jason rejecting Pasiphae and Medea, to Jason making out with Medea in the woods, then connecting with his mother in jail, and finally turning from them and heading back to his friends.

Ever reluctant to expand its roster, the show kills off Aeson pretty much as soon as Jason is back on side. As to what it does to its greatest romance, it breaks my heart. Poor Pythagoras is going to be heartbroken to learn that Icarus has betrayed him, even to save his father's life.

Atlantis is really suffering from early-onset Cerebus Syndrome. It's going to wrap up next episode, and I don't think I'll miss it.

Atlantis - 'The Gorgon's Gaze'

Atlantis blows a perfect opportunity for a big no.

Ariadne arrested! Pasiphae Queen of Atlantis! Jason accused of murdering the Oracle!

On these and other bombshells we open this week's episode with the inauguration of the new Oracle, Cassandra, who immediately announces that the Gods are pissed as hell with all these shenanigans and the vain-taking of their names and justice. It strikes me that this is a very real problem that a would-be usurper like Pasiphae might have taken into account, living as she does in a land of real and vengeful deities (indeed, that this was the purpose of her various schemes to marry Ariadne to her henchling in Season 1.)

While Ariadne is subjected to the dreaded Colchean stare-eyes torture (in fairness, this is actually done pretty well, with top-notch intensity from Ariadne, Medea and Pasiphae,) Medusa hatches a scheme with Pythagoras. With the aid of his friends, Daedalus and his son Icarus, he breaks into the temple and steals Pandora's Box. In order to atone for the Oracle's murder, she drugs Hercules and transforms herself back into the Gorgon, before allowing Jason to decapitate her and use her as a weapon of mass destruction.

This leads to a confrontation in which Jason nearly kills Pasiphae, before she reveals that she is his mother. This apparently leads Medea to assume that she and Jason are totally going to do it in the impromptu statue garden, but he assures her he just finds her creepy and walks out with the blindfolded Ariadne.

"You only need my head; my body will just slow you down."

Atlantis has always had a dark streak, but this is some heavy shit, from the murder of Ariadne's loyal guard captain to Jason cutting his friend's head off to use as a death ray. Hercules is, understandably, pissed as hell, and Pythagoras guilt-wracked. Fun, fun, fun.

In terms of dramatic punch and performances, this is a career best for the series, sadly coming after the decision to cancel at the end of Series 2. Still, there's always Olympus to keep us going over on Spike.

Alphas - Season 1

Season 1 Cast - Ryan Cartwright, Laura Mennell, Warren Christie, Malik Yoba, David Strathairn and Azita Ghanizada

Once more, Netflix helps me to catch up on another now-cancelled series.

Dr Lee Rosen (Strathairn) is a man with a mission, to discover humans with extraordinary neurological abilities - Alphas, in his parlance - and to help them to achieve their full potential. He is not an Alpha himself, although it emerges at the end of the season that his daughter Danielle is. Rosen is a psychologist and the leader of a team of Alphas who work under the auspices of the Defense Criminal Investigative Service to track down and contain dangerous Alphas. Throughout the season they work against both individual Alphas and the Alpha supremacist organisation Red Flag, but all the while it becomes increasingly apparent that their own side is more sinister than at first they might appear*.

Alongside Strathairn's Academy nominated heavy talent, the team - each with their own ability and downside - are played by either relative unknowns or TV stalwarts: Bill Harken (Yoba) is an FBI field agent and hyperadrenal, who gains superhuman strength from his adrenaline rush but is exhausted afterwards and always cranky. Nina Theroux (Mennell) is the veteran of the team and a 'hyper inductive', able to override the will of others through speech and eye contact. Rachel Pirzad (Ghanizada) has the ability to heighten any one sense to an incredible degree, but only by dulling the others to near-insensibility; an ability that the series calls synaesthesia, which kinda makes me want to punch things. Gary Bell (Cartwright) is a transducer; he can sense any electromagnetic radiation and interpret it as images, sounds or patterns. The new guy is Cameron Hicks (Christie), who sounds like he ought to be fighting aliens on a spaceship and is in fact an ex-Marine/ His hyperkinesis allows him uncanny agility and hand-eye coordination.

The basic format is a monster of the week anthology, with the team tracking down Alphas who are, deliberately or unwittingly, causing harm. A double-edged arc plot concerns the rising activities of Red Flag and the increasing evidence of Guantanamo-style abuse at the facility set up to house the Alphas that the team brings in.

The meat of the show is in the characters and their interactions. Bill is constantly aggravated by his amateur teammates, but it is the same informality that sets the show apart. Nina struggles with her compulsion to use her ability to simply take whatever she wants with no consequences. Rachel struggles with a family who consider her ability an illness and Cameron labours under the white man's burden or something (seriously; of all of them, Cameron is the one most cursed with awesome. He's a natural ninja who sometimes chokes up under pressure.)

The show loses points for having the Hulk be the African-American character, but pulls something back for making him the highly-trained professional agent genuinely struggling with his anger management issues and the fact that they keep him from getting back to the job he loved. Likewise Rachel is in some ways a stereotypical sheltered, over-controlled Asian girl, but without succumbing to most of the more obvious signifiers (her parents fix her up with dates, but don't try to arrange her marriage.)

The real triumph of the show is Cartwright, however, whose nuanced performance as Gary eschews typical autistic stereotypes. Of particular note is the relationship between Gary and Anna, a Red Flag strategist and omnilinguist whose own combination of autism and profound intelligence made her the one person in the world that Gary could ever felt truly close to.

It's easy to see why Alphas didn't make it past two half seasons. It's a decent enough show, but it's not doing anything new enough or well enough to stand out from twenty years in the shadow of The X-Files. Still, it did get two seasons, so expect another review somewhere down the line.

* And they first appear as a team of black-suited, faceless government goons who disappear 'bad' Alphas to an upstate compound for remedial time in the maximum fun chamber.

Almost Human

Karl Urban's second toughest cop character.

Another of those cancelled shows, Almost Human had the Bad Robot/JJ Abrams factor going for it, but that didn't save Believe either.

In the not-too-distant future of Almost Human, a rising tide of lawlessness has led the police to deploy military androids - the MX series - alongside human officers, acting as a combination of mobile database, crime lab, lie detector and heavy fire support. John Kennex (Karl Urban) is a somewhat maverick cop who doesn't like 'synthetics', having been abandoned after a pair of MXs deemed the chances of rescuing his partner negligible and prioritised other officers in distress. Refusing to work with an MX, he is partnered with Dorian (Michael Ealy), a DRN series android designed to be much more human and to operate as a true detective in full partnership.

The resulting show is a combination of mismatched buddy cop narrative and techno-thriller, with each episode revolving around a speculative technology or use of current technology (as well as androids, the show uses synthetic organs, smart homes, self-guiding bullets and designer drugs, among others) and the case being cracked by a combination of Kennex's instinct and experience and Dorian's analytical abilities.

The core relationship between the gruff, macho Kennex and the soft-spoken, sensitive Dorian is effective, and Dorian's attempts to persuade Kennex to open up are never pushed to the point of becoming annoying or uncomfortable. The supporting characters, including the no-nonsense Captain Maldonato (Lili Taylor), genetically-engineered Detective Stahl (Minkha Kelly as the love interest who is literally too good for Kennex) and antisocial tehcnical genius Rudy (Mackenzie Crook) are also well used, although rival tough-guy Detective Paul (Michael Irby) is a bit lost in the ensemble.

Once again, it's a shame to have lost this one. The concepts were interesting, the acting good and there were plenty of teasers to what might have been to come.

The Tomorrow People

So, I said I'd talk about some of the cancelled series I started watching. One of these was The Tomorrow People, which I think calls for a little background.

One of the original Tomorrow People
was black. In 1976, this was pretty
huge.

The Tomorrow People first materialised in the 1970s. Created by producer/writer Roger Price, it featured a group of young people (mostly early teens) who had special powers, due to their being part of the next stage of human evolution; Homo superior, and an underground base with a supercomputer called TIM because... reasons. Their powers manifested (broke out) at puberty, and were primarily telepathy, teleportation (called 'jaunting') and telekinesis when the budget allowed, although various other powers were displayed throughout the series, as the plot demanded, some of them quite consistently (one character had a particular affinity with machines), but others at random (in one episode a character brought a dead man back to life, but healing abilities were erratic.)

The series itself was also rather uneven. Early episodes were focused on saving the world plots, but the series had a strong moral message; along with their powers, Tomorrow People had an intrinsic inability to cause harm, and they also struggled to fit into normal society, their secret identity standing in for the almost universal teenage experience of feeling isolated and misunderstood. Later episodes used time travel as a device and revealed a utopian future, in which all of humanity were Homo superior and lived at peace in the Galactic Federation, an interstellar alliance of TPs which was introduced as a current concern in the second series.

Later seasons saw things get sillier. There were still some serious episodes and topics, like the story of a young Russian TP being manipulated by the KGB who was ultimately killed by her handlers, but there was also the one where Peter Davidson wore a bubble-perm wig and tried to kidnap the leader of the Tomorrow People to be his sister's mate, not to mention 'Hitler's Last Secret', which accidentally put forward the lesson that Nazism is wrong because Hitler was a shapeshifting alien, rather than because it is a noxious ideology founded on hate and prejudice. A general trend to use actors for good aliens and costumes for bad also gave an inadvertent air of racism, which sat ill alongside plots in which Caribbean dictators tried to use alien tech to take over the world and Chinese cults practiced child sacrifice.

The series eventually kind of unravelled and ended. Things went quiet.

The one in the middle is future Moneypenny Naomi Harris,
and remembering this show made it even more uncomfortable
than it was already watching her be raped and murdered on
stage in Frankenstein.

The first reboot of The Tomorrow People came in the 1990s. Kristian Schmidt off of Neighbours was the stunt casting as 'Adam Newman' (not layering the symbolism there at all), although the future big name was Naomie Harris, and guest stars included Christopher Lee and William Hootkins. There was a lot less about evolution and no Galactic Federation, and overall the characters stumbled into stuff rather than seeking it out as in the original.

Their base was a spaceship that 'called' them somehow, but otherwise the only aliens were the pods in the episode 'The Living Stones'. 'The Ramesses Connection' actually suggested a more mystical universe with a battle between forces of evil (represented by Christopher Lee as an ancient Egyptian) and forces of good (who danced around in plastic raincoats, and not in a sexy way).

The 1990s Tomorrow People was kind of weird, but then so was the original.

Older and darker.

Noted producers of Doctor Who audio plays, Big Finish were the next to throw their hats into the ring, beginning with The New Gods in 2001. They followed the continuity - such as it was - of the original series, with a nod to the existence of the 1990s variation, and had original TP John (Nicholas Young) as their central character, along with the original Tomorrow People supercomputer, TIM.

The overall theme of the audio plays seemed to be the nightmarish onset of entropy. Faced by enemy after enemy, the Tomorrow People saw their relationships collapse, their families die, their unassailable moral stance destroyed as TPs were manipulated into killing, and ultimately the entire Galactic Federation crumble under the onslaught of the very first enemy from the original series, the shapeshifting android Jedekiah.

This series ended with the Federation destroyed and Earth invaded, and the planned future episodes - some partly-completed - vanished after an unsuccessful license renewal in 2007, which also saw all the past episodes withdrawn from sale.

The Tomorrow People, sponsored by sassy hair-care products.
No, seriously; it really was.

Which brings us to the recently-cancelled attempted US remake. In the attempt to find an approach that none of the previous versions had mined, they went with sexy tweenagers with perfect hair. Three character names were recycled - TPs John and Stephen, and Jedekiah, who is recast as Stephen's resentful Sap (Homo sapiens) uncle - and the term 'Tomorrow People' limited to the Utopian movement fostered by Stephen's father and then by John and Cara, the third point on the inevitable love triangle (which in this case is actual at least two, maybe three, interlocking triangles; despite being a whiny git, Stephen has no fewer than three hotties trying to get in his pants, while all the boys go gaga for Cara, despite the presence of many, many attractive women who are more emotionally available, more overtly affectionate and less in a relationship.) The Tomorrow People had the underground base and TIM, and were opposed by Ultra, Jedekiah's shadowy telepath-hunting (and also employing) agency.

By the end of the first and only series, several of the telepaths (the generic term, although they retain the 'three Ts' of telepathy, telekinesis and teleportation) have been surgically altered to remove the prime barrier which prevents them killing (although they can use brutal levels of sub-lethal force with abandon), and Stephen is able to stop and occasionally rewind time.

The Tomorrow People has been through a lot of variations. The original was sombre, yet hopeful, but descended into silliness; allegedly as a result of executive meddling as ITV couldn't sell a serious children's SF series and wanted more wacky antics. The remake had some ambitious ideas, but was plagued by budgetary limitations. The audio plays were honestly a little too grimdark, although I would have been interested to see where they went in series 6 and 7.

And then the 2013 remake came along, with its generic sexy tween shenanigans and slick psychic combat. Its sin, I think, was in trying too hard to be accepted, which as the successor to a series which was basically about the teenage experience of not fitting in, is kind of ironic.

Believe

Delroy Lindo, Jake McLaughlin, Johnny Sequoyah, Jamie Chung, some guy and Kyle MacLachlan. Seriously, I don't know who that fifth guy is. At all.

First in a short series of reviews of the series I have watched this year that got cancelled right out of the gate is Believe, a paranormal conspiracy thriller created by Alfonso Cuarón and Markus Friedman, and exec produced by JJ Abrams.

William Tate (McLaughlin) is saved from death row by Milton Winter (Lindo) and his right hand woman Channing (Chung), in exchange for which he is asked to protect Bo Adams (Sequoyah, who despite her name is not a bounty hunter or professional riverboat gambler), a psychically gifted girl who is being sought by the federal authorities on behalf of Roman Skouras (McLachlan, not to be confused with McLaughlin). Bo is, it emerges, Tate's biological daughter, whose mother was killed by a biological breakdown caused by her own powers.

Bo is the most gifted, and the most stable psychic ever studied, capable of unconsciously recognising the feelings, needs, pasts and futures of the people that she meets. Tate is a damaged young man who lost the only good thing in his life when he got involved in a robbery that led to him being framed for murder and hasn't really matured since his late teens. Winter and Skouras represent different sides of science; Milton is driven, but still cares on a human level, while Skouras is absolutely focused on his goal, even when it manifests as a possessive and protective love for Bo.

In the half season that it got to run for, Believe established a solid premise. Interestingly, by the end it had effectively resolved a lot of the plot surrounding the main pursuit, apparently intent on settling into an old school hobo series vibe, reminiscent of The Incredible Hulk, The Fugitive, or even The Littlest Hobo, with Bo and Tate drifting into a new town every week and finding someone who needs their help. Tate had opened up and matured from the surly ex-con into a sympathetic fledgling dad, and Sequoyah managed to go thirteen episodes as a child prodigy without being a brat. Lindo and McLachlan provided the heavyweight support, and the only one who seemed a little lost was Chung, who as the muscle of Winter's organisation basically existed to nay-say Tate's suitability. She did have an episode to establish her history and purpose, but nothing further came of it. Without any other significant female leads, it was a shame that they did so little with her.

I'm sad to see it go, but in a way also glad not to have seen it falter and fall. I don't know if it would have made the transition to hobo anthology, and I guess I never will now.