Game of Thrones – 'Stormborn'

#teamtargaryan

We open in the cold, grey halls of Dragonstone, where Danaerys is conferring with her commanders and allies. She confronts Viserys with the fact that he has betrayed, like, all of the kings he has previously worked for, and he tells her that this is true, and he will absolutely do the same to her if she becomes a tyrant. This seems to be the right answer.

Melisande turns up, having now settled on Danaerys as her Prince that was Promised(1) on account of all the rest of her options falling through. Dany then talks strategy with her commanders and allies, most of whom are all for a direct assault on King's Landing. Tyrion counsels against this - also dropping some sass on Ellaria by telling her that they 'don't poison little girls' - and Dany agrees that she doesn't want to be 'queen of the ashes', which she will inevitably become once she lets the dragons off the chain over a major population centre. Instead, she determines to follow the Tyrion plan of besieging King's Landing with Dornish and Highgarden troops, while the Unsullied and Dothraki fuck up the Lannister seat of Casterly Rock.

Olenna warns her against being too kindly. Margaery was more beloved than any Queen in history, and she got imprisoned, tortured and incinerated for her efforts. "The nobles are sheep," she tells Dany, "but you are a dragon. Be a dragon."

 

"It's this or Luke Evans."

Before he leaves, Missande comes to Grey Worm and they get all sexy, but this scene raises so many questions. Mostly, if these characters have come to freezing, storm-tossed Dragonstone from the sweltering heat of Essos, why aren't they wearing more layers? It is much speculated that this encounter will also spell doom for Grey Worm.

In King's Landing, Cersei paints a picture of Dany as a marauding psychopath to the nobles – including Tyrell's bannermen – to persuade them to support her. You'd think Cersei might have learned a lesson or two about glass houses after the whole Sparrow debacle, but anyway. Jaime makes an impassioned plea to Sam's dad not to back Olenna's vengeance, and Qyburn explains to Cersei that the only thing that can kill a dragon is a black arrow from a windlance (I guess because he's seen the movie of The Hobbit, but not read the book.) Fortunately, he's had one built, and demonstrates it on the largest skull in the catacombs.

She's not a tame wolf.

In the North, Jon gets an invitation from Tyrion to parlay with Danaerys – omitting her demand that he bend the knee – and is inclined to go. Fire kills wights, dragons make fire; he's done the maths and the solution is a happy face. The nobles of the North are not keen, but when Sam sends word of the dragonglass mountain, Jon is determined and he and Ser Davos head south, after roughing up Littlefinger for being a creeper. I can't imagine that leaving a disgruntled Littlefinger in Winterfell is going to go well, but I still hope that Sansa is going to come good and either push him off a wall or sic Arya on him, because after learning from Hotpie – still working at the Pig and Plot Drop – that the Starks are in charge of Winterfell, she's heading north again. Well, she was until she ran into Nymeria and her wolf pack. He former pet turns her back on Arya, but doesn't eat her, so that's not nothing, right(2)?

Sam determines to cure Ser Jorah's greyscale, since he couldn't save Jeor Mormont. This is... icky, and flies in the face of the advice of the Archmaester, who points out that the maester who described the cure for greyscale died... of greyscale.

This man looks like he should be breaking kneecaps in a Mockney thriller and
reveling in the nickname 'Smasher'(4).

Yara transports Ellaria and the Sand Snakes back to Dorn to muster their troops, but is ambushed en route by Euron's fleet (apparently his gift to Cersei is to be her daughter's killer.) Yara and Theon get to be pretty badass, but Euron is some sort of indestructible monster(3), capturing Yara, Ellaria and one of the Snakes, and killing two others. He taunts Theon to come at him, but Theon jumps in the water instead.

'Stormborn' is a troubled episode. The Missande/Grey Worm scene feels like padding, adorable as they are, and Ellaria and Yara have a moment of pure fanservice right before Smasher's fleet – which... I don't know where that came from, in any sense, considering that Yara and Theon are supposed to have nicked all the good ships in the Iron Fleet, and they were in the middle of the ocean so apparently Euron was guided by plot (or, charitably, a traitor in the fleet) - pops out of nowhere like an iceberg at the Titanic. Smasher manages to be even more pointlessly nasty than Ramsey, and the deaths of the Sand Snakes lack punch because I never really cared about them, whereas I'm obviously supposed to since the final image of the episode is their corpses on the prow of the burning ship. Overall, it's an episode with a lot of sexy filler, which tends to reflect a lack of significant plot or character development (we knew Missande and Grey Worm were into each other, and we knew that Yara and Ellaria would shag anything that didn't run fast enough.)

We cut from this to the Pig and Plot Drop, thus doing for pies what Ramsey
Bolton did for sausages.

Also, the weird spatio-temporal nature of Westeros strikes again, with Jon receiving word from Tyrion a mere cut scene after Dany tells him to send it, but not getting the message from Sam - sent last week - until some time after. And never mind how long it's taking word to reach him that Bran has come over the Wall, or indeed for Bran to reach him. Is Castle Black out of ravens after all those messages for people to send help?

(1) Missande points out that, punchy as the translation is, the noun is actually ungendered in High Valyrian, so should be read as 'prince or princess.'

(2) It has been point out that Arya's response to this 'That's not you,' mirrors her statement when offered a future of marriage and family 'That's not me.' If Nymeria would come to her paired Stark like a lapdog, she wouldn't be paired with Arya.

(3) Straight up, I swear he is all over cuts from the Sand Snakes, but completely untroubled.

(4) I think I'll call him 'Smasher' Greyjoy from here out.

Game of Thrones - 'The Red Woman'

"Prepare yourselves, everypony. Winter is coming."*

Oh yes, everybody's favourite cavalcade of oversexed, blood-soaked, baby-murdering, head-popping, wedding massacring, dubiously consenting fantasy politics is back, for the first season that moves the plot ahead of the books (which would of course mean more to me if I had read them**.)

Jon Snow was dead, to begin with, and despite pathological fan speculation looks set to remain so, with the lovely Kit Harrington apparently retaining his mop just to play a great looking corpse. Well, actually he looks like death, which is apt. Stabbed up by the officers of the Night's Watch, the late Lord Commander is found by his remaining particular buddies and Ser Davos Seaworth, who retreat with Ghost the direwolf into a small room, surrounded by the treacherous officers, their only hopes a message sent to someone else who owes Jon Snow their lives (I'm guessing the Wildlings, but they're keeping us in suspense) and the titular Red Woman.

"Well, this is an improvement."

Ever so slightly further south, Roose Bolton's plans are unraveling, the death of Stannis Baratheon as nothing compared to the loss of Sansa, which threatens their control of the North and so leaves them vulnerable to the wrath of the Lannisters over the very wedding that Ramsey has so royally bollocksed with his rapiness. It's almost as if pointless cruelty weren't an effective motivator, but if that were the case surely fewer people in Westeros would use it?

"Well, look at this. Appears we got here just in the nick of time. What does
that make us?"
"Big damn heroes, m'lady!"
"Ain't we just."

Sansa and Theon flee through the snows and are almost caught by Ramsey's hounds, but Brienne and Pod arrive to violently save the day, and for the former to swear in as Sansa's first knight.

That's the first blood for the episode; it's not the last by a very long stretch.

Jaime Lannister returns home with his daughter's body, scotching my last hope that someone involved in the whole Dorne business wasn't a complete idiot. Seriously, it was so bloody obvious and yet... But perhaps that's my father/daughter issues talking again.

The Sand Snakes: Still looking like refugees from an even more exploitative
series.

Jaime and Cersei reaffirm their 'fuck the world' policy. Meanwhile, the High Sparrow moves into the 'good septon' phase of Queen Margaery's interrogation and the Sand Snakes launch a coup with their patented blend of violence and fanservice, murdering the Prince and his son in order to take control of Dorne in the name of the people, who are apparently hacked off with the lack of bloody revenge being pointed Lannisterward.

"I'm going to walk the earth, like Kane in Kung Fu."

Tyrion and Varys take an incognito tour of Mereen and learn that things are getting bad. The Sons of the Harpy are organised, and the Red Priests are whipping up the faithful to fight in the name of the Lord of Light and the Mother of Dragons. Honestly, I think this scene is really just there to keep Tyrion in the episode.

Jorah and Daario track Daenerys to the site where she was captured by the dothraaki and discuss unrequited love. We then cut to Daenerys being taken to the Khal and threatened with all kinds of sexual violence (yay) before establishing her status as a Khal's widow and thus untouchable, but destined to a life in the Vaes Dothrak home for widowed Khaleesi.

"I'm going to walk the earth, like Rutger Hauer in Blind Fury."

In Braavos, Arya Stark is out on the streets, blind and begging. The waif from the temple rocks up, gives her a stick and tells her to fight. Arya gets her arse kicked and the Waif swaggers off with jaunty promise to return tomorrow.

So, what does 'The Red Woman' bring to the table? The Dornish coup was kind of inevitable given the inability of anyone involved to recognise that a group of passionate, highly-motivated psychopaths wouldn't just roll over and play nice. I wish I could be interested, but the gratuitous sexy-sadism of the Sand Snakes just smacks of trying too hard. Vaes Dothrak is kind of new and Maisie Williams and Peter Dinklage are always worth the price of admission.

Just to prove that we don't always fall back on sexy.

In fairness, the cast is generally excellent. There are a few wobbles in the cast members who don't have English as a first language, and most of them are probably great in Spanish or Dutch, as it goes. The problems of the series, such as they are, are in its increasing dependence on sensation. The Sand Snakes are a low point, with their combination of gratuitous fanservice and giggling psychopathic bloodlust, but the dothraaki idiom of continual sexualisation and objectification is frankly a grind. I think it's telling that many of my favourite characters are the least sexualised: Arya, Brienne, Davos, Tyrion (yes, Tyrion has sex, but isn't sexualised.)

* Actual line from My Little Pony.
** Normally I read a lot, but there's only so many times people can tell you what an awesome turn around the Red Wedding is before it robs you of all desire to read it.

Interstellar

"We didn't run out of planes and television sets;
we ran out of front lighting."

The latest offering from Christopher Nolan - one of a handful of 'name' directors in the current generation (seriously; it feels as if this generation's Spielberg is still Spielberg and the last director to open movies like Nolan does was... what? Tarantino?) - is Interstellar, a grandly epic space opera on the themes of global catastrophe and survival.

Cooper (played by the increasingly impressive Matthew McConaughey) is the last astronaut on Earth. A global crop blight has forced most of the surviving population to return to the land, but Cooper's dreams of space are rekindled when a gravitational anomaly in his daughter's bedroom offers him the chance to lead a mission to find a new home for humanity in another galaxy. As he and his crew head out to contact a set of initial survey missions, his daughter (Jessica Chastain, once grown up, so they know thye have someone who can really look serious surrounded by dust) works with the project's originator to crack a gravitational equation which will allow humanity to follow the trail they are blazing.

"We didn't run out of astronauts; we ran out of plumbers."

"We didn't run out of planes and television sets; we ran out of
space heaters."

Interstellar is a film about hope, about endurance and about the will to survive, both the personal determination to persist and the drive to propagate personified in one's children. It is also a film quite literally about big pictures; the film plays out across an eighty year time frame and not just interstellar but intergalactic distances, for the fate not of a person or a people, but the entire human race. Its centrepieces are its lovingly crafted space landscapes and hostile alien worlds, not least among these the post-blight Earth.

On a more philosophical level, Professor Brand (Michael Caine), by embracing the possibilities of 'plan B' - the genetic reincarnation of humanity from embryo stocks - puts the general survival of the race above the specific survival of its extant members. Meanwhile Dr Mann (Matt Damon) represents the more absolutely selfish imperative of personal survival, and the Coopers a middle ground for whom life has a sanctity beyond the theoretical; a sanctity born not in faith but in the bonds that connect people.

* As any fule no, Newton's Zeroth Law states that when a
father makes a promise to his little girl, classical mechanics
and quantum theory can suck it.

As might be expected from Nolan, there is a lot of thinking involved in the film. It's mostly philosophical rather than scientific; the whole plot is enabled by a 'wormhole' provided by a sufficiently advanced sponsor, although the science isn't as bad as some make out*. It is perhaps the depth of consideration given to how one defines 'humanity' as something to be saved that makes it a little disappointing that there is only one major non-white character (Romily, played by David Gyasi.) Contextually, diversity feels important, although its absence is more telling for the overall quality of the movie.

In a lot of ways, the film pays homage to 2001: A Space Odyssey. There are some very similar visuals in parts, and the presence of the 'stargate' in Saturnine orbit matches the location from the book if not the film. Moreover, the mission's AI members, the robots TARS and CASE, owe a clear debt to HAL, even if they are rather more mobile and benign.

TARS: Best character in the movie.

As a final note, for me perhaps the most interesting aspect of the film is that, although overall its view of humanity is positive, the end of the movie shows the last survivors of Earth apparently operating some form of combatant air force. That the Nolans choose to show a persistence of military influence says a lot to me, and I can't believe that it's a complete throwaway.

Gotham: Spirit of the Goat

"Gotham's golden rule, Harvey; no heroes."

It's time we got to know our man Harvey Bullock a little better, don't you thin? Well, if you do then this is the episode of Gotham for you. A flashback to ten years past shows how Harvey's early zeal and idealism left his partner in a wheelchair, but the return of a supposedly dead serial killer called the Spirit of the Goat reignites his drive. The Goat was the last killer Harvey and his mentor Dix took down together, and his apparent resurrection hits the jaded detective hard.

Gordon: "You're a cynic. A slovenly, lackadaisical cynic."
Bullock: "Probably."

Harvey Bullock has been a strength of the series from day one, with Donal Logue's easygoing yet weighty performance anchoring the show against the pull towards tedious worthiness created by the duality of the blandly idealistic Gordon and the utterly venal and savage criminal elements of Gotham. He is the life of the GCPD, the perfect balance of essentially decent man and corrupt thug, determined to put away as many scumbags as he can for whatever he can to make up for the high-flying scum he can't touch and fiercely loyal to his partners.

'Spirit of the Goat' is Harvey's episode, from start to finish, with even the big shock ending focused on his reaction. It provides a background to his cynicism and a context for his approach to his work, as well as bearing the soul of the man. Most importantly, it reveals the policeman at the core of the thuggish persona, as for once it is Bullock who looks past the obvious, past the easy collar, and puts in the legwork to root out the real villain.

Simultaneously adorkable and creepy as fuck.

Speaking of legwork, we get to see Edward Nygma at work this week, and also to see him stalking Kristen Kringle, the GCPD records clerk. This particular scene is notable for being both adorkably awkward and seriously creepy, Nygma's near-absolute social blindness tempering what would otherwise be pure nightmare fuel. He perceives his filing system as objectively superior and what better gift to give the records clerk of your dreams, right?

Speaking of stalking, Selina Kyle is back, breaking into Wayne Manor and stealing keepsakes. By comparison, Nygma is the picture of socially adroit charm. And speaking of social obliviousness, Bruce delivers a sick burn to Alfred by telling him that the Goat wouldn't take him 'because there's no-one to take me from.' Poor Alfred.

Barbara is... less annoying this week. Her impassioned plea to be allowed 'half of everything you carry' is far more appealing than the earlier pressure for her fiance, whose job involves danger, untold horror and strict confidences which could destroy a case if broken, to keep no secrets. Montoya continues to be stuck-up and self-righteous, which is a shame because normally I like Montoya a lot more than this and it would be a shame to waste one of the few openly gay, action-oriented female characters on television on a cliche-ridden jealous ex-girlfriend bit.

The Fish Mooney/Carmine Falcone subplot is also less annoying this week, by which I mean it isn't in there at all. I think this contributes more than is immediately obvious to this being one of the better episodes so far.

Our final recurring character, Oswald Chesterfield Cobblepot makes a few passing appearances and one really big one, presumably his push to take back control after his misstep with Maroni, but for once he's a footnote. This is Harvey's episode, and not even the Penguin can take it from him.

Arrow - The Rest of Season 1

I chose to head this post with a picture of Oliver and Felicity, because duh. I
am turning into such a shipper.

Man, I sort of dropped the ball on Arrow after the first five episodes.

Here then is my round up of Season 1 (I am currently watching Season 2 and I know Season 3 is running but I watch it with my girlfriend and we have a baby daughter who is not watching Arrow yet thanks.)

Season 1 took a long while to get started, stretching out the island flashbacks and featuring a number of pretty similar episodes in which Diggle and Oliver argued about the Hood's methods, Detective Lance argued with his daughter and Laurel was held up as some sort of paragon while Felicity was overlooked and Walter roundly abused.

Fuck you, Arrow!

It was with the emergence of Malcolm Merlyn not merely as a mastermind but as the lethal physical threat of Black Arrow that the series got traction and started working more of an arc vibe. Even as Malcolm gave direction to the Hood side of the story, so Tommy Merlyn became the beating heart of the civilian story. He came into our lives as an irritating, shallow douchebag and grew into a likable, interesting and rounded character, was harshly betrayed by Laurel and yet still risked - and lost - everything to save her. It is only right that Season 2 goes on to make him the touchstone for Oliver's transformation from killer vigilante to hero; from Hood to Arrow.

The flashback sort of drags on and on, leading up to Oliver finally killing someone. Slade Wilson is a much more interesting character than island love interest Shado (Arrow Season 1 is kind of bad with love interests.) To bump something that came clear to me in the comments, Season 1's flashbacks are kind of just marking time until they can bring in a character who has to be kept secret until they appear in the present day timeline, and since that debut happens in early Season 2 we get 22 episodes of largely running in place. Until then, island Oliver is only allowed very limited growth.

Throughout the series, the action scenes are fantastic, and the interactions of Team Arrow in particular are adorable. There are a lot of characters, however, and some of them inevitably end up on the periphery. Thea and Roy are hit hardest, although Laurel takes a drop in Season 2 after the series shifts its romance focus to Oliver and Felicity and Tommy is out of the picture.

The Flash - 'Pilot' and 'Fastest Man Alive'

Disappointingly, I was unable to find a cast in costume promo shot to use for this review; I like those in an ensemble show and, as I like ensemble shows, I worry that The Flash might be a bit of a one man band. I don't care for one man bands.

Barry Allen is the fastest man alive. After losing his mother to a mysterious, superpowered assailant, he grows up to be a seeker of truth as a CSI with Central City PD, but is given a chance to do more when the disastrous activation of the STAR Labs particle accelerator gifts him with superhuman speed, and a rogue's gallery of variously empowered foes to face.

The first - and possibly the last, given the current focus on the DCCU - step in the creation of a larger DC television universe on a par with the old Animated version, The Flash is a spin-off from Arrow. Barry Allen made his first appearance as a lovably awkward science genius in two episodes of Season 2 of the parent show, and was then struck by lightning mere seconds after making a move on Felicity Smoake, apparently securing her status as protected love interest by an act of God.

After a year in a development coma, Barry returned with his own series and a daringly classic uniform, which manages not to look completely stupid. He has his own back-up, akin to Team Arrow, formed of Dr Harrison Wells, head of STAR Labs, his sort-of-but-not-actually foster father Joe West, a CCPD homicide detective, and a pair of adorkable science nerds, Caitlin Snow and Cisco Ramon. Snow and Ramon are named after DC characters, but don't seem to be related, although it is possible Snow will end up as a foe yay Killer Frost in the same way that Arrow's Cyrus Gold might fulfil the hints and rise again as Solomon Grundy (Hell, I'm only halfway through series 2 so he might have done so already.)

'Pilot' and 'Fastest Man Alive' are effectively a two-part set up for the series as a whole. 'Pilot' is the origin story and 'Fastest Man Alive' shows Barry finding his feet as 'the Red Streak', matching Arrow's trick of keeping the classic superhero identity in the title for the time being. They also set up the core arc - Harrison Wells has a newspaper from the future, is faking his paralysis and is willing to kill to protect Barry; what's up with that, yo? - and character dynamics.

Clearly the internet agrees with me (even if it is embracing
the frankly lame 'Snowbarry'.)

In addition to Team Flash, the main characters are Joe's daughter and Barry's long-time unrequited crush Iris, and Joe's partner Eddie Thawne, who also has a DC villain's name, and since he's dating the canon love interest may actually turn out to be a supervillain. I hope not, because after two episodes I want him and Iris to get married and move away, because Barry's awkward crush on Iris is already annoying. There is way more chemistry between Barry and Caitlin, or Barry and Felicity, and in fact between Iris and Eddie, than Barry and Iris.

The alternative is that Eddie becomes The Flash's version of Tommy Merlyn.

As it plays out, what Barry and Iris looks like is Barry still chasing his 'safe' option, the girl he knows loves him and would never want to hurt him, despite - or even because of - their total lack of romantic zip. So far, the series has offered us Barry trying to ask Iris out and her assuming he's asking for advice on talking to girls, and Barry admitting his feelings at superspeed so that she can't hear him. On the flip side, we have Barry noting that Caitlin's smiles are rare things and managing not to be creepy doing it and the rest of Team Flash noting that he makes Caitlin mad in a way only her late fiance ever managed before. I sincerely hope that the producers aren't wedded to the canon OTP.

As an aside, I think that the timeframe set out in the pilot means that Allen either sort-of asked Felicity out on the rebound from being blank-bounced by his sort-of-but-not-actually foster sister or vice versa, but I'm going to try not to think of it that way because it makes him less likable and is almost certainly an artefact of the year between the Arrow episode and 'Pilot'.

In terms of antagonists, 'Pilot' gives us the Weather Wizard and 'Fastest Man Alive' a semi-sympathetic Multiplex, both established DC characters. They appear uncostumed, and are somehow darker because of it, and I suspect that in the long term the lighter touch of The Flash as compared to Arrow would be better serve by an increased flamboyance in its villains. Still, that's a delicate balancing act, so let's see how they do.

Noah

Darren Aaronofsky made the film π. It was small, incomprehensible in parts, and deeply bizarre, assuming a techno-magical basis to Jewish mysticism. Aaronofsky's Noah is like that, only huge.

The film describes the antediluvian civilisation of the descendants of Cain as a vast, world-spanning technological empire based on the exploitation of 'zohar', a mystical stone holding a spark of divine power. Having corrupted and destroyed both Creation and the Watchers, fallen angels who once tried to help them, men have proven unworthy and the Creator decides to wipe them out.

It is to the line of Seth that God entrusts the saving of the innocent; the creatures that have never fallen from the grace of the Garden. Aided by the surviving Watchers, Noah and his sons create the Ark, and place two of every animal in a drugged stupor to ride out the coming flood.

Antagonism is provided by Tubal-Cain, last king of the people of Cain, and by the clash of Noah's conviction that all men must die and his family's hope to begin anew in the new world.

The film is a weird mashup of Biblical narrative and pseuod-divine science fiction, and there is a weird inconsistency that comes from not really cleaving to one in preference to the other. Overall, it is an interesting film, with some fantastic cinematography and production design married to decent performances from a strong cast. The palette of the film is predominantly grey and brown, which can be a bit wearying on the eye, but in that palette the design is sumptuous, and the exceptions are striking for their contrast. On occasions, the actors are shot purely in silhouette against a vivid sky, while the green land where the Creator (never God, at least not from the descendants of Seth) still has some sway stands out starkly against the barrens of the Cainites.