Doctor Who – The rest of the season

Aliens rarely dress for the weather.

NB. I’m way behind on these reviews, so I’m going to rush through this.

This review will contain spoilers

‘The Tsuranga Conundrum’
"Whole worlds pivot on acts of imagination."

Incapacitated and rescued by a hospital ship, Team Tardis have to rally the crew and patients to stave off three kinds of disaster, before one of them claims all of their lives.

There’s a good bunch of supporting characters and a nicely Doctorish solution, although this is one of the Thirteenth’s more erratic episodes, perhaps the most extreme of her ‘adjustment’ episodes, and the all-consuming pting is a little too adorable a death machine.

Easily my favourite thing in the episode is when the Doctor is trying to turn the ship around to get back to the Tardis, and the doctor (small d) gives her a chewing out about the other sick people who need to get to the main hospital, and she listens. That last bit is important.

Rating - 6/10

‘Demons of the Punjab’
"This is all that remains of our home. Our people. Every ancestor. All one dust.... They died unwitnessed, unsaved. We were too late to grieve or honor them. But we, who returned, gave up 100 generations to sift, to remember the lost dead, the unmourned. In time, it was all we knew. And now we travel beyond, seeking the unacknowledged dead. Across all of time and space. This is now the Thijarian mission -- to bear witness to those alone. To see. To bear pain, honor life as it passes."

Yaz persuades the Doctor to let her visit her grandmother, Umbreen, to solve a family mystery. Despite her promise not to get involved, Team Tardis find themselves part of Umbreen’s wedding to Prem, a Hindu man who is not Yaz’s grandfather. But the year is 1947, and the partition of India is about to rip the country – and this marriage – apart. Also, there are aliens.

‘Demons of the Punjab’ covers some of the same territory as ‘Rosa’, but this time the racism is all home-grown – Prem’s brother is a Hindu nationalist, violently opposed to Prem marrying a Muslim – and the aliens are there as observers, and perhaps a link to the arc plot (their world was destroyed, possibly by Stenza weapons.)

This is another strong, Earthbound episode, with a solid historical message which, come at me haters, is what Doctor Who exists for. It also gives Yaz the character workout that she has been missing.

Rating - 8/10

Free existential terror with every order.

‘Kerblam!’
Jarvis Slade: How would you like a warning for insubordination?
The Doctor: I'd love one. I could add it to my collection.

Someone sends the Doctor a gift via Kerblam! (basicallt space Amazon,) but the packing note contains a cry for help. The team go undercover at Kerblam!’s fulfilment centre, where they discover a broken system and a possibly misguided conspiracy.

Playing to modern fears of human redundancy, Kerblam! is elevated above lazy satire by making fear and mismanagement the villains, rather than simply taking aim at corporations in general, but unfortunately it does sort of let the corporations off the hook entirely by doing so. A couple of very sympathetic sacrificial characters add emotional involvement, but it isn’t as powerful as the recent pseudohistoricals.

Rating - 6/10


‘The Witchfinders’
"We want certainty, security. To believe that people are evil or heroic but that's not how people are. You want to know the secrets of existence? Start with the mysteries of the heart."

The Tardis team land near Pendle Hill in the midst of a witch hunt, but it’s not the Pendle witch hunt known to history. As the fanatical magistrate Becka Savage drowns her way through the population, no less a figure that James I shoves his oar in, but the Doctor detects an alien hand as sentient mud begins to animate the dead.

Bringing its pseudohistorical game to a more remote time, but more local place, ‘The Witchfinders’ once more looks at the politics of fear and hate in a drama that stands a step above the pure SF episodes of the season. Honestly, I’m curious to see what they current team could do with a pure historical.

Rating - 7/10


‘It Takes You Away’
"This woman is clearly an alien force, collapsing two realities and impersonating your dead wife. Time to move on, mate!"

The Tardis lands in Norway, where the team discovers a young, blind girl, living in an isolated house and menaced by a snarling monster that took her father away. Creepy enough, but then they find a mirror that leads into an alternate dimension, and it all gets even weirder.

Doctor Who gets a bit Scandi-Noir, before bringing in a sentient pocket universe looking for companionship, one of the few beings lonelier than the Doctor. The episode is Graham’s turn to shine, as Bradley Walsh puts in his Bafta nomination performance for his character’s confrontation with a projection of his late wife, Grace.

Rating - 6/10

Another planet, another quarry.

‘The Battle of Ranskoor Av Kolos’
Ryan: What happened to 'never do weapons'?
The Doctor: It's a flexible creed. Door, locks, walls, buildings. Fair game. If it can be rebuilt, I'll allow it.
Following many, many distress signals, the Doctor brings the Tardis to Ranskoor Av Kolos, where a large number of ships have crashed and a psychic field alters perceptions. Here they discover Tzim-Sha of the Stenza has managed to masquerade as the god of a two-person race called the Ux, who have the power to manipulate reality, using them to shrink planets and store them in glass jars. While Graham declares his intent to kill Tim Shaw, the Doctor struggles to win over the Ux and send the planets back where they belong.

A strong episode for Graham and Ryan, and a cap to the season arc, there’s a lot happening in ‘The Battle of Ranskoor Av Kolos’, and some of it is a little too familiar. Stealing planets is reminiscent not only of ‘The Stolen Earth’, but of the classic series serial ‘The Pirate Planet’, and as much as persuading powerful religious characters to rethink their life is classic Doctor, it’s really Graham’s confrontation with Tzim-Sha that gets the best of the writing, and the result is somewhat uneven.

Rating - 5/10

Doctor Who – ‘Resolution’

I'm not sure what I'd say about the new look, but I can't help imagining the
response would be: "THANKS! IT HAS BOBBLES!"

"Where's your kitchen? I just need to get some eggs to check the protein alignments in the goo."

Once again, archaeology threatens the foundations of human civilisation, as a fragment of monster is dug up and reconstitutes itself. Now, a Dalek is loose on Earth, and the Doctor races to find it before untold destruction ensues. Meanwhile, Ryan’s dad turns up looking to reconcile.

This is a surprisingly strong festive showing, proving once more that a single Dalek can be more effective than an army if used correctly. There are strong shades of ‘Dalek’, although this lone Dalek – a reconnaissance scout sent out in the early years of Dalek expansion – is a remorseless foe with none of the pathos of that sole survivor.

A strong end to a strong season, I would say, and a good start for the 13th Doctor. Now, roll on 2020.

Rating - 8/10

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

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?

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.

DC Roundup: Supergirl - 'Fort Rozz', 'For Good', 'Both Sides Now' and 'Schott Through the Heart'; The Flash - 'True Colours', 'Subject 9', 'Enter Flashtime', 'Run, Iris, Run', 'Null and Annoyed' and 'Lose Yourself'; Legends of Tomorrow - 'No Country for Old Dads', 'Amazing Grace', 'Necromancing the Stone', 'I, Ava', 'Guest Starring John Noble' and 'The Good, the Bad and the Cuddly'

Grrl power.

Okay; I've got a lot to get through on this one, so I'll probably be a little brief.

Aware that Reign is far from beaten, Supergirl plans a trip to 'Fort Rozz', which is now in orbit around a blue star that depowers Kryptonians and is lethal to males, because science, okay. In this highly specific set of circumstances, Kara recruits an unusual squad for this apparent suicide mission(1): Herself, despite her lack of powers, along with Imra, Livewire and Psi. Their goal: To find a Kryptonian heretic priestess and find out more about Reign. At the same time, Alex agrees to sit for Ruby while Sam is on a business trip - only for Sam to ditch the trip when Reign is activated to stop Supergirl's mission - and helps her to confront a cyberbully.

It's Sara Douglas, from Superman II.

Psi zaps Imra during a fight, confining both to the ship. The prison is almost pulled into the star, but Winn bounces superlight signals off Voyager 2(2) to save it. Meanwhile, Kara and Livewire locate the priestess and learn of the other two worldkillers, Purity and Pestilence(3). Reign - whose powers are not only Kryptonite resistant, but also not dependent on ongoing exposure to yellow solar radiation - shows up and kills the priestess. Livewire sacrifices herself to save Supergirl and Psi is able to drive Reign off, seemingly by creating a bridge between the Samantha and Reign personalities, which also causes Sam to seek help from Alex over her 'missing time' episodes. Kara is knocked by Livewire's death under her command; no Amanda Waller she.

Elsewhere, a second Worldkiller survives being hit with a car.

My favourite thing about this episode: That the Wicked reference in the title
suggests they aren't going to heel turn Lena.

In 'For Good', Lena's feud with Morgan Edge once more arises. Edge and Lena are both targeted by assassination attempts, causing Edge to go somewhat over the... well, the edge, and publicly both accuse and threaten Lena. James comes over all white knight and threatens Edge in his Guardian persona. While the DEO chase the assassin, Lena works out that the killers were contracted by her mother, Lillian, in an attempt to make her 'Luthor out' and embrace her inner diabolical mastermind. Kara and Lena crash Edge's party to warn him, just before Lillian launches an attack with hacked drones. Lena coerces a confession from Edge over the pool poisonings, then destroys the targeting tag in his VIP pass. Mon-el helps Kara to fight off the drones, and also Lillian in Lex's armoured battlesuit(4), with Winn throwing in some re-hacked drones for good measure. Edge tries to escape with the recording, but is stopped by Guardian.

The eyes have it.

Elsewhere, Alex tests Sam, but finds no sign of illness or tumour. Winn, J'onn and Mon-el work out that the Worldkillers are genetically modified, and deduce that they probably came to Earth with Superman and would have secret identities, identifying four possibilities, including one Julia Freeman, whom Kara has seen in dreams, leading the DEO to track her down in 'Both Sides Now'.

A raid on the home of one Julia Freeman turns up what seems a normal, scared woman. Kara tries to talk to her, but Alex steams in and triggers a shift to the Worldkiller persona. They are able to subdue her and take her in, where Kara's attempts to get through to her are constantly thwarted by Alex getting all aggro, despite her promise that they can 'try it your way'(5). Alex's bad cop routine is similarly ineffective, and the Worldkiller escapes. When surrounded, she briefly reverts to Julia and agrees to come back to the DEO, but then Reign shows up and drags her back to the Fortress of Sanctuary to be properly Worldkillerised.

During this whole business, Sam - who is on sick leave - abandons Ruby at an ice rink to go off and be Reign. Ruby calls Lena - which is the kind of employee relations few CEOs can boast, even with senior executives - who also briefly sees Sam turn into Reign. Also, Mon-el and Imra are having troubles because - as he admits to J'onn and then to Imra - he is still in love with Kara and, although he does love Imra, didn't marry her on his own terms but for diplomatic reasons. In return, she admits that she and Brainiac-5 have a secret agenda that they didn't share with him.

Also with karaoke.

Finally, in 'Schott Through the Heart', Winn's father, supervillain the Toyman, dies. At the funeral, Winn's mum shows up, and then the coffin explodes like a giant jack-in-the-box full of C4.  Winn is hostile to his mother for abandoning him, although she explains that she did it because his father ran them off the road when she tried to take him to an abuse shelter and told her that if she ever tried to see Winn again, he would kill Winn. Then mechanical flying monkeys bust into the DEO. Winn's mother recognises something about them and goes to confront a corrections officer who was in love with the Toyman and whom he groomed to be his instrument of revenge. Kara and Mon-el help Winn to rescue his mother and take down his father's protégé.

In character development land, Mon-el tells Kara what he has learned about the Legion's secret mission: that Imra and Brainiac were sent to stop the third Worldkiller, Pestilence, who will one day become the cosmic-level supervillain Blight, who caused the plague whose cure is concealed in their DNA. James is having some issues with his relationship with Lena, who seems to have vanished, but is in fact trying to help Sam by using one of L-Corp's evil labs for good. Also, Alex realises that J'onn's father has Martian dementia. He angrily tells her not to get involved in his relationship with J'onn, but comes around and confesses to his son in another of Supergirl's surprising flashes of really dealing well with real issues.

This season of Supergirl continues to run strong, with a good central cast(6) and making a lot of the opportunities presented by getting to use an enemy who is like Supergirl, but bad. Conversely, The Flash is really struggling with not having an enemy who is like the Flash, but bad, in part because it's using one of the most difficult of villains: the inhuman supergenius.

That's a striking range of heights.

In 'True Colours', Barry has to break out of the metahuman wing, along with fellow prisoners Kilgore, Black Bison, Hazard and Dwarfstar, in order to prevent the warden selling them all to Amaunet. Team Flash learn about the deal when Cecile reads the Warden's mind, then Ralph discovers the ability to shapeshift and tries to call the deal off, but loses control and screws the pooch. Barry gets to see what kind of people he is escaping with - Kilgore and Dwarfstar are gits, Black Bison is a zealot, and Becky 'Hazard' Sharpe is actually lovely - before they are cornered by Amaunet and the warden. They fight off this threat, only for DeVoe to pop out of nowhere, as he do, drain the powers from Hazard, Black Bison and Dwarfstar - killing them - and abandon the ailing form of telepath Dominic Lanse for that of Beck Sharpe. He also murders the warden, keeping Barry's identity safe, which is handy when Ralph shapeshifts into DeVoe in order to claim not to be dead and get Barry released.

A lot of work goes into establishing what are essentially sacrificial victims.

Team Flash realises that DeVoe is specifically targeting the bus metas, which will include Barry, while DeVoe uses the Weeper's narcotic tears on his wife to allay her growing doubts over the death toll of their plans.

DeVoe's next target is 'Subject 9', a country musician named Izzy who can control sound waves, especially in conjunction with her violin. Her abilities prove uniquely able to disrupt DeVoe's stolen powers, but despite training and support from Barry and Ralph - the latter forming a close bond with her - and the use of the cerebral dampener mentioned by Savitar, they are unable to stand up to DeVoe's battery of abilities, and he is able to steal Izzy's body to escape the deterioration of Sharpe's form. With Barry on indefinite leave from the police due to ongoing questions over his case, and Ralph mourning the loss of Izzy, the two bond and Ralph gets Barry a PI license.

All the speedsters (well, a good number.)

A bit of a side track in 'Enter Flashtime', as an eco-terrorist sets off a nuclear bomb nicked from ARGUS(7). Barry manages to accelerate to the point that the world seems to stop around him, but the bomb is already detonating. He and Jesse - on Earth-1 to talk to her father - bring people into this 'flashtime' one at a time to try to solve the problem, but even with help from Jay Garrick they cannot seem to find a way to prevent the detonation, until Iris gives Barry the idea to retrieve a quark sphere designed to make the Speed Force believe he is still within it, thus drawing down a storm of Speed lightning able to refuse the nuclei in the bomb.

Caitlin and Harry briefly encounter the mysterious girl at Jitters.

It's a new colour for a speedster.

A flamethrowing metahuman bank robber brings to light another bus meta, Matthew Kim, whose ability is transferring powers from one person to another. When they try to capture him, the Flash's speed is passed to Iris, who must learn to act as a speedster while Barry takes over as man in the van, in the episode 'Run Iris, Run'. To help out where Iris's lack of experience calls for more novel uses of speed, and to fight the Thinker, Harry devises his own thinking cap. Cisco has doubts about this plan, especially nixing Harry's attempts to persuade the group that he should charge the cap with dark matter. This enables him to provide a plan to defeat a meta empowered by Kim and - with Kim secured in the pipeline for his own protection, and Barry's powers returned - also locates the last two bus metas.

Also, Breacher returns and seeks help with his failing powers, but I had
literally forgotten that.

In 'Null and Annoyed', Ralph's irreverence wears on Barry as they track down another bus meta, Janet Petty, who can control gravity. Ralph admits he jokes because he is afraid of being abandoned, which honestly Barry would have picked up on if he wasn't so self-centred. They are able to stop Petty, and Ralph becomes an airbag to catch Barry when he is degravitised and falls from high altitude. DeVoe's wife, Marlize, discovers that he has been drugging her, but when leaving a recording to remind herself that he is doing so discovers that she had done so many times before, while Harry works on charging his Thinking Cap with dark matter.

In 'Lose Yourself', the team looks for the last bus meta, Edwin Gauss, a dropout who is able to enter pocket dimensions. A Samuroid comes after Gauss, injuring Caitlin, and Harry develops a tuning fork weapon to stop DeVoe. Barry argues with Ralph, who is intent on killing DeVoe to protect his new family, Team Flash, while Joe tries to help Harry with an addiction to the thinking cap's effects. Barry and Ralph use Edwin's power to open a door to DeVoe's pocket dimension base, but he outplans them again and uses their absence to hit Star Labs, taking the remaining bus meta powers. Ralph is able to capture him, but he uses his powers to prevent the power dampening cuffs activating, allowing him to steal Ralph's body and escape back to his lair, after draining Caitlin's powers and the Killer Frost personality, and before shifting into his original shape using Ralph's powers.

The problem of course is that a) DeVoe is now simply too monstrous for me to give a flying fuck about his Utopian vision. They keep referring to their plans, and I just blank them, because on top of the villains he has murdered good, kind, innocent people to get to this point, and repeatedly brainwashed his wife so that she never questions him, so I literally care less about his diabolical masterplan than I did about Damien Darhk's back in Arrow season 4, and b) in order to sell his supergenius you have to both stretch credibility - Sherlock Holmes is capable of insane leaps of logic, but we get to follow his purported process and that means that we're not left thinking 'nope, he's just a wizard' - and allow that the good guys are gripless incompetents who can't think to build a power dampner into the cerebral inhibitor 2.0.

I'm not crying. You're crying. Shut up.

Also, either they just spent a good third of a season growing Ralph Dibney from a complete douchebag into a character the audience could respect, even like, just so they could kill off a recurring character(8), or they're going to somehow bring him back, which means his death is meaningless. Either way, it's pretty cheap, and as with so many things in The Flash, fundamentally Barry's fault; not that I'm advocating superhero rough justice, but Barry's ability to adapt to the new paradigm is significantly poor.

Also, just how is DeVoe's battery of abilities any barrier to a hero who is established in Flashtime to now be basically able to move and act faster than thought? For a while now I've been of the opinion that with superhero shows, half-season arcs are the wave of the future. It keeps a single nemesis from outstaying their welcome, and allows for tighter storytelling.

Which brings us to Legends of Tomorrow, which does full-season arcs, but with a shorter season, and which uses its time travel premise to continually play with its look and keep things fresh.

"No one can know about my haircut."

We begin this final set with 'No Country for Old Dads', in which Darhk sends Nora and Ray to 1962 Berlin to retrieve the secret of cold fusion - needed to power the repair of the broken fire totem - from a defecting scientist who is about to be murdered by... Damien Darhk. Naturally, shit goes sideways and Nora and Ray bond a little as they struggle to extract the scientist the old-fashioned way. Ray believes that there is good in Nora, and despite her own determination that she is Mallus' creature through and through, there is something there that he reaches, in part because of that Pollyanna willingness to accept the good in everyone that Zari protected back in 'Phone Home'. There is no defection here, however. Damien shows up to save Nora from his younger self, and in the ensuing conflict Ray blows a hole in the Berlin Wall, creating another anachronism, while Nora's desire to save her father is - despite her general evilness - selfless enough to allow her to bond with the stolen spirit totem, corrupting it.

Rip and Wally contact the Legends and they learn that the prison in which Mallus was bound is time itself, hence as the anachronisms create cracks in time, his cage weakens. Wally rescues Ray and steals back the fire totem, and the dying scientist - shot by the older Darhk to preserve his record as an assassin - gives Ray the formula for cold fusion. The director of the Time Bureau is killed by Grodd while attempting to prevent Alexander Hamilton seeing Hamilton, making Ava acting director and allowing Rip back to work. Wally stays on the Waverider, and Rip deletes a file in the ship's directories to prevent Sara learning Ava's secret.

Well... okay.

In 'Amazing Grace', Nate loses his hair game as rock and roll vanishes from time, thanks to an anachronism caused by a mass panic at Elvis Presley's first big performance which prevented the style going mainstream. The team realise that Presley's guitar contains the death totem, which is summoning ghosts, but when the swap it for a replica find that Presley can't play, having previously been inspired by the presence of his late brother's spirit. In addition, a ghostly presence tries to take the guitar from the Waverider and return it to Presley, while his uncle, the local pastor, has him arrested to try to free him from the 'devil's music.'

Amaya persuades Elvis's uncle to allow his record to be played on the radio, which causes the dead to walk in numbers, but then Elvis is able to use the real guitar to send them back to their rest, before surrendering the death token and returning to his destiny. Amaya plays Nate music from Zambesi, having listened to him rant on about rock and roll all episode, and the death totem tries to escape from its bonds.

Even her t-shirt has veins.

In 'Necromancing the Stone', the totem calls to Sara due to her affinity with death, and she falls under the control of Mallus, her physical form stalking the Waverider and taking out the Legends one at a time, even Wally with his oh-so-annoying superspeed. Meanwhile, Ava and Gary track down John Constantine for help, and in Mallus' realm Nora tries to persuade Sara to willingly join Team Mallus. The surviving Legends try to access the other totems to fight Sara and Mallus, but are unable to do so, and Constantine cannot enter Mallus' realm to help Sara. He is able to block Mallus for a time, and engage him in battle-banter, where Mallus offers to trade: If Constantine gives up Sara, Mallus will release Astra(9) from Hell. Constantine does not fall for this, although he admits that he would have gone with it if he thought it might have worked.

Finally, Mick is able to bond with the fire totem to stun Sara, and Constantine and Ava release her from Mallus' control. Sara breaks up with Ava, fearing that she brings destruction on everyone she loves, and Constantine joins Gary's D&D campaign.

A post-break up nightmare made real?

Learning that Ava hasn't been to work for a few days, Sara and Ray accompany Gary to her parents' home in 'I, Ava', and soon realise that her parents are actors, hired to play the roles in perpetuity. They then learn that Ava's first mission for the Time Bureau is also her first recorded act, and travel to the mission's location in the temporal no-fly zone of 2213. They learn that in 2213, most of society's service industry needs - including civil protection - are met by AVA, a mass-produced 'perfect woman'(10). The three are captured, then rescued by Ava, who is both literally and figuratively beside herself in shock, clearly having had no idea where she actually came from. She and Sara figure out that it was Rip who hid her history. In the next episode, Ava learns that she is the 12^th AVA clone Rip has snagged to use as an agent, which is pretty cold soup to lay on someone's plate.

Fantasy or nightmare? How much of a lechy sleaze is Nate?

Back in plot-land, Amaya and Nate have to try to keep Mari McCabe(11) from getting killed trying to vigilante now that the spirit totem is in the hands of the Darhks. Amaya forms a temporary truce with Kuasa, who also wants to protect Mari, only for her to sort-of double cross Nate when he suggests pretending to hand him over in exchange for the spirit totem. She does return the totem, but in the meantime Nate is tortured by the Darhks. In fact, he realises that while Nora is now entirely Mallus' creature, and half-possessed already, the seeds of doubt that Ray sowed have taken root, as Nora's brief outpouring of daughterly love has cracked Darhk Snr's shell and what he now wants is to save Nora from Mallus.

I... literally don't know what to make of this. On the one hand, as a father I sympathise with his desire to save his child from a mess in large part of his own making, and on the other it's taking away a female character's agency, although you could say that Mallus already did that.

Nora/Mallus catches Damien fake torturing Nate (which is hilarious.) Amaya, Wally and Kuasa rescue Nate, but Nora rips the water totem out of Kuasa, killing her - although Wally is able to retrieve the totem itself - driving Amaya to return to Zambesi in 1992 and try to save her village from the attack that wiped it out.

And yes, John Noble is the voice of Mallus.

The Legends next defend future president Barack Obama from Gorilla Grodd in the 1980s, and in so doing both prevent further anachronism and get a few licks in at the current administration. Damien offer an alliance with the Legends to prevent Mallus' ascension, having realised that it will mean Nora's destruction, but admits he has no more influence over her since she realised he had gone soft. Since the only person she listens to is Mallus, they decide to trick her into thinking that her master is giving her instructions, by getting actor John Noble to imitate Mallus' voice in the weirdly meta episode 'Guest Starring John Noble'(12). They achieve this by getting him to run lines from a doctored script to The Return of the King, then Ray plays them through external speakers while basically sitting in her ear, and thus lures her into the Waverider to be captured.

With Amaya - and Nate - poised to create another anachronism by saving Zambesi, Sara decides that they let this happen, then job Mallus with the six totems when he emerges, having learned that it was only the defection of the sixth tribe - the creators of the death totem - that prevented the ancestors gacking him in the first place. Damien wields the death totem, due to Sara's prior issues, but as Nora is still alive inside her possessed form is duped into turning on the Legends with the sliver of hope that she might survive, and releases Grodd to rampage in Zambesi, thus preventing the demon's release; until Nate uses the Earth totem to stop Grodd and it's Mallus o'clock.

Ultimate evil...

Moving into the finale, 'The Good, the Bad and the Cuddly', the Legends try to whip Mallus with their individual totems and it all goes tits up. Rip sacrifices himself to buy time for the Legends to escape(13), fleeing to the temporal blindspot of Salvation in the Old West, where they catch up with Jonah Hex while they lick their wounds and woe about how they weren't worthy of the totems. Ultimately, they realise that the problem was that they used the totems individually, where in fact they needed to be combined, their joined power bringing forth an ultimate warrior of light. Ray, however, goes his own way, releasing Damien and planning to secure Nora in Zambesi before Mallus can emerge.

Apparently Mallus can see more than the Time Masters(14), because it isn't long before he sends an army of Romans, Vikings and pirates, commanded by old foes Julius Caesar, Freydís Eiríksdóttir and Blackbeard, descends on Salvation demanding the totems. Ray and Damien fail to contain Nora, but Damien never intended to. He uses Ray's nanogun to kill Nora, forcing Mallus to abandon her and take him as a host, while Ray gets Nora away and treated. They then rejoin the team, along with Hex, and a band of unlikely allies: Jax, a Kuasa who grew up without the shadow of her village's destruction, and Helen of Troy after a few years Amazon training on Themyscira. The Legends try to pass off the totems - apart from spirit and air - to those more worthy, but are in turn told to step the fuck up. They defeat the army, and when Mallus turns up Sara (death), Mick (fire), Amaya (spirit), Nate (earth), Zari (air) and Wally (water) combine the totems to create the most powerful warrior for good since Captain Planet:

...vs Ultimate good.

Words literally cannot describe how awesome this is. A giant demon is piledrivered by a cuddly toy, that's really all you need to know.

Mallus is destroyed, and Damien Darhk is killed(15). Ray slips Nora a time stone as she is taken away by the Time Bureau. Amaya returns to Zambesi, but with her memory intact. The rest of the team take a well-earned break in Aruba... until John Constantine (and Gary) turn up to tell them that a bunch of other demons escaped when Mallus was released.

Another very strong outing from the Legends then, as the junior show moves out of the shadow of Arrow and The Flash to become its own thing, with its own villains and whacky time travel shenanigans. I don't mind admitting that this show has really grown on me. I'm sorry to see Jax and Stein go - I mind less about Firestorm - but I hope that Wally can find the place he never found on The Flash, and Zari is a huge pile of fun; her training session with Mick, which ends with her spinning him around in a whirlwind until he promises to learn to use the fire totem properly, is a high point in this set. I also like that Ray is getting some love, without betraying the brilliant, loveable, well-meaning dope that he is, and that his attempts to save Nora pay dividends, not because she falls for him(16), but because he manages to revive enough of the genuine love at the base of her relationship with her father for him to rebel at her consumption by Mallus.

(1) There must be a name for something like that...

(2) The sort of feat that only gets more impressive the more that you think about it.

(3) Reign is 'Power'.

(4) A comics and DCAU favourite.

(5) Alex is being a real dick in this episode, and I'm not sure why exactly.

(6) It still really doesn't know what it's doing with James, but that's not the actor's fault by any means.

(7) Seriously; what do ARGUS pay their people for?

(8) Which was a cheap trick when Voyager did it.

(9) The little girl he accidentally sent to Hell in his own backstory.

(10) They call her a clone, but there are strong robotic elements, especially tied to the original Rossum's Universal Robots.

(11) The modern day Vixen.

(12) I just thought the Sky box has mislabelled the episode here.

(13) Gone for reals this time; probably.

(14) Or perhaps someone forgot how quickly they were tracked last time they were in this particular 'blind spot.'

(15) Gone for reals this time; probably.

(16) Aside from anything else, that dynamic hit peak with Blackarachnia and Silverbolt in Beast Wars.