Runaways - 'Reunion'

"Can't stay at home, Can't stay at school."

Runaways is a Marvel property I have heard a great deal about, but don't really know much about, at least in part because I've always intended to maybe try and read it some time. I never got around to that, but now they've made it into a TV series, which may or may not be a part of the MCU(1).

The story centres on a group of privileged, yet troubled teens, whose parents are all members of a charitable trust called the Pride Foundation(2). Alex is a proud geek, whose formerly close bond with his friends was broken when one of their number, Amy, died two years previously. In large part for the sake of Amy's angry Goth sister Nico, he tries to stage a reunion with her and their other friends: jock and closet engineering genius Chase(3); perpetually sunny Karolina, who was raised in her mother's cult; and adoptive sisters Gert, an Angry Young Woman, and Molly, the youngest of the group, who is hitting the puberty and discovering that she has super strength. Sadly, no-one is really interested in getting the band back together.

Gert arranges a Spanish tutoring session with Chase - she either has a super-obvious crush on him, or the show is dummying us and she has complicated feels for other reasons - but he blows her off to go to a party with his Lacrosse team as part of a commitment to better living through douchebaggery. He hits a limit, however, when Karolina blows off church stuff for the party, takes off her cult bracelet for the first time, sees her arms go all sparkly and passes out. The other lacrosse players see this as an ideal opportunity for some date rape, but Chase sees them off and Karolina comes to when he replaces her bracelet. He warns her against drugs, but we see her dispose of a pill that she was given without taking anything.  Molly feeds her parents many pets, and discovers a door in the basement leading to the dinosaur room. No, really and literally.

With Molly and Karolina in a state of advancing freakout, they beg Gert and Chase respectively to take them 'somewhere else, but not home,' and so they wind up at Alex's place, as does Nico after failing to raise her sister's spirit in a candle-lit beach ritual(4). While their parents toast their own organisation and snark at Gert and Molly's hippy parents, the kids awkwardly reunite, tempers flaring over what exactly came between them when the 'glue' of Amy's presence and personality was gone. Chase decides that stealing the good booze is the way forward, which leads to the accidental discovery of a secret door triggered by a stack of coasters(5).

 

"Old folks say you poor little fool."

The kids descend into a cellar, where they see their parents wearing red robes and feeding a young girl from the church into a glowing coffin of, we presume, evil. Molly tries to use her phone as a periscope and accidentally lets of the flash, and they flee.

Runaways has a good rep and a fair amount of potential. Of course, the kids are the real heart of this show, and so far, they make a decent fist of it. They're all pretty privileged, but their shared loss allows the audience to sympathise with them for the one thing that no amount of money can insulate against. None of them really look quite as young as I think they're supposed to be, although they're slightly more convincing high schoolers than the cast of Teen Wolf. As antagonists, the parents are a mixed bag - right on, dino-breeding hippies; douchebag lawyer and trophy wife; uptight tech moguls; sinister-happy cult leaders; ruthless ex-ghetto(6) realtors - and so far seem to embody a fairly banal kind of evil, and even their human sacrifice ritual is kind of sterile and clean - feeding an unresisting victim into a glowing light while shrouded in a sound-dampening forcefield - the ultimate in middle class, house proud cult activity.

'Reunion' is very much a set-up episode, establishing and beginning to upset the status quo. As with all such series, transferring from this 'everyday' set-up to the ongoing situation is a challenge, and it remains to be seen how Runaways manages that. Better than Inhumans and more involving than The Gifted, I'm keen to see where the series will go.

(1) I hear yes, but there's been no direct connection so far.

(2) No relation to LBQTA rights that we can see yet.

(3) He's cool and gadgety, and probably intended to be like Tony Stark, but I read him more like Jonathon Brown in Paddington 2; secretly into steam engines, but asking to be called 'J-Dog' to fit in.

(4) This is the problem with learning all your witchery from The Craft, although fair play she has some good candles, because none of them blow out.

(5) I guess the parents never expected their kids to try to use a coaster.

(6) The rest of Pride suggest that Alex's dad at least comes from 'the hood', but they're so upper-middle class that they could mean anything from a trashbag in an alley to a suburb that isn't quite the thing anymore.

Lost in Space - 'Impact', 'Diamonds in the Sky' and 'Infestation'

Where it all began (except that it began in black and white.)

There are so many reboots these days, and Irwin Allen's classic 1965 scifi family soap Lost in Space - recounting the oddly domestic adventures of the space-stranded Robinson family, their hunky pilot Don West, comedy villain Dr Zachary Smith and an unhelpfully excitable robot - has already had one; or two if you count a failed 2004 pilot as well as the 1998 feature film, with Matt LeBlanc reinterpreting upright 60s chauvinist Don as 'Joey-from-Friends' in Space. Repeats of the original were a part of my childhood landscape, so I have a certain fondness for the property, and for my money the film at least shouldn't count against the possibility of a new version, since it was both bad and highly forgettable(1), so I'm excited to see what Netflix makes of the property.

What they make of it is a gritty, SF survival drama, eschewing the somewhat cosy affects of the original, while keeping the optimistic family togetherness vibe and occasionally inappropriately upbeat theme tune. In a near future in which the world is going to shit, the Robinson family are part of an interstellar colony mission which hits rough skating and a possible wormhole. The family consists of engineer Dr Maureen Robinson and her three children - Judy, an eighteen-year-old medical prodigy; Penny, a more conventionally troubled teen; and Will, who against the tendency of prior versions is a modestly intelligent boy who questions his place alongside his more gifted siblings - as well as her somewhat estranged husband, military man John.

The new hotness.

When something goes badly wrong with the colony transport, Resolute, they evacuate on their lifeboat, Jupiter-2(2), and crash on an unknown planet. Across the opening episodes they learn that not only are they off course; they seem to be in the wrong galaxy. The Robinsons struggle to survive freezing conditions with the Jupiter submerged. Will is separated from the family while searching for magnesium to melt Judy out of a glacier and runs into a damaged alien robot. At first hostile, after he helps it self repair, it assumes a more human form and seems to imprint on Will as its master. A flashback shows us that the robot attacked the colony ship, the Resolute, during which attack a sociopathic identity thief adopted the identity of one Dr Z. Smith (the original played by original Will Robinson Bill Mumy.) She came down with engineer Don West, later ditching him to improve her own chances and hooking up with the Robinsons during a rain of deadly, falling diamonds.

And then there are fuel-eating space eels! Because of course there are.

With a strong, diverse cast - Judy is half-sister to the younger Robinsons and step-daughter to John, played by Taylor Russell(3), and Don is Hispanic, as well as Parker Posey's Dr Smith making the main cast 50/50 male and female, if you count the robot as male based on the voice actor for its three words of dialogue(4) - and a much stronger range of characters than the original, in which Maureen and Judy Robinson basically made meals and gushed over John and Don respectively. In this version, each of the character has earned a place on the colony mission, so they all have skills; apart from Smith, who is a phoney, and Will, whose place was wangled by his mum bending some rules. Not sure what's going to come of that, but it must be something.

'Danger, Will Robinson.' It's the new 'I am Groot.'

Three episodes in, and Lost in Space is definitely justifying my investment.

(1) Apart from the Apollo-440 remix of the theme music; that was baller.

(2) In this series, the lifeboats are all Jupiters.

(3) And don't think that there hasn't been the usual furore about having a mixed-race family. Blah, blah, diversity for the sake of it, blah, blah.

(4) Yes, those three.

Star Wars: Rebels - 'A Fool's Hope' and 'Family Reunion... and Farewell'

"Right. You and that army."

Wow. Here it; the end of the road for the Rebels.

With Kanan gone, Ezra puts into motion his plan to free Lothal. It's his plan, details by Sabine, with Hera and Zeb forced to allow that their kids have grown up. Unfortunately, time is tight to deal with Governor Pryce before Thrawn returns, so the crew pull in as many allies as they can, including Sabine's ex-partner Ketsu, dyed-in-the-wool scoundrels Hondo and Visago, Rex's fellow clone troopers Gregor and Wolfe, and the former-agent Kallus.

Ezra lays out his plan to hit the Imperial compound, but the odds against them are high and Rider Azadi contacts Pryce, offering to sell out the Rebel cause. Come the morning, Pryce brings a gunship strike force to the Rebel base, and a brutal firefight ensues, while Hera and her reinforcements sneak past Thrawn's blockade, painfully slowly. After a fierce resistance, the Rebels are subdued, but Ezra tells Pryce that Azadi's betrayal was a fake to draw her out. She is dismissive, but then the Ghost drops in, and when it looks like the ground fight might still go badly, Rukh and the stormtroopers find themselves outmatched by the Loth-wolf pack.

"You do remember that I saw what you really look like, right?"

'Family Reunion... and Farewell' then picks up with the mission itself. Using codes extracted from Pryce under threat of Loth-wolf, the crew infiltrates the Imperial dome. The plan is to issue a planetary evacuation order, drawing all of the Imperial troops into the dome, then launch it - because it does that - and set a self-destruct to take out all of the occupying troops and armour on the planet, which is pretty metal, and plays to the future Rebel strength of blowing up round things full of Imperials. Pryce is snide about their chances, but Kallus manages to bluff through the evacuation order and they prepare to launch. Unfortunately, things go south, as Thrawn's command ship, the Chimaera, pops up above them. Unable to launch without crashing into the Chimaera and raining flaming metal across the city, and with the dome's shield generators disabled by Rukh, Ezra has little choice but to surrender to Thrawn. Most of the crew try to talk him out of it, but Sabine lets him slip away.

Future cute.

Ezra goes aboard the ship, while Sabine coordinates a strike on the shield generators to get the defences back on line. Ezra is show a reconstructed chunk of the Lothal Jedi temple, and meets the Emperor, albeit in a prettified holographic form. The Emperor wants him to reopen the World Between Worlds, offering in exchange the chance to go back, save his parents and remake his life. Although tempted, Ezra ultimately refuses, while below, Zeb is able to trap Rukh on a power converter, and the rest of the crew get the shields working, even though their position in the command deck is now under fire.

Following a secret mission for Ezra, Mart brings the hyperspace whales to the fight, mashing the bejeebus out of Imperial blockade fleet, with one of them reaching its hyperspace whale tentacles(1) in to grab Thrawn and so fulfil the Bendu's prophecy. The whales jump to hyperspace, dragging the Chimaera - and Ezra - with them, while the Imperial dome detonates with Pryce aboard, having refused to switch sides.

Okay; this is my fantasy PI spin-off for the series.

In an epilogue, Sabine explains that with the increasing pace of the Rebellion, the Empire never came back to Lothal. Hera and Rex fought at the Battle of Endor, alongside Spectre 7, Jacen Syndulla, the son of Hera and Kanan. After, Zeb took Kallas to the new home of the Lasat to find his own peace. Sabine herself thought that Ezra had asked her to look after Lothal, but eventually realised that he wanted her to coms and find him, which - accompanied by Ahsoka Tano - she sets out to do.

So, that was Star Wars Rebels, and it's been one hell of a journey. The story of Lothal and its defenders has touched on many corners of the Star Wars universe, and brought us a family of memorable characters, engaged in thrilling shenanigans and some serious character growth.

(1) Full disclosure, I'd practically forgotten these things, but it was all set up back when.

DC Roundup: The Flash - 'The Trial of The Flash', 'The Elongated Knight Rises' and 'Honey I Shrunk Team Flash'; Legends of Tomorrow - 'Daddy Darhkest', 'Here I Go Again' and 'The Curse of the Earth Totem'; and Supergirl - 'Legion of Super-Heroes'

Barry gets his day in court, and for a major murder trial, it really doesn't feel
like it's more than a day.

Back to the Arrowverse (and Earths west,) as we come back after the mid-season break for The Flash, Legends of Tomorrow and, eventually, Supergirl.

'The Trial of The Flash(1)' follows from the midseason cliffhanger, as Barry faces trial for the murder of Clifford De Voe and the series faces the greatest challenge of a super-intelligent villain; the pitfall of simulating super-intelligence by having everyone else be incredibly stupid. Seriously, the trial of Barry Allen is about as fair and convincing as the trial in Paddington 2, but that was supposed to be a crock and featured in a critically lauded children's comedy, whereas The Flash occasionally aspires to aspects of police procedural. The prosecution simultaneously presents Barry as a diabolical mastermind and as a highly-skilled CSI completely incapable of even attempting to cover his tracks(2). Ultimately, that's because this episode is more about Barry refusing to use his superhero alter-ego to derail the trial than it is about the facts of the case, and thus we're just asked to accept that De Voe is capable of setting this whole thing up. It's also about Team Flash accepting his decision and not revealing the secret identity for him, and realising that they can't make right by doing wrong, as when Ralph Dibney of all people has to talk Joe down from planting evidence to clear Barry. It's played as an emotional moment of growth for Dibney, but it's also an important practical withdrawal, because Joe has apparently forgotten that the De Voe house is full of cameras.

 

Fallout. Not our best villain.

Also, the Flash helps to stop Fallout, a hapless metahuman who unknowingly pumps out radiation, and who is lucky enough to be sent off for treatment (because when Barry protests that he never killed anyone, this is rather disingenuous, his run-ins with Earth-2 metas in early Season 2 reaping a particularly bloody harvest.) This is an almost entirely insubstantial B-plot, except that it allows the show to parallel Captain Singh giving a citation for the Flash, alongside the judge sending Barry down for life without parole. 

Come for the life sentence, stay for the hats.

Thus, 'The Elongated Knight Rises' sees Dibney trying to step up as Central City's key hero, and while he does an okay job it's hard to see why no-one is asking 'where the heckins has the Flash got to?' Dibney's first case involves the second Trickster, who is broken out of jail by his mother, formerly known as Prank. She wants them to go straight, but is easily persuaded to drop her medication(3) and start kidnapping people. Trickster's new thing is acid-loaded squirt guns, which prove able to damage Dibney's polymerised cells, leading him to face the question of whether he wants to be a hero if he can be hurt. Meanwhile, Barry is treated to his inaugural shivving - Iron Heights is a traditional, orthodox prison - but saved by prison heavy 'Big Sir', whose life was saved by an emergency appendectomy performed by the late Henry Allen.

I miss Mark Hamill.

Dibney also runs into a girl at CC Jitters who is writing in a strange language. Apparently, this is the language Barry was writing in when he came out of the Speed Force, but my immediate assumption was that she was one of the Observers from Fringe.

Finally, 'Honey I Shrunk Team Flash' sets Team Flash against a meta with shrinking powers, who just happens to become active after (criminally speaking) after years on the QT, right after it turns out that he was responsible for the murder Big Sir was convicted of. Barry urges Team Flash to track him down and get a confession so that Big Sir can go free and travel to China, but the confession is not forthcoming, even after a whole bunch of high jinks involving Cisco and Dibney being shrunk and an attempted cure priming them to explode. With no way to get Big Sir's sentence overturned, Barry speedsters him to China(4) and then returns to his own cell, where he is drugged by the warden and taken to be sold to Amaunet.

That's a bad sign.

This is not a strong set of episodes for The Flash. There are a lot of great moments peppered throughout, but overall they are disappointing. The trial is too fast and hinges too heavily on the presumption that De Voe has not only created a sufficient wealth of evidence to hang - as it were - Barry, but that he can do so without needing to give any additional direction to the prosecution. Thereafter, Dibney is only a so-so fill in for the Flash, and the teams methods for evoking the Killer Frost persona in Caitlin are superficially funny, but in retrospect almost as creepy as the fact that members of the team have been hitting the clubs with Killer Frost while Caitlin has been sleeping.

I'm curious to see how the show prevents Barry's secret identity from becoming public knowledge once, inevitably, he escapes from Amaunet's 'employment', and am wondering if she won't be suffering another non-culpable, Flash-related fatal accidents.

It's that man again.

Legends of Tomorrow has been bringing me rather more joy lately (although The Flash does have a shout-out to one-time god of war, Beebo.) Not that there are many laughs in 'Daddy Darhkest', as John Constantine leads the team to an asylum in Star City, 2017, and a girl named Emily who is possessed by a demon who knows Sara's name. The demon is Mallus, and laughs at Constantine's most substantial wards, and the girl it turns out is Nora Darhk. Mallus throws Constantine, Sara and Leo back in time, where Constantine and Sara get jiggy(5) and Leo gets drugged. With the Waverrider in trouble because - among other things - Ray and Zari are off trying to convince Nora not to go evil in later life, Sara has to willingly channel Mallus in order to mark and reactivate the time travel rune that was used to send them back in time, in order to get home. This means that she potentially opens herself to Mallus in future, and Constantine urges Ray to keep working on a nano-pistol designed to kill the possessed.

Also, Ray goes home to Earth-X.

Okay, not much joy there, but then we have 'Here I Go Again', which is, in the parlance of the show itself, the Groundhog Day episode, as a temporal fluid leak and an explosion on the Waverrider leaves Zari stuck in some sort of time loop. The first few times around, Sara - already narked at Zari for dragging her heels on repairs - has her sedated, but it turns out that Nate is willing to believe, and gives her Groundhog Day as a shorthand to convince him each cycle. She struggles to solve the problem, and as she looks for a mole in the crew she learns a lot about them, such as Ray's work on the nanite gun, Sara's burgeoning relationship with Agent Sharp, and the fact that Mick is writing a halfway decent sci-fi romance.

I have a deep and shameful love of sassy female-voiced computer. And sassy
male-voiced computers, actually, although there are fewer of them.

My favourite thing about this episode is the twist. It does all the standard time loop stuff - the intense struggle, the dossing around cycles - but then, just as the source turns up and the loop gets broken with the countdown still ticking, it turns out that this isn't a time loop. The fluid leak just knocked her into a coma, and Gideon - who is just the scariest voyeuristic caregiver ever - put her into a simulation in order to convince her that she could stay and be a part of the team, which is a nice spin on a classic trope.

Finally, we go all pirate in 'Curse of the Earth Totem', as one of the missing totems is tracked to the Caribbean and the near-legendary Captain Blackbeard. Cue hilarity as Ray and Nate try to be piratical, but ultimately own Amaya the better pirate, and boast her up as their pirate queen in order to blag a ride with actually-a-complete-coward Blackbeard to the island where he buried the 'cursed' totem with his lover, Anne Queen(6), after it turned her into a plant-manipulating hell-ghoul, because the totems are powered by one's own spirit and pirates aren't good people. There are crosses and double-crosses, the Darhks turn up and blag the spirit totem, but Ray shoots Nora with the anti-mage gun, which works a treat.

For it is, it is a glorious thing to be a pirate queen.

The team retreat to the Waverrider, but Nate isn't able to leave a woman he knew as a girl to die of horrible internal burny-freezy nanites. He goes back and offers a cure in exchange for the spirit totem, but hangs around too long and gets mage-choked by Nora, surviving only because Damien Darhk suggests a use for him.

Also, Sara and Agent Sharp - I want to say Evelyn? - go on a date, only for Sara to dine and dash when she gets an alert from the team, and Rip Hunter escapes from Time Bureau custody to recruit Wally West, first for a mission of his own and then as a potential new recruit to the Waverrider crew.

"I don't have the best history with people called Brainiac, but we won't
mention that. At all."

Finally, Supergirl reopens two weeks later than the other shows, with 'Legion of Super Heroes'. Reign is pretty much... Reining, with no-one to stop her as Kara is in a coma, her only contact with the outside world being the projected presence of Mon-el and Whatsherface's(7) teammate, Brainiac-5, who is trying to coax her out of an internal projection of her apartment. As the DEO struggles to contain Reign, Mon-el resists the urge to join the fight, since the Legion a) aren't supposed to get involved in past stuff, and b) his team hold the key to curing a terrible future plague in their own DNA, because apparently the twenty-eighth century(8) doesn't do thumb drives, data crystals, notepads, or any other form of information storage more efficient and stable than living DNA.

The twenty-eighth century is kind of dumb(9).

Power rings and cool outfits.

Mon-el and Imra eventually do join the fight, activating the Legion's 'ah, fuck it' protocol, and Kara snaps out of her coma to join the fight after realising that she is keeping herself in the room, partly on account of how much of a beating she took, but also because she's still trying to deny her humanity and be an alien arse-kicking machine, where her civilian persona is still vitally important, and not just in the sense that J'onn has to pretend to be her again after James tells Lena that Kara is home sick.

Anyway, Kara comes to the aid of the outmatched Legion, taking a bit of green vein to stick Reign with an emergency Kryptonite shot held back in case of bad Superman. Reign retreats to what I'm going to call the Temple of Doom, where the hologram of her creator tells her that the world has been seeded with support goons for her, and Johnny Used-to-Worship-Supergirl(10) tells her he can help her, since he sees a Kryptonian object of worship who offers some potential for validation.

(1) For some reason, I was sure it was called 'The Trial of Barry Allen', possibly because Barry Allen was on trial, while everyone still loved the Flash.

(2) Experience shows this to be a fair cop, but mostly because he lacks the intellectual coldness to plan such meticulous deceptions, or even wear a mask when breaking into a mastermind's house.

(3) The Trickster family are a bit of an oddity, continually straddling the border between diabolical supervillainy and genuine mental illness, although rarely as successfully as in the JLU episode 'Flash and Substance'.

(4) With no money, passport, ID, or - so far as anyone can tell - Chinese language.

(5) Points for having Constantine also hit on Leo. They still haven't shown him as actively and definitively bi, but since Leo is in a committed relationship there was only so far they could have gone without creating other problems.

(6) Related to Oliver?

(7) Imra, damnit.

(8) Or whenever they come from.

(9) Fair play, they were trying to hide the information, although sticking it in your genome and escaping through time still feels a little belt and temporal paradox.

(10) Just in case anyone thought it was just female characters whose names I couldn't remember.

The Gifted - 'eXit Strategy' and 'boXed In'

"Hey; we're the good guys here."

Slowly working through Marvel's not-quite-the-X-Men-series-that-isn't-Legion, I've got two more episodes in the bag.

In 'eXit Strategy', the Underground set out to rescue Lawyer-Face and Polaris(1), with the junior Struckers comboing their powers to create a more targeted destructive effect to stop a prisoner transport truck. Meanwhile, Marco goes to his former contacts in a Mexican gang to get info on the convoy route, only to find that the gang is now run by his ex. Soo awkward. Things then go bad, as everyone's powers stop working, thanks to Pulse, a mutant friend of Johnny's who was thought killed in a raid on a Sentinel Services base, only to turn up apparently working on them. Then Johnny knocks out Pulse and everyone gets away, after Lawyer-Face volunteers the metal pin from his leg to allow Polaris(2) to break out of their transport.

'boXed in' sees Blink coming to terms with the fact that her relationship with Johnny is a big old fake, while Lorna ropes Marco into kidnapping Sentinel Services Agent Tragic McBackstory, whose daughter was killed when a mutant rights march exploded, leading to the current state of world affairs. They rope in Roofie-Breath to mess with his mind, and after Blink extracts them from a self-inflicted Sentinel Services hairball, McBackstory is left to go home with no memory that his daughter is dead.

So... y'know. It's actually hard to call who the real villains are here.

Also, Lawyer-Face makes amends for his almost betraying the entire Underground by going out and dummying Sentinel Services away from the hideout.

The Gifted is not a terrible series, but the plot matches its washed-out colour palette. It's much, much better than, say, Inhumans, but also much less memorable. There's a lot to like, some strong characters and interesting relationships, and mostly what I remember is that I really don't like Roofie-Breath and that Lorna and Marco are working hard to justify McBackstory's hate. Honestly, if the Underground represent the good mutants, I'm starting to think that Sentinel Services may have a point. Not a good point, but a point nonetheless.

(1) I'm watching this very slowly, so regular people names are especially hard to remember. Strucker is Lawyer-Face's surname, but there are a lot of Struckers in the series.

(2) Her real name is Lorna, but she's a long-time comic character as well.