Smallville: Salvation (s9 ep21)

And so ends another series of Smallville here in the UK (the US are already watching Season 10, the final season). Again frustratingly, though somewhat comfortingly expected, this season ends on a cliffhanger.

With the Book of Rao (or Rau as the subtitles kept calling it) in hand, Clark decides that he'll use it to send all the Kryptonians, himself included, off to another world and a new home. This means it's time for an emotional goodbye with Lois, though Clark still can't tell her that he's the Blur. Everyone else around him knows - Oliver, Chloe, even Tess - but for some reason Clark thinks it wouldn't be a good idea to tell the most recent love of his life (kinda similar to when he was with Lana in the first few seasons). Anyway, eventually Lois figures it out when the Blur kisses her, which - let's face it - was a bit risky anyway. It wasn't so dark that Lois wouldn't see something of his features, even without the kiss.

Meanwhile, Zod and his cronies are going around blasting the Z-symbol into lots of well-known landmarks around the world. The reason for this - other than stamping their mark on the world - is to lure all the other Justice League / Justice Society superheroes away from Clark so they can't help him. Then Zod confronts Clark just as he's using the Book of Rao to open up the portal. And he's brandishing a dagger of blue kryptonite, which temporarily turns Zod and Clark human.

After a thrilling slow-mo battle on the Watchtower's rooftop, Zod stabs Clark and then Clark falls from the building. This takes the blue kryptonite away from Zod, and consequently he reverts back to being an alien and gets sucked up into the portal and away from the Earth. Clark falls to the ground... fade to black and cue "To Be Continued".

During all this Oliver is attacked by numerous unknown people who are apparently not Kryptonians (!?) and Tess is burnt and killed by Zod. However some strange old woman goes to visit Tess in hospital as she dies. Perhaps, to fit in with the villains to come in the next season, this is Granny Goodness?

Overall, a very good episode with some nice fight scenes and effects plus the shadowing of what is to come - and perhaps a very brief flash of Superman himself - in the initial couple of minutes. This season has improved on previous seasons, mainly due to the addition of various DC characters and lore. Zod, the main bad guy, was a little poor and the general storyline a bit muddled (as always) but, on the whole, still very enjoyable.

Now I just have to wait until next year for season 10 to appear on E4 when, hopefully, we'll finally see Clark stop moping around and become Superman. I won't hold my breath. ;)

Smallville: Hostage (s9 ep20)

A strange but interesting episode this week (well, last week now) that strangely paused the Zod & his Kryptonian storyline - I can only assume they felt they needed a holiday after destroying the Checkmate mountain fortress last week. Instead, everyone was looking for the "Book" of Rao and we found out who the Red Queen was. Until last week, I don't remember the Book of Rao being mentioned before, but maybe I'm just forgetting. Seems like a convenient macguffin to me - "Ooh, we've got a bunch of Kryptonians on the planet and here's something that can handily get rid of them all".

Whilst Clark is trying to find this "book" (which isn't a book at all - it's one of those brushed steel octagonal disks), Lois is left feeling unwanted, her career seemingly in ruins. Then along comes the welcome return of Martha Kent, who has hooked up with Perry White. Soon it becomes apparent that both Lois and Perry are hounding the same story about aliens hidden in Metropolis, demolished secret government facilities and a familiar-looking octagonal artefact. So, except for Zod (who must be having a well-deserved rest somewhere), everyone's looking for this Book of Rao, it seems.

Even Martha!

Who, as it turns out (spoiler warning folks), is actually the Red Queen. She's got Maxwell Lord to telepathically interrogate Tess to try and discover the whereabouts of the Book. Tess soon twigs that it's all mind games and breaks out. Stupidly though, she immediately goes to the place where she's kept the Book hidden and, of course, the Red Queen follows her.

Meanwhile, Perry and Lois have been chasing the story, gone to uncover the Red Queen's identity but instead end up in a spot of bother whilst climbing up the side of a building(!). Lois saves Perry, realises something or other and then Perry puts in a good word for her and Clark at the Daily Planet and then get their jobs back.

It was great to see Martha again and good that, as the Red Queen, she remained ruthlessly effective to the end, retrieving the Book of Rao, kicking Tess' ass, and so on. It makes sense that she'd use her political power and resources to help protect Clark, even if she had hidden her agenda from Clark as well as kryptonited him to keep him off her tail. Weirdly, this week, Clark seems to do very little other than figure out who the Red Queen is by using leaps of logic that could bound over tall buildings.

Overall a good episode, even if - pace-wise - it seemed an odd placement in the season, coming just before the finale next week (well, tomorrow actually).

Smallville: Sacrifice (s9 ep19)

It was also a better epsiode this week in Smallville as things start to kick off. You can tell it's getting close to the end of the season as storylines begin to get resolved and the action starts to ramp up ready for the season final.

This week started with the Watchtower going into lockdown when Checkmate starts to hack its computer systems. Can someone tell me why? It's being hacked from outside (using a device in Tess' body) so what good will sealing the place do? Other than nearly killing Chloe and Tess, that is?

Actually, Tess does die. Chloe kills her in order to shut down the router device inside Tess. Later, Chloe is able to bring Tess back to life because, of course, she's a skilled medical professional and is able to get those defribrillator shock paddles to work through Tess' top. And, miraculously, Tess gets up immediately with no brain damage due to being dead for an hour (or however long it was).

Meanwhile, Green Arrow fights Zod. Luckily GA has a handy kryptonite arrow in his arsenal (handy that) but ultimately it does no good. At first, I thought Zod (and Smallville's writers) had killed Oliver and burnt his face off, but that was just some other guy. Instead, it seems GA is going to have to change his codename to Zenith or something - what with that big Z burnt into his chest!

Slight aside but I'm not thrilled by Smallville's Zod. Callum Blue doesn't seem to have the right presence for one of Superman's main enemies. And his accent just sticks out like a sore thumb.

Anyway, elsewhere Checkmate kidnaps the Kandorians but then Clark rescues them. In retaliation Zod attacks Checkmate's base causing mucho destructiono. In the end, Zod and all of the Kandorians gather at the Fortress of non-Solitude - well, all except the pregnant Faora (or whatever her name is) who Zod had strangled earlier, hence the title of this episode I guess. We then find out that Zod has very quickly given the rest of the Kandorians a blood transfusion because they then all flew off.

Which again highlights a problem with Smallville - how come Clark hasn't learnt to fly yet? Kara (Supergirl) could. Zod can. The poor Kandorians, who have been sat around doing nothing for weeks, pick it up in no time at all. Heck, even evil Clark could fly. But not bland Clark. SFX-wise, you could just say that when Clark runs away at superspeed he's actually flying away at superspeed, so it can't be that. It just seems like a silly restriction (there are lots of those in Smallville).

Only two more episodes to go...

Smallville: Charade (s9 ep18)

The UK's Smallville is a little behind the US - who are now getting the first episodes of a Darkseid-infested tenth season - but only by about half a season. Over this side of the pond, this week's episode comes about two thirds of the way through Season 9 and again promotes the Checkmate storyline that has been running alongside the Zod & the Kandorians story this season. And, to be honest, it was pretty forgettable.

Now, Smallville is a guilty pleasure of mine. I like it and feel that these later seasons are probably the most comicbooky of all live action TV shows in the last few years. But this episode just seemed to be... "meh".

In it, it had something about Lois and Clark investigating why the conviction of an ex-DA had been overturned. Apparently, this DA had thrown Lois off a building at some point previously - can't say I remembered that so thankfully the pre-credits "Previously" bit reminded me. They find out only the governor could have released him and one of the governor's biggest backers is one Maxwell Lord. Aha! Another well-known DC character crawls out of the woodwork. I knew I had seen the guy who played Maxwell Lord before but it took me some time to realise he played Billy in Ally McBeal. To be honest, he's not who I would have considered for the part but he does the job, I suppose.

Not that this Maxwell Lord is the same as the comic book version, of course. This is Smallville after all, and here he seems to have the power of telepathy and making his hand glow blue. He's captured a number of people that the Blur (Clark) had encountered - including Lois - in order to extract the Blur's identity from the glimpses within their minds.

All very well and good, but this slight storyline was padded out with gooey emoting about the Lois/Clark/Blur triangle. I know the teenage relationship stuff is a big part of Smallville (even though the characters are surely now well into their 20s and Tom Welling might almost be as old as me - though somewhat more handsome) but I just thought it was a little too much this week. Perhaps it might have been better if the Checkmate/Lord storyline had been better?

Still, we were left wondering who the Red Queen was that Max encountered (it's sort of made to look like it could be Tess - although I know who it actually is). And it was good to see a Maxwell Lord, I suppose. The bit of action when Clark jumped into the slowly-resolving, holographic Blur identity thingy looked quite impressive too.

Let's hope things pick up in the last 3 (is it 3?) episodes and something actually happens with the whole Kandorian arc (because they just seem to have been kinda hanging around for half the season, poor chaps).

More TV

Sorry but it's been a busy week this week. Still is! So here’s some quick TV notes:

Ashes To Ashes: Season 2 Episode 1

A better start to this than series one. One of the things missing from AtA that Life of Mars had was a sense of mystery and madness. Sam Tyler (and the viewers) didn't know whether he had gone back in time, whether he was hallucinating, whether his memories of the future were hallucinations, whether he was in the afterlife, or something else. That, together with his love of Annie and the growing companionship with Gene, was slowly causing Sam to doubt himself and head a little towards madness.

Conversely, Alex Drake is just a little too sure of herself. She's pretty certain she's just dreaming all this; it's a death's-door fantasy based on her work on the Sam Tyler case.

With the introduction of the strange man who knows about things in the 90s and Diana's death, a whiff of mystery has been added. And Alex now doubts what's going on. Much, much better!

It's still not as weirdly wonderful and surreal as Life On Mars was, and will never obtain that sense of mystery, but it is definitely getting better.

Smallville: Infamous (s8 ep15)

Still reasonably good. This week's episode was - on the one hand - a bit of a cheat with the whole travelling back in time to the start and undoing the whole episode. I didn't know the Legion flight ring could do that. Still we saw a bit more of Doomsday again. And it was interesting to see how Lois would react to Clark's revelation.

Heroes:  Turn And Face The Strange (v4 ep9)

Okay and perhaps getting better. The Petrelli family are all back together and digging up graves. But that means we get a flashback to the early days of the Heroes universe next week, which I always like. The whole shapeshifting power could get somewhat complicated, as we'll never be certain who's who. And big Matt Parkman has now met little Matt Parkman. Little Matt was good fun but I think I'm getting bored of him now. Again, things are just plodding along. Hopefully, it'll improve.

Primeval: Episode 16

They killed Nick Cutter! The main character! Wow. Sure, I suppose he could come back via some time-travel shenanigans but still. That's one heck of a change. This programme keeps improving and is a decent sci-fi/fantasy show for ITV - certainly better than Demons!

Random TV Stuff

Sorry there have been no posts recently, but I've been busy with real life stuff and it's near the Easter holidays. Still, here's a brief run down of some of the TV stuff I've seen this week.

 

Primeval (s3 ep1)

Season 3 of this started with a “Walking with Dinosaurs meets Night In the Museum together with a little touch of Stargate” episode, where the team found an anomaly trapped in an Ancient Egyptian "Sun Cage" whilst fighting off a giant crocodile. And it was actually pretty good.

When Primeval started a few years ago, I remember watching about half the first series and then getting bored (it was all CG monster-of-the-week stuff). Then I caught the final episode of that first series and was fascinated by the whole time-travel paradox thing, where the team discovered that the camp and dead body they'd found in the first episode were due to their own actions in season one’s final episode. Also, due to their time-travelling hi-jinks, one team member now no longer existed. For some reason, I then missed the second series - I never even knew it was on! Although, since realising that season 3 was about to start, I have since managed to catch a couple of episodes repeated on one of the digital channels (ITV2?).

It's quite an interesting little show. Sure, there's still a monster-of-the-week element to it, but there's also an intriguing time-manipulating season-wide story running through the episodes. And the group dynamic between the characters is well played. Plus – bonus extra - we even got to see Hannah Spearritt in her pants again. Hurrah!

 

Smallville - Bulletproof (s8 ep12)

This week's episode wasn't as good as last week's (Legion) but it was still pretty entertaining. Other than that, I don't have much to say about it. Not knowing the Superman books that well, I wasn’t really aware of who Dan Turpin was. But the stuff with Lana actually seems to be getting more interesting.

 

Heroes - Shades of Gray (v4 ep6)

I was so busy that I didn't get to see Heroes this week. Perhaps I'll catch it on BBC's iPlayer or a repeat.

 

Doctor Who - Planet of the Dead

I have now seen the first trailer to the Easter Special episode of New Doctor Who (which will be shown on Saturday April 11th - my daughter's birthday). Looks marvellous! I wonder what the "planet of the dead" is all about? Can’t wait.

Smallville: Legion (s8 ep11)

Well, that's more like it. After last week's disappointing episode, this week's - starring the three founding members of the Legion of Superheroes - was much more welcome.

There was action. There were guest appearances from other DC characters. There was not so much soppiness. And the only two problems I had were that (a) we didn't see enough of the Persuader (in fact I didn't see him at all because I missed the beginning couple of minutes) and (b) the whole "Brainiac downloading memories/information from people" thing was a bit silly. 

This episode, written by Geoff Johns (one of my favourite comic book writers at the moment), re-enforced Clark's future legacy and his standing as the foremost superhero. There were lots of little bits about Clark becoming Superman ("Where's your cape?" and "Why don't you fly?") without actually mentioning Superman or Superboy. And, perhaps surprisingly for Johns, the main theme of this episode concerned Clark's heroic stance on not killing others even if it means saving many more.

Unlike Heroes, this had a done-in-one story that also had a background pieces that linked to ongoing threads throughout this season (Brainiac coming back, Davis turning into Doomsday, etc). I much prefer Smallville's format to that of Heroes.

So, a great episode for a fan-boy like me. And great to see Cosmic Boy, Lightning Lad and Saturn Girl. Grade: Fine.

Smallville: Bride (s8 ep10)

The majority of this episode was somewhat soppy and… well… dull. It was Chloe and Jimmy's wedding so it was all lovey-dovey. Strangely they had the wedding in Clark's barn (married in a barn?!?), which I guess saved money on building a new set. Lois was also getting all misty-eyed over Clark. I think Lois' affections were reciprocated - Clark almost kissed Lois - but it was difficult to tell because Clark always looked kind of bemused. There didn't seem to be any emotion shown on Tom Welling's face at all.

Lana returned, which stopped the aforementioned kiss between Lois and Clark. To be honest, I'm not really bothered about Lana. For umpteen seasons, we watched as the Clark and Lana storyline went nowhere and now I'm actually glad she's gone. Well, she was until now (and, I believe, this return is only temporary).

So, overall, meh.

And then, in the last ten minutes or so, Davis turns into Doomsday and trashes the wedding, kidnapping Chloe and mortally wounding poor Jimmy. Of course, Clark stumbles into a box containing some Kryptonite so doesn't get to fight much against Doomsy (ho hum). But still, these last moments at the end managed to drag this week's Smallville out of Dullsville and leave me excited for next week's episode. It's amazing what a cliff-hanger can do!

Grade: Very Good (mainly due to the last quarter of the show).

Heroes (vol 4 ep 3) and Smallville (season 8 ep 9)

Heroes – “Building 26”

Heroes first, which was on Monday evening here in the UK. Not that I have a lot to add other than to say that this week's episode seemed a little slower than, and not as eventful as, the others. Not much seemed to happen. Some government woman visited Nathan and his team and was considering closing down his "capture the heroes" operation. Then that Hunter guy let Tracy escape and she froze somebody, killing them. That made the government woman reconsider (because, of course, a prisoner who had been tortured and then kills someone whilst trying to escape means that all superpowered people are dangerous and should not be allowed the usual human rights).

Meanwhile, Sylar had that kid tagging along and edged closer to finding his father, Claire told her mother about what Noah's doing, and - for some unknown reason - Hiro and Ando stopped a woman in India from marrying a man she didn't love. Not sure what that latter one is all about.

Anyway, it's okay but not as exciting as the last couple of episodes. Also, what did the title of this have to do with anything? It drops to Very Good.

Smallville – “Abyss”

Now Smallville. I forgot all about this being on E4. It had been repeating the episodes of season 8 that were shown before Christmas but now it's caught up and on to new episodes. In fact, a new episode was shown last week and I missed it (something about Clark going to the Phantom Zone and finding Kara).

Anyway, this was a great episode. Little Chloe was very convincing as a younger version of Big Chloe although Little Clark wasn't. Nice effects with Chloe's memories disappearing and the Krypton symbols. Some interesting foreshadowing of the coming of Doomsday. And, oh heck, the crystals in the Fortress of Solitude have now been infected with black Brainiac goo.

Unfortunately, the resolution of Chloe's memory loss was a bit of a cop-out. Clark just took her to the Fortress and Compu-Jor-El "cured" her. Easy-peasy, no problems. All over in moments. Hmmm...

I'm rather fond of Smallville. Yes, I know it's not brilliant. Sometimes you have to forget common sense, its version of the Superman history doesn't match the comic book, and belief is often stretched to breaking point - but it is entertaining. And it's fun when new guest characters based (sometimes loosely) on comic book heroes pop up. Fine.