#subo

“I don’t suppose the Red Angel offered you any advice on how to handle a situation like this.”

“No. But my limited experience as a fugitive offers only one course of advice. We run.”

“...I can’t ask any of you to participate in what is clearly an act of disobe-“

“-Course heading, sir?”

Discovery soars in a stellar episode, one that brings the series’ inclusion of Pike front and center.

I wasn’t quite sure how they were going to integrate the Talos IV into the story (mostly because, both in-universe and out, The Cage is rarely discussed), but here, they succeed by committing to it fully. If Memory Serves basically a full-fledged continuation of The Cage, down to the very real feelings that Pike still holds for Vina.

I assessed this at a 4/5 and enjoyed it at a 5/5, returning a final rating of 4.5/5.

RANDOM THOUGHTS:

1: ILLUSION 100

2: Holy crap, Ethan Peck is fantastic. We finally get to see a lucid Spock, and while Peck doesn’t quite nail the voice (a problem no doubt solvable by smoking two packs a day), he’s able to convey a vulnerability that is heartbreaking to watch.

3: I love how they’ve been handling Culber. It would have been so easy to get back to the relationship fluff and basically ignore his months of perdition, but if Culber cannot get over it, nobody in the ship can. It also raises the question: is this really the original Culber, or merely his body and memories?

4: Pre-Vahar’ai Saru would have definitely made a different call. I didn’t even think about that aspect, so when Pike brought it up it caught me completely by surprise.

5: Hail Mary Theory: Sending the probe into the time distortion is what causes the future crisis, and the Red Angel is the chosen avatar of the Discovery crew, determined to fix their mistake.

The corvettes of the crisis bear a strong resemblance to the probe, suggesting either common ancestry (Humans, maybe even the Mirror Universe?) or that their technology was reverse-engineered from it. Perhaps Discovery finds out about this and in trying to rectify it, creates a causality paradox and must fulfill the role of the Red Angel throughout history.

“You allowed the fight to proceed.”

“I believe the confrontation was a necessary and avoidable catharsis. For both men.”

“Hardly an example of by-the-book conflict resolution.”

“Ugh, the Starfleet manual provides no regulatory guidelines for interactions between humans with Klingons grafted to their bones, and a ship’s doctor returned from the dead...”

“Then, occasionally, we have to make it up as we go along.”

“That is the situation in which we find ourselves, yes.”

“This is not intended with any judgement, Saru, but I suspect that before your own evolution, you might have made a different call?”

“Perhaps, Captain.”

“That was a finesse their dear old daddy hadn’t bothered to teach them...”

“Who are you talking to?”

“Grant Morrison fans, Reddit trolls with DC subscriptions, and the three new fans who stuck around after the donkey fart!”

“You still think you control this story, don’t you?”

“Haven’t seen any evidence to the contrary, old friend. To wit: you’ve slipped through my fingers for the last time...”

:O

Hold on, I have to pick my jaw up off the ground, in between bouts of tears; tears at how much pathos the Doom Patrol members are able to express, at how hilarious and funny this show is, and how as a fan and long-time advocate of the Doom Patrol, this show is everything I could have wanted it to be and more.

I love the Doom Patrol so much. They’ve always relied on their unique flavor of dark humor and unrepentant absurdity to bridge the gap between mirth and misery, creating some of my favorite comic stories.

(By the way, if you haven’t read Gerard Way’s Doom Patrol run, do yourself a favor, stop right now, and READ THAT SHIT.)

Yet, I always had the lurking suspicion that all this anarchy came with the unspoken conceit of medium exclusivity; perhaps it was just too niche, too corny, too weird, too melodramatic to unironically work outside of a comic book page. I mean, would you watch a movie about a robot, a walking hole in reality, and a guy who looks like the Invisible Man with a Macklemore coat, and tell me that it was some highbrow artistic experience?

(I probably would, but my point is that the Doom Patrol are a distinctly Silver Age creation.)

Clearly, I was wrong.

Alan Tudyk as Mr. Nobody. This is one of the rare cases where breaking the fourth wall actually makes things seem more bleak for the main characters. As Mr. Nobody puts the team through horrible pain and ostracization, he turns to the audience and explains that this suffering is the inevitable, comics-decreed fate of the Doom Patrol. Yet, it’s so cleverly written, you have to laugh along. His omnipresent, fourth-wall breaking narration kept these episodes on their toes.

There isn’t a single development in the two episodes that doesn’t work. Every emotion, every interaction, every striking image is completely earned. Too much media tries to emphasize that its protagonists aren’t Big Damn Heroes, but here, they make it work; these aren’t superheroes, they’re people with horrible conditions and ruined lives. The world has rejected them, but deep down, despite what they tell themselves, they haven’t rejected the world.

AND THE LITTLE MOMENTS, OH MY GOD. The cockroach at Cloverton (AND THE OBITUARY IN THE DONKEY UNIVERSE ERGERGWEFWEFREFRE). The relentless quotability of Mr. Nobody. The whole sequence when Cyborg and Cliff are trying to lasso Crazy Jane, and Rita and Larry are on the front porch as Mom and Dad because the kids are running inside!

Maybe I’m dead and this is an elaborate illusion, made to content me forever on the way to Perdition. Either way, I’m going to enjoy it. Somehow, they were able to take comics’ weirdest, most impossibly niche heroes and turn it into the best comic show I’ve ever seen. Hats off to Geoff Johns and Greg Berlanti; I will forever be in your debts.

I enjoyed this episode at - wait, is there still any ambiguity over what I thought? 6/5, period!

RANDOM THOUGHTS:

1: This is one of the most different and interesting Cyborgs I’ve ever seen. The idea of Silas offering “upgrades” to Victor in response to good behavior, his active encouragement of vigilantism, and his goal of getting Cyborg into the Justice League are off-putting at first, but I want to see where this goes.

I bet that after this season, Cyborg will leave the team and join the Titans.

That would give us a team opening...

2: WILL CASEY HAPPEN. GREG BERLANTI, PLEASE MAKE THIS HAPPEN. GEOFF JOHNS, PLEASE MAKE THIS HAPPEN.

3: The CGI is... kinda shoddy, but it didn’t bother me. The costumes, sets, everything that isn’t CGI looks stunning.

4: I think that Danny has been keeping Doom Manor from Mr Nobody’s eyes throughout all these decades.

“What the fuuuuuuck??”

“...”

“...”

“...whathefuuuuuuuuck?”

The Britain's Got Talent Judges Lorraine