Doctor Who: History Is Written By The Victors

You may have noticed there was no review last week. This was because I felt that episode was on the uneventful side and was spending too much time setting up to something much bigger. This week, we'll be looking at both episodes, The Pyramid At The End Of The World and The Lie Of The Land, as they're both tightly interconnected with each other, and Pyramid works much better as the first half of the episode than it does as a stand-alone.

That said, for any sci-fi junkies out there, this is for you.

Dr Daniel Jackson is furious that he's not allowed in Turmezistan.

Pyramid is an interesting little mystery story with a very large threat looming in the background. We're privy to the events that are foretold by the Monks as they unfold while the Doctor, Bill, and the rapidly dwindling leaders of the world try to figure out what kind of threat would be so great as to make the Monks appear, offering to save us.

There's essentially two stories going on here, side by side, completely unconnected until the end of the episode. The A-story is serviceable: Nardy is tolerable, having toned down his more annoying tendencies; Bill is still dressed in 1990's finest; The Doctor is still pretending not to be blind, and has apparently been fumbling around the wardrobe, now wearing quite a flattering loose-fitting red shirt under his coat; and the Monks finally get some proper screen time, and they are superbly creepy. Like telepathic zombies wearing fine silk robes, they create a great visual dissonance between pristine and rotten. Even the Doomsday clock has a relevance, being something that most people are aware of already and having only recently been set again in our world.

The real star of the episode: this amazing outfit.

The B-story is a very Michael Crichton-esque outbreak story which, while also serviceable, suffers from one very, very glaring flaw: a super bacteria is created which could wipe out all life on Earth by misplacing a decimal point without a single automated alert that would either stop the process or notify the scientists. (Editor's Note: I was quite put off by the WTFery of a bio lab which automatically and irreversibly vented to the outdoors even during quarantine lockdown.)

I quite liked Erica, though. Although we're never quite sure what happened to her, I think we can be pretty sure she's dead. Single-episode companions that the Doctor likes, asks their name, and makes an offer to usually end up dead. See Kylie Minogue's character, Lynda with a Y, and several other examples.

Between that laugh and this smile? Capaldi can be terrifying.

Moving into Lie of the Land: this episode was much better, but suffered in a few places as well. It's a well-constructed episode, but it's a little too evocative of previous episodes, almost as if they took concepts that worked well enough as individual episodes and mashed them into a single episode:

• The Doctor losing and the bad guys using him (or his technology) to rule the world hearkens back to The Sound Of Drums/Last Of The Time Lords where The Master held The Doctor prisoner and used his TARDIS to hold back a paradox, while his (coincidentally, I'm sure) black, female companion was one of a few that knew the truth and participated in a resistance. 
• The resolution of the episode - using Bill's emotional connection to her mother to overcome the Monk's signal - was a "power of love" resolution like Closing Time's, where Eleven convinced a father to overcome a Cyberconversion to save his son. 

Still, despite the copied elements, there were a lot of themes at work in this episode that were really great, and I feel it's objectively better if only for Peter Capaldi's presence. Twelve played a long game with Bill that would have made Seven proud, giving her the photographs of her mother (that he took after she told him she didn't have any), as well as de-converting his own guards and giving Bill a test that rivaled Seven forcing Ace to question her faith in him in Ghost Light. His speech to her, touching on fascism and fundamentalism, free will and peace and order, was harsh, cold, and very, very believable, given how alien and detached Twelve gets at times.

The Doctor's place: Between Humanity and danger.

Episode Eight of the season takes us inside the vault (after a raucous scene of the Doctor crashing his prison ship into the coast with such maniacal laughter that, Erin and I agree, suggest Capaldi could play an excellent Joker), and we get an extended sequence with Missy. She's allegedly, in her words, going "cold turkey" from being evil, and Michelle Gomez does what she does best: doing her damnedest to steal every scene from Peter Capaldi. It's a huge credit to her that she's capable of playing so well against his intensity. I feel like they both get progressively more Scottish in every scene they share together, as Gomez's emphatic pronunciations of certain words ("gud") would be completely over the top coming from anyone else.

Twelve pays Bill an amazing compliment with "In amongst 7 billion, there's someone like you. That's why I put up with the rest of them." After her determination and bravery, I really feel she deserved it, too.

I would normally say Pyramid  wouldn't be a required watch, but it sets up Lie of the Land in such a way that you'd really be missing out a lot by skipping it. Lie, on the other hand, does not have the strongest story, and there are so many questionable moments of science that I can only recommend it on the performances of the cast alone, as well as another of the now-infamous trademark Capaldi monologues. If you enjoyed his scene-stealing moments in the Zygon two-parter or the masterpiece that was Heaven Sent, you'll enjoy several parts of this episode.

NEXT WEEK: SPACE 1899 AND I AM HYPED

Doctor Who: The Not Really Pilot Episode

Clever play on words, there, Moffat. Very clever.

So setting aside the Christmas Special, it's been quite a while since we've had any Doctor Who, hasn't it?

I have to admit, when the promotional materials were released for the new series, I did not like Bill at all. (And before you get started, don't. Martha's still my favourite companion of the new series, and I still have not forgiven Russel Davies for her puppy-dog fixation on the Tenth Doctor and unending jealousy of Rose). Bill came off incredibly gobby and was asking the absolute stultifyingly dumbest questions in her promotional video.

It was not a good first impression. So in a way, Pilot acts as an audition for Bill as a character. Naturally, Pearl Mackie already has the job, so we've got her like it or not, but is Bill really going to work as a character?

Naturally, the best way to do this is to have the Twelfth Doctor first make her an offer, then spend every scene afterwards trying to drive her away. Capaldi does this in fine form, managing to effortlessly out-do Matt Smith's cranky exile behaviour from his first face-to-face meeting with Clara.

Of course, it's not all him driving her away. Some of it's rescuing her from a rather creative monster. Some of it's evocative of Nine's "red bicycle when you were twelve" moment, with the box of pictures.

What's wrong with your faaaaace

Bill does pass his shit-test, happily, and redeems herself from the awful promotional videos. The scene from the promo more or less still appears, but it's been incredibly cut down, leaving out Bill's terrible lines. She also has some notable character traits: she's got an eye for detail; she's very down to earth, but at the same time says some rather poetic lines; her mind works incrementally and logically, as evidenced by her progression of assumption about the TARDIS first being a 'knock-through', then a lift, then going around the University.

But visually, she's a little jarring. (No, not that, stop it.) I can't seem to figure out what time period this season is set in because of her. The Doctor references "texting and vlogging", but Bill's entire wardrobe is a throwback to the late 80s, with high-waisted jeans, denim jackets with badges sewn into them, and glaring colours, with what I suspect to be a Siouxsie and the Banshees shirt. These are outfits you'd expect to see around Seven/Ace's period, not 30 years later, and everyone else around her seems to be dressed from the correct time period.

Overly Attached Space Girlfriend

The episode's not without its problems, but they're few and far between: the line "It hasn't rained in a week" seconds after they walk past a stream of runoff water from the University rooftops; Bill's lines from the promotional video (which I'm still holding against them); the "kitchen" reference -- in what way does the TARDIS console room look like a kitchen?

Oh, and can we please blow Nardole out the nearest airlock? I'm not a fan of Matt Lucas, and his character is annoying me. You could have given half of Nardole's lines to Bill and left out the other half and the episode could have had more time to breathe.

I'm very interested in finding out what the mystery of the season is, and I'm sure it's related to the vault in the University basement. We know Missy will show up again, John Simm's Master is rumoured to return, Nardol is still there for some reason, and the Doctor's sworn not to leave the University while he's guarding the vault and he's been there for at least 50 years so far. He's got a lock on the basement door set to "friends only" and an alert set to his psychic paper.

All in all, definitely worth a watch, and a good start for the new series. I'm just glad we've got a proper screwdriver again, and this one's a beauty:

Welcome back, proper screwdriver. 

Doctor Who: The Gallifreyan Lament Configuration

Pardon while I don my tin-foil fez...

A week or so back, I messaged Erin, ranting nigh-incoherently about hair and jumpers. I'd noticed something off, and it triggered a few memories regarding previous episodes. I'd noticed that Twelve's previously unkempt hair and ratty jumper were gone, and he was once again immaculate in waist-coat and finely-groomed hair. Why didn't he know how the Confession Dial worked? Why was it important now, after going unmentioned since the first couple of episodes and for that matter, who was he talking to when he was playing guitar and talking about Beethoven and the Bootstrap Paradox? Why did he say “Longest month of my life” when Clara referenced him thinking she was dead? Something is off, and I suspected we were seeing events play out of order again. Which led me to one conclusion:

Clara Oswald has been dead this entire season.
At least from the Doctor's point of view. And after this week, I feel that I'm still right. 

We learned what the Confession Dial is: it's a Gallifreyan interrogation room, a personalized prison and puzzle box. And in the course of the Doctor working out this particular puzzle, we get something that I've wanted to see specifically since Capaldi started and generally for much longer: an episode with just the Doctor. And did we ever get that. 

• Capaldi veers seamlessly between quiet anger and abject horror as he's faced with his childhood nightmares and reminders of his failures. 
• A monster that would be straight out of a classic Japanese horror film if it were shot differently. 
• And some very real mature content, as his death scene is played out in gruesome detail. 

The image of a badly burned and blistered Doctor dragging himself by his fingernails is not something I thought I'd see, let alone him killing himself just so he could live the cycle all over again. But he was clever. Left himself a clue so that he could make progress in the puzzle, which is probably not something his captors were suspecting, even if it took two billion years to do it.

Capaldi's performance here has cemented his place in Doctor Who history, if it were not already so. Three of the four previous episodes have had truly shining moments in his performances, and now he's surpassed even “Everybody Lives”. Steven Moffat borrows heavily from another property for this episode, taking the Doctor into his own Mind Palace as he did Sherlock Holmes at the moment when Mary Watson shot him and his body was shutting down. The difference here is that whenever the Doctor is in danger (and not just dying) he thinks quickly. Very, very quickly, as he retreats into a mental version of the TARDIS, and depends on the one thing that's kept him going for a very long time: his companions asking him questions.

This is the perfect excuse to bring Clara back, perhaps for one last time, to give the Doctor one last stern order: Get off your arse and win. I wonder what strings Moffat had to pull to get the BBC to allow swearing on a family show, pre-watershed at that, but honestly I've been waiting for Clara to swear for some time now... she strikes me as the type to do so. (Repeatedly. With much imagination.)

But you have to read between the lines a lot in Doctor Who. The kids are watching, after all, and it wouldn't do to have a companion with, say, a ton of emotional and abandonment issues to be a stripper. No, she's just a kiss-o-gram.

Always read between the lines. The story's much more fun that way.

The Oncoming Storm Approaches

Which brings us back to my theory: Clara's been dead for a long time now. Certainly since before the beginning of this season, which is why the Doctor's in a funk and why he's dressing down. The Confession Dial's first proper appearance was this episode. We know it was given to Ohila of the Sisterhood of Karn (as seen in the Season 9 Prologue), who will most likely hand it off to Missy, at which point it will return to his possession, only to be given to Mayor Me/Ashildr. Until now we assumed that the prologue took place before this season started, but now I suspect it takes place between this week and next week's episode, or even after next week's episode. Who has the dial after Me/Ashilder is anyone's guess. As for Clara, there's production photos of her in a waitress uniform floating around the internet, so we haven't seen the last of her. But it's entirely possible that her erratic travels with the Doctor could be in part to him intruding on her timeline as far back as last year's episodes, as the ratty jumper and hoodie have made appearances previous to this season. 

My fingers are crossed that I'm right, and I'm genuinely eager to see what goes down on Gallifrey next week.  

Doctor Who: Let Zygons be Zygons

Yeeaah, I went for the easy pun..

I really have nothing to say about this episode that can't be copied and pasted nearly word for word from the first episode of this series review. The pacing is odd and the scenes, while interesting on their own, don't gel particularly well. I'm going to hold off passing judgement this week until I see part 2.

I *will* go ahead and say that Clara's evil-face is amazing. Like bunk-time amazing.

Oh please, don't let this be the last appearance of Evil Clara.

I will say, however, this is one of the most beautiful moments in Doctor Who history, brought by a character that's a loving tribute to the show's fandom. 

I don't answer that question. Because there is no question to answer. I don't accept it. My sister and I are the living embodiment of the peace we made, and I will give all the lives that I have to protect it. You want to know who I am, Doctor? I am the peace. I am human *and* Zygon...a hybrid, if you like. 

If this two-parter plays out like the first one did, the second episode will bring together all the loose ends and tie them into a solid story. So far, each two-parter has had a stronger ending than beginning, so I've got my fingers crossed for this one, too.

Doctor Who: Chekhov Was a Dalek

Spoilers are simply chewing up the scenery. 

It's been brought to my attention that I may have been light on discussing Missy last week. Let me make things absolutely clear: between the lines she's given, and her ability to chew scenery better even than Shatner in his prime, Michelle Gomez is the top Master. The juxtaposition of focused lunacy with Mary Poppins-esque prim and proper corset, coat, and boots is brilliant. She's out-menacing Delgado, out-crazying Ainley, and out-camping Roberts. She's every bit as murderous as Simm and dignified as Jacobi, but far more focused and purposeful. In short, I can't take my eyes off her even as I know she's likely to eat me alive. She is, after all, sharpening her stick as we speak.

"If you're going to take my stick, do me the courtesy of using it."

Last week I did mention that the episode, while full of fun and memorable moments, was extremely unfocused. After seeing this week's episode, I stand by that. This episode has just as many memorable moments but is extremely focused. Were I Stephen Moffat, I would have taken the best ten or twenty minutes of the previous episode and edited it into this episode to make one very, very good seventy-or-so minute long series premiere episode. And while the last episode had new memorable moments, this episode has many classic-oriented memorable moments:

• Seeing Four and One convincingly displayed in Missy's story. 
• Twelve riding around in Davros's support chair. 
• Clara climbing inside a Dalek and piloting it around in a scene that not only calls back to, but almost redeems, the Cushing film's comedic scene of a human piloting an empty Dalek casing.
• Editor's Note: Let's not forget the big reveal of Asylum of the Daleks, either. 
• The Special Weapons Dalek (which admittedly showed up in the previous episode) from my all-time favourite episode from the classic series, Remembrance of the Daleks. 

Gomez and Coleman have an amazing amount of chemistry in this episode, too. Clara knows she's working with a murderous sociopath of unprecedented level, but she continues to press on, not trusting her but knowing she has to do so to get back to Twelve. Missy's gleeful compulsion to place Clara in danger, showing only just enough restraint to not let her get killed, or kill her herself -- at least until they're out of immediate danger and she can try to get Twelve to kill her instead. Is it wrong to hope for 14 episodes a year instead of 13, just so we can get an Adventures of The Mistress episode?

The hell did he get that cup of tea, anyway? 

Now, the reason for mentioning Chekhov: We all know Chekhov's gun, yes? If there's a gun on the mantle in act 1, it must be used by act 3. This episode uses all of its guns. From the living Dalek sewers to Missy's explanation of the Dalek translation software and weaponry to the cables going to Davros's chair right down to the damned sunglasses themselves. I only wish more of the guns had been placed in Part 1, as only the literal gun in the cliffhanger is used here. Which brings me to...

...I was not at all expecting to get choked up during a Davros episode. At least not by Davros. I mean I got a little choked up in Journey's End when the TARDIS was being properly piloted and when Davies was taking a WRECKING BALL TO DONNA NOBLE'S CHARACTER (DAVIES!!! *shakes fist*), but the charade played by Davros was so well executed and drawn out for so long that I fell for it. I genuinely believed that Space Hitler had lived long enough to experience regret. When his eyes, which I assumed had long scarred over and sealed shut, started crying and opened, I gave a little gasp. When Twelve said “Look, the sun's coming up. We're on the same side now” I teared up. It wasn't until his hand started glowing that I suspected I'd been had and found myself cheering on Missy when her serious face came on as the Daleks started to glow and she had to wreck shop and save Twelve.

All in all, an excellent episode. Only real complaint is Twelve making his hand glow. Maybe I can handwave (sorry) it as being a little unstable due to being past his original regeneration cycle, but I really wish they'd stop using regeneration energy like that. It wasn't even necessary, just save the light-up hand until after he'd grabbed the life support cabling. Also, the Sonic Sunglasses were cute, but please bring back the screwdriver. I'm not ready for that kind of change. And I'm certainly not buying overpriced novelty generic-looking sunglasses.

See you next week for Victorian ghosts in an undersea base! 

South Park: Stunning and Brave

Yes, I'm reviewing an episode of South Park. What has my life come to?

South Park has been on the air, (nearly) without hyperbole, simply forever. I remember it being  on TV when I was young, and when the movie Bigger, Longer, and Un-Cut came out I thought the show had ended. That's just the way these things work, right? You get a good run, you come back due to fan demand, you make a movie. But South Park kept on going. And going. 

I'd also be remiss if I didn't recommend playing South Park: The Stick of Truth. Excellent game.

So, with a feat few shows have pulled off (and fewer have remained consistently funny – looking at you, Simpsons), South Park enters its 19^th season with “Stunning and Brave.” This episode is going to be related thematically to episodes done by a few other animated series, namely Powerpuff Girls and My Little Pony. The cold open for this episode is perfect, introducing the new character PC Principal -- a muscled-up frat bro quoting directly from a Social Justice handbook -- calling the citizens of South Park out for previous story-lines, and giving not only Butters but Garrison detention for questioning his narrative. 

The crux of the episode revolves around Kyle (I think. I always get Stan and Kyle mixed up) and his dad being called into PC Principal's office for saying he didn't think Caitlyn Jenner was a hero. When Erin wrote about that particular topic, she asked for my input. It was four succinct words: “Not another goddamned Kardashian.” I agree with Kyle in that I'm happy that she's more comfortable in her own skin, but I don't consider her a hero, nor “stunning and brave” like the characters on the show deadpan whenever her name is mentioned. Especially entertaining learning that her personal views are quite the opposite of most people praising her. Oh, and the manslaughter thing.

Three scenes in particular stand out to me. In the first, Randy Marsh, after being conscripted into the PC Bros, is hung over at the kitchen table parroting lines fed to him in almost a cult-like manner. The second has PC Principal physically assaulting Cartman while screaming at him about the verbal violence faced by minorities. And finally, the scene where the PC Bros with Randy “check Kyle's privilege” by waking him in the middle of the night with noisemakers and filling his room with pigs covered in the word “biggit.” The first scene mirrors the cult mentality that a lot of people deep into the Social Justice movement often display, and the second two are analogous activists that attack their own best allies like Bernie Sanders and the Black Lives movement or Stephen Amell (for daring to suggest that maybe stereotyping people from Texas isn't great either) while also doxxing people, harassing them with threatening language, and trying to get people fired from jobs. The fact that the PC Bros are all straight white males who speak over minorities while ostensibly speaking for them isn't lost on me, either. 

The episode ends with an assault on the PC Bros with a baffling 4-pronged attack involving pregnant Mexican women, taco launchers, Syrian refugee children, and Jared from Subway (despite the message, this is still South Park, after all) before it's interrupted by Kyle being shamed into saying that Caitlyn Jenner is, in fact, stunning and brave and a hero simply go make the entire shitstorm stop, as has been seen often on the internet.

PC Principal is sticking around, too, which I'm happy to see. The amount of salt being mined from this episode has reached epic proportions. It's almost as if it was fine when certain people took joy in South Park taking shots at religions, at corporations, at conservatives, etc, but when they skewer people on their own side, it's suddenly “NOT COOL BRO.” I look forward to where they take this PC Principal storyline, and I think I'll be watching the show regularly again for the first time since Satan and Saddam Hussein had a musical number in a plush bed in hell.

Doctor Who: Let's Really Kill Hitler This Time

Spoilers exist in multiple points in time and space simultaneously.  

In 2015, Stephen Moffat did something I didn't think possible. He told an interesting Davros story.

At this point I've taken in almost every Davros-related story I can think of, from the I, Davros audio dramas to the classic series through a few of the novels. I've seen how he becomes the Davros we know, how he created the Daleks, and how he almost obliterated the entirety of existence (including us, as we never had seen the Weeping Angels either at that point). But The Magician's Apprentice managed to show us an aspect of Davros that we'd never seen until now.

The war on Skaro has always fascinated me: a war that starts out with high technology, but is waged for so unfathomably long the attrition has reduced it to almost literally sticks and stones. The depiction as silly, sixties-era sci-fi in the Hartnell era (far after the war, shortly before the Daleks began their expansionist era) stood in stark contrast to the gritty war-torn collapsing civilization in Genesis of the Daleks (the beginning of the worst attrition). And it's beautifully realized here as well: appropriately close Genesis's vision of it, as it's mere decades before. The hand-mines are utterly creepy and appropriate, given the Kaled's experimentation with biological weapons and genetic manipulation, and the biplanes with mounted lasers are morbidly anachronistic as well as a nice callback to the WWII squadron that attacked the Daleks under Churchill's command. And this Davros is subtly different. He's no longer the rage-filled bitter husk of a man, but tired. Tired and wanting closure. Muttering under his breath instead of shouting. Too tired to hold his own head up. 

Oxford English Dictionary entry: Fear-boner

Missy's back, of course. Nobody really expected her to be dead, not after the myriad ways that she'd died when she was several different he's of varying degrees of sinister. And she's a complete force of nature, still. Dramatic and histrionic, but never a wasted gesture or word. (A shame she hasn't managed to cobble her own TARDIS together yet.) Clara's gotten an upgrade as well, as there's considerably more showing than telling about how clever she is, especially the bit about circling the plane; but she should really know that you can't make a hashtag that's not about social justice trend that fast. And that was some of the worst fake-typing I've ever seen.
Have I mentioned how much I adore Peter Capaldi lately? He's channeling his own youth here, and possibly a little bit of Doctor House, entering into an old Celtic arena on the bow (do tanks have bows?) of a tank playing a medley of classic rock including a touch of Van Halen's Eruption and Pretty Woman and cracking terrible jokes. I think twenty-something punk rocker Capaldi who did drugs with Craig Ferguson would be proud of his older self here. If you squint, you can see some of Nine's desperate happiness cracking through the lines of his face; appropriate, as he mentions all of his selves are present in some form or fashion. 

I almost believe old Attack Eyebrows will do it, too. 

As a practice in going from setpice to setpiece, this episode is great, with a few really memorable moments and great lines... but the story is very, very disjointed. It doesn't flow well. A terribly great number of things happen in this episode, which is quite different from a normal “part one.” Most part ones spend a great deal of time setting up for the action in part two, but this one's setup for part two could probably be condensed into five, maybe ten minutes without losing much story. I can't wait for this coming Saturday, so my full opinion can condense completely, but I really would have liked to have seen this episode edited down a little and combined with part two for something like an extended special episode like Tennant's off-season or Day of the Doctor.

Still, the episode's got the huevos to kill off two major characters and destroy the TARDIS -- you can't say that about a lot of episodes. I mean, it'll be undone completely, probably in the first five minutes of episode two. Dalek guns don't vaporize.

A Hypothetical Review of the Supergirl Pilot

[author's note: the following critique is entirely hypothetical in nature, as the series premiere of Supergirl has not yet aired, and the leaked pilot is only available via less-than-legitimate means. The author in no way supports illegitimate ways of obtaining entertainment material, and strongly recommends you purchase an overpriced cable subscription from your local cable company. They need the money, after all. That said.. hypothetical spoiler warning]

I am not a fan of Superman. He really bores the hell out of me, and is really only interesting to me when he's Batman's punching bag. So how do you go about making Superman interesting to someone like me?

Question asked and answered: make her an awkward, insecure twenty-something who is completely out of practice with her powers.

When I saw the six minute long trailer for the series, I was not hopeful. It played like a bad rom-com with superheroes. Like Sex and the City or Ally McBeal with a cape... not helped by the appearance of Callista Flockheart.

Superdoof is best doof

Now that I've... hypothetically seen it. I'm happy to say that it's... really not that bad. Given that it's a CBS property, it borrows some elements from its CW cousins, Arrow and Flash. The light tone and adorably nerdy protagonist strongly echo Grant Gustin's Flash, and the voiceover “My name is..” introductory monologue returns from the two related series. It's got that DC spirit that's worked so well on television so far. The MCU juggernaut may rule the big-screen, but (despite SHIELD and Daredevil), DC still has television locked down, and I could imagine Kara joining Ollie and Barry for a 'super' crossover (I'm so sorry).

The episode's golden moment comes when Kara sees a plane with a failing engine that happens to be carrying her adopted sister, and struggles momentarily to remember how to fly before shooting up into the sky with a beautiful camera shot panning around her as she chases after the plane and carries it to a safe landing through a suspension bridge and into a river before climbing aboard the wing in view of cameraphones, news choppers, and lots of witnesses. Following up with Kara (in sweats, on her sofa) squeeing over seeing herself on the news adds the human touch missing from the first appearance of Superman.

It's got some delightfully subversive moments, too, such as Kara's reacting poorly to her boss Kat (Ms Flockheart) dubbing her “Supergirl,” suggesting it's not very 'feminist.' Kat then dresses her down beautifully. “I'm a girl, and I'm beautiful and powerful and successful. If there's a problem with SuperGIRL, maybe the problem's with you,” to paraphrase. Another moment later on when the big bad of the episode underestimates her because she's a woman (alien from a literal patriarchal society), allowing her to sucker punch him with heat vision.

She walks like she's got some steel in her spine when she's on the clock.

Aside from a few minor adaptation changes, the pilot so far hasn't strayed too far from established Super-lore. The one most noticeable exception is that now Jimmy Olson is no longer a scrawny excitable ginger, but a charismatic hunky black man. And possibly Supergirl's love interest. Which... I'm okay with. I like the actor. He does good work with the role.

There's some dodgy CGI. Some corny dialogue. A few head-slapping choices of musical scoring. The comedy best friend is annoying, and I'm not hopeful that he'll grow on us like Foggy Nelson did over in Daredevil. But overall, the pilot is nowhere near as bad as the six-minute first-look trailer made me worry it would be. Ironically, there's a human element to Kara Zor-El that almost every depiction of Superman so far has been lacking, and I think that might be enough to make the show worth watching.  

Hipster Batgirl hurts me. Deeply.

(if you thought Female Thor bothered me, just wait..)

Gail Simone is one of my favorite comics writers. She's always found a way to work in interesting, complex characters (some of whom just happen to be female) into interesting and complex stories without ever being preachy about any beliefs she might hold in the real world. She's done some fantastic work on Deadpool (very hard to write for Deadpool without straying into lolsorandom territory) and fleshed out the Birds of Prey title, giving a lot of extra life and backstory to one of my personal favorite comics characters, Barbara Gordon. When the New 52 event happened in DC and all the books relaunched, Batgirl was relaunched as well, with Gail Simone at the head.

Not pictured: Stilettos, spandex

I was in a bit of an outrage at the time, as since Alan Moore's “The Killing Joke” ended with Barbara being shot in the spine by Joker resulted in Barbara's growth from Batgirl to Oracle, tech support and girl genius for the Justice League. She was the one the heroes turned to when they couldn't figure something out or couldn't get the job done on their own. She even proved herself still physically capable, sparring regularly with Nightwing and Black Canary, and defending herself from Prometheus when her clocktower base was compromised. The news that Barbara would be back on her feet and resuming her role as Batgirl, I was less than pleased. Like throwing things less than pleased. Gail Simone's writing was my one ray of hope and it just so turned out that not only was the series not bad, but was actually pretty damn good.

Simone took Barbara through hell and back, introducing new villains and teaming her up with some familiar faces, dragging her into the Death of the Family with the gruesome new Joker and squaring her off against (and finally redeeming) one of the Talons of the Court of Owls before bringing her face to face with her disturbed brother, James Gordon Jr.

And then Cameron Stewart and Brendan Fletcher took over. The last few panels of Simone's final issue have Barbara deciding that she's got to 'get away from it all' and resume in Fletcher and Stewart's first issue with her moving to a trendy, hipster borough of Gotham called Burnside (think Williamsburg) and returning to college(despite having already earned several degrees). Leaving, bafflingly, the storyline with Batgirl wanted for murder and being a fugitive of the police unresolved, her brother still at large, and unresolved issues with both her father and her boyfriend.

What follows is an unprecedented tonal shift which left me with such a case of whiplash that I genuinely thought I'd picked up the wrong comic. This feels like an alternate universe or Young Adult title, and not at all like the issues that logically follow on from Simone's run. The art is simplistic and flat, not unlike a middling web-comic. The characterization is completely out of place. Barbara is overly awkward. Black Canary shows up and is so glum and grumbling that the artist might as well have just drawn a permanent storm cloud over her head. Simone's trans character(who is a good character on her own without straying near tokenism), Barbara's roomie Alysia is left behind. And in every goddamn panel is somebody wearing skinny jeans or horn-rimmed glasses. The complaints people have about this book being too hipster? Totally valid. There's Starbucks mocha half-caf skinny soy vegan latte and ironic disinterest dripping from the pages. There's hashtags and tinder references every other page. I think I know where they got their photo references from.

And the costume..

I'm fine with the costume. Honestly, in another context, it would be fine. A Young Adult version of Batgirl would be fine in this costume. But Barbara Gordon, in the last three years since regaining her complete physicality, has faced some serious threats, and a single layer of leather is not sufficient for someone who regularly punches out of her weight class. And it's almost like the author knows it, and is embarrassed, as in one of the first few issues of the new team, Barbara's nearly taken out by a cosplayer on a motorcycle with a sword when the costume gives way with one slash. And I've seen people say “Oh at least it's not spandex and stilettos.” **Batgirl did not wear spandex and stilettos**. Read the book. Read. The. Book. Batgirl had proper boots with armored knee covers. Teflon armor with impact resistant plates. Shock plates in her cowl. All those little lines on her New 52 costume? Those aren't sewing seams. Those are armor plates. Batgirl had some serious gear that took a budget to maintain, so don't tell me “oh the van caught fire so I have to make a new costume out of thrift store finds.” Fuck right off with that. Barbara Gordon is damned resourceful and smart, and fully capable of restocking her arsenal with or without Wayne funding.

Better yet, we know Misfit's in the New 52. Give that costume to her. It'll fit. Or have Stephanie Brown move into Burnside and have her be Batgirl of Burnside in that costume. It fits either of those two characters far better than Barbara Gordon, who is a professional crime-fighting vigilante. 

Most damning of all, Gail Simone gave us a very mature, very adult Barbara Gordon. One who faced hardships, betrayal, and devestation and still managed to pick herself up and keep going. Cameron Stewart's batgirl is two giggles and a hair toss from being just another god damn manic pixie dream girl, and that just does not sit right with me.

Oh, Salem, surely you're just overreacting..

I'm tickled that a cross-dressing villain (think Warhol with a Batgirl fixation) garnered him accusations of Transphobia from the SJW crowd after tweeting this. If that's what you think of Barbara Gordon, sir, you don't deserve to clean her highly-functional armored boots.