Only one appearance by Diana in the comics world or the movies world last week and that was for The Legend of Wonder Woman #5. A bit of talky one this, with the now grown up Diana chatting first with Alcippe for ages about fighting and the good old days, followed by Diana chatting with her mum, who it turns out has known all about her sparring sessions for years.
But it turns out Diana’s not the only one who’s been sensing bad things on Themyscira – everyone else has, too, so wants Hippolyta to stand down as queen, cos she’s done nothing about it. Guess whom Hippolyta wants to replace her? And who doesn’t want to become queen, because then she’d have to become immortal.
It does feel at this stage a bit like procrastination when the plot should now be picking up in pace. It’s an origin story, after all, and it’s now beginning to feel like the first half of an origin story, rather than the real deal. Author and artist angling for a sequel already?
Two other interesting points: Kangas are canon here.
And as you’ll note from the above, the Amazons celebrate the Athenian festival of Anthesteria. Why should this be, other than Athenian festivals were the best recorded of all the poleis and therefore the ones we predominantly know about? No idea, but even the Amazons seem to be surprised by having to celebrate it.
Next issue: fate (and action, hopefully) finally arrival on Themisycra.
Rating: 4/7 (artwork: 6/7)
Disclaimer: Owing to the small fortune it would take to buy every single DC comic each week, this is not a guaranteed rundown ofallthe comics that feature Wonder Woman. If you know of any I’ve missed,email meor leave a comment below and I’ll cover them the following week
It’s “What have you been watching?”, my chance to tell you what movies and TV I’ve been watching recently that I haven’t already reviewed and your chance to recommend things to everyone else (and me) in case I’ve missed them.
The usual “TMINE recommends” page features links to reviews of all the shows I’ve ever recommended, and there’s also the Reviews A-Z, for when you want to check more or less anything I’ve reviewed ever. And if you want to know when any of these shows are on in your area, there’s Locate TV – they’ll even email you a weekly schedule.
It’s actually Saturday evening and I’m writing this
To make sure you’ve all got something to read (if you want) on Monday, when I’m away
Because I had a bit too much work to do on Friday, when I should have written this
So that means I haven’t seen this week’s episodes of The Bridge. Otherwise, though, I’m up-to-date with both the new and old shows that are generous enough to air only an episode a week. I’m now about four episodes into The Man In The High Castle, which is fine but stringing things out a bit and – odd accusation though this may seem – painting the Nazis out as more evil than they were, yet missing out on some of their greater evils. I’m also about 10 minutes into Kung Fu Killer, as GYAD recommended (turns out Netflix did have it, as well as Ip Man 2), but I’ll hold off commenting on that until I’ve seen the whole thing (interesting so far, though).
Elsewhere, I’ve already reviewed Telenovela (US: NBC) and previewed The Expanse (US: Syfy), so after the jump, a look at the latest episodes of Arrow, Ash vs Evil Dead, Bron/Broen (The Bridge), Doctor Who, The Flash, Legends, Supergirl and You’re The Worst.
In the US: Mondays, 10/9c, Syfy In the UK: Not yet acquired
As I’ve remarked before, nothing’s original these days – you’re basically just mixing elements of previous works together to come up with novel combinations. In sci-fi, that goes doubly so. Indeed, given any new sci-fi series, it’s usually possible to spend your time going, “Oh, that’s X meets Y,” where X and Y are the TV shows being synthesised together to create the new series.
So you have to at least credit the creators of The Expanse with developing something that enables viewers to play this very nerdy drinking game not twice but thrice over, with the option of further plundering later on. Based on the books of ‘James SA Corey’ (really Daniel Abraham and Ty Franck), it’s set in the 23rd century and postulates a future where the solar system has been colonised. The UN runs Earth, Mars is an independent military power and the asteroid belt is a source of raw materials that both Earth and Mars are looking at eagerly.
So Earth: think Elysium meets 24, with Shohreh Aghdashloo as the UN boss running black sites to try to find out what Mars is up to, as war in space looks inevitable.
The Asteroid Belt: Think Total Recall meets Babylon 5 meets Blade Runner meets Dune. Thomas Jane (The Punisher, Hung) is a ‘belter’ private detective investigating the disappearance of a rich girl who’s run away from home. The belters have grown up in low g, so often have things wrong with them, such as weak muscles, overly long limbs and problems with bone fusion. They also have their own language, which Jane speaks but his non-belter partner doesn’t. They’re also feeling a bit grumpy, since they’re the working class who make everything happen, doing dangerous work for low pay, while everyone gets rich on their labour.
Mars: We’ve haven’t seen that yet. Take two shots when we do.
Outer space: Think Alien meets Virtuality, with a proletariat crew grumping around the solar system with their cargo. Steven Strait (Magic City) is the unambitious second officer who gets a promotion to XO when the captain, Jonathan Banks (Breaking Bad, Community), gets a touch of the space blues. Then they get a distress call and thinks start to get a bit more dangerous.
What links the otherwise totally unconnected outer space and asteroid belt strands is that the distress call is from the missing rich girl. What’s going on, what will happen next and will everyone get to meet up by the end of the 10 episodes to become Elysium meets 24 meetsTotal RecallmeetsBabylon 5meetsBlade RunnermeetsDunemeets Alien meets Virtuality? You’ll just have to wait and see.
So far, so derivative. But, as I said, so’s everything these days. So does The Expanse do much that’s interesting with this pot pourri of sci-fi stories past, or is it just a rip off?
At the very least, The Expanse does indicate that following a somewhat fallow period for Syfy, in which it was more content to make B-movies like Sharknado and “me, too!” shows like Alphas and Z Nation, it seems relatively determined to make proper science fiction that leads rather than follows. Like Defiance, it loves itself a bit of world-building and tries to imagine what these 23rd century societies might be like. Life in the belt is well realised and no one has a modern-day fashionable haircut; bravely, even Jane has deformities from having grown up without the benefit of billions of tons of rock beneath him.
The Expanse also wants to emphasis that it is more Battlestar Galactica than Star Trek, with some attempts at correct physics which it credits its audience with having the brains to understand. For example, the solar system is very big and you need to go very fast to go any distance; that means accelerating quickly, which isn’t something the human body is very happy about and might need some assistance dealing with the associated difficulties. None of this is explained to some newbie – you just have to work it out for yourself.
But as is also often pointed out, science-fiction rarely tries to predict the future so much as extrapolate the present or even the past, and where The Expanse does fall down quite severely is in its depiction of cultures. Everything is basically the Wild West in outer space. There’s some racial diversity, but not much. Everyone appears to be straight.
And everything is run by white men (yes, captain, XO and 2nd officer of the spaceship are all white and men). Women, despite the fact that we’re talking about zero-g mining so physical strength isn’t an issue, aren’t numbered in the miners at all. And by the end of the first episode, there are only two female members of the cast left alive in outer space. One’s an engineer on the spaceship who has an oddly, cleavage-revealing outfit. The other is…
No. Have a guess what she does for a living, first.
Bet you can.
Yes, she’s a prostitute.
As you may have noticed, the show’s Achilles’ Heel is the people side of things. As well as devising a future that’s less progressive than the 1950s, it’s also quite poor at creating characters you might care about. Jane’s almost interesting, but his is more or less the only person in the show who has any depth. Attempts to make Strait a slacker don’t endear him to you so much as irritate you. And they’re the ones who get the bulk of the characterisation. Pity everyone else who doesn’t even get that much.
The Expanse is very much science-fiction aimed at the ‘Sad Puppies’ contingent – big ideas, science-based, very little about the people, with heroic white guys running the place, the centre of all attention. If that’s your bag, The Expanse is one of the best offerings in this field for some time. If it’s not, then while you can admire it, like all that ice they’re mining in the asteroid belt, it’s a slippery affair that’ll you find hard to grab onto.
But don’t just take my word for it – try the trailer and if you like it, underneath is the entire first episode for you on YouTube.
As you may have gleaned once, twice or even thrice, I’m a big fan of both Duneand Dune. However, both are probably too adult in tone for your average child, which makes this particular movie tie-in I’ve just discovered so thrillingly bonkers.
Both Dune and Dune are hard sells for kids at the best of times – not only complex and layered with subtext on subtext about ecology, the Middle East, oil, religion and more, but also a paean to mind-expanding drugs. That’s probably why Dino de Laurentiis’ 1984 effort to create a franchise on a par with Star Wars probably floundered. That and getting David Lynch to write and direct the movie adaptation.
Full marks for effort, though.
De Laurentiis’ plans meant that there was a merchandising aspect to his franchise ambitions. Star Wars set the template for this, of course, and de Laurentiis followed where Lucas had pioneered. Now I’m not sure if you could ever buy yourself a stillsuit – I suspect not – but here’s a perfect example of why Dune was a bad idea as a potential kids-friendly franchise.
The Dune colouring in and activities books. Now, these boys pretty much speak for themselves, so I don’t feel I need to comment that much on them. Only to wonder exactly what anyone involved was thinking beyond “Star Wars has colouring-in books. Therefore we need colouring-in books.” If you want to see even more of the pages of these delights, you can find them over here.
I have to admit I’ve never watched much Downton Abbey: what I have seen makes it look like it’s just a period ITV soap opera in which posh people are the saviours of the poor working class people who toil for them.
But it’s very big right, particularly in the US. Part of the charm is that the English accents make it seem like a very ‘classy’* show. Now Steven Colbert’s got Michelle Dockery, Hugh Bonneville and Allen Leech to try to do a scene of the show with American accents, to see if losing the accents affects the US viewer’s perception.
It basically all sounds as badly written as I suspected, but how about you, American readers? Does it reduce Downton‘s classiness to hear it in a variety of US accents?
