Whowatch 20 plus raving Superman: Legacy conspiracy theories
So it turns out this was as we'll note below the shortest Whowatch we've done by a mile, love ya Moffat but it's sure plain this is the season you hadn't planned for and I'm starting to smell the fumes you're running on. Fortunately however, even aside from the small announcement that I'm on Bluesky now, there's a subject at hand I can ramble on at length to pad this baby out:
Rachel Brosnahan I'm at least somewhat familiar with since my mom's a fan of The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel, she was the #1 pick by far of several of my friends, and apparently she had the best audition tape of everyone there, so excellent to hear Lois is in good hands. Don't know Corenswet from anything, as is right and proper going by sacred near-half-century Superman tradition, but I've watched a few clips of him now and yeah this guy seems to have the goods in the way you'd want. Frankly I don't see him as super-duper looking like Clark - though maybe he's just close enough to Cavill to get my wires crossed - but to be fair, beyond the broad strokes of 'White guy, dark hair, muscly, usually a square jaw' there aren't many of the prior actors who really, truly look like the Curt Swan or Jim Lee or whoever character come to life in my opinion either. If anything, the closest I think we've gotten with a Superman-type visually is Josh Duhamel's Utopian kinda reminding me of Wayne Boring's Clark. It's the vibes really that sell it and I'm sure my fellow David can pull that off.
(By the same token I don't know why folks were ragging on Nicolas Hoult as visually unsuited to the part, he seems as fitting to me as say Routh. Definitely don't get the vibe from Tom Brittney at a glance though, so I'm a hypocrite.)
Much more interesting in the short-term however is a minor mention by The Hollywood Reporter - though it's possibly a mixup of Gunn's prior statement that superheroes exist by the time we join the universe in Legacy - that the inclusion of The Authority characters in this is specifically part of a story where Superman debuts in a world already full of superpeople.
Now this as I've discussed in the past isn't my ideal for the character, but I can sigh and admit that Superman in the context of a DCU is always going to play by different rules than Baseline Iconic Superman, and at least whatever this is is for a story built around him, rather than the awkward retrofitted attempts at continuity service with the JSA and such in the comics that have always bugged me. What's striking though is this would place Superman as the younger rebel figure against The Authority, rather than What's So Funny About Truth, Justice, and the American Way? making him the senior figure disapproving of the faux-Authority new kids. The dynamics there instantly shift, putting him in a dual position of being an agent of change AND the brighter hero advocating for a lighter touch; even if I'd shudder at 'hey in a pop lineage sense this is kind of Superman vs. the MCU', that's probably as close as you could get to appeasing most folks with him at this point.
What struck me yesterday however, and now we're moving into the rank theorizing: we've assumed because Authority characters are in this, they're operating in some form as The Authority, which makes a vs. story difficult to imagine when you gotta believe Gunn loves those punks even aside from that they also have to be set up for their own movie.
But what if it's Stormwatch?
Yes nobody knows or cares about them but they don't know or care about The Authority either. Instantly skates past everything potentially weeniecore and generally insufferable about Superman fighting the one-time cool kids on the block and becomes straightforwardly Superman vs. The Cops on a global scale. And in the aftermath of him freeing the world and establishing (or reestablishing) the 'superhero' as a force for good, making clear why he's the major figure of this setting and why we're entering said setting here, a few of the castoff super-cops now taken off the leash form The Authority. Making them his creation and responsibility, his LEGACY if you will, same as they were for his analogue The High in the original Wildstorm material.
(For the love of god James, put him in the t-shirt and round out the Grant influence. You can even get a whole additional marketing bonanza out of SO WHAT'S HIS REAL COSTUME AT THE END GONNA LOOK LIKE)
I'm also guessing Gunn'll slide Ultra-Humanite into the Weatherman role since they'll probably want to save Bendix for The Authority proper, and they'd probably be nervous about having Lex as the straightforward main villain from word go yet again (my theory with him: he starts as Superman's ally this time. 'Hey, I'm all about you going against these unaccountable ideologues setting themselves up as demigods!' With the inevitable third act turnaround of 'of course to be clear I'm killing you too.') Also occurs to me the obvious way of tying it together conceptually to 'justify' it as a Superman movie is to have the Skywatch technology based on purloined Kryptonian tech, both in a literal sense of 'here's why Superman of all people has to stop it', reclaiming his Kryptonian Legacy while he's at it, and the not-needed-to-understand-but-still-present meta sense of 'Superman introduced this concept, it's been perverted into a way of empowering cops and soldiers, he's taking it all back.' You really could pretty much just do Action #1-4/7-8 but swap the police and army for Stormwatch agents, Metallo for the Authority members (hell, even keep Metallo), and Brainiac and his ship for Ultra-Humanite and Skywatch, down to including the big climactic jump into space to the ship where he gets his real suit. Heck, you could even allude to Brainiac for the long-term with the Skywatch tech 'keeping the world in a bottle'. And one last dopey guess for the road: Skywatch ultimately gets repurposed as the JL satellite. You can nitpick the symbolism of that but you don't put an Ominous Superhero Satellite in your first DC movie which Superman vacates the owners of and not turn it into the Watchtower.
How much of this do I think is right? I dunno! I think it'd be a pleasantly surprising but fairly tidy crowdpleaser premise, it'd potentially give ace reporters Lois Lane and Clark Kent useful stuff to do, there'd be logical room to explore those insider vs. outsider, aristocratic heritage vs. humble upbringing tensions Gunn's talked about, and speaking cynically, it's just broad enough to be also readable as 'Superman vs. Big Government/The Deep State' so it could feasibly be pitched to Zaslav. I could also be 1000000% wrong. But y'know, it's nice that this is a Superman movie we know just enough about to theorize about without any certainty, as opposed to how it'd be if they went with 'idk, he's fighting Brainiac I guess finally, y'all said you wanted that so here'. And if all goes wrong the Coates movie still seems to be happening too and the first My Adventures reviews are positive - a week from today! - so hey James, do whatever you please.
Extremis
The Pyramid at the End of the World
The Lie of the Land
Empress of Mars
The Eaters of Light
David: Just as this set of episodes is the return of a classic Who writer, we're joined by our returning guest Lena Mactíre!
Sean: Hey, Lena! So great of you to join us.
Lena: Hello again, you two! What trouble have you got for me this time?
David: Dematerializes into a special effect so you get I was a computer game the whole time
Up first we’ve got an attempt at one-upping the ambition behind The Girl Who Died/The Woman Who Lived by doing a three-part story by disparate creative teams! The result:
Sean: Look, there were a lot of behind the scenes things that happened with that three parter, only some of which were Toby Whithouse’s fault.
Lena: Ah yes, the answer to the question “What happens when Steven Moffat has an interesting idea, but not a pool of writers who can pull it off?” At least Harness has ambition.
Sean: I’m pretty sure Extremis was Charlie Brooker’s idea first. Anywho, let’s start with that one as it’s the one that’s the least… faulty.
David: Extremis is good! Great sets, effectively creepy, love that video-game ass ‘hub’ as fits the truth of what’s going on, I’m told Moffat came up with this as a prequel episode after the fact so it’s a real solid example of him improvising. There’s also absolutely no reason it needed followup, I 100% would have bought ‘and then Bill and Nardole and The Doctor solved it offscreen now that they have a heads-up’ and it would’ve been better for it.
Sean: There are a lot of reasons for this, and I’ll get into them when we talk Pyramid, but for right now I want to highlight the crux of the episode: Missy and Doctor Who’s relationship. For all that the main plot is a clever story about simulationism and ends with Doctor Who chin wagging at the villain mere feet away from Donald Trump’s corpse, the core of the episode is Doctor Who deciding he’s not giving up on his toxic best friend. Capaldi and Gomez are, as to be expected, a fantastic double act even in this more serious endeavor. We can see the centuries of their relationship in their eyes.
Lena: I’m just glad that we have a story that essentially serves as a 2010s remake of The Matrix, complete with a character who is, if you read it right, transgender. If that isn’t great for Pride Month, I don’t know what is.
David: It really is a cool episode! It’s just dragged down by association, especially when it’s so very obvious how it could have been a standalone that didn’t have to deal with, well, let’s get into that.
Sean: Ok, before we do that, it’s worth noting the context the episode was made within. Elizabeth Sandifer goes into it with more depth, but doing a brief overview, this was not supposed to be the work of three writers. This was supposed to be a purely Harness two parter. There were a number of changes from the initial version to the one we viewed, most notably that instead of three generic army people, it was supposed to be stand-ins for Donald Trump, PM Jeremy Corbyn, and Vlad Putin. Unfortunately, Harness had scheduled his vacation time at the wrong point in time, so we ended up with the three parter we have right now. As for the reason Moffat is listed as a co-writer, well it turns out that Steven Moffat’s mom was dying. So he couldn’t give the script the care it deserved and had to do the final draft himself. It should be noted that Steven publicly apologized for this state of affairs.
Given that, it’s a bit eh. Not as bad as The Lie of the Land, but not all that memorable. I kinda wished we got the version where Donald Trump gets strangled by his own toupee.
Lena: It’s nice that they had someone with dwarfism in a prominent role, at least.
David: There’s little strictly wrong with it except that it’s a real One Unit of Doctor Who episode (though not the most so we’ll get to in this Whowatch!) hot on the heels of Extremis as a pinnacle of that sort of thing. Plus I just don’t buy that we’ve seen the 12/Bill relationship develop to the point that we can sell the I HAVE TOTAL FAITH IN THE DOCTOR ending yet. I’d additionally complain that given the premise these seem to be pretty wimpy omniscient gods, but we haven’t seen anything yet.
Sean: Yeah, I refuse to watch The Lie of the Land on principle. It’s shit. I skipped it on initial broadcast, and everything I’ve heard about it doesn’t make me regret that decision.
Lena: Mark Gatiss could’ve done a better job.
Sean: For instance, he could have given the Monks a motivation or an aim or something. Apparently, the direction from Wayne Yip is really good. You can see why he’d be picked up to do that Amazon Rings series alongside the woman what did Jupiter’s Legacy.
Lena: PCap can do excellent evil laughter.
David: This is maybe the first time in all of Whowatch I went “No, fuck you, The Doctor wouldn’t do that”. Full on nerd characterization pedantry, but fuck you, even to the extent you buy he’d have to make the deception even he isn’t so goddamn thick as to not go ‘hmm, I should maybe say sorry about all of that’. And the ending is indistinguishable from a parody of Moffat-era Who endings.
Sean: Honestly, I kinda wished Nardole was the evil spokesperson for the Monks. Then, it’d be funny.
Lena: I am so very glad Whithouse hasn’t written for the show since.
David: The nicest thing I can say about the episode is the bit with the recording was good, but when I looked at my note “The bit with the recording was good” it took me a full minute to remember what I meant.
Sean: So Missy is in this one? And she’s… doing a Hannibal Lecter, I guess.
Lena: “The other last of the Time Lords…” IT’S NOT 2007 ANYMORE TOBY! WE’VE MOVED ON!
Sean: In many regards, that’s Whithouse’s ultimate failing. He hasn’t moved on from when it was clever to nick a bit from an Alan Moore comic. He’s like one of those early 90s Post-Moore writers who thought the way forward was to show ample amounts of brutality while also having a quote from a work of classic literature, and you’d be the next Alan Moore. But as with those writers, Whithouse lacks the instincts to have any formal ambitions, any attempts at doing anything but vaguely-1984.
Sadly, he was the only alternate choice to run Doctor Who after Moffat left, because apparently no one trusted one of the men behind The League of Gentlemen.
David: It’s heartening, in a sense, to know things were always doomed.
Lena: And people wonder why I became a Star Trek fan instead. Doctor Who was rapidly running out of ideas! (Well, good ideas.)
Sean: Alas, even Star Trek is in the midst of losing its ideas to the corporate masters that be. Discarded like all the rest.
Lena: JUSTICE FOR PRODIGY!
Sean: I’m frankly baffled they thought “Jack Crusher” was a good idea. Let alone, “The Dominion are back and they’ve teamed up with the Borg.”
David: neeeeeeeeeeerds
Lena: Well, I liked it. Anyway! Moving on…
Sean: It’s a Mark Gatiss episode. It’s charming, if somewhat marred by Gatiss being a tad racist regarding whether or not Black people were historically part of the British Colonization (though thankfully in the pedantry sort of way rather than the… that character from The League of Gentlemen sort of way). It’s an episode about the empire of Mars joining the Space European Union that is too cowardly to show Alpha Centauri in all their phallic glory.
[David, look up Alpha Centauri and put an image here]
David: I knew that was some continuity bullshit at the end there.
Lena: I love a good Peladon story. Bonus points for doing a new take on the Ice Warriors. Again!
David: It’s an episode hack enough to do a full-on ‘two weeks to retirement’ but also I really love the FUCK YOU, ALL YOUR BONES ARE BROKEN ray so it’s a wash. The TARDIS breaking sounds are good too, though if you wanna talk hack, there’s that whole development.
Sean: To be fair, the writing was on the walls, so Mark was basically going, “Fuck it, if no one is being invited back to write for the show, I’m doing a Peladon prequel!”
Lena: Why not? Curse of Peladon is objectively excellent.
Sean: And what about The Monster of Peladon?
Lena: Shhh! We don’t talk about that one!
Sean: Isn’t that the one that’s quoted out of context all the time for the sake of Girl Power™?
Lena: Yes… sigh
Speaking of girl power: Rona Munro, anyone?
Sean: Yep, and what a delightful tale of magic and queerness to have her back for. It’s almost as if she hasn’t been gone for over two decades. Though there was a surprising lack of furries this go around.
Lena: That’s okay, we still have lesbians.
Sean: And Roman Bisexuals.
David: What a thing this episode was! A perfect bridge from what I’ve seen of Classic Who - here’s a little history lesson, an inconvenience to separate The Doctor and their companion, and a spooky monster that can only be defeated through learning a moral lesson and applying basic principles of physics to herd it into a corny special effect portal - and the New Who-ish sci-fi poetry of the likes of “The crows aren’t sulking. They’re remembering” and translation matrix inadvertently bridging the communication gap between the locals and the music never quite stopping to the end of time. It’s not one I have a ton to say about - none of these were this go-around, surely this must be the shortest Whowatch we’ve ever done - but a total charmer.
Lena: I have a sneaking suspicion the next one will be longer. ;-)
Next Time: Ladies and Gentlemen, Ritesh Babu.
Lena: Yaaaaaaaaaay!