Legends of Tomorrow, Season 1, Episode 7: Marooned
I honestly didn't think that Legends of Tomorrow would have time for too much filler episodes, but we had two in a row. Last episode just had a really cool cameo and backstory with the whole future Arrow thing. This one is just, well, Team Legends fighting Space Pirates in something that felt like it is one of the most basic filler plot in Star Trek or whatever.
The whole pirate takeover plot is really quite boring and basic. Jon Valor is a hammy enough villain and it had a sense of fun futuristic sci-fi feel that the previous 'time travelers in the past' couldn't quite muster, but again it's very basic. Add that to the still-irritating-but-not-quite-painful attempts at giving Ray and Kendra a romance (which actually panned out this episode?) is a very distracting and time consuming side plot.
It's just a little springboard to give Rip Hunter some backstory, though I am unconvinced that we needed a whole episode for this and couldn't have fit this in place of the high school teen drama on a spaceship we had last episode. Rip's backstory is interesting, of course. We see that his wife, Miranda, used to be a Time Master as well, and their affair led to Miranda sacrificing her career in the name of love. It helps to build Miranda up as an actual person we care about instead of her just being 'Rip's wife. Who died.' and nothing else.
The other big focus is on Heat Wave, who I don't think would really get this much focus, but we build up on the friction between Rory and Snart that we got last episode. It doesn't matter, really, that the trigger for their conflict is really trivial -- Rory's just dumb enough to want to hang out with the biker gang of the future -- but Snart punching Rory at the end of the last episode, and how Snart overrode their original 'we're in it for the money' for Snart warming up to heroism and saving the world... Rory taking some time away from Snart really helped to kinda flesh the conflict out a bit, and it's Rip's stupid speech about how Rory's only brought along because he and Snart were a package deal and the 'IQ of meat' line finally tipped the scales.
I mean, it's not like Captain Cold and Heat Wave are joined at the hip -- we've seen Cold work with only his sister or with random goons in the Flash several times -- but it's a damning line that finally broke Heat Wave. And I really liked how we are never really sure whether Mick Rory has just gone to the dark side or is just doing some pretending-to-be-a-bad-guy-to-get-an-advantage thing to doublecross the pirates... and up to that moment when Heat Wave shows up on the Waverider with an army of pirates I was still half-expecting Heat Wave and Captain Cold to share a knowing nod and be all like 'yeah we just pulled a fast one over them' and then take out the goons. But no.
I am, of course, unconvinced that Captain Cold would kill Heat Wave, but it's a nice little cliffhanger and we don't find out what happened to poor Rory until next episode.
We get some nice moments with Stein wanting to be space ranger (and actually beating a pirate goon the fuck up off-screen) and Sara sharing to Snart about the feeling of having died once, but overall the focus is still on Rip and the Rogues. There's a nice little speech as Cold tells Sara about his first meeting with Mick Rory as well.
Also I kinda liked the free-for-all action scene on the corridors of the Waverider and Acheron in the climax. It's just a fun romp of an action scenes.
Alas, with Rip being the catalyst for Mick Rory's turn, and how he's just the biggest idiot in charging straight into the Acheron while everyone smells a trap, and for the umpteenth time separates Jax and Stein and renders Firestorm inert for a really good chunk of the episode, and generally is incompetent -- it's Stein and Gideon that really saved them all from being taken out by the pirates. Add that to several questionable decisions from past episodes, and I honestly think that this version of Rip Hunter might not be all that he's cracked up to be.
It's still quite in the middling grounds, where I really like the good parts of the episode (Snart, Rory, Rip's backstory, the action scenes) but the weaker parts (filler villains, Rip's incompetence, weak romance scenes, inconsistent time travel rules) still dominate the episode enough to make this not quite as good as it could've been.
The DC Easter-Egg Column:
A couple fun and real obscure ones that I had to do some research in this episode:
- Eve Baxter, the Time Master that Team Legends rescues, shares her last name with Bonnie Baxter from the comics, who is Rip Hunter's love interest as opposed to Miranda Coburn in this continuity.
- Jon Valor is otherwise known as the 'Black Pirate' in the DC comics, is an actual seafaring pirate from the 16th Century (as opposed to a space time pirate) who was involved in a couple of time-travel capers and his ghost would be a supporting character for one of the many Starmen. His comic-book counterpart is a fair bit more heroic than his live-action version.
- The code phrases that Rip uses to give Gideon commands are all based on Superman enemies (because Brandon Routh), and Rip also implies very strongly that these are actual threats out there. 'Imperiex Onslaught' is a reference to Imperiex and the Our Worlds at War crossover event. Kanjar Ro, likewise, is an alien villain that tangles with Superman a lot of times.
- The comic book that Stein reads, Rick Starr, is a somewhat obscure and old DC comic who I don't think is a part of the main universe.
- Acheron, the name of Eve's timeship, is the name of one of the rivers of hell from Greek mythology, but since we're talking about DC comics, Acheron is a minor demon enemy that fought Nightwing one time.
No comments:
Post a Comment