Krypton, Season 1 [2018] Review

Krypton, Season 1

[originally reviewed separately from May 2018 to June 2018]

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Krypton, Season 1, Episode 1: Pilot

Well, the TV series Krypton was announced as a prequel to the DC Extended Universe, or specifically, Man of Steel, since... shit, since 2014 or something. It felt like forever, and I didn't even realize that it's been released, what with the huge, huge abundance of other superhero material out there both in televized and movie forms. Krypton is a TV series that takes place prior to Krypton's explosion, an origin story of an aspect of Superman's origin story.  There's an inherent danger about telling an origin story so detached from everything that's going on about the character you're selling. Gotham works only because the main character is Commissioner Gordon, a character that Batman fans are familiar with. The Star Wars prequels only work as a story because it focuses on younger versions of our main characters. Prequels are a dangerous sort, especially if it doesn't really have anything in common other than the setting, but extra especially if the ending is sort of said-and-done. Whatever happens in the Krypton series, it will end with the planet erupting in a ball of death and radioactive green rocks, with a sole survivor being jettisoned towards Earth to become the future Man of Steel. (Also Supergirl, also General Zod, also Krypto...)

And... and, well, Krypton's first episode is certainly written with a neat visual flair in mind. There's enough to go on about the backstory of our main character, Seyg-El (parsed as Seg-El in this series, apparently), Kal-El's grandfather, and his role in this rigid society of castes and guilds. We're quickly introduced to the fact that the El family was stripped of its rank and house due to Seyg-El's grandfather trying to prove that other life in space exists, and we also get to see two other houses -- Vex and Zod. There's a love triangle thrown in for extra drama, and then we've got a more familiar face to DC fans, C-lister superhero Adam Strange (disappointingly, he wears a silly hoodie-and-cap ensemble instead of an adaptation of his comic book costume), apparently having traveled back in time to stop some catastrophic disaster, the Collector of Worlds Brainiac, from ending Krypton prematurely before baby Superman is sent to Earth. As rushed as the random revelation that Brainiac is the Big Bad of the series, and this adaptation of Brainiac's robot-skull-ship is pretty damn awesome.

I admit that the time travel aspect was something that caught me by surprise, but ultimately it's a somewhat smart move to keep this somewhat anchored in a deeper DC universe story that the audience would care a bit more about. It still doesn't instill me with that much confidence, though, because the characters feel more like pieces being moved around a board rather than actual characters. Seyg-El is just someone trying to figure out what's going on -- namely, the mysterious Fortress of Solitude that his grandfather (and his parents, at the end of the pilot) died to protect. He's 'bound' to the house of Vex, and the Vex patriarch was responsible for Seyg-El's grandfather's death, whereas the daughter, Nyssa-Vex, is 'bound' to him, some sort of loveless arranged marriage just to produce a child via the sterile Kryptonian birthing matrix (which is actually a cool scene).

Meanwhile, the house of Zod are warriors and protectors of Krypton, and Lyta Zod is secretly fucking Seyg-El, being the 'true' love interest, a fact complicated when Lyta's mom is responsible for killing Seyg-El's parents. Albeit it's a decision that's implied to be more merciful than malicious, but still. None of these characters really feel fleshed out, and I understand that it's just the first episode, but it really feels more like pieces of a puzzle. Instead of a pilot episode introducing to us these characters and who they are, it feels more like a proof-of-concept about how the characters would interact.

Overall, other than the rather lifeless and limp excuse of an emotional core, there's really not that much to talk about this pilot episode. It does great in world-building exposition, of course, and the addition of a time-travelling Back to the Future/Terminator aspect is certainly more than welcome (and probably the only reason I'll even continue watching Krypton) but ultimately it feels very dry. There are a lot of plotlines set up here, like the terrorist organization Black Zero, the whole time travel, Brainiac, the enigmatic and silent many-faced Voice of Rao... but Krypton really has an uphill battle to really prove itself as being any more interesting than 'it's tangentially connected to a superhero I care about'.

DC Easter Eggs Corner:

• While initially billed as a prequel to Man of Steel and the DCEU movies as a whole, other than featuring some of the same producers, Krypton has been confirmed to be its own continuity. 
• Seyg-El (not Seg-El, as he is spelled in this show) is Superman's paternal grandfather in the comics, and while he's got a fair bit of backstory detailed in the 80's series World of Krypton, this series is really the biggest role he's ever going to get. Seyg-El's named after one of Superman's real-life creators, Jerry Siegel. 
• Old Seyg-El's narration that opens the pilot seems to be a homage to Marlon Brando's Jor-El in the original Christopher Reeve Superman movie. 
• The entire aesthetic of the Fortress of Solitude, as well as the 'Sunstone' key emblazoned with an S-symbol,  is all taken mainly from the Christopher Reeve movie. 
• Val-El, identified here as Seyg-El's grandfather, is a very, very minor ancestor of Superman's who appeared in a grand total of one issue of the 80's Krypton Chronicles series.
• Val-El's cape has a black Superman symbol, which brings to mind the black S symbol on Superman's cape in the New 52 rebooted continuity. 
• The events of this series takes place in Kandor, most famously known as the Bottled City of Kandor in the comics, where the entire city was reduced into microscopic size enough to fit inside a bottle, and the location of many, many adventures for Superman and Supergirl. As a possible homage to this fate, Kandor in Krypton is covered with a glass dome. 
• Black Zero, in addition to serving as the supervillain names of several minor Superman enemies, is also shared with a group of Kryptonian terrorists -- which is what the Black Zero here seems to represent. The three Black Zero criminals that are sentenced to death are framed similarly to Zod, Ursa and Non in Superman and Superman II. 
• While the members of the House of Vex are original to the show, one of Zod's minions in Man of Steel was called Car-Vex. While Seyg-El and Nyssa-Vex's child is also called Car-Vex, the Car-Vex of Man of Steel is a woman whereas their child here is explicitly a boy. 
• While there isn't a specific entity called the Voice of Rao in the comics, Rao is the Kryptonian Sun God (as well as the name of the star Krypton orbits) and often used as an epithet by both Superman and Supergirl. 
• Dev-Em, the man bethroted to Nyssa-Vex, is the name of a time-travelling Kryptonian who battled Superboy briefly in the comics before becoming an ally of the Legion of Super-Heroes. Some retcons in the comics ended up turning his race into Daxamite instead of Kryptonian. 
• Seen in various signs and parchment are Kryptonian alphabet as codified in Jeph Loeb's Superman/Batman series which finally give A-Z equivalent symbols in Kryptonian. 
• Val-El's Fortress of Solitude prominently features a Kryptonian man and woman holding a globe within them, which is the centerpiece of Superman's Fortress of Solitude in the comics, albeit the man and woman in Superman's Fortress are his Kryptonian parents. 
• Adam Strange, while perhaps not a familiar name to DC fans, is one of DC's longest-running characters, an Earthman who was trapped and sent into space, into the planet Rann through a phenomenon called a Zeta Beam that linked Earth and Rann together. Adam became a staunch protector of Rann with his jetpack and space guns, defending Rann from various extra-terrestrial threats, although the Zeta Beam radiation would run out and send him back to Earth at various intervals.
• Brainiac, a.k.a. Vril Dox, is one of Superman's most iconic and long-running enemies. Hailing from the technological race of the Coluans. Through his many, many appearances, Brainiac's most iconic modus operandi is to 'collect' intelligence and information about races, usually by shrinking and kidnapping entire cities or planets depending on the continuity. Brainiac's metallic skull-shaped ship was made iconic during the Silver Age, and his green-skinned form briefly seen here is based on his original appearance where he was a lot fleshier -- some modern interpretations turn Brainiac into wholly mechanical. 

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Krypton, Season 1, Episode 2: House of El

After all the awkward introductions of character dynamics and a clumsily handled origin story, we finally get a fair bit of a better quality from this second episode of Krypton. It's not that much better, though, as Seyg-El is essentially trapped by so many people telling him to do different things. His sponsors (who killed his grandfather) from house Vex want him to just join the house and discard everything from the House of El.  His betrothed, Nyssa-Vex, is a lot more sympathetic, giving him ashes and stuff for closure for his family. The mysterious Adam Strange want him to investigate the mysteries of Brainiac, Collector of Worlds, this mysterious threat that's going to come and devour Krypton. The computer fascimile of Val-El (because of course one of those exists) wants to know that, no, the House of El actually isn't speaking bullshit, and wants Seyg-El to continue that dynasty. 

And most of the episode we just see Seyg-El bumble around trying to do something and be indecisive, and it's not as entertaining as the show really thinks it is. Sure, it's acted competently and all, but it's also pretty bland. Brainiac is coming because Val-El discovered it in the past, except he isn't because Seyg-El's stolen access to Kryptonian sensors show nothing, except he is because Adam Strange and Seyg-El's bar buddy finds a Brainiac probe later on, showing that Brainiac's already arrived. Seyg-El just whiplashes between his plan to suicidally kill the killers of his family and the whole saving Krypton from a threat told by a future alien bit so much just so the other supporting characters can get a chance to exposit to him, and while the show might think that it's Game of Thrones, none of the expository scenes are really that interesting to watch. 

It does make the final scene where Seyg-El finally decides that he's had enough of being pulled around by everyone else and cuts off the House of Vex symbol from his shirt pretty neat, because finally the dude's developed a backbone and does something that is truly his own, but eh. 

Of course, the one sliver of fun character arc is the (admittedly very simple) story of Lyta-Zod. While her love interest Seyg-El is torn between what to do and his hatred towards Lyta's mother, Lyta decides to take things into her own hands, say "fuck you" to all the oppression towards the Rankless, and challenge her commanding officer Quex into a duel to the death, which she naturally wins. Oh, and she manages to impress her mother, who, while clearly caring for her, had never believed she had this much fire inside her. It's interesting, but when she's supposed to be a side-character and not one of the main characters of this venture, it really speaks just how very bland the whole Seyg-El storyline really is. 

Overall, it's really pretty flat, to be honest. There are definitely some good performances, notably from Lyta-Zod, Nyssa-Vex and Val-El, but it's still a bit of a struggling effort, I'd say. It's not that the concept isn't interesting, it's the execution and the over-reliance on exposition and very, very clunky coincidences -- like Adam Strange and Kem digging just in the exact spot to find a Brainiac probe, or the Voice of Rao popping up quite literally any time it's convenient...

DC Easter Eggs Corner:

• The Phantom Zone is, of course, an integral part of Superman's mythos.
• The whole concept of a paternal figure manifesting as a holographic AI projection is, of course, codified by Jor-El in Superman. 
• Val-El briefly mentions an event known as the "Green Death", which in the comics is the Kryptonians' first exposure to Kryptonite, irradiated masses of their own planet, and one of the pieces of evidence that Jor-El had that Krypton is a dying world. 
• Quex, the military guild member that Lyta-Zod defeats, shares his name with Quex-Ul, in the original Superman run, one of the many Phantom Zone criminals unleashed upon the world from imprisonment. He worked with General Zod and Zaora, and in punishment for their crimes against Earth, Superman evoked Kryptonian law and executed the three with Kryptonite -- an act that, while legal and justified, would haunt Superman for years. 
• Of course, Quex dies with a neck snap at the hands of a member of Zod's lineage, which is likely a reference to Man of Steel's infamous scene where Superman kills Zod with a neck snap.
• The Voice of Rao give a brief listing of the Kryptonian gods whose faces are sculpted into his golden mask. In addition to the primary deity Rao, the other masks represent Cythonna, Telle, Mordo, Yuda and Lorra, all of whom have been mentioned -- albeit in far less prominence compared to the primary deity Rao -- in the DC comics. Out of these, only Cythonna really has any sort of backstory, an evil ice deity who fought the sun god Rao in ancient times according to Kryptonian mythology, and the primary antagonist of the Superman: Last God of Krypton one-shot. 
• Zeta Beams, the beams that allow comics!Adam Strange to travel between Earth and the planet Rann, is repurposed as the plot device that allows Adam Strange to travel back to the past. 

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Krypton, Season 1, Episode 3: The Rankless Initiative

I would enjoy Krypton a lot more if they actually didn't try to resort to exposition in every second line of dialogue. This episode is somewhat better than the previous two episodes in that we aren't stuck in 100% exposition mode, and the episode has a far more solid story than the previous two, but it's still not the most impressive or fun superhero show out there. 

While the show has mostly stumbled in trying to portray Brainiac as this world-ending threat (and part of it is reusing the same two or three shots of CGI Brainiac which just feels ridiculous), this is the first episode that really works in doing so, because the plot of the episode revolves around Seg-El, Adam Strange and Kem trying to hunt down the mysterious Brainiac Probe that's already been taken by someone among the populace, and this is Kem and Seyg's fellow Rankless buddy, Rhom, who's been working salvage outside of the city to make ends meet.

Of course, Team Seyg's attempts to hunt down the Brainiac probe ends up complicated thanks to the titular Rankless Initiative, where Lyta-Zod is forced to lead her Sagittari to crush the Rankless quadrants that Seyg lives in in order to root out the Black Order terrorist group. And while Lyta tries her best to be fair (arresting a Sagittari that shot a defenseless Rankless), police brutality and the beatdown of the Rankless still happens, which is portrayed pretty competently by the show. Oh, and there's the whole bit with Rhom mutating into a techno-organic cyborg monster, killing a bunch of Sagittari and causing Seyg to ask Lyta to lend him the Kryptonian equivalent of an EMP grenade and fry Rhom's circuits. Lyta is sort of brought into the loop of alien invaders, and the happenings there can be placed at the hands of Black Order terrorists, but the episode ends in a rather somber note as Rhom is still trapped as a Brainiac drone, Lyta's career is seen in an unfavourable light and Daron-Vex has to face the Voice of Rao for his failure. 

Again, the Rankless Initiative is a very interesting setup for a storyline and setting, and probably the highlight of the episode. It's a shame that the episode itself end up feeling so dull for long stretches of time, and not helping is the pretty contradictory bits in the series about Brainiac's nature. Last episode establishes that they can't get a reading in space for an anomaly because Brainiac is already here... but this episode immediately handwaves it, because Brainiac is still in space, it's just the probe that's here. And the probe, supposed to gather information about what planet it's on, just... hangs around in Rhom's body (seemingly pretty quickly too, in a matter of days) before going all alien-invader and trying to transmit its information back to Brainiac, noting that Krypton is worthy of collection. 

Overall, though, it's still a pretty strong outing for Krypton. it's a shame that the editing and repetitive expository dialogue makes this a slog. Thankfully, Seyg-El, Adam Strange and Lyta-Zod are starting to really feel more like people, so there's definitely that. 

DC Easter Eggs Corner:

• The leader of the Black Order is identified as Jax-Ur, a Kryptonian criminal imprisoned in the Phantom Zone, who, ironically, in his original incarnation actually fought the Black Zero (there an alien force instead of a group of Kryptonian terrorists). In most continuities Jax-Ur tended to be a minion of the iconic General Zod, other than Superman: The Animated Series where Jax-Ur ended up standing in for Zod as the Kryptonian military leader released from the Phantom Zone. 
• While not part of his standard modus operandi, Brainiac has been known to transform humans into his drones and agents, most notably Lex Luthor's daughter Lena in the "Our Worlds At War" arc.
• Among the objects that Adam Strange is offered by the random trader is a Daxamite blade, which is a reference to Daxam, Krypton's more warlike sister planet and where Supergirl's Mon-El hails from.
• Another thing that the trader notes is 'Gem City', which isn't a reference to a specific location (as far as I can tell -- it does sound very Golden Age-y) but DC's Central City and Keystone City are often collectively referred to as the Gem Cities. 
• The design of the grenade that Seyg takes from Lyta is a visual homage to the Omegahedron, the plot device from the 1984 Supergirl movie that barely anyone remembers.

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Krypton, Season 1, Episode 4: The Word of Rao

It's a... weird episode of Krypton, for sure. We pick up from the previous episode, 'The Rankless Initiative', and deal with the fallout of that episode. Predictably, Lyta-Zod is put to trial, but far worse than insubordination, the Voice of Rao decides that he needs a fall guy in order to restore the Voice of Rao's standings among the Rankless, and decides to pull strings in order to get Lyta to be that fall guy. It's never really made clear just what the role of the Voice of Rao is other than some vague leadership/papal role, and just why he needs to maintain his standings among the Rankless when he was so eager to push the Rankless Initiative in the previous episode. But Lyta is framed for being an agent of Black Zero thanks to some fake testimonies, setting her up to get executed in the same way that Val-El was in the pilot. 

This ends up driving the whole Brainiac plot to a halt as Seg-El (fine, we'll use the show's spelling) decides that a Krypton without Lyta isn't worth saving, and Seg quite literally drops everything regarding investigating Brainiac to do this side-quest. And everything revolves around Seg's attempt to get Lyta out of jail, but at the same time  events are also unfurling for the ever-encroaching arrival of Brainiac, and that's a bit of a weird discrepancy there. 

And while Seg manages to get Nyssa-Vex to help out in getting Lyta out of jail from a legal way (Nyssa, conveniently, is the Kryptonian equivalent of a lawyer of some sort?) and Nyssa ends up being the only person left to fight for Lyta when Seg gets kidnapped by a group of... some other dudes that aren't the enigmatic Black Zero, but are allied with Black Zero. Colin Salmon's (Arrow's Walter Steele) currently-unnamed character notes that, yes, Brainiac is coming and they are an organization that knows this and is trying to stop this. Seg tries to get them to break Lyta out of jail, but instead tries to get free from this organization and attack their minions? Eh. 

Nyssa ends up confronting Jayna-Zod and pretty much tries to get her to stand up and overthrow the Voice of Rao, which is neat. This part of the storyline is fun, in no small part due to really strong performances from both actresses involved. 

Meanwhile, the Rhom-Brainiac gestalt is still indecipherable, but probably dead, causing Uncle Kem to have a talk with Ona about death or something, and this, in turn, causes Ona to rush forwards to the Voice of Rao when he visits the Rankless. Ona gives the Voice of Rao a little figurine, and the Voice of Rao plays with this to maintain his saintly prophet image and elevates Ona into one off the priests of Rao... but this is all a ploy from Brainiac's probe? Who has apparently infected Ona (or maybe just the figurine?), which in turn infects the little gift, which in turn infects the Voice of Rao -- not when he received the figurine, but when he's in his room? It's a neat plot twist, but it's definitely a wee bit too convoluted. Just how intelligent is Brainiac's little figurine? Isn't the whole mission statement of the probe to collect information and send it to Brainiac? Why is it trying to infiltrate the higher-ups in the Kryptonian government, then? Did Brainiac give the drone new standing orders? If he did, then why did the Rhom-drone need to find some huge communication device to talk to the real Brainiac body? 

Overall, it's a weaker episode of Krypton, I feel, for the simple reason that the show does a lot of exposition, but at the same time it also doesn't tell us enough about some aspects of the setting. Black Zero's mentioned a lot of times by practically all the characters, but is hardly relevant, never actually showing up. Adam Strange is some sort of Kyle-Reese-esque character, someone from the future trying to save the past, but half the time he doesn't do anything more than Kem does. The Voice of Rao shows up a lot, but we never really get any sort of real concrete note as to how he figures into Kryptonian politics. Ultimately, the show does have enough good points for me to be interested in continuing to the next episode, but it's definitely flawed in execution and plot-pacing. 

DC Easter Eggs Corner: [not much of these in this episode, surprisingly]

• Lyta is imprisoned in Fort Rozz, which Supergirl viewers might recognize. Fort Rozz, in the comics, of course, is also a prison for Kryptonian criminals. 
• The Nova Cycle is indeed a Kryptonian holiday in the comics, where in Nova Cycle, the Kryptonian Religious Guild has the right to absolve any criminal of his or her wrongdoings. 

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Krypton, Season 1, Episode 5: House of Zod

Huh. This is an interesting episode. On one hand, the running theme of Primus Jayna-Zod being challenged over and over to betray her duty in order to join in a conspiracy with the house of Vex in order to save her daughter while we flashback to how the House of Zod trains her and her brother to basically fight as if to the death, because mercy will cause them to be unprepared. It culminates in young Jayna-Zod being forced to leave her brother to die when the two of them are sent into some trial by fire (or by ice, as it were) to get to some spot in the wilderness of Krypton's icy wastes, onnly to find that there's only one respirator left. The mother-and-daughter pair of Jayna and Lyta has been the most interesting characters in Krypton so far, and the whole concept of the House of Zod being extremely driven by honour, combat and survival of the fittest is well-delivered. It leads to a different decision in the present day, where instead of choosing honour over a loved one, Jayna ends up paying the price to House Vex in order to secure her daughter's release. She gladly saves her daughter, but also tells Lyta in no uncertain terms that she is her greatest shame.

 

The Vex house is a bit less interesting, mostly because Daron's pretty uninteresting himself. He's apparently in love with Kol-Da, the false-witness that is meant to take Lyta down, but ends up being forced to order her assassination in order to get Lyta off the hook and in turn make the House of Zod (and thus the military guild) ally with him. That random wrinkle of Kol-Da being in love with Daron is so unnecessary. Nyssa-Vex, thankfully, is a lot more endearing, whether it's in her political machinations with Jayna-Zod or her conversations with her clearly less competent father regarding how to best take control of this situation. 

It's a shame that the rest of the storylines in this episode falls thin. We've got both Dev-Em and Seg-El confessing their true, true love for Lyta, and that honestly just feels like lobbing in a love triangle for the sake of a love triangle. Dev is a flat character, and I cannot honestly say I really care about him. Whereas Seg is still stuck in the rut of being a generic nice hero. Seg's storyline has him escape from the Not-Black-Zero dudes when Colin Salmon's character walks away, but before we get much clarification about this mysterious person (we don't get any hints about Colin Salmon until the final shot of this episode) Seg saves another prisoner... 

And then Seg is brought into a different cult who worships Cythonna, the goddess of ice, and hates Els, and also holds the key to saving Krypton from Brainiac. This revelation is done so haphazardly and feels so shoehorned in that it almost ruins any goodwill I have from the Zod stuff in this episode. It feels so convoluted for them to introduced this huge facet of Kryptonian society when so much about the other pre-existing ones they introduced in the past four (!) episodes are still nebulous. We haven't even met anyone that actually hails from Black Zero, and I can't even call Colin Salmon's character or faction by any proper name since they don't have one yet. The world-building is commendable, but it's done so clumsily and it really wouldn't hurt to give some space to both build up the facets of this world and make them memorable, or, failing that, actually build up the other characters. Out of the main 'save Krypton' team, Seg just feels mostly flat, I can't name you a single thing about Adam Strange beyond 'plot device that sometimes makes bad quips', and Kem... Kem's all right, I suppose. 

After being freed, Adam Strange and Lyta head off to rescue Seg, but not before Nyssa overhears Seg's anguished dying declaration of love for Lyta... and honestly? I really find it hard that both Nyssa and Lyta fall in love for Seg. We are told this, yes, and Lyta and Seg at least has the excuse of having a long history and a pre-existing relationship, but there is not much chemistry between either couple that makes the attraction really believable. Thankfully, this is quickly redeemed when Lyta and Colin Salmon's character face off against each other. Both of them have the same Zod necklace (as in, the exact same object) and Colin Salmon's character reveals himself to be Lyta's (possibly time-travelling) son.... which means that he's General Zod himself. Which is exciting, because General Zod's cool, and Colin Salmon's a great actor... but of course, we have yet to untangle the huge mess of introdumped world-building that we haven't really explored yet. 

Overall, the episode has some good points, but it's bogged down by trying to fit in too much without really spending the legwork or time to make me care about a lot of the plotlines, so it really just feels packed to the brim but hollow at the same time, Zods notwithstanding. All the Zods both time-travelling or otherwise are great. It's a shame they're attached to a bunch of other far, messier storylines. 

DC Easter Eggs Corner:

• The huge revelation that Colin Salmon's character is, in fact, Lyta's son, implies extremely heavily that he is General Zod himself. Dru-Zod is of the same generation as Jor-El, Superman's father, and since Seg-El is Jor's father, General Zod should be a generation below Lyta-Zod as well. The fact that General Zod is older than Lyta implies further, of course, that he is time-travelling, just like Adam Strange.  
• "You kneel to no one", says the elder Zod to Jayna, which, of course, is a spin on the memetic and infamous "KNEEL BEFORE ZOD" line from Superman II. 
• As mentioned a couple of episodes back, Cythonna is the Kryptonian goddess of ice, and a rival to the god Rao. Apparently, she has a cult that worships her in this show. Cythonna herself features as the main antagonist in the one-shot Superman: The Last God of Krypton. 

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Krypton, Season 1, Episode 6: Civil Wars

Well, this is a very interesting episode, in that the points that are raised in this episode are genuinely interesting. In the midst of throwing in a bunch more plotlines, episode 6 of Krypton actually manages to tell intriguing storylines with both casts of characters -- the ones in the wasteland and the ones in Kandor. It's the first time that I've also actually come to care about Seg-El as an actual character as opposed to just being a designated hero, so kudos on this episode for doing that, even if the episode also throws in Doomsday as yet another layer of complications into this whole thing.  

The big debate here is a constant theme of "how much must you sacrifice for the greater good?" Both Primus Jayna-Zod and Dev-Em struggles with how much they are willing to suffer for the cause of overthrowing the Voice of Rao and installing the Vex/Zod alliance as the leaders of Kandor. It's interesting to see just how far they are willing to go. Dev-Em is willing to commit himself to the alliance, and while clearly conflicted, both Jayna and Dev are also willing to get rid of that one junior officer who's poking his noses too much into the release of a Black Zero bomber (who's meant to be the fall guy for the Voice of Rao's assassination). But when the Voice of Rao changes the terms of his address and fills the rooms with civilians, Dev-Em decides that it's not worth killing so many civilians for their cause, and warns everyone about the bomb.

Likewise, Lyta-Zod and Seg-El are forced to confront the two time-travelers about their true intentions, and for the most part both Adam Strange and General Zod tell the truth... with one small detail. Adam Strange conveniently leaves out the fact that Krypton will explode in a couple hundred years, and while Adam Strange's biggest priority is to preserve history and thus Superman's existence in the future, Zod cares far more about Krypton and wants to protect it. For Lyta and Seg, clearly the nebulous "your descendant is the mightiest hero of the future" understandably doesn't resonate quite as well as Zod's goals of wanting to rescue Krypton from its doom. It's intensely well-done, actually, with General Zod's brutal truth and Adam Strange's increasing desperation ("but we're friends, right?") being pretty well delivered. 

I do really wished the earlier episodes have been more consistent in portraying Adam and Seg's friendship and make it feel like something huge to be lost in this episode, and make General Zod not quite as cartoonishly evil with the torture and random killing of subordinates in episode 4. Which ruins this episode somewhat... but Colin Salmon's intense performance and how he keeps mentioning that, yes, he owns all his conflicts against Kal-El, but also damns Kal-El for integrating himself to mankind at the expense of Kryptonian culture. 

It all comes to a head when Seg-El and the two Zods fight their way through the Cythonnites and open a Zod/El seal to reveal the ancient weapon Doomsday, but they are talked down from unleashing Doomsday (not that, mind you, they have anything concrete like a skull-ship to unleash Doomsday upon anyway at the moment). 

The storylines in Kandor might not be quite as interesting as the time travel ethics debate, but the assassination attempt is interesting, as is Jayna and Dev's moral struggles. We also get to see Brainiac-Voice talk to little Ona (who's confirmed to not be mind-controlled) about destiny and the nature of faith and stuff, and it's... interesting, for sure. Ona's clearly a very devout and religious child, and it is interesting to see the clearly Brainiac-possessed Voice of Rao talk about giving her the chance to be part of what I assume is going to be some sort of sci-fi mind collective. If nothing else, when Dev-Em and his fellow conspirators get ready to gun the Voice of Rao down, he reveals his true powers and unleashes Brainiac robo-tentacles upon them. It's pretty interesting stuff, and honestly? This episode as a whole is a pretty strong winner, I think. Good stuff. 

DC Easter Eggs Corner:

• The "Hall of Justice", is, of course,  a reference towards the Justice League's base, famously featured in the Hanna-Barbera cartoon Challenge of the Super-Friends.
• Kryptonopolis is mentioned as another one of the cities on Krypton. It is, as you might imagine, the capital city of Krypton and where Kal-El would eventually be born. 
• Doomsday, of course, is the spiky, unkillable alien who was infamous for being a monster that managed to kill Superman in the 1993 storyline "The Death of Superman". While initially introduced as just some random alien monster, later retcons revelations would reveal that the creature later known as Doomsday is a prehistoric creature native to Krypton that was the result of an alien scientist's experimentations to create the perfect, unkillable being. 
• Tangentially, if Zod being played by a different actor doesn't already clue you in, Doomsday's presence as an ancient Kryptonian being quite fully separates Krypton from the DC movie continuity. 

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Krypton, Season 1, Episode 7: Transformation

This episode's more of a huge 'things happen' episode, and it's pretty neat. Brainiac has basically taken over the Voice of Rao, and through a pretty awesome cold open, used his tentacles to turn the military guild members into his minions. This Voice of Brainiac ends up interacting with Daron-Vex, and basically plays around and treats the whole thing like a test of worthiness. Brainiac can detect if people are lying, and Daron ends up giving up everything to Brainiac -- including the fact that his own daughter is a co-conspirator that he was well-prepared to give up to Brainiac, willing to even shoot Nyssa to prove his reality. I really kind of wish, just like everything else, that we've spent more time with Daron to really care about him beyond "huh, what an opportunistic scumbag."

Eventually, though, as the pieces on the board move around, the characters we root end up all on the same page. Seg-El, Lyta and Zod go off to try and take down Brainiac on their own, and then Seg goes off to save Nyssa, who's branded a traitor by the Voice of Brainiac. Meanwhile, Lyta seeks the help of Dev-Em, her 'betrothed', to track down Jayna-Zod... but Dev-Em's apparently already corrupted by Brainiac, forcing Lyta to shoot her. I guess the show tries to build up Lyta and Dev's relationship in the previous episode? It really feels like they're just handwaving the love triangle they've built up between Lyta, Dev and Seg, which is... eh? Dev's been built up a little past the last couple of episodes, but not that much, honestly. 

Nyssa is probably the MVP of the first half of the episode, where her interactions with her father and her utter disgust at being turned into ''the perfect political partner" is amazingly delivered, and her understanding that Seg is helping her out not out of love but out of friendship, is pretty well done, I think. 

This all leads to the final scene, where the Kryptonians all join together to assassinate the Voice of Brainiac. Or at least expose his true nature as an alien before the crowded masses of Kandor so they will rise up and become their army. Unfortunately, Brainiac one-ups them by hovering into the air, burning in flames and acts all glowing like an angel when one of the Rao priestesses call the Voice out for not being Kryptonian anymore. Apparently Brainiac's realized the importance of religion, and ends up masquerading as this godly being, turning the resistance's attempt to get the people of Kandor to fight back against them. 

Oh, and Adam Strange finally ends up developing into something resembling a character instead of just a plot device. He gets to talk with the computer program that is Val-El about just what it means to be a hero. And while "I want to be a hero" is a well-and-tried trope in these superhero stories, they tell it relatively competently. Unfortunately, Adam Strange draws the wrong conclusions from Val's motivational talks and decides to kill General Zod instead of joining the Kryptonian Resistance. 

Overall, it's an episode that feels like it cares more about getting all of its characters in place instead of telling any real character-focused story, but it still manages to give us some great moments with Nyssa-Vex and Adam Strange, and a wee bit for Lyta and Jayna Zod. There are still some iffy parts of the episode, pacing-wise, but overall still pretty fun, I think. 

DC Easter Eggs Corner:

• Adam Strange makes blatant references to the Justice League from the present day, as well as not having a power ring, which is a reference to Green Lantern, one of the traditional members of the Justice League. 
• Brainiac calls his brainwashed bodyguards the Red Shard, which is the name of a tactical response squad in the city of Kandor that Superman was a member when he returned the Bottle City of Kandor to its original size. 
• Among the trophies in the Fortress of Solitude is the Black Mercy flower, which was introduced in Alan Moore's iconic Superman story, "For The Man Who Has Everything". 
• Argo City, mentioned by Daron-Vex, is the birthplace of Supergirl. The name Argo was taken from Superman: The Animated Series, where Argo was initially introduced as Krypton's sister planet as opposed to a city.
• Mentioned briefly by Kem are Rondors, which are a species of land animals native to Krypton, featured in some Golden Age stories. 

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Krypton, Season 1, Episode 8: Savage Night

I really think that if Adam Strange showed some real personality or some real capabilities at being a  hero, I'd be more invested in his character journey throughout this episode. As an avid comic-book reader, I'm already familiar with the character of Adam Strange, and I root for him thanks to that vague association. But Krypton's Adam Strange have been shown, time and time again, that he's... honestly not that good. He's nice, sure, but when he was blinked back to the present day (or the future, I guess) he gives this long, long speech about how saving space-time is his destiny, even though he stole the Zeta Beam Device and insists on going on it alone despite there being the potential of them sending someone more capable. Add that to how he's clearly making things up on the fly and has no real solutions to offer Seg-El and his Kryptonian buddies, and I find it honestly hard to root for Adam Strange and his delusions of grandeur, if we're taking Adam as a character solely based on his appearances in Krypton. Add that to Kem's not-wrong "stop talking about imaginary grandsons in the future" roaring speech, and honestly it's really hard to like Adam.

And that's without going about Adam's plan, which is to go to Daron-Vex with some sort of nebulous, ill-defined plan to get him and Brainiac to succeed as long as Seg-El is outside of Kandor when it happens, a plan that doesn't seem to work as the episode ends with Daron-Vex carted off by Black Zero.

At least he sort of redeemed himself at the end of the episode, right? The dual gut-punch of Adam jumping in the way to finally do something heroic instead of just stand around and drop Easter Eggs, as well as little Ona being used as a living bomb by Brainiac is a pretty powerful shot. Yes, it's a very cheap way for us to get a 'the stakes are HIGH!' moment by killing a little innocent child, but it's still pretty effective. I'm not quite sure just why the Voice of Brainiac chose Ona to do it in spite of showing an interest in her... is it because Ona asked one too many questions?

Meanwhile, the Kandorian Resistance (tm) is divided up into two groups in this episode as they go to take down the Voice of Brainiac, who, according to one of the scripture-tattooed priest ladies, is eating babies and turning the embryos into energy that he can feed on, Matrix style. Which genuinely feels like it came out of nowhere. Seg, Lyta and Nyssa go off to recover the body of Dev-Em and then use the Fortress of Solitude to cure him and use him as an entry-way to hack into Brainiac, while Jayna and Dru-Zod go off to talk to the leader of Black Zero, Jax-Ur (who is a woman). Jax-Ur's price for Black Zero's help? Dev-Em, which honestly no one, not even his own daughter, is going to contest.

And the Black Zero would really felt like it mattered a lot more if we actually see them doing... anything at all? I guess they were all sort of off-screen. Anyway, Val manages to free Dev-Em from Brainiac's control, and judging by the scenes, might start up a (sigh) love triangle sub-plot. Can I just say how utterly silly it is for them to leave Lyta, one of their strongest fighters and a soldier that has been assigned to the city not a couple of days ago, behind, just in service of a teary-eyed "yay Dev is alive" scene? Jayna gets to utterly be a badass in that corridor scene, while Seg and Zod ends up confronting the Voice of Rao and dropping him down the Genesis Chamber. It seems like an awful stupid thing for them (other than Zod) to just write him off as dead, though.

In other news, Jayna decides that Zod wants to rule Krypton because... Zod was honest to her about being imprisoned in the Phantom Zone? It's a great scene for Jayna to notice that Zod is suspicious, and might not be completely altruistic. It's another to make the leap from "I was in prison for a coup because of shitty leaders, the very same thing we are doing now" to "he is trying to rule us!" Overall, it's a pretty episode, one with a lot of action scenes and some decently-acted scenes, but all the Adam Strange stuff and just how all over the place Brainiac makes this a bit more of an iffier episode than I would've liked.

DC Easter Eggs Corner:

• While they are unseen and remain as disembodied voices, Adam identifies the people he's talking to in the present-day as Sardath and Alana. The two of them, in the comics, are Adam's closest allies in the planet Rann, with the cantankerous Sardath being sort of a mentor figure and Alana being his eventual love interest. 

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Krypton, Season 1, Episode 9: Hope

Well, this episode... certainly raises the stakes, yeah? And this is where I really wished Krypton had treated its characters more like, well, characters as opposed to moving pieces on a chess-board in service of plot. Because a lot of the motivations of the characters ends with me shrugging it off because, well, why not? Add that to some very nebulous characters like the Cythonnite cult or Jax-Ur or the Black Zero or whoever's leading the Sagittaris that we barely spend any time with, and it really ends up getting hard to be invested in the well-doing of these characters beyond the general sense of "oh, these characters are doing something". The really generic 'hope' speeches from Val-El to Seg-El doesn't really work as motivation either.

And basically, the whole point of this episode is a huge internal conflict for the Kryptonians. Adam Strange and Ona remain dead (although I wouldn't rule out Zeta Beam hijinks) and this motivates Seg to... do... something? It's never really clear what Seg's big plan is, but he certainly get in the way of General Zod and Lyta Zod as they try to unleash Doomsday to take down Brainiac. Seg and Jayna will not allow General Zod to rule Kandor with fear... and honestly? I don't really buy any of Seg or Jayna's motivations, since the show doesn't actually sell the whole "General Zod is evil and wants to rule the world" beyond the audience perceptions knowing that, hey, General Zod is traditionally a villain. Honestly, judging Krypton by its own merits... Seg ends up feeling like Adam Strange earlier in the season where he rants about ideals but never really offers any sort of concrete solution. Jayna is likewise hypocritical,  but at least Lyta calls her out on it. The Zod family drama is highly all over the place in this episode, and despite the relatively consistent performances by the actors it's not a storyline that honestly really engages.

It doesn't matter at all, though, because Zod and Jayna end up fighting to the death, a fight interrupted by Lyta and allowing Jayna to escape. Meanwhile, the Cythonnites apparently broke Doomsday's pod upon moving it, ensuring that Doomsday will be unleashed, and so the Cythonnites threaten to kill Seg and Nyssa, while they move Doomsday to Kandor to unleash it upon Brainiac when he comes to collect and bottle up the city.

Somewhere in-between this, Seg and Nyssa manages to broker an alliance between Black Zero and the Sagittari, although it ends to be for naught because Brainiac easily manipulates the two groups into killing each other shortly before the climax. The Voice of Rao threatens to drop Seg down the building, but Nyssa charges in, stabs the Voice with the convenient Chekov's Alien-Crystal-USB-of-Hope that Seg gave her... but Brainiac reassembles himself in all his green-skinned glory. Oh, and somewhere along this, Nyssa and Seg are now an item and I genuinely didn't realize when this happened. Somewhere after Seg's ranting to Lyta that she has disappointed him or something? I dunno. Krypton's romantic storylines are never really told well.

Oh, there's also a sub-plot with Jax-Ur and Daron-Vex, with Jax-Ur finding access to the council's secret stash of high-class people clones, while Daron-Vex escapes but gets shocked remotely by Jax-Ur. It's... it's an interesting storyline, of course, but it also feels like half-baked world-building because I genuinely don't give a shit if Jax-Ur and Daron-Vex become Brainiac casualties next episode due to how little they are actually treated as characters.

Overall, the episode builds up to the climactic season finale with Brainiac finally arriving on Krypton, but there are so many moving parts and so few characters that I genuinely care about that I'm honestly not very optimistic for Krypton's finale. There is a lot of thought put into Krypton, but so much of it feels more like people acting out a rough plot draft instead of a character-centric story, and so much of it also relies on pre-existing knowledge about DC characters that doesn't quite gel with how the characters are portrayed on-screen. I dunno. I've tried to cautiously give Krypton the benefit of the doubt, but ironically it's the episode titled 'Hope' that makes me lose the very same thing in it.

DC Easter Eggs Corner:

• Among Dev-Em's password is the phrase "Flamebird", which is the secret identity that Jimmy Olsen uses when he and Superman entered the Bottle City of Kandor. Inspired by Batman and Robin, Superman and Jimmy adopted the identities of "Nightwing" and "Flamebird" and acted as superheroes there. Various other superheroes connected to Krypton would later adopt the identity Flamebird as well. 

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Krypton, Season 1, Episode 10: The Phantom Zone

Huh, that was a season finale. Krypton's final episode is thankfully a lot more solid compared to the previous setup episode, which was extremely messy. In a sense, the tenth episode of Krypton doesn't really fix a lot of the problems I already have with it -- namely, the fact that Seg-El is honestly a character that I don't really care about even after spending an entire season with him -- but Zod, Brainiac, Nyssa, Lyta and Val-El all deliver compelling enough performances to entertain me throughout this final episode of Krypton's first season.

Visually, Krypton manages to deliver a pretty neat showcase as Brainiac's giant skullship descend upon Kandor and use giant tentacles to ram down all over the city, promising apocalypse. Of course, this being a TV show, the main focus is still dealing with Brainiac in the flesh, who has landed upon Kandor and is surveying his victory. Sure, there was a brief moment of neat CGI spaceship 

battle with the doomed Sagittari, but ultimately most of the conflict happens on the ground.

Most of our heroes end up running around trying to figure out how to stop Brainiac. Seg doesn't really give any sort of a plan beyond shouting really hard that NO HE MUST SAVE EVERYONE HERE AND NOW. Thankfully, General Zod has a better plan in tow, which is to pluck Val-El out from the Phantom Zone. It's a bit of a weird ass-pull, admittedly, to have Val-El apparently disappear into the Phantom Zone while faking his death in episode one, and that the Phantom Zone's weird "beyond space and time" bit causes Zod and Val-El to basically hang out together while imprisoned together. It's a bit of a wonkiness to it all, but I can let it slide. And then... Val-El turns out to be as clueless as Seg is in taking Brainiac down. Okay?

Then Zod decides to just trade Val-El and his knowledge of the future to Brainiac. Knowledge of the future which Val has, but Zod doesn't? How does this Phantom Zone really work? All of these new plot points are just bombarded to us with no real explanation. I mean, it could be worse, I suppose, but it really feels like clumsy storytelling that only Colin Salmon and Ian McElhinney's earnest acting manages to sell. Zod's confrontation with Brainiac is neat enough, but I'm not sure how much of it is planned, because Zod tricks Brainiac into standing on the platform that causes him to get sucked into the Phantom Zone, disabling his master ship.

Oh, and Brainiac pulls Seg-El with his tentacles into the Phantom Zone with him. It's kinda sad, I suppose, but if I had to be honest... I don't really care that much, considering Seg has been sort of a non-character all season long, mostly happening to be a storytelling device as a point of view instead of really working out as a proper character. It's a bold move, for sure, ending the first season with the possible death (undeath?) of the main lead, but if I'm being honest I don't really care.

The B-plots in this episode involve Lyta giving a big speech to drive Dev-Em and his shiny metal arm and the rest of the Sagittari to fight back, and then angsting over sending them to their deaths. Nyssa also goes to save her baby from the gestation chamber with a huge streak of motherly instinct which I don't think has ever been foreshadowed in any shape or form. Jax-Ur shows up and tells Nyssa that she's apparently one of the clones from the Vara Protocol, activated after the original Nyssa-Vex died. Okay? This ends up with Jax-Ur and Nyssa sort of starting a brand new alliance with Val-El to resist the reign of Zod.

Because stopping Brainiac ends up basically stopping the bottling of Kandor and the subsequent destruction of Krypton, and Superman's cape gets transformed into a Zod-insignia cape. Thanks to their victory over Brainiac, the Kryptonians have changed the timeline, forming a timeline where General Dru-Zod gives this huge speech about how all of Krypton and the rest of the universe will KNEEL BEFORE ZOD. I'm not actually being sarcastic here -- Zod's speech is actually pretty goddamn awesome.

There's a lot of random plotlines introduced in this first season that end up honestly being thrown out of the window or saved for season two, though. We've got Doomsday being a complete non-entity throughout the entire finale, while I was waiting for the inevitable breakout... which only really happens in the final scene. Why even introduce Doomsday as a huge plot point if he's not going to factor into the story? Likewise, Jayna has disappeared off stage left, not seen at all in the entire episode. We also get weird ominous scenes of Adam Strange apparently being teleported into a frozen Earth city in Brainiac's collection? It's weird.

Overall, Krypton ends its first season with an okay finale, all things considered. It's just that the entire season, while clearly the burden of a lot of distilled stories from DC comics that are relatively faithfully adapted, still ends up feeling entirely lukewarm. Maybe it's the fact that Seg-El and Adam Strange, who we spend a fair chunk of the screentime around, are both pretty bland and uninteresting characters. Maybe it's the fact that the finale randomly discards a bunch of plot points to focus on a bunch of new ones. There's definitely a pacing problem, for sure. Ultimately, while Krypton isn't unwatcheable, it feels dreary and dry. What it did right are the visuals, though, and as much as I decry the introdumps, it does the world-building (plot holes notwithstanding) pretty well. Overall, I can't say that I'm super excited for season two, though.

DC Easter Eggs Corner:

• "Kneel before Zod", as mentioned before is, of course, the iconic catchphrase of General Zod's first live-action adaptation in Superman II.
• Cygnus 4019 is Planet Salvation, the mysterious planet that the Earth government sends all impounded prisoners to during the Salvation Run storyline, which happened around the Infinite Crisis era. As Zod alludes to here, the comic book version of Cygnus 4019 is filled with strangely advanced Apokoliptan technology despite supposedly being a deserted planet. 
• Doomsday hammering at the edge of his pod seems to be somewhat inspired by the lead-up in the comics to the Death of Superman story arc, where for the four or five issues preceding Doomsday being unleashed, each issue would end with a page of Doomsday's fist hammering onto the walls of his prison.