Icarus

DVD, Smallville S10 (Icarus)

I was as conflicted about this one as the citizens of Metropolis are about vigilantes, because when it sticks to Clark and Lois, and their super friends it works, but when it moves from that into evil villainy and people talking about themselves as heroes it loses its way and much of its lustre. It was going quite well, even with all the mushy romantic stuff (I'd have thought Clark would be a bit miffed that he'd gone to all the trouble of booking an exclusive restaurant months in advance, a delivery for a huge bunch of flowers, and a special evening in which to propose, only for the fickle Lois not to get the hint and make a proposal of her own: a quiet evening at home!), and I was as fooled by Tess' cover of getting both Lois and Clark to Watchtower under the pretence of upgrading their retina scans only to find the whole band of extended cast there to celebrate with them in a surprise party. I say the whole band, but it was actually only Hawkman, Stargirl (making her debut this season, I can't remember?), Dr. Emil and Queen. But that's not the only time we see the greater hero clan due to the last flight of the Hawkman in his bid to save Lois from the evil General Wilson (who's 'beyond death's stroke' - so he's Deathstroke), crashing and burning and laid to rest in Egypt we can assume, though it's hard to feel sorry since his whole schtick is that he comes back to life, or is reborn, or something along those general lines, though he won't be around to fight the evil with Clark. Anyway, in the solemn procession to his burial you can make out hooded characters behind in the colours of Aquaman, Flash and Cyborg, but I don't know why we didn't get the actors.

Black Canary has a minor role (I have no idea if it's the same actress who portrayed her before), so why not the others - we had Aquaman not so long ago? Once again it's easy to see they were forced into more scenes of dialogue to stretch the budget further, and once again these tend to be the better parts of the episode, more meaningful than the occasional brushes with action, such as Hawkman and Wilson's fight in LutherCorp. There are times when we see the horror of injustice, such as Queen saving some woman from an attacker, whom he then chases into a busy street where the criminal claims Queen attacked him, prompting the general public to start beating him. That was some good stuff, especially as I'd forgotten about the evil shadow of darkness that is apparently hanging over the world, turning people's hearts bad. It would have been more effective if the situation on the streets had got so tense that the people were taking matters into their own hands, ironically condemning the 'vigilantes' by performing their own acts of vigilantism upon them, failing to see the hypocrisy of their actions, but things are dragged down a little by going away from the real and heading into silly fantasy territory with the evil at work claimed to have been responsible for such events as the Inquisition or the Third Reich, when I'm not sure it's right to suggest that such things were more than the awfulness of humanity (even if humanity can indeed be influenced by external evil, so maybe they did have a point after all…).

With General Wilson self-healing and having no compelling motivation beyond catching and interrogating all the known heroes' friends he doesn't stand up to scrutiny, nor is he given time to shine in the role of evil protector, and some of the discussion between characters where they're so ingrained in referring to themselves as superheroes and such, is jarring when they're achieving so much reality in the way people react, or in the personal scenes. It has ever been the way, sadly, and the series does tend to sabotage its good stories sometimes by bouncing down into the realm of the comic book rather than filling out a story from a solid, believable setup. It's quite nice to see Clark and Lois together, whatever the context, and their band of merry men and women have become more of a family than in the past - the series has never succeeded (not since the early days), in making it a family as so many other series' have (the Treks, 'SG-1,' etc), because they don't have the space to keep all these super people around, there isn't the time to create fulfilling stories that feature all of them logically. So Stargirl's just there because she is, and Aquaman isn't because he isn't, and they've never remotely been consistent with an impression of the wider Justice League working as a team. Their reach exceeded their grasp.

Or is it their grasp exceeded their reach? Either way they cram in a number of characters, including Cat at The Daily Planet, but unfortunately the story nosedives and even leaves us on a cliffhanger with all the heroes that bore Hawkman to his resting place, knocked out by some small white pyramid that pops up out of the sand. There are also inconsistencies such as Cat changing her entire worldview based on a short conversation with Lois who mentions her son and that's enough to convince the younger woman she should not give Lois away to the VRA Gestapo that have rounded up so many of Queen and Oliver's associates. Now she's on The Blur's side? Maybe she was just going with a gut instinct to trust Lois rather than committing her undying loyalty to the enemies of the VRA, but it was too pat and easy. Before you know it Clark and the others are going dark, shutting down Watchtower and he, Oliver and Carter all find themselves breaking into Wilson's office at the same time, making for some comedy. I really wanted to like this episode, and for much of the time I did, even the Stasi-like interviews of Wilson's subordinate as she tries to learn where their most wanted are. But I have to concede it lost out somewhere around there and never recovered, failing to provide an ending on a par with the opening half. Even a flashback scene to remind us who Chloe is, and a gift from her to celebrate Lois' engagement can't keep it from degenerating. Not that it fell far, it's still mostly enjoyable, it just fails to deliver on the setup. I hope this isn't an indication of how the series itself ends!

**