Prophecy

DVD, Smallville S10 (Prophecy)

It begins with much promise, Lois becoming Super-Lane thanks to a dubious wedding gift from Jor-El, while Oliver gets to the Bow of Orion, the weapon that can defeat the coming Darkseid, but it all soon gets bogged down with multiple characters and fantastical directions that have no explanation. For a start, it was good to have Terence Stamp finally returning to voice Kal-El's pa at the Fortress of Solitude, because without his presence it's been an empty place. It was also nice to see Kara again, a chance to finish out her story and send her to the future thanks to her Legion ring, clear the playing field so we don't have her helping Clark against Darkseid, or Queen, as it's likely to be. Even Star Girl was okay in her brief appearance. And the Toy Man, Winslow Shott, was well played again from his prison cell. But then we have a whole other team of villains introduced - I say introduced, but they were only seen sitting round a table, so whether they'll be prominent in the last episode, or were mere names to throw up there that the comic lovers are going to be excited by, I don't know. If that was the case, and they were only Toy Man's little gang and have no further importance, then what was the point of having them at all? I still don't understand his plan to take control of Metropolis' water by buying up businesses that are on the line that governs it, or some such nonsense. It was just confusing and bizarre, seemingly all setup for Lois to become a danger to Clark. And we know he's not going to die in the penultimate episode by the hand of his bride!

Talking of which, we have to have the last melodramatic moment of cold feet from Lois, however selfless it seems: she's realised, as if it would take that long to realise, that marrying Clark would make her his weakness to be exploited, but what's the change? She would still be a weakness if anyone knew who The Blur was, and though it's laudable for her to be concerned that every moment he spends with her is one less person saved, it's an issue that must have been discussed between them long ago, surely! Clark knows he can't save everyone, he's not there to be a slave to his powers, but to use them. He can save some, but he can't be there for everybody all the time, he has to have a life, otherwise he'd just be a robot. His gift is to help in the way that he can, not give up being himself, much like we can all give to charity, but that doesn't mean we give everything we have and feel guilty at any moment when we're not working towards that goal. I put it down to last minute hysterics and the need for some kind of cliffhanger just before the finale. We know it'll all go off without a hitch, there'll be a big wedding, hopefully as many characters as possible from the series' past will be there, and either it'll be interrupted by Darkseid or it'll be the culmination of the series, post-battle. Either way, it was just a soapy way to create false jeopardy between the characters.

It is those two characters that have made the last couple of seasons worthwhile, because when they've focused down onto this pair, they've shown a different, more interesting side to Clark, far from the circular 'romance' disasters of prior seasons that was one of the most irritating tropes of the series. And this episode is no different, with the potential to have a lot of good stuff coming from Lois receiving Clark's powers and him having to go around powerless. That was more than enough for an episode, but they only touch on it in the scene where they're staked out outside the only business that hasn't sold to Marionette Ventures - she uses Super-hearing for the first time, and tellingly, though she has the abilities, it shows how much work it took for Clark to train himself to use them properly, not to mention the moral questions around them, and it's more than just doing 'the squinty head tilt': Lois is disheartened by the number of cries for help she needs to ignore, and they liken it to triage. Clark's learned to prioritise and it's a revealing moment for her and for us that explains why he isn't constantly dashing around twenty-four hours a day. But this is as far as that exploration goes while they force the story down a path to Lois coming to kill Clark, which happens seconds before sunset when the powers will be reversed, so the power of the story is watered down by a desire to throw too many more things in there and spoil the broth.

The episode would have been fine with Lois learning what it's like to be Clark, and I'm surprised they'd never done a switch like that before - maybe they had, but I don't remember, though Clark's certainly lost his powers before, as we're reminded by the talk of Gold Kryptonite, which Oliver has dug up in order to use against him now that he's fully under Darkseid's dominion. His position as trying to get the Bow and cure himself from his evil influences (the Bow was Orion's, son of Darkseid who chose the righteous path of light), would have been a satisfactory B-plot, even if he hadn't run into Kara. It's all a little too busy and a bit awkward as they cram in everything they want to, too much, before the finale comes a-calling. Then Granny Goodness makes a reappearance, destroy's the Bow (which is like some prize at the end of a dungeon in 'The Legend of Zelda'), and finishes Oliver as a good guy.

The idea of getting Jor-El's blessing for a Kryptonian 'life union' was good for the mythology, but daft when you think about it, because Jor-El isn't really there, it's only a program of him or something like that, so why would Clark feel the need to consult a computer program? Then you have to wonder how Toy Man was able to create a device that would take over someone so quickly and easily that they'd do his bidding. And while he had Lois there, why not command her to break him out? Unless he likes being in prison and it's just another game to him, the same as the reason Clark suggested he hadn't told anyone of Clark's Blur identity. It wasn't very sensible of Lois to agree to being controlled by Toy Man in the first place, especially when she had the power to go and stop the villains - so little of it made sense, either narratively or for the characters.

I just hope that they got out all of this stuff before the finale to clear the decks, clear their minds and do a proper, rip-roaring conclusion to the ten years of a series that could easily have bowed out long before that, but had somehow struggled on through all the 'pain' of the middle years after they lost the promise of the premise, then began to find it again by making it about Lois and Clark in Metropolis. One sad thing is not seeing the Kent Farm at all, only hearing Clark's found a buyer, so there seems a chance it could be out of the picture and won't appear in the final episode. That would be a great shame, considering it's almost a character in itself, but I get that the theme is Clark moving beyond his childhood upbringing and coming into the man he's supposed to be, out from the under the wing of both his birth Father, Jor-El, and his adopted Father, Jonathan Kent, while still respecting all they brought him to. We even get a good view of the Superman costume that's been waiting for him in the Fortress. I can't remember how that came into being, whether it was made or was within the Fortress always waiting for him to come to his destiny, but I didn't think even that looked all that great. But that's getting into the nitpicky, and it's too close to the end to worry about minor things, you just have to go with it and hope for some good themes along the way, as this season has managed to do on a number of occasions. We'll see if the writers can get their act together for one last time, or whether I'll be wishing Darkseid had vanquished the Man of Steel and put us out of our misery.

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