« cool Save Farscape Campaign stuff | Main Index | Dubya a B5 fan?!? »
12/04/2002: about having Roswell flashbacks and some other stuff
Originally I wanted to post a couple of episode comments days ago, but somehow I don't seem to be that good at finishing started blog posts when I intend to, so here are a few brief, late thoughts. Some spoilers for Smallville 2x10 Skinwalker and Birds of Prey 1x08 Lady Shiva ahead...
And totally unrelated to any of that, a short, seasonally induced rant: It would be really great if people were not posting generic holiday greetings for whatever holiday to large lists, especially not to (supposedly) fiction-only lists. On combined fiction and discussion lists I mind holiday mails less, at least as long as they are vaguely related to the list's topic -- popular around the US Thanksgiving date seem to be mails like "thanks to all authors for the great fiction you posted during the last year" or something along similar lines, even though holiday blanket-feedback isn't something I would do -- but really, I don't need to get my inbox filled with some random holiday greetings, quoted poems, etc. It just makes no sense to post these things to huge fandom lists. Chances are a lot of people don't even share that holiday the poster seems to care so much about, that s/he needs to let hundreds of others know about it. For example, Thanksgiving isn't on the same date everywhere (here usually the first Sunday in October is thought of as Thanksgiving), and here it is no big deal, you don't celebrate on its nominal date. The only time I've seen anything Thanksgiving related were altar decorations in churches.
Am I the only one who thinks that Indian cave paintings have become sort of trite as a plot? In Roswell cave paintings gave the teenage aliens also clues about their identity, there was the Dead Zone Episode Shaman with some similarities (no aliens there, though), and of course the X-Files did it too.
Hope posted some interesting comments on the episode, and I agree in part about the continuity and the foreshadowing, but for me the annoying things almost outweighed what I liked about it. Unlike some other people I don't mind that in Smallville foreshadowing can be less than subtle, I think that comes in part with the territory of the superhero genre. It's just not the most subtle set-up. And like Hope I liked that in Smallville foreshadowing the "like brothers" theme is so prominent (though I honestly didn't notice that their cave paintings representations were physically joined, but it's a cool detail), however for me the other parts of this "origin myth/prophecy", mostly ruined the positive things.
I don't have a firm grip on comic canon and the intricacies it will undoubtly have developed over the decades (I'm constantly confused by just looking at DC canon overviews, and I'm still not sure whether it's consistent if you're just enough of an expert, or if it is an X-File type of continuity), so it's entirely possible, if not even likely, that there are multiple comic story lines where Kryptonians visit Earth prior to the Smallville meteor shower, and that the cave painting story might be a valid variant of the usual Superman origin story. It also probably depends on what version you see as "real," I mean, at least some versions seem to have a real proliferation of surviving superbeings from Krypton (weren't there even super-pets?). Though I think most of those were pre-crisis and are not part of the current continuity. It's a fairly safe assumption that there are enough convoluted "official" destruction of Krypton story lines that this current Smallville twist won't be that out of place. So I don't think that looking at larger Superman mythology Hope's argument for why she dislikes this version really holds up. She says (quote from this post):
"First of all, Clark is supposed to be unique in the universe, the last son of Krypton. This Anasazi-rip off storyline places another Kryptonian on earth before Clark, meteor mutations before Clark's appearance, and not only does this introduce the possibility of part-Kryptonian cousins roaming the place, but they gave themselves a cheap out for any kind of mutation they can imagine. I understand the need for a conflict vector, but I think they could have done it much better, without undercutting Clark's singularity in the universe."
I am not sure that in Superman canon he is always singular, or that this is really such a defining element. However, I also dislike the implication that there were Kryptonians on earth before Clark, and mutations that predate the Smallville meteor shower. Since Smallville rewrites Superman canon once again it has the chance to keep the mythology simple, and to avoid the convoluted parts of the story that plague at least some parts of the comics canon. IMO, the Smallville explanation for the Kryptonite, i.e. that it just came down in a meteor shower and lies around Smallville, is a good example for keeping it simple, yet giving the known an interesting twist. Making earth a regular destination for Kryptonians complicates the origin story without need, and I'm doubtful they'll really resolve those problems in a coherent fashion. I mean, if another alien visited earth previously and predicted Clark's arrival, how did he know of their planet's destruction in advance? Are they going to introduce timetravel? Precognition? I hope not. To complicate the origin story in this manner pushes Smallville away from "teen drama" towards superhero sf aspects of the source, and I don't think it fits the Smallville all that well.
Another thing I didn't get about the last SV episode was how they ended the Kyla plot, or rather how they ended Kyla. That came across as missing some essential parts. It seemed as if Clark didn't even race to bring her to a hospital to attempt to save her, and that was very unlike Clark. Also everybody, including her relatives seemed to get over her death awfully fast.
About last weeks Birds of Prey I can only say that I think it would have made much more sense if the woman killed by Batgirl had been really Lady Shiva, and her sister had taken up her secret identity as a supervillain and vowed to avenge her. As it was presented, Lady Shiva survived and I had to believe that Helena was friends with a costumed meta-human thief in high school, who after the death of her sister turned from stealing to killing. And Helena's mother, who then still lived and supposedly was famous in the costumed criminals scene, never noticed the part time occupation of her daughter's best friend. Still it was better than the last episode, Split, where it was clear from the start that the friendly co-vigilante also was the ruthless villain, so that our super heroines came across as fabulously clueless, and the story overall was yawn-worthy.
