The Borg Take On "Camelot/3000" In Legends Of Tomorrow!

The Good: Decent plot development, Special effects, Most of the performances, Fun and dangerous tone
The Bad: Virtually no character development
The Basics: Legends Of Tomorrow goes forward and back in time with "Camelot/3000," which allows Ray Palmer and Stargirl to become real heroes!


One of the issues for television shows these days is that the television-watching audience has become far more sophisticated than they used to be. Viewers today are much more savvy about serialized arcs, so they tend to be able to handle long arcs and they appreciate a good story that develops over quite a few episodes. Because of the binge-watching phenomenon, individual episodes have to stand on their own and hold up as part of a larger season's story better than they used to. Legends Of Tomorrow has been having some trouble in its second season finding a flow that works for the show episode to episode. One hilarious episode is followed by an intense and violent episode, which is followed by a dark, but predictable, one. "Camelot/3000" treads toward the serious, which is good given how dire the stakes are becoming in the season.

"Camelot/3000" follows on the events of "Turncoat" (reviewed here!), which had a pretty long denoument with Rip Hunter returning to the Legion Of Doom as their tool, while the Legends celebrated Christmas aboard the Waverider. "Camelot/3000" returns Rip Hunter, villain, to the narrative and allows the Legends Of Tomorrow to become a part of Arthurian myth.

Opening in Detroit in the year 3000, Rip Hunter arrives where he meets Charles McNider. McNider does not give up the fragment of the Spear Of Destiny that he possesses, but Hunter realizes that it is probably inside the scientist. Arriving at 3000, Heywood and Jiwe disagree on the nature of their relationship. Jiwe is upset because McNider was Dr. Mid-Nite in her Justice Society Of America and after they discover McNider's corpse, Jiwe clashes with Lance. Lily Stein's daughter created an algorithm for finding the pieces of the Spear Of Destiny and it points the Waverider crew to 570 Britain. While in 3000, though, Dr. Stein stole something from Dr. Mid-Nite's laboratory. When in Britain, the Legends encounter Guinevere and Palmer talks his way into the court of King Arthur. At Camelot, the Legends find Stargirl acting as Merlyn and she explains how the J.S.A.'s final mission went down.

When King Arthur tracks down his mysterious Black Knight, the knight turns out to be Damien Darhk. Darhk and Rip Hunter take control of Arthur's mind and hold Camelot ransom for the fragment of the Spear that Courtney (Stargirl) hid. Fortunately, the object that Stein stole from Mid-Nite's lab is the telepathic control device Rip Hunter is using. Stein uses Rory as a test subject, but the test only informs Stein that Hunter and Darhk are coming in force on Camelot. As Guinevere steps up to lead the remaining knights, the Legends search for the last piece of the Spear to take it from Stargirl. When Heywood checks his manuscript, he realizes Palmer will die in the past and the Legends have to decide whether or not to leave him and save reality or let Palmer become a hero.

By the point of "Camelot/3000," Legends Of Tomorrow has created a web of temporal anomalies that are pretty extraordinary. It seems like a huge stretch to believe that the season can be resolved without it actually undoing the entire season. The adventure in Camelot for Legends Of Tomorrow is, at the very least, fun.

"Camelot/3000" unfortunately minimizes Sarah Lance. Lance continues to get played as a one-note character. It's fun watching Lance seduce historical women and the chemistry she has with Guinevere is good. But it seems like that is the only note the writers are playing with the character. Lance has the potential to be a great leader, but most of the second season, she has been relegated to a simple assassin or temporal lech. Fortunately, by the end of "Camelot/3000" writer Anderson Mackenzie finds more for her to do as an inspirational leader.

Legends Of Tomorrow smartly raises the stakes with the big picture - as Lance recognizes it - with the last fragment being put in play. The addition of a mind-controlled army - it is like a Borg invasion! - could have been a mess, but Legends Of Tomorrow manages to pull it off by having the characters play to their strengths. Dr. Stein is not a traditional fighter, so having him try to hijack the technology Hunter is using to win the day makes a lot of sense. The episode makes surprisingly good use of Stargirl and Ray Palmer . . . two characters who have been either entirely undeveloped (in Courtney's case) or underused - Ray Palmer hasn't had a truly decent arc since Hawkgirl left at the end of the first season.

While "Camelot/3000" has a long build-up, the resolution to the episode is well-executed, even if some aspects of it are predictable. While it might be tough to believe the season might not simply get undone in some fashion by its end, "Camelot/3000" is almost enough to make the viewer believe that the Legends actually have the potential to end up as legendary characters!

For other works with Caity Lotz, please be sure to visit my reviews of:
"Invasion!" - Arrow
"Invasion!" - The Flash
Legends Of Tomorrow - Season 1

[Knowing that single episodes are an inefficient way to get episodes, it's worth looking into Legends Of Tomorrow - The Complete Second Season on DVD or Blu-Ray, which is also a better economical choice than buying individual episodes. Read my review of the sophomore season of the time traveling hero team here!
Thanks!]

6/10

For other television and movie reviews, please visit my Movie Review Index Page for an organized listing!

© 2017 W.L. Swarts. May not be reprinted without permission.
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Can Open, Worms Everywhere: "The Race Of His Life" Ends The Second Season Of The Flash!

The Good: Most of the acting, Special effects, Moments of character
The Bad: Terrible plot
The Basics: The Flash reaches its second season finale with "The Race Of His Life," an episode that once again puts a ridiculous spin on a simple problem.


Season finale time is upon us and this season one of the hardest finales to execute is coming from The Flash. The episode is entitled "The Race Of His Life" and the burden upon it is one that will reverberate into the future seasons of The Flash. The fundamental problem facing the executive producers of The Flash is that the franchise has three truly great villains: the Reverse Flash, Zoom, and Captain Cold. In the books, Captain Cold gets reformed post-Forever Evil and that has essentially already happened thanks to his role in Legends Of Tomorrow. Eobard Thawne - the Reverse Flash - was dispatched in the first season finale of The Flash and while there are implications he will continue to return as an out-of-time temporal fragment that makes no rational sense, leaving just Zoom as a constant, menacing adversary for The Flash. Don't get me wrong; in the books, The Flash has a ton of adversaries and when Mirror Master pops up, I'll be thrilled if they do it right and I'm already dreading the dumbed-down PG version The Flash will be forced to present with Murmur should Geoff Johns ambitiously try to bring that serial killer to the small screen. But villains from The Flash make for tough season-long or series-long arcs for network television (if The Flash was on AMC, I'd have different thoughts on the matter) and the Metahuman Of The Week style has already proven to be a very unsatisfying concept for The Flash, which has an audience that can easily handle serialization. So, going into "The Race Of His Life," the burden on The Flash is to satisfactorily thwart Zoom and set up the third season in a way that makes viewers want to return.

It failed.

"The Race Of His Life" picks up in the last second of "Invincible" (reviewed here!) and given the climactic nature of that episode and the way it reverberates into "The Race Of His Life," it is impossible to discuss without some conversation of where that episode ended. After all, "The Race Of His Life" opens in the wake of Barry Allen losing his father and the shock of that leaves him appropriately shaken at the outset of the season finale.

With Henry Allen killed in front of him, Barry Allen is furious. The Flash and Zoom begin to race through Central City when Zoom abruptly appears to kill the version who is fighting Barry. Zoom taunts Barry with the idea that The Flash is almost ready to completely become him. Following Henry's funeral, The Flash and Zoom square off and Zoom challenges Barry to a race. The S.T.A.R. Labs team, however, knows exactly what Zoom's trap is; a device was stolen from Mercury Labs that could be used to destroy Earths throughout the multiverse - which is the vision Vibe saw previously. The speed from Zoom and Barry running will power the device and allow Zoom to destroy Earth-2.

To protect Earth and the Flash, the S.T.A.R. Labs team knocks The Flash out and sticks him in a prison cell in order to keep him from racing Zoom. The rest of the team attempts to entrap Zoom and when they throw him back to Earth-2, Joe West is pushed through the breach with him. When Wally West finds out, he rescues Barry and The Flash demands the right to race Zoom to save Joe's life.

"The Race Of His Life" has moments of true greatness, but it falls down ridiculously fast. Opening with the sudden macguffin of the Mercury Labs device that can destroy Earths across the multiverse and Zoom informing Barry just how he can defeat him, there are elements to the episode that are tragically bad. Zoom telling Barry how to defeat him opens an instant plot problem with the episode. The Flash is told by Zoom that Barry has to be willing to kill his own temporal remnant and that being the case, all Barry has to do to stop Zoom from executing his plan to power the world destroyer (why the hell does Mercury Labs have this thing anyway?!) is make Zoom believe he is dead already. In other words, create a temporal remnant of The Flash, then have him killed in front of Zoom so Zoom doesn't have The Flash to rely upon. Similarly, Barry has had numerous experiences now with time travel; there is virtually no temporal consequence to Barry going back in time a day to save his father's life from Zoom. Or going back in time, creating a temporal remnant of Henry Allen and letting Zoom kill the temporal remnant while the proper Henry Allen remains alive somewhere safe.

So, up until the last act, "The Race Of His Life" is wonky at best; before the episode turns away from its potential to completely trash the series. The Flash takes a dive, as if the executive producers realized that they had shot their wad on the potential of the series far too early. The best analogy I have for what is happening with The Flash now is Glee. Glee reached its peak success early with a cast that was solidly constructed; the moment its first season succeeded, the subsequent seasons should have been re-constructed to make each season a semester of the school year to keep the cast solid. It would have given the show four more years before the producers had to deal with reinventing the show. In a similar way, the second season of The Flash banked heavily on keeping Zoom around and thwarting him in "The Race Of His Life" . . . without having a strong idea of how to get there.

The special effects in "The Race Of His Life" are great, as is the performance between Grant Gustin and Candice Patton. Danielle Panabaker is unfortunately stiff as Dr. Snow and Zoom is ridiculously monolithic in the episode. Ultimately, "The Race Of His Life" is a flawed premise with a series of leaps that make it fit poorly with what immediately came before it. The third season premiere will bear the weight of the final moments of "The Race Of His Life," but viewers will be returning to something that is already struggling to make sense of itself.

For other big season finales, please visit my reviews of:
"Legendary" - Legends Of Tomorrow
"Fast Enough" - The Flash
"Doomsday" - Doctor Who

4.5/10

For other television season and episode reviews, please visit my Television Review Index Page for an organized listing!

© 2016 W.L. Swarts. May not be reprinted without permission.
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Return Of Chronos: "White Knights" Sets Up And Continues Remarkably Well!

The Good: Fast-paced, Performances, Moments of character
The Bad: Plot-heavy, Details
The Basics: Legends Of Tomorrow returns to form with "White Knights," as the team moves on to 1986 in its quest to stop Vandal Savage.


The fear an audience has when they start a new program, rightly so, is that the show might start incredible and then go downhill. Fans of Legends Of Tomorrow might have had that concern after the show's third episode and had trepidations about "White Knights," the fourth episode of the first season. Fortunately, "White Knights" does a lot to alleviate those concerns by making for an exciting, quip-filled, hour of action-adventure television.

"White Knights" picks up directly after the climax of "Blood Ties" (reviewed here!) with the Waverider zipping off to follow its next lead on Vandal Savage. Chasing the villain through time brings the crew to 1986 and the setting takes a backseat to the characters, the performances, and some pretty cool moments of reversals. The episode continues the group dynamic of the show, though it finally gives Jefferson Jackson a few moments to shine as a character.

Arriving in 1986, the crew of the Waverider goes in search of the original file of a heavily-redacted U.S. Defense Department document with information about Vandal Savage and his whereabouts. The mission into the Pentagon starts initially well, but during the exit, Firestorm is electrocuted, Saunders is taken over by Hawkgirl and Rory flips out on some enlisted men at the Pentagon. The recovered document indicates that Savage is in the U.S.S.R., having enlisted Valentina Vostok to work on a secret project. On the trip to the U.S.S.R., the Waverider is attacked by Chronos and Hunter uses the Soviet Air Force to (apparently) dispatch of the temporal bounty hunter.

While Sara and Kendra train and Palmer and Snart attempt to make contact with Vostok, Gideon detects a temporal anomaly. Hunter and Rory investigate the anomaly and find Time Master Druce, who claims Chronos is dead. Rory tells Hunter that Druce is trying to have them all killed and that causes Hunter to rethink the entire mission. After Snart lifts the keycard to the Soviet facility at which Vostok works, Hunter returns to decline Druce's offer. Chronos, as it turns out, is very much alive. In the resulting conflict, Jackson is wounded and the team of the Waverider finds itself torn apart. Learning that Vandal Savage is attempting to create his own Firestorm, Dr. Stein infiltrates Vostok's laboratory. In the lab, Stein discovers Vostok's prototype core and Snart has to make a difficult choice when the entire mission goes south.

First off, Wentworth Miller is undeniably cool in "White Knights." From the first pocket pick to the on-screen chemistry with Stephanie Corneliussen (Valentina Vostok), Miller is an awesome actor. While Dominic Purcell might have gotten the most fun quips for the episode in, Miller plays consistently and cool throughout "White Knights" in a way that is incredibly watchable. Victor Garber is predictably wonderful in delivering his emotional monologues in "White Knights" and Arthur Darvill continues to impress and make viewers forget about his iconic Doctor Who role.

Franz Drameh is given his first real chance to shine as Jefferson Jackson and Firestorm in "White Knights." Jackson is irked by how Dr. Stein orders him around and Drameh is given the difficult task of expressing Jackson's frustration without simply coming across as a whiny twenty-something. Drameh succeeds, though his key scene is overshadowed by Garber's response scene (between Garber and Routh). Regardless, Legends Of Tomorrow is a pleasant surprise for the caliber of its acting and "White Knights" reinforces the idea that Victor Garber can act the hell out of any material he is given!

Despite the impressive force of Drameh's performance, the key scene he is given is a bit tough to stomach on a character and plot front. Chronos's weapon was so powerful, it violently split Jackson and Stein. Jackson is wounded such that he is bleeding from his stomach pretty badly, but he stops to give a vocally forceful speech to Stein (which, no doubt, required the use of much of his diaphragm strength!). Director Antonio Negret gets some other details slightly wrong, like Dr. Stein immediately speaking Russian when he takes the vocal translator pill (in its introduction, it had to be turned on before the user would speak in the language it was programmed for).

"White Knights" is cool, even if it is a bit predictable and very much a set-up episode. The episode is fast-paced and engaging, but it is not especially deep. In fact, the episode's most significant character moments that are not specific to the Legends Of Tomorrow plot come in a c-plot involving White Canary and Hawkgirl training each other. The rest of the plot-intensive episode is a pretty typical science fiction action adventure episode. It is not bad, but it is not superlative.

For other works with Martin Donovan, be sure to check out my reviews of:
Ant-Man
Inherent Vice
Boss - Season 1
Weeds
Saved!

[Knowing that single episodes are an inefficient way to get episodes, it's worth looking into Legends Of Tomorrow - The Complete First Season on DVD or Blu-Ray, which is also a better economical choice than buying individual episodes. Read my review of the premiere season of the time traveling hero team here!
Thanks!]

6/10

For other television season and episode reviews, please visit my Television Review Index Page for an organized listing!

© 2016 W.L. Swarts. May not be reprinted without permission.
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