RAVINGS FROM THE SHADOWS

Mighty Morphin Power Ranger #47

January 23, 2020

You know it’s very hard after all these years to remember sometimes just how bitchy and shallow Kimberly could be. At the time it seemed like she was such great friends with everyone but then you look again and realise that actually she’s been forced into a situation where she’s become friends with people she wouldn’t normally associate with because of being a Ranger. And that bitchiness gets to show in this issue.

Honestly the tension between the Rangers in this issue was great. Zack, Trini and Jason lied to their teammates and they can’t even tell them why. The only one that seems to understand their position is Zordon… maybe they now have some sympathy for the position he found himself in in the past.

Aisha’s conversation with Trini was great. Under any other circumstances Trini’s answer would have done its job and settled all of Aisha’s doubts. But then Trini had been caught lying to Zordon and her friends, so how could Aisha just take her word for it?

I’m insterested to see what Kiya does next or what her ultimate goal is. She states she wants order… is it me or is she starting to sound a little like Drakkon?



 


Year Of The Villain – Hell Arisen #2 (2020) – Lex vs the Sinister Six… well some of them.

January 22, 2020

Lex Luthor’s greatest asset has always been his mind. And in this issue we get to see him demonstrate that he doesn’t need super strength to overcome his foes. From using a red sun to take down Supergirl to having an answer to Donna Troy, Lex shows not only how clever he is, but how well he knows his opponents.

Case in point: the greatest weakness of Shazam is that Billy Batson is only ever one word away.

Now of course this series would not work unless Lex found himself pitted against a foe that can offer him a challenge when it comes to plotting. And the Joker Who Laughs is one such evil genius. While Lex has been concerned about the other members of the Sinister Six, Jim Gordon was perhaps fulfilling the most important role: recruitment. Trapp in a cell inside the Justic League’s headquarters, secured in a straight jacket and seemingly helpless, old Jim still managed to infect those around him when they entered to feed and attempt to cure him.

Now the ending of the issue sees Lex’s agent approach the Joker for assistance. Seems a sensible idea, but I can’t help wondering if the Batman Who Laughs would really fail to see that coming and if he did what measures he took to give Lex a little surprise.



 


Doctor Who – Nikola Tesla’s Night of Terror

January 20, 2020

Now after last week’s episode I went into this story wanting to be reassured that episode 3 had just been an exception to an otherwise good start to the season. And I found that my wish was granted. As a story taking place in the past, the writer’s did an excellent jo of capturing the rivalry between Tesla and Edison. A lot of people when asked will come up with a list of things Edison is supposed to have invented, very few will mention that he was proobably the first person to use public relations in an attempt to win the War of the Currents.

The difference between Tesla and Edison is clear when they are inside the TARDIS. Tesla is a scientist and an inventor, he understands how the TARDIS work. Edison doesn’t need to understand how it works, but you can bet he knows how to make money out of it.

The actual villain of the week was a little disappointing. It looked like somebody had been searching through a list of old villains and decided to retool the Ragnoss. I have no problem with alien scorpions (although I’m not sure why they seemed incapable of running), but I think they could have come up with something a little better.



 


Doctor Who, Series 12 Episode 3, Orphan 55

January 13, 2020

Going to try to stay positive about this episode, but really could have done without the rant at the end. Okay they were wrong, it was Earth all along… If they had not decided the Orphan 55 would be Earth and had made it a planet very similar to Earth they could have gotten the message across just as easily.

I admit that when I saw the cube at the start of the episode I thought it was one of the Hypercube’s Time Lord’s use to communicate. All in all not as good as the previous two episodes.



 


Doctor Who, Series 12 Episode 2, Spyfall Part 2

January 6, 2020

So the Master returned to Gallifrey and uncovered something he considered so bad that he burned the entire planet. What on Earth could have been that bad?

now don’t get me wrong here the Master has absolutely no love for Gallifrey or his fellow Time Lords. He has put the planet in danger numerous times for his own selfish reasons. So the knowledge that he decided to turn his homeworld into something resembling Australia at this time, was not shocking. That he did so without having anything to gain from the act was surprising. Of course that raises the question of why he went back in the first place? The Master never does that sort of thing without a sinister reason.

And still there is the question of where does this Master come in relation to Missy? The obvious answer would be that he comes after Missy who somehow managed to survive being shot. But there’s also the possibility that Missy did not follow immediately after the Simm Master. Perhaps there is a regeneration in between. There could actually be a number of regenerations in between and Missy acts as the Master’s final regeneration many incarnations away.



 


Doctor Who, Series 12 Episode 1, Spyfall Part 1

January 1, 2020

The Master is back! Woohoo, one of my favourite Doctor Who villains has returned. And it was a return to for for the character as at the end of the first part of the adventure I had no idea what he was planning. Was this entire plot a scheme to draw the Doctor in so he could reveal himself? Or was this one of those old fashioned Master decides to piggyback on someone else’s scheme things?

Blowing up the cockpit of a plane and then taking the Doctor away before she could save everybody’s life was just the sort of thing I’d expect from him.

Unfortunately there were some things that did not work. I really wish Lenny Henry and Stephen Fry ha switched roles for this episode. Fry would have made a more interesting secondary villain while Lenny was clerly the stern head of MI-6. While I enjoyed the discussion between Fry and the Doctor, he was wasted by such a short role.



 


On the right track

January 8, 2017

When I saw the first ten or so minutes of the show I thought for sure that Sherlock would go and accuse Culverton Smith based on the accusations of the man’s daughter. That Holmes would be betrayed by the daughter and end up hospitalised (I had seen the hospital bed in the trailer). This would allow Culverton to kill him, which had been his plan all along. And then Holmes would prove he was correct using the modern equivalent of somebody standing out of sight and listening.

That wasn’t how it turned out. As it turns out Culverton Smith had no idea about his “daughter” seeking out Sherlock Holmes or the detective’s increasing obsession with him. There was no plan to set Sherlock up for failure which we might have seen with an earlier villain. All we had with Culverton Smith was an evil man who couldn’t stop confessing and letting people know what he was while making it impossible for them to use his words against him. As villain’s go he was a very simple rich bad guy.

E on the other hand… Now I stated a while back that I thought Sherlock had been mentally conditioned by Mycroft and that his older brother was slowly feeding him the key to memories he had suppressed. That made me wonder if Sherlock knows he has at least one other sibling (something about that line that people stop looking at three thinking although this could be yet another reference to the possibility that the 13th episode will by the last)? Do his parent know and what did Mycroft do? What did Sherlock do will be a more appropriate question I think.

So the episode ends with E or Euros (the East Wind) shooting John. I really can’t wait to see where this goes.



 


Save John Watson… from what?

January 1, 2017

Tonight I watched the death of Mary Watson and I was upset. After surviving a vengeful former comrade who believed that she had betrayed him, she died saving Sherlock from being shot by a mere secretary. It was a wasteful needless death caused almost entirely by Sherlock's need to taunt. And throughout the scene Mary told him to stop and he ignored her because his inability to truly understand human emotion. It was actually a cool flashback to that first episode where Sherlock and Mary met after John had hit him a few times and Sherlock could not understand why his friend wasn't pleased to see him. This time it cost a life.

Then came the last few minutes and the message to save John Watson. Save him from whom? I'm assuming it was the red headed woman on the bus. No idea how Mary knew about his apparent affair, but maybe there is more to E (after Missy anytime a character announces themselves as a letter or short name I can't help think "what's it short for?") and her comment about being a vampire than a simple joke.

If not then the next best guess is himself. At the end of the episode John Watson has lost his wife and turned his back on his best friend. Who will help him put his life back together if the two people who love him the most are not around? I bet the Molly/Watson ficcers are already working on this.

Good thing is there is only a week until we find out.



 


Uchu Sentai Kyuranger – please be good

December 11, 2016

Please let the 2017 Sentai be a good one.

It's really gotten bad to be at the point where I have gone 18 months without giving Kamen Rider more than an occasional and stopped watching the Super Sentai after the fourth week (I had to force myself to watch it that long). Seriously the Kamen Rider Ghost theme was a good idea but they just failed to put it all together. Drive was a brilliant series in my mind so maybe I am a little biased.

However 2016's Super Sentai has been awful. The mecha looks like something a 3 year old would build out of Duplo Bricks, there are far too many ideas mashed together in there and really is does seem like South park's theory of how Family Guy's creators come up with their ideas. Hey let's put (spinning the wheel) animal people against (spin the wheel) game playing villains. It did just occur to me if they had just taken the villains and given them to Kamen Rider they've have gotten it right.

And had they done that maybe there's a chance I would have enjoyed Ex-Aider too. Alas it seems that the standard for Kamen Rider has fallen for the second year in a row.



 


Justice League / Power Rangers Crossover

October 16, 2016

I've just seen the news that there is to be a JLA and Power Rangers crossover. In the past DC has accomplished crossovers with He-Man, Marvel Comics, Thundercats and many other franchises, so I suppose bringing in Power Rangers is not that big a stretch.

But I do have a problem with such crossovers and that problem is Superman. You see Superman is depending on the writer, powerful enough to shift planets on his own and the rest of the JLA are often portrayed as his peers, each with a level of power that grows and diminishes according to how powerful Superman appears. So against the likes of Machine Empires or space pirates it would raise the question of why do we need the Power Rangers?

Of course the good thing about Power Rangers is that there are different types of villains. There are the machines, and pirates and aliens, but there are also the magic users. And there perhaps lies the type of villain that would cause Superman to ask for help. After all he is known to have a slight… weakness when it comes to hocus pocus. Now the JLA does have its own magic users, but I'm not sure many of them could be described as warriors, which when facing an invading army is probably a useful thing to be.

And then I can't help but wonder how they will meet. If they were meeting with Turbo or RPM I could have seen the Flash blundering his way into a crossover by vibrating a bit too much around the barriers between dimensions. And then of course there are always the possibilities of external influences drawing the two worlds together for ulterior motives. It should be noted at this point that I'm assuming the JLA will find their way to the Power Rangers' world when it is perfectly possible that this is all the results of an evil spell or one of Billy's inventions gone awry.