11 replies on “Smallville Discussion – “1961””

  1. So, does it count?
    They always said if we saw flying, it was a sign that they had run out of ideas – but does it count if it’s Jor-El? (That’s a silent r, -, and l, right?) Good episode otherwise, as long as you can ignore the semi-ripping off of The Dead Zone. I think I enjoyed the hinting at how Lex is going to go about bringing down the MB over the flashback scenes, though Kristin Kreuk was looking good channeling the spirit of Teri Hatcher’s Lois Lane.

    Of course, I think it’s a rule that if the Cancer Man is in an episode, it gets bonus points (or did that only count for the first few seasons of the X-Files?)

    • Re: So, does it count?

      They always said if we saw flying, it was a sign that they had run out of ideas – but does it count if it’s Jor-El?

      I vote for “no,” since it only makes sense for Jor-El to have full mastery of his powers on Earth.

      I really enjoyed this ep, and found myself wanting to see more of Jor-El, and really want to know why he’s been putting Clark through the paces, given his own experience with his father.

      Either Tom Welling is getting better, or I’m just getting used to him, but I really accepted him as Jor-El; a completely different character from Clark, rather than, “Oh, that’s Clark as Jor-El.” Ditto for Kristin Kreuk. I think I’ll just say they’re growing as actors, and it’s a good thing. I wonder if the similarity to Teri’s Lois Lane was deliberate…

  2. Who’s JorEl?
    Flashback Joe the drifter didn’t sound anything like Terrence Stamp. They can’t both be Jor-El. There’s no reason why he’d program a British accent into his "conquer the earth" message if he knew Kal was going to land in America.

    And why didn’t Clark notice the difference?

    • Re: Who’s JorEl?
      Sure there is. That accent just sounds so authoritative. :)

      If they bother to justify it, I guess they could say that Jor-El wanted “Joe” to fit in as well as possible, and having a British accent in the middle of the Great American Prarie just wasn’t going to cut it.

      • Re: Who’s JorEl?

        If they bother to justify it, I guess they could say that Jor-El wanted “Joe” to fit in as well as possible, and having a British accent in the middle of the Great American Prarie just wasn’t going to cut it.

        So you’re saying that for some reason, his natural Kryptonian dialect sounds like British English but he suppressed it to sound American when visiting in 1961?

        I think a better bet is that the guy who recorded the voice of the spaceship and the guy who visited in the flashback aren’t the same Kryptonian.

        • Re: Who’s JorEl?

          I think a better bet is that the guy who recorded the voice of the spaceship and the guy who visited in the flashback aren’t the same Kryptonian.

          So then Joe would be Clark’s older brother? The way he spoke about his father… could be Jor-El.

          Of course, it totally violates even the most general outline of the canon, but, hey, when has that stopped them before?

    • Re: Who’s JorEl?

      Flashback Joe the drifter didn’t sound anything like Terrence Stamp. They can’t both be Jor-El. There’s no reason why he’d program a British accent into his “conquer the earth” message if he knew Kal was going to land in America.

      And why didn’t Clark notice the difference?

      The most obvious – and easiest – reason is that the flashbacks can’t be verified as being perfect in both visual and auditory terms. It could be seen as being similar to the difference in hearing your own voice live and then hearing it in a recording – even the highest fidelity recording is going to sound different from the real thing. It could also be considered odd that Clark (and we in the audience) saw the flashbacks from various angles instead of entirely from Joe’s perspective – we can forgive that, of course, because it would be a distracting artistic choice on the part of the director.

      A more ominous reason is that we all know Jor-El is already dead since Krypton was destroyed. Thus, whatever voice has appeared so far is some combination of recording and AI. The AI could be acting for its own reasons and perhaps Jor-El didn’t program it very well, resulting in causing Kal-El pain and encouraging him to master the earth.

      The final possibility (the one that entertains me the most) is that the voice we’ve heard which the Kents have thought is Jor-El is some manifestation of General Zod that he’s managing to project from his Phantom Zone prison. According to tradition, he hates Kal-El for being the spawn of his enemy and jailer, so he would have motive for trying to manipulate Kal/Clark – not only to cause him pain but in the hopes that he can be manipulated into freeing Zod and his compatriots from their prison.

      I can only hope that the last possibility is the true one because it could eventually make a slam-bang ending to the series.

      • Re: Who’s JorEl?

        I only watch the show occasionally and it broadcasts here a week later, so I haven’t see this yet. Is he actually speaking English? Maybe whatever device allows Jor-El to be heard in English changed over the years, applying a different accent.

        You’ve all offered good theories, but let’s face it. Most likely, this is your basic continuity error.

      • Re: Who’s JorEl?

        A more ominous reason is that we all know Jor-El is already dead since Krypton was destroyed. Thus, whatever voice has appeared so far is some combination of recording and AI. The AI could be acting for its own reasons and perhaps Jor-El didn’t program it very well, resulting in causing Kal-El pain and encouraging him to master the earth.

        Like, perhaps, Brainiac?

  3. Best yet
    The more I think about this episode, the more I think it’s the best Smallville episode yet: it combined a good mystery plot, slowly revealing details with a romance and revealed some key information about the main story. And surprising as well in that the main plot was actually about Clark, not the Luthors.

    It’s interesting that one of the better Roswell’s was the same type of “history” show. I would expect this type of gimmick to be just that, but both actually significantly advanced the main story and were quite well done.

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