…people sat at home arguing about the washing up while the house burned down.
–Doctor Who
After a fairly strong opening, Doctor Who gives us an episode that might have aired last year, or during Matt Smith’s run, recycled from familiar tropes. That doesn’t mean it has to be a bad episode, but….
Let’s take a closer look.
We haven’t done a Weekend Review of an older film for some time, so here’s one for 2020, a film that, after numerous delays, finally saw release last summer, but found its biggest audience on AmazonPrime. David Robert Mitchell got notice for his first feature, The Myth of the American Sleepover, and then he wrote and directed a brilliant and very successful horror film called It Follows. He was apparently given a free reign and significant budget for this project, which blends indie comedy, neo-Noir, conspiracy theory, and urban fantasy, with interesting, but decidedly mixed, results.1
We’re a little late here; Amazon Prime, which saved The Expanse from cancellation, dropped the entire fourth season a month ago. However, we’re finally catching up, and we’ll be reviewing it in two or three bits— flotsam and jetsam, as it were.
Darkness never sustains.
–The Doctor
Doctor Who continues with the conclusion to “Spyfall,” and the introduction to this season’s larger arc. Certain spoilers, avoided last week, will appear in this week’s review. You have been warned.
The thirteenth Doctor has returned, with a James Bond twist on that most typical of Tardis Tales, the alien invasion of earth.
Family-unfriendly trailer:
Riddler: Riddle me this: What did Nadia Comaneci do after she scored seven perfect tens at the 1976 Montreal Olympics?
Harley: Win a medal?
Poison Ivy: Not menstruate until her twenties?
Riddler: No! She broke a record! And that’s what you sound like. A broken record.
The new, R-Rated Harley Quinn series premiered at the end of November. Here’s our take on the pilot of a series set in a version of the DCU where everyone swears heavily and reality doesn’t take itself too seriously.
The Crisis on Infinite Earths continues, as the characters move to Batwoman’s show and encounter a couple more Legends, some spare Supermen, and an especially Dark Knight.
René Auberjonois, whose numerous roles include Odo in Deep Space Nine, has died at the age of 79 from lung cancer.
He will be missed.
Wonder Woman has been a bright spot in DC’s uneven foray into a shared superhero movie-verse….
\
…and her next film, set in 1984, looks like its Friday, June 5 release day won’t be a Blue Monday.
The Crisis on Infinite Earths comes to DC-TV starting tonight, with Supergirl. We’ll have reviews—and we have an overview.
Lex Pendragon: On the CW, five shows are combining their audiences into one super crossover event, Crisis on Infinite Earths.
Based (at least loosely) on the DC comics event Crisis on Infinite Earths, the comics story that took the various Earths and different continuities and eventually combined the multiverse down to a single continuity. The Multiverse option was appealing to the showrunners, who embraced it to allow a crossover between Supergirl on CBS and The Flash on the CW. The shows loved to exploit this, giving us Flash hopping between universes regularly, using it for further crossovers, and eventually even referencing past shows such as the 90s Flash and Constantine (from NBC), who eventually joined Legends of Tomorrow.