Killjoys, Season 3, Episode 2: A Skinner Darkly

Last week Olli was injured so Johnny brings her to Havigan’s bar for treatment and to threaten whoever betrayed them - Havigan applies logic here, sure he asked after Clara but why would anyone actually betray them?

While Olli is treated Johnny gets a crash course on just how terribly Hackmods are treated and, when Olli wakes up, they manage to get some information about the Hollen gooed man who tried to kill them. Though Havigan is reluctant because everyone there has enough shit to deal with without adding to it with Johnny’s drama

There’s a group called the Skinners that can literally change your skin, entirely shapeshift someone to look like someone else (we see a scene where one of these shapeshifted people went off mission gets it all a little wrong when their skin shift doesn’t quite take and end up being killed by Niko - a hackmod with a bionic leg - head of the Skinner’s company to keep them covered up). Naturally Johnny wants to investigate this because Hollen-goo is scary

So time for his awesome undercover as guy seeking cosmetic surgery while being a super confident douchebag. I do like Johnny undercover. He’s fun and he’s willing to have fun more than the rest of the cast - in fact D’avin and Dutch need Johnny because they’re just way too intense and dour without him.

There they sneak Olli in for some investigating, discover a whole lot of skinned bodies and Yoko - Clara’s friend - who gets them out sharpish though almost gets Johnny caught in the process

But Olli does manage to get Johnny some hands from the bodies to examine. He is inappropriately gleeful about this. They also have a lead with Yoko - Olli decides her tried and true tactic of punching her in the face until answers come out may be in order.

Except Johnny’s experiments on the hands come with some disturbing truths - the hands are actually the bodies of hackmod owners: people NIko has targetted. And one of them owned Olli and Yoko. Olli has never been owned, she’s sure - but she also has a 6 year gap in her memories. Poking further it becomes clear that Olli isn’t running around with Clara’s arm - Olli is Clara but has been skinshifted.

The emotion of this moment is perfect with Olli horrified when Johnny calls her Clara and he has to stop her cutting off her face screaming “who is this face?! Get it off”. The gun arm lead Olli to Johnny because Clara programmed it to.

Back to Havigan to get some answers from Yoko - it turns out Clara did find the skinners and what they were doing and she was horrified. Niko ordered Yoko to make Clara disappear… which she did but without killing her and with a memory chip. Yoko explains that they’re using skin shifting to get enough money and legal clout to get people to a colony far away (involving cryo-transport), an actual home for hackmods without having to hide or be attacked. Johnny is duly cynical but Yoko absolutely accepts zero judgement from a Basic who has no understanding of their lives.

Which is when Niko comes, knocks everyone out and kidnaps Johnny

She wants a Killjoy skin - because she’s been tracking Hollen-goo all over the system (she doesn’t know what it is only that she needs it for the skinning) and a whole lot of them are guarded by KIlljoys. She also tells her story - how she got in debt, how she was stolen and how her leg and eye were taken by her new owner to be replaced with mods.

When Olli comes to rescue Johnny she also has an awesome speech about how she learned to love and accept herself - but that loving and accepting herself and not wanting to change her mods doesn’t mean she has to forgive those who abused her. I think this is a powerful point - it’s often held over the heads of victims that if they’re not forgiving then they’re somehow not “moving on” or allowing their attackers to “still control them”. You can love who and what you are and where you are and still be furious with the people who hurt you.

Preacher, Season 2, Episode 3: Damsels

The gang are heading to New Orleans, Tulip dragging her feet every step because Victor is there and she doesn’t want to meet him but she won’t tell Jessie about it - and Jessie, looking increasingly self-absorbed seems either oblivious or callously irritated by Tulip’s obvious trouble.

Of course, New Orleans isn’t a small city and you can’t just walk around saying you’re looking for god. Originally this gets them to a highly imaginative group of sex workers with a latex dog costume which is about the time that Tulip and Cassidy bail on Jessie to get accomodation

Cassidy insists on meeting up with his friend Dennis - who turns out to be an elderly man who only speaks French (while Cassidy speaks no French) and he seems pretty indifferent to their presence

He also tries to help Tulip but she keeps freezing him out - he objects that they’re treating him as incapable, as unable to help, as the “idiot Irish sidekick” which… ok is kind of how they’re treating him… but it’s also kind of how he acts? Pretty much nothing he does is handled in a vaguely competent fashion and he regularly makes things worse, especially since the few bursts of competence we have seen have been when they haven’t been there. It would actually be interesting for Cassidy to turn to Tulip and Jessie, object to their treatment, point out he’s old enough to be their grandfather and change and show his skills… but he’d have to have skills beyond “awesome partier” and “can take all the drugs”.

Tulip tries to call Jessie only to have us further see how obsessed Jessie has become and how cruelly he’s ignoring her. And, inevitably, Victor’s people find her.

While Jessie is dragging himself from bar to bar looking for god which generally doesn’t go well, lots of booze and a few bar fights later he finally gets a lead on a singer in a club turning down dates because patriots aren’t sufficiently sure that Tallahassee is the capital of Florida (but nice shutting him down lady).

She is unwilling to speak to Jesse but agrees to meet him outside the club - where she’s attacked by 5 men in white suits and masks. Jessie uses Genesis to stop the getaway van and then promptly beats all 5 of the men at once because he’s Jessie and he doesn’t need supernatural powers to take down 5 goons. He rescues her and they go back to her place where she has a baby and is planning to run. There she tells him he’s not the first looking for god and talks about a conspiracy religious world domination cult that was behind her attackers

She also tests Genesis to see if he can stop her kissing him - and he does. It’s a good test though, Jessie does look surprisingly good in the preacher garb

She leaves with her child and leaving Jessie without a lot of leads but he ends up in a club where and old man is listening enthralled by a band playing.

Zoo, Season 3, Episode 2: Diaspora

The group is still all spread out everywhere but at least we’re finally coming together.

In Portland, the monster zone, the bomber has left, dropping something in her escape, abandoning her car and leaving a little bug on a rock.

Jackson is feeling all the guilt about this for some reason. He’s also checking out the internet where people are trying to find… him. Apparently he’s largely blamed by everyone - including his girlfriend, Tessa, for setting off the sterility plague and everything else. This is possibly accurate, but that would require me remembering the last season and trying to find some kind of thread of coherence among that mess.

He’s now going by the name Dylan. And “Dylan” and Tessa try to follow the bomber, failing to find her, but do find a weird little Shepherd-symbol thing that she left behind.

Also investigating the bombing is Detective-police-don’t-have-background-checks-anymore Logan who discovers his bomb and Jackson’s bomb is linked and decides to fly to Portland and risk breaking poor Jackson’s cover to Tessa and Logan has a lot of experience lying to girlfriends. The pair of them snark back and forth being passive aggressive and making Tessa suspicious while trying to track this bomber - who calls Jackson just to taunt him a bit

A DNA test reveal she is Abigail Westbrook. Apparently Jackson’s sister

Because a battle for the world and whether humanity becomes extinct really needs completely unnecessary sibling family drama storylines.

Over to Abe and Dariela and there’s some regret for not going with Clementine (which is a little odd because she didn’t exactly give them a chance) and Dariela is frustrated about being “benched” which Abe rejects - they’re raising a child! It’s an interesting subversion of tropes to have the woman push to go out and have action while the man focuses on and values domestic life and family.

At the same time, later on Dariela criticises Abe’s “save the world” card. So he’s also frustrated at the narrow focus - but perhaps his crusades are less action packed so don’t appeal to Dariela’s action-orientated mindset while her charge in and fix it style lacks of the planning and caution Abraham has always favoured (he has always been doomed to be the big sensible, calm mountain while around him people charge around making terrible decisions).

The blood sample that Abe was sent by Jackson is now growing into a foetus - which is more than a little bizarre. It’s also a telepathic foetus that is summoning razorback hyena mutants to its rescue (apparently they were nearby?) resulting in a siege and the hybrids eventually escapes with what Abe calls “the egg”. Which is a shame because he thought it could cure human sterility.

Honestly it says all you need to know when telepathic foetus from blood samples actually doesn’t seem weird.

Zoo, Season 3, Episode 1: No Place Like Home

So last season took the original concept of Zoo - the sinister idea of completely normal animals rising up and killing humanity and the terror that could bring down human civilisation and decided to throw a whole bunch of random nonsense at it instead. We had the idea of rats swarming from the sewers, of animal agriculture becoming impossible, of the terror of pets and instead we got… Earthquake sloths and electric ants. Contrary to how it may originally appear, singing Earthquake sloths do not make everything better

At the end the animals were cured - at the cost of rendering humanity sterile

Which means we enter season 3 with the original concept not just dead, but the body has been burned and the ashes scattered across several large bodies of water. At this point Zoo could just say “UNICORN ALIEN CANNIBALS!” and I’d shrug…

…

If this season actually has unicorn alien cannibals I’m going to get so drunk.

We also have hybrids invading, which are like mutant animals. Apparently the entire west coast has been abandoned to them and a big big Trumpian wall has been built. To which I have to say “huh”? I mean these animals have escaped from labs - how many were they?! They’ve have to breed like the world’s horniest rabbits to have enough numbers and more super powers than Superman’s-Gary-Stuest-collection to possibly be threat enough where the expense of abandonning and walling off the ENTIRE WEST COAST of the US is somehow economically preferable to shooting them with America’s many many many many many many guns. C’mon that maniacal gun culture has to be good for something?! And how do you even build the wall? If these hybrids are so scary you are writing off California, Oregon and Washington then how do you get them to back off long enough for you to build 1,500 miles of wall?!

And they’re building secret labs on the west coast? These secret sinister base people have poor choice of location - there must be much cheaper real estate and much easier chance of doing this without oversight in, say, rural Montana (is the “rural” redundant when talking about Montana?)

The show hasn’t even started and already it’s making my brain hurt!”

The new season opens with a nice explanation of all this, re-introductions to everyone (as well as the possibility that Mitch isn’t dead and the actor has not said “oh hell no” to the script yet). Everyone has split it up since it’s now been 10 years since the events of the second season, so time to catch up with them all

Jackson and his new girlfriend Tessa are in the new monster filled Pacific zone trying to get people our, introducing a poor west coast boy into the horror of moving to Tennessee. They’re still being attacked by hybrids - Ridgebacks, basically big hyenas, but that’s fine because Jackson has a pride of tame lions: male lions - which save their lives and drive off the hybrids

Ok, back to my point about how the hybrids don’t seem like such a threat? Lions are fairly endangered creatures - the only reason they’re not more endangered is because humanity has actively decided to refrain from slaughtering them. A pack of animals that lions can match does not make for an apocalypse. It’s target practice. Humanity is GOOD at killing things. We make entire species extinct by accident - step up your big scary enemy game

So they do with… a big scary bony rhino. And it’s big and scary but Jackson also confines it in a lorry - which doesn’t even seem to be reinforced. I mean it looks scary. But we have RPGs. And tanks. And bombs that destroy cities.

He sends a sample off to Abraham and lets the IADG come collect the big scary rhino.

Oh, he also seems to control the lions with his mind (as he himself was a weird infected monster man at some point, I’m guessing).

So let’s join Abraham and Dariela, living together with their son Isaac and all being happy-ish. Abraham is focusing on trying to cure humanity’s sterility (and there’s a nice moment where they talk about there not even being dolls around any more since there’s so few young children) and there’s a suggestion that he left several prestigious research institutions under Less Than Ideal Circumstances. Dariela is also stealing and sending off some of his research to someone without his knowing - so expect drama

12 Monkeys, Season Three, Episode Six: Nature

1953

Of course, we're back at the Emerson hotel again and who should arrive but Gale. Yes, the FBI agent who hooked up with Cassie and Cole in Berlin and died as a result.  When Gale bursts into 608 with his partner, he finds a couple engaged in some spanking. This leads to laughter from Gale's partner about Gale's futile search for a connection with the Monkeys. Suddenly, the lights start to flash on and off which of course signals the arrival of Cole and Cassie, looking for help from Gale. Gale explains that after what happened in 1944 that he almost got fired and he became a laughing stock because of the report he wrote about time travel. Gale has spent his time looking for the army of the 12 Monkeys.

Cole and Cassie share the timeline written by the Witness. There's a notification for the winter of 1953 in Hope Valley and it's described as the winter of ash and blood. The plan is take down the Monkeys before they can even get off the ground. Cassie tries to get Gale to stay out of it but he's in with both feet.

2046

Adler and Jones are discussing project Charon when Deacon interrupts them. Jones has declared this a need to know mission and therefore has no interest in sharing the details with Deacon. Proving that he's no slouch, Deacon immediately picks up the reference to Charon, the ferrymen who carried the dead across the Styx and Acheron.

Jennifer returns in the Splitter machine after convincing Lasky that she needed to go back in time to get some Valium and her uncle's ashes. Jennifer actually went back to grab her turtle Jerry which she of course has to introduce to an older version of Jerry.  Jennifer then gets a vision of someone in a dark cape and cowl wearing a mask. Jennifer immediately goes running and who can blame her.

1953

It's Christmas time in Hope Valley and Gale decides that he is going to pay a visit to the local sheriff to find out if anyone strange has recently come to town. The moment Gale leaves, Cassie suggests that it's wrong of them to use Gale in this fashion because they know that he dies in 1961.  Cassie blames herself for Gale's death and wonders about warning Gale but Cole is worried that this would jeopardize their accomplishments in 1961, leading to the Witness getting his red forest. They switch topics and start talking about their son. Cole is adamant that they cannot save him and that everyone dies because of the Witness's plans. An explosion in the mine happens, bringing an end to their conversation, as smoke and ash float up in the sky, covering the town. Cole makes eye contact with Christopher Lloyd.

2046

Jennifer tells Deacon that she sees dead people and that she frustrated that her primary skills won't let her see the whole puzzle.  Deacon is curious about why it is that Jennifer never sees him in her visions, noting that everyone is involved but him.  Jennifer continues to be frustrated that she keeps seeing a ghost who stares at her and points which makes her worried that she will be locked up. Deacon assures Jennifer that she won't be locked up and that she has a purpose because her name, unlike his, is on the document.  Deacon suggests that Jennifer try speaking to the apparition. 

Outcast, Season 2, Episode 6: Fireflies.

So everything kind of went just a bit wrong last episode, now Kyle is in hospital to have his injuries healed… except the doctor treating him is our friendly demon doctor so this won’t end well. He takes the opportunity to kidnap Kyle for Sidney and tell his family he’s dead.

That would be Megan, Amber and Alison. Oh and Anderson sort of hanging around. Alison utterly falls apart, wanting to say sorry to Kyle, blaming herself for not leaving the mental institution sooner.

While Megan is reeling from her sudden exposure to the supernatural and now has the difficult, emotionally dramatic task of trying to convince Alison that no she’s not evil, she was possessed, like Megan was possessed, like Sidney was possessed and a whole lot of people died because of it. It’s emotional and dramatic and difficult and awful

All the while Amber is calm because she’s sure her dad is alright and rather scarily adult and mature and creepy, lots and lots and lots of creepy.

Kyle is near death and has visions of his dead mother - if you think it’s all fluffy and hugs you’ve been watching the wrong show. Angry mother shames him for giving up and not killing all the demons until he starts spitting white light - like the demons spit dark

The easiest answer here is the “outcasts” are angels if we’re going to keep going with demons.

He wakes up to find Sidney being all gloaty and saying it’s pointless trying to kill him because they are legion blah blah and let me say something menacing about your daughter muahahaha aaaaaargh your touch burns!

So, all villains out there, when facing an enemy who’s touch feels like molten metal try not to taunt within arm’s reach. Even if they do have a gut wound

Thankfully Kyle has the decision making skills of a Shadowhunter and tries to strangle Sidney with a sheet therefore keeping cloth between him and his burning hands so Sidney is saved and Kyle is captured for a bit longer.

I mean, holding someone imprisoned when they have touch-of-molten-metal is hard even if he is bleeding (especially since his blood is even worse).

Anderson, meanwhile, rages around not doing a lot. He goes to Sidney to tell him Kyle is dead and they need to build and army and fight- but Sidney, much to Rose’s despair - is out of the fight. He’s given up, exhausted and thinks the fight is truly lost

Doctor Who & the Importance of Bill

At the end of every season of Doctor Who, fans spend their time hashing out the merits of the season while whining about the wait for the Xmas episode. With Peter Capaldi and potentially Pearl Mackie and Matt Lucas leaving, there is so much to break down, celebrate, and mourn over.  It’s easy to focus on the Doctor, because he is the titular character; however, the Doctor would not be the Doctor without his companions and of course Missy/The Master.

I know all of you Clara fans were all in tears when the Raven came calling and for a time, people couldn’t picture anyone else in the Tardis with the Doctor. Bill Potts came as a refreshing surprise and quickly became the companion that many viewers didn’t realise that they needed. The most obvious differences between Bill and the other companions is that she is Black, female and gay. Yes, finally a major gay recurring character on Doctor Who. Don’t get your panties in a knot Captain Jack fans. Jack was most certainly bisexual but given the amount of episodes he appeared in, any reasonable person would be hard pressed to call him a major character and or a companion and in fact, most of Jack’s importance comes from him staring in Torchwood and not his appearances on Doctor Who.

It terms of minority representation Bill certainly ticks a lot of boxes but there’s so much more to her character than that.  Bill didn’t have a lot of time on the Tardis and therefore much of the time, she was working in ignorance.  Almost every week Bill would discover something new about either the Doctor himself or Timelords in general. These are things that would have developed more slowly with longer running companions like Clara, giving the companion time to adjust to new ideas, whereas; Bill always had to adapt to new situations on the fly and make adjustments based on that. Sometimes Bill had to make decisions without all of the facts, like when she chose to kill the Doctor in The Lie of the Land. Toby Whithouse, put Bill in a terrible position and while he didn’t have the courage to have her follow through with rightful rage after discovering the Doctor’s manipulation in the way that Clara did in Kill the Moon, Whithouse did allow Bill to prove that she had the mettle to travel with the Doctor and make the hard decisions.

Ending up on the Tardis would be an amazing adventure for anyone but through it all, Bill never loses who she is, or gets caught up in the moment.  She’s not afraid to challenge the Doctor on the location of the ninth legion, or take the risk to save an innocent creature, even if it means risking the lives of humans. All through this season the Doctor constantly tests Bill, pushing her boundaries.  At some point all of the companions have had to lay down the law with the Doctor because of his penchant for dropping in on their lives.  Rory and Amy struggled to balance their lives and their trips with the Doctor.  Clara had difficulty having a relationship with Danny Pink, in part due to her travels and in part due to the Doctor’s disapproval.  In each instance, each companion had time to adjust but because of Bill’s short tenure she was forced to throw up walls early. Sure it turned out to be handy that the Doctor agreed to help her move; however, she still found the strength to let him know that her personal life is not something she wanted invaded, no matter how tempting the adventure. All along the way, Bill asserts herself and claims her identity without any kind of shame, even when Catholic Cardinals crash her date.

Perhaps what I love most about Bill is the fact that she is a walking talking geek reference.  Whether it’s invoking Star Trek or other sci shows or films, Bill never misses an opportunity to throw in a reference.  Sure, it often goes over the Doctor’s head but it always serves as a moment of hilarity and helps the audience to bond with her as a person.  Bill is a Whovians dream in that sense. A geek watching a geek make geek references is some great television. This follows in that almost 4th-wall breaking geekiness of her poking holes in Doctor Who itself - I love how she was willing to question some of the very fundamentals of Who everyone kind of accepted. Who didn't love it when the Doctor started bragging about how advanced Timelords are that Bill pointed that they're called Timelords?

The Sight (Devil's Isle #2) by Chloe Neill

Claire continues to split her time before running her family shop out of the Zone - he magic struck heart of New Orleans - and working with Liam as a bounty hunter to bring in lost wraiths to Containment - and their prison for paranormals

Increasingly she sees the injustice of Devil’s Isle - not least because of her own carefully hidden magic. But all of Containment are at risk when a charismatic human preacher starts rallying people against the remaining imprisoned supernaturals. The war ended 7 years ago, but someone is trying to start it again

Like the first book in this series, I have to say what really stands out here is the world.

The concept of a war zone created by magical invaders, of the prisoners of that war - so many supernatural creatures - locked away. Of permanent scars left on the land due to the influx of magic and then people trying to scratch a living in that land, in battle scarred New Orleans, in the shadow of that prison, dealing with shortages and magic and the constant threat of wraiths but also the oppression and intrusion of Containment interference.

The magic invaders themselves are divided, not just by creature type and magic but also by faction - the invading Court and the ordered Consularis who were forced into the fight. Then this book brings in lots of extra complexity around Sensitives - humans who have absorbed magic, gained abilities but now risk imprisonment and worse. As well as human hate groups blaming the remaining imprisoned paranormals for everything that is wrong in the Zone.

That was also something that mildly frustrated me - or not so mildly. Like we’re told there’s a difference between the Consularis and the Court and the Court forced the Consularis to fight - ok, fair enough but can we go to that in more depth? See some actual divisions? Maybe meet one of the court? It’s suggested the Court were ruled by the Consularis - were they escaping what they considered oppressive rule? We’ve already had the words “consularis” and “order” even strict order bandied about a lot - maybe expand?

Or expand a bit more on the numerous supernaturals we see? What are they? What powers do they have? What cultures? We alluded to some having troubles adapting to Earth - let’s see that

Or how Ezekiel and his anti-paranormal movement in part succeeds because there’s a lot of very poor, desperate people living in the now 7 year old refugee camps - can we explore their lives and struggles? Or how some are willing to live in the camps because New Orleans itself is so heavily monitored and policed by Containment.

This book, this world lays out a thousand and one fascinating plot points and they’re strewn around and I beg, BEG to follow any one of them up.