Smallville: Legion

By TrinityVixen

If there was one thing Smallville didn’t have enough of, it’s superpowered people with IQs inversely proportional to their proximity to Clark’s self-righteousness. It is bad enough that the JLA is MIA for fear of their members forgetting how to blow their noses. Do we really need to raid and ruin the intelligence of the future heroes?

Season Eight, Episode Eleven

The Legionnaires land this week–literally, as they have rings that allow them to fly and travel through time. They are a tripartite super team from the 31st century (alas, not this one)–Rock (Cosmic Boy), Garth (Lightning Lad), and Imra (Saturn Girl). Either people in the future have maturity issues or all the “-man/woman” aliases were taken after a millennia of heroes. Personally, if I were named Rokk, I wouldn’t bother coming up with an alias–certainly not one as unrelated to my powers of magnetism as “Cosmic Boy.” (Saturn Girl is scarcely less descriptive for a telepath, though hers is at least indicative of her planetary body of origin.)

Clark runs afoul of a future fiend as the set-up to meeting these venerable Legion members: an atomic (?)-axe (!?)-wielding miscreant shows up at the Kent barn in the aftermath of Bloomesday’s tantrum to slice up Clark and smash the Martian Manhunter’s Phantom Zone crystal. The Legionnaires banish the villain back to the future, where, I should hope, someone is waiting to lock him up, then introduce themselves to a wounded and suspicious Clark. Imra unhelpfully informs him, “We are the Legion;” Rokk clarifies, “We’ve come from the 31st century;” Garth is entirely too informal with a man who is, according to the future, its greatest hero, and wants to know, “Hey, Kal, where’s your cape?” You shall know them by their first lines: Imra is out to lunch; Rokk is all business; Garth is a doofus (who bears a distinct resemblance to the pizza-faced kid from The Simpsons).

The easily dispatched villain is a human-rights activist, one of many who aren’t thrilled by aliens living on Earth in the future. He came to destroy the crystal because it could stop Brainiac, who has the best chance of vanquishing Superman and preventing super-alien takeover. Thus proving that slime molds are better capable of more thorough deductive reasoning than humans because this anti-alien crowd doesn’t stop to consider that the enemy of their enemy hates their guts, too. Clark’s head stops spinning long enough for him to try and dissemble (while holding his organs in after being axed) about aliens. Garth cheerfully reassures him that he’s in good company. (In fact, Garth is from a planet called “Winath,” pronounced “WHINE-eth.” I can’t make this stuff up.) “It’s because of you that the world learns to welcome alien immigrants with open arms.” Except Clark didn’t exactly immigrate. He’s just a cosmic Elian Gonzales.

Clark’s fellow immigrant, Bloomesday, wakes up in the Fortress as the Legionnaires contemplate the problem of having to deal with Brainiac. That problem is currently feeling fabulous and well he should: he gets to wear Chloe Sullivan. Davis, thinking the Brain Interactive Construct is Chloe, checks to be sure that she’s okay. Brainiachloe, still in a blood-stained wedding dress, reassures him, “I’m just about perfect.” You’ll get no argument from me, Madam. Or Sir. Brainiachloe’s ethereal, chilly beauty is helped along by the Fortress being more softly lit than a dream sequence.

Brainiachloe disabuses the freaked Bloomesday of the notion that there was any attraction between him and Chloe; Chloe’s uncomfortable attachment to him was a ploy, a feint of vulnerability that Brainiac used to draw out Bloomesday. All Brainiachloe wants is to suck the planet dry of its data and use Bloomesday to mop up the refuse when he’s done. Finally, Brainiac’s motives jive with canonical versions of this character: he’s not looking to propagate a master race of Kryptonians on Earth; he wants to be the sole proprietor of any information about or generated by Earthicans. To do this, he needs a less wussy killbot, so Bloomesday is put into an ice chrysalis to burn away those pesky vestiges of humanity that Faora was unable to stab to death.

Clark and the Legionnaires dicker over what to do about Brainiac. Without the crystal, he can’t be stopped unless his host is killed. (What’s to prevent him from serially possessing hosts as he did when he first arrived?) Imra snoops in Clark’s head to figure out that he knows who Brainiac’s host is. I don’t know how many times I have to say it: poking around in people’s heads without their permission is Not Cool. Imra is welcome to knock that off any time.  As none of the future travelers know who Chloe is, they assume she was lost to history. Art imitates life as Imra and Garth parrot the fan debate about Chloe’s ultimate fate that leaves her out of the regular DC canon. Imra floats the popular fan theory that Chloe changed her name for some security reason (aww, they would confirm that possibility when I’ve just started to really like Lois Lane), but Garth assumes that Chloe must have died. If she’s going to die anyway and they have to kill her to get at Brainiac, no harm no foul if the Legion kills her, right? Why should they look for alternative methods to neutralize Brainiac when they can jump on the murder bandwagon now and wait around another thirty minutes for Clark to figure out another solution? That gives him a good long time to wind up some moralizing garbage about preserving life above all else, including planet-ending threats.

(Somewhere in this talky angst-fest, Garth directly references “no tights, no flights,” breaking the fourth wall to quote the guiding methodology of the show. I love a show with its own mythology outside of the episodes themselves! Also, Rokk says we’re going to be done with fossil fuels in 20 years. That’s optimistic of the show’s writers. I think their political allegiances are showing.)

Clark abandons the Legion to tear ass for the Fortress, as disillusioned with Garth as Garth is with his hero for not being behind the killing Chloe plan. The increasingly pissy Lightning Lad opines, “I thought Kal-El was known for doing whatever it took to save the world. Are you sure we have the right guy?” Garth assumes Clark is a fraud and the history he admittedly didn’t read was wrong! Wrong, I tell you! With that solid grounding, Garth declares he is ready to kill Chloe himself if necessary. Rokk, with the expression of one who has had to explain LIFE to Garth more than once, tells him to button his yap.

The team splits up: Garth and Rokk search Chloe’s apartment to learn more about her. In the process, they determine that, lo, Chloe is pretty awesome and it’s entirely possible that she is the driving force that turns Clark into Superman. However, they overlook the possibility that she accomplishes this not-inconsiderable feat by being a supportive, pushy friend who refuses to allow Clark to back down. Of course they do–it contradicts their working thesis that she has to die. Therefore, it must be Chloe’s tragic death that spurs Clark to greatness. Team “Kill Chloe” is still going strong. Meanwhile, Imra goes for Clark’s soft spot and tries to persuade Lana to work her mojo on Clark. Somehow, despite her extensive study of Lana Lang, Imra never picked up that Lana might object to killing her best friend as the solution to the Brainiac problem. Lana is also all “Not cool already,” to Imra’s reading her thoughts, making this the second time in as many weeks as I have been in full agreement with Lana Lang. If this keeps up, they’ll convert me into a Lana worshipper yet. Say it ain’t so!

Brainiachloe wins the pissing contest with Clark in the Fortress when Clark can’t bring himself to hurt Chloe to get at Brainiac. I love Allison Mack’s performance as the cocksure computer. It’s different in tone and swagger from James Marsters’ work, but she brings a mercilessness to the character that Marsters never did. Marsters had too much fun with goading people, and he had to conceal himself to work his stealthy evil; he could never be this overt. Allison Mack revels in getting her Big Bad on and goes right for the jugular. She’s rocking the corpse-like aspect, too.

Brainiachloe tosses Clark aside and bee-lines for The Daily Planet to suck their internets dry because it alone is “the hub of information.” (Too bad that Dalek beat him too it.) Is that their motto? Brainiachloe’s logo pops up on screens all over the world wide webisphere, which allows him to drain brains as he downloads all of Wikipedia. (He can argue with himself over the definition of irony forever!) Lana falls victim just after telling Clark where he can find his computer nemesis. He arrives just in time to prevent Rokk from stabbing the evil out of his best friend (Garth, predictably, chickened out despite his pledge to destroy evil no matter what), which means that it’s time for Clark to unload the lengthy speech he’s been preparing that details the myriad ways in which the Legionnaires suck:

“You speak of a code. But if it had anything to do with me, rule number one would be ‘Do not kill, ever.’” End of story, Kal-El hath spoken. Now that death is Not An Option, Imra actually bothers to scan Chloe for any brain activity of her own and finds some. Despite Rokk and Garth having successfully combined their control over magnetism and electricity, respectively, to knock Brainiachloe back with an EMP in the first place, Clark has to explain their powers to them. He instructs Rokk to leech the Brainiac nanobots from Chloe and Garth to zap them into uselessness at the same time. Magnetism! Electricity! Science! Brainiac does not turn into a hateful, manifold little bitch and rip through Chloe’s body but instead exits harmlessly through her mouth and is duly captured into a ball. Chloe revives instantly, inordinately cheerful: “I definitely feel a whole lot dumber.”

Bloomesday wakes up in the arctic as Brainiac is neutralized. Uh-ohs.

Much chastened, the Legionnaires apologize to Clark for trying to murder his friend. Rokk is going to edit the Legion’s charter first thing when he gets back so that “Preserve life at all costs” comes before “Leave brains safely secured in your present time when traveling to the past.” Preserve life at all costs? Even Chloe tells Clark that if there had been no other way, it would have been okay with her to die rather than to let Brainiac destroy the Earth and move on to other conquests. I suppose this rather balanced attitude towards one’s own death means that Chloe is never going to punish Clark for stealing her memories. (Which she now has back, as Clark ascertains with his subtle probing: “Hey, so you still don’t know I’m an alien, right?”) What are memories when she’s willing to die to save the world? Chloe ought to have a chat with the Legionnaires about acceptable losses.

The Legionnaires depart without any words of wisdom but plus one baseball: Garth, his faith in Clark restored, rifles through the great one’s things in search of a souvenir. Garth is ridiculous. Rokk thinks so, too. “Garth, you’re acting like a sub.” I’m sure that doesn’t mean what I think it does. (That link may not be safe for work!) Regardless, it’s a weird thing to leave hanging there without further explanation. The Legionnaires return to the future leaving behind a ring with which Clark may follow after them if he is so inclined. Until they meet again, the Legion plans to work on rehabilitating their Brainiac sphere. Because they have every reason to expect that this incarnation is going to play any nicer with them than the last few. (They’re right as it turns out, but the odds were astronomically against that being the case.)

Rokk warns Clark to watch out for himself, and the Legionnaires zap back to their own time. As soon as they are good and gone, Clark disses all over them to Lana. His theory is that they suck because they had a crap role model instead of the paragons of moral virtue who raised him. Lana explicitly states that Clark was their role model. Typically, the implication and the irony sail over his head. Clark focuses on being intimidated by his future stature instead. Lana soothes his ego and promises he’ll get there. He wants to know what their futures hold for both of them. (HINT HINT, ARE WE GOING STEADY AGAIN, YES/NO?)

Their future has some doom in it. Freed from his chrysalis, Bloomesday is tearing the Fortress a new one. He doesn’t look like a beautiful butterfly…

Next week: The Martian one is down, which means that the cumulative IQ of the characters will be insufficient to challenge a sponge to a battle of wits.

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About TrinityVixen: There’s an asterisk on TrinityVixen’scollege transcript that assures anyone who reads it that, though there is no specific major, degree, or certificate for it, she did, in fact, complete some kind of creative writing program as an undergrad. Armed with that symbol of irrelevant experience, she has polluted the internet with her opinions and horrible fanworks ever since (and for quite a long while before). Living poor in New York until she finds a means to become independently wealthy, she must subsist on the juicy meat of fandom. Fandom and noodles. And instant soup.

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