#i wish you could have seen anson better in this video

[cjennies]

Louis Partridge on Jonesy’s Jukebox

[damnredthing]

What I want to see in SNW and especially for Pike… and what not

Warning

Long post, because as you might have noticed by now, I love to write and I write a lot.

Prologue (aka the elephant in the room)

So uh… I guess I will get to see the show at some point… still not sure when. I must admit my excitement is nearly entirely gone due to Paramount+ treating us international fans like… not even 2nd class fans, they treat us like we don’t exist or matter at all. Every promotional video, every interview, every Twitter announcement that exclusively takes place for US and Canadian fans feels like mocking. There is no, absolutely ZERO, ZILCH, NIL, NADA advertisement over here AT ALL. My brother, who is an even bigger Star Trek fan than me (but who is not so much hanging out in social media), didn’t even know SNW is going to start in May, he thought the show was still in the making.

That being said, I’ve worked on my personal wish list for SNW for quite a while. I have rewritten it probably 10 times by now, especially after some of my wishes were already fulfilled as I could see in the trailer (excursion jackets). Even though I do not feel the vibe anymore, I’ve decided to post this anyways because… well… it’s already written and would be wasted energy if I don’t post it. So here we go.

Different tones in different episodes

With SNW being episodic, this allows for different tones in each episode. One episode can be all about action, another can feature a horror story and another can be more comical. I sure hope to see some comedic relief on the show every now and then (if you think Anson cannot do comedy, I highly recommend watching him in Hood of Horror). With this being said, I’d love to see…

Tribbles!

We know they have already been discovered by the time SNW will launch, because Lorca had a tribble as pet in his ready room. And then of course there is also the Short Trek “Trouble with Edward”. I’d love to see Pike and his crew deal with a Tribble infestation (doesn’t have to be on the Enterprise). Or maybe they discover the Tribble's home planet "Tribbletopia".

Pike being the hero

At least every now and then. Now this requires some explanation. We already know that there will be a Christopher Pike Medal of Valor. I think the medal mostly goes back to Pike’s great sacrifice when he tried to rescue the cadets and was poisoned by delta radiation. But I am sure the medal is also based on Pike’s overall service in Starfleet.

While we’ve already seen him jumping headfirst into adventures, he also had to be rescued quite often out of said adventures (even in the ICW comic!). While that is not a bad thing at all (and whumpers will get their fair share I am sure), balance is the key word here. The medal must have a true meaning, let Pike have his hero moments.

Don’t let Pike act like a reckless invincible madman

Pike knows his fate, and I am sure he has already jumped to the same conclusion as many Star Trek fans: If he knows his fate, and he knows he has to be on a cadet ship and be a fleet captain for the events to unfold, he also knows that up until that event he will survive pretty much everything. That could lead to him taking insane risks for himself, or worse, for his crew as well. I hope the writers find a way to balance that out somehow.

However, if the writers go that route, I at least hope for the next…

Let Pike learn a hard lesson

There needs to be consequences. If Pike risks his own life over and over knowing he cannot die up to above mentioned event, then I hope there will be that one key episode that teaches him a hard lesson. This lesson should involve only him and not another character. Another character’s death caused by his reckless behavior would be too lazy writing. The lesson should effect only him. Even though he might not die, he might still get himself in a really bad situation that teaches him there can be a worse fate – even if just temporal - than what he saw in his vision. The lesson learnt should make him rethink his decisions and make him take better care of himself.

Psychological evaluation

In case the writers decide to let Pike recklessly risk his life because he knows he cannot die, and if there won’t be a hard lesson for Pike to learn (see above), I would love to see people around him become increasingly concerned to the point where Starfleet orders a health check and psychological evaluation of Pike, or else he’ll have his command taken from him.

You can tell by now that I see this “knowing my fate” as problematic for the entire length of the show. I can see him dealing with it for a season or even two, but IMO it shouldn’t be the driving force throughout the entire show.

Don’t let Pike have a girl on every planet

There are no doubts that Anson is a very fine-looking man (understatement of the century). I hope the writers will not get tempted to throw women at Pike in every episode. Pike is not Kirk. He has very high moral standards, having countless affairs would contradict that.

Besides, Pike already found the love of his life. The bond to Vina is still very strong (as we have seen in Discovery). We also already know that he will (be) return(ed) to her.

I would not be surprised if we see the Talosians reaching out to Pike a couple more times throughout the show. After all, they are kind of linked to him and will become his caretaker. If they do establish contact again via long range telepathy, I am sure we will also see Vina again.

I hope the writers won’t destroy what they already have. And yes, that trailer still bugs me.

The only affairs I would accept are the kind that are out of Pike’s control, like Orions or other trickery involved.

A pet for Pike

Since I’ve seen Anson in his Discovery uniform on the Captain’s chair with his puppy Mac in his lap, I want to see Pike having his own pet in SNW.

Preferably a pet that gets picked up from an alien planet. I’d love to see a scene where the crew tries to find a new owner for the pet on the ship, but the pet rejects just everyone of them. That is everyone except Pike. The pet doesn’t need to be constantly visible throughout the show, just every now and then.

Spock mind melting with Pike

I just want to see it, no matter the plot.

No retconning Pike’s fate, but continue thereafter

Yes, it stinks to know what will become of Pike. But for the sake of keeping canon towards TOS intact, Pike must go through it all. I just hope the show will not end with Pike’s horrible accident. The show needs to end in a positive way. I hope we’ll get to see at least a couple more episodes of his new life on Talos IV where we see him coping with the knowledge that he’s now basically exiled from Starfleet and his home, but at least can live a happy life with Vina.

However, it wouldn’t be a retcon if the writers continue from there on. After Pike and Vina spent some time on Talos IV, there are many options how both could be helped physically as well. We already know that crippled Pike has an artificial heart to keep him alive (as Bones mentions in the Menagerie Part 1). And we have seen what Starfleet is capable of if we think of Airiam. We also know the Talosians are able to heal as they tried to do so with Vina, but because they didn’t have the right “sample” to learn from, they did the best they could which resulted in Vina’s crippled appearance. Also, who says Starfleet has stopped working on healing Pike? The chair might have just been a first step of many to come. Maybe Starfleet will develop the required technologies to provide him with bionic replacements.

Or let them find an alien race with far advanced medical technology (like in the Voyager episode “the Phage”).

The possibilities are endless. And they could even be carried over to a movie if it shouldn’t be part of the show.

Time travel to Earth in the year 202X

Time travel episodes to a younger Earth are a classic in Star Trek, and considering certain spoilers about *coughs* another Captain *coughs*, it looks like we might see that in season 2. It would be cool to see the landing party (with Pike of course) deal with our current world. It would be funny to see them deal with social media, influencers, nosey yellow press, UFO hunters, NASA or even darker “foes” like the CIA who suspect them of being aliens or time travelers.

What would Pike’s reaction be to the Kardashians or Q Anon? Endless possibilities!

Let Pike be the alien in one episode

After Pike defended the Prime Directive so vehemently in New Eden, I’d love to see him end up on a planet with a pre-warp civilization all alone (shuttle crash or whatever) and be the alien to them (and the Enterprise being unable to find and beam him up for a couple weeks). I’m dying to see how he tries to uphold the Prime Directive while very obviously he is the one who looks different from everyone else on the planet. Whether the civilization is curious, hostile or friendly towards him I don’t care. I just want to see Pike squirm around when pressed to tell who and what he is and where he is from.

Horses

We know Pike is a horse man, so show us them horsies some more!

No Kirk please (I know this is already a lost fight)

In the Menagerie, Kirk states that he met Pike only once for a very short time, basically just to hand over Enterprise. So, I hope we won’t see a lot of Kirk in SNW. Yes, yes, I know the leaked pictures. And again, I have nothing against Paul Wesley. But I totally despise the idea of bringing in Kirk so early, time travel episode or not. Fans campaigned for a Pike show, why the writers think it makes fans ecstatic to see Kirk already in season 2 is beyond me. Hopefully he only shows up for 1 episode and then never again for at least 4 seasons (as much as that makes me feel sorry for Wesley).

Do not turn the Pike show into a Kirk show

In addition to my previous point, I hope the writers don’t show the transfer from Pike to Kirk (sometime in season 10 or so 😋) and then just move on with Kirk as the new Captain in SNW. We already have TOS for all the Kirk stories. Please leave it a Pike focused show from start to finish.

A black collar for the uniforms

The new SNW uniforms look much more comfortable for the wearers than the Discovery ones (although the Discovery ones looked very cool). I am all for that, because I know the working hours for actors on such a show are INSANE. The more comfortable it is for them, the better. However, I think if the costume designers add a black collar to the v-neck (instead of the black undershirt), they would look much nicer and closer to the TOS uniforms. Maybe the uniform will evolve over the seasons to become more like the TOS ones. That would be neat.

Pike shutting down technobabble

I just love how Pike gets practical and finds his own words in Discovery when things get too technical. I hope he keeps that up in SNW.  He can have as many damn red things as he likes as long as the crew knows what he’s referring to.

Bring back Tenavik

The time guardian Tenavik from Boreth looked so cool and Kenneth Mitchell played him so well. I sure hope we gonna see him again!

Bring back Ash Tyler (and continue the rivalry with Pike)

I enjoyed the rivalry between Ash and Pike in Discovery. Even though they have learnt to respect each other and understand that both are on the same side, I could still imagine them ending up in some banter every now and then. Besides, with the Section 31 show not getting on with it, I feel that not having Shazad Latif in a Star Trek show would be a big wasted opportunity.

Please no Mirror Universe

I know this is a Star Trek classic and it is probably wishful thinking on my side, but I hope there won’t be any mirror universe episodes. I get that they are fun to play for the actors because they can be the diametral opposite of what they usually play. But to me mirror universe episodes are just a waste of time. In the end everyone will be back to their normal selves and all the events in the mirror universe served no purpose at all, except that we know there might be an evil Pike, a dumb Spock or a sadistic mad scientist M’Benga who likes to torture his “patients”.

However, should the writers decide to do a mirror universe episode, I want to see Pike channeling his inner Cullen Bohannon.

Tholians  

I wanna see that war unfolding and Pike dealing with this species. A reverse scenario to “In a Mirror, Darkly” from Enterprise would be interesting, in which the Mirror Enterprise crew had a Tholian captured and tortured. I’d like the reverse scenario not as a mirror scenario though, because see above. However, Tholian’s require a temperature of around 200°C (~400°F) to feel comfortable. I wonder how they would handle a prisoner on board of their ship. If they gave him a bubble with acceptable temperatures for humans, there wouldn’t be any room to escape because the moment he left the bubble he’d be steam fried. A cell without physical walls, interesting.

It could be one of the most challenging diplomacy tasks to get out of that situation.

Forced recruiting

An episode in which Pike and some of his away team members are caught by a species who recruits whomever they can get a hold on by force. I shamelessly borrowed this idea from John Jackson Miller’s “The Enterprise War”. However, I am not thinking about those suits. I am thinking about a boot camp, military crew cuts, put in military gear, memory wiped, new identities implanted so they think they actually ARE part of the troop by their own will. Can be a multi-episode arc. And yes you read correctly, I wrote crew cuts. Just to see us all scream in agony when Pike’s wonderful hair is cut. Hah! But my friends, Anson will rock that easily and if they do that as the last 2 episodes of a season, we can see his wonderful hair again in the next season, maybe in a new style even. Variety is everything!

Robert April

I’d love to see an episode in which Pike wakes up just as every morning and prepares for his shift. He mindlessly puts his golden uniform on, sips his morning coffee, bites into a toast… and when he’s about to leave his quarters and passes a mirror, he freezes and stares unbelievingly at his younger self. His hair doesn’t show a single grey streak, his uniform only shows 2 stripes and it looks a bit different overall. He is a commander. Confused he walks to the bridge where he sees Robert April in the Captain’s chair. Robert – knowing his prodigy all too well - looks at his Number One and notices his confusion, asks him about it. Pike is unsure what is real, this reality… or the reality where he was yesterday. Did he all just dream it and he in truth is not a Captain yet? Or is this a trap and he shouldn’t reveal what’s bothering him? He decides to keep his confusion for himself for now and proceeds his duty as April’s Number One. What the episode is all about I don’t even care lol, I just want to see Robert April (and I want him to be the fatherly figure for Pike as Pike is now for his crew).

Gorn

I WANT THEM! That’s all I can say about this. Oh, and Pike fighting a Gorn as a homage to Kirk fighting one. 😁

Novel “Burning Dreams”

Please (partly) turn beta canon in Burning Dreams to alpha canon. Yes I know this means we will lose some redshirts, but Pike kept as a pet for a while by a carnivore deaf hunter alien species Pike can only communicate with by using gestures? Yes, please! Put those Black Bolt sign language to some good use again. 😁 (But please skip the promotion to Fleet Captain… just bring this episode earlier in his career).

Family background

Just an episode in which we learn more about Pike’s family. Does he have siblings? Are his parents still alive? Who actually are his parents for real? In beta-canon (again in “Burning Dreams”) there’s this thing going on that Pike is adopted by Charlie Pike (who later turns out to be his for a long time absent biological dad) and his original name is actually Christopher McKinnies. I’d like to see his family background resolved once and for all. This adoption thing is a nice idea, but it is still beta canon and some of that story doesn’t sit well with me.

Surprising reveal

We do not have that much background about Pike. Is he really 100% human? Why could the Talosians access his mind so easily? Why is Pike empathic above average? I’d not mind a surprising reveal (even to Pike himself) sometime in season 2 or 3 that he is ¼ Betazoid. Not enough to be able to use telephathy, but enough to have rudimentary effects coming with it. I am not sure this would go with canon as I think Betazoids were first introduced in TNG, but at that time they were already a very well established species within the Federation. As they are indistinguishable from humans (except for their all black pupils), they maybe lived in secret amongst humans for way longer than we thought…

Spiders

Pike hates spiders, so spiders need to be the center of at least one episode. I’m thinking either a horror episode in which Pike faces giant spiders or is haunted by an army of little spiders in his involuntary visions.

Or a humor episode in which he encounters a spider species who is super curious about those weird looking 2 legged beings (away team). They are so curious that they don’t want to let them leave again, all the while they do everything they can to make their guests feel comfortable. The spiders in the humor episode would kinda look cute, with big round eyes, fluffy hair. But still, they have 8 very long legs and they can produce silk which freaks Pike out no matter how nice and caring the spiders are towards him.

Pike’s Nemesis

I’d like to see a true nemesis of Pike’s develop throughout the show. Kirk had Khan. Picard had Q. Sisko had Dukat. Janeway also had Q (sort of). I think for Pike the nemesis should either be a Tholian or a Klingon. I’d love to see an antagonism of the kind we saw between Sisko and Dukat with changing states of emotion towards each other. Sometimes pure hate, sometimes they even grow some weird sort of respect for each other, sometimes they are forced to work together against an even greater enemy. But in the end there will be the big face-off and only one can survive (and we know who that will be… naturally).

[briangroth27]

Marvel’s Inhumans Season 1 Review

I didn’t find much to love in Marvel’s latest TV series: I’ve never been a huge Inhumans fan and this did little to change my mind. The show felt prohibitively small-scale, the character arcs were messy even in an eight-episode season, and they took the bizarre position of making the supposed heroes the heads of an oppressive caste system. It seems like budgetary restraints put a cap on power usage, but I feel like we see more action on episodes of Agents of SHIELD than we did on this show. There were many opportunities to go bigger, weirder, and much more interesting in all areas of the series, from design to superpowers to character arcs, but more often than not they chose to play it safe and conventional.

From costumes to sets, the production values for the Inhumans’ hidden moon base Attilan looked far too mundane and ordinary, like you could find them in any location on Earth. Their design choices and way of life didn’t reflect a people that had been separated from humanity for such a long time. Shouldn’t they have wholly disparate customs and outlooks; shouldn’t they essentially be aliens to us at this point? The terrigenesis ceremony, which gives the Inhumans their powers, was the one cultural touchstone that felt like it separated them from any other Earth culture. Attilan should’ve been home to as many strange and wondrous Marvel Easter Eggs as possible—this was their first chance to truly dig into the weirdness of the MCU on TV—but we got none. While Hawai’i was shot well, the rest of the Earth locations didn't really pop either. The set for what was supposed to be a high-tech space agency was an empty warehouse with a big-screen monitor and some desks arranged in front of it. 

The characters didn’t fare much better and for the most part, their sojourns in Hawai’i did little to endear them to me. While it was great to have a lead who couldn’t speak and instead used sign language (or a version of it, anyway; like I saw in reviews at the AV Club, there’s no reason for them to speak English but not use ASL), Black Bolt (Anson Mount) wasn’t given many opportunities to do more than glower. When he did get to briefly explore other emotions, like comedic reactions to humans or romance with Medusa (Serinda Swan), Mount was believable, but overall Blackagar Boltagon felt pretty grim the whole time. I didn’t buy the angst of his character: a scene where he accidentally vaporized his parents with his super-destructive voice was so nonchalant it appeared comedic, not tragic. Additionally, Black Bolt did not appear to be a ruler charismatic enough to uphold the oppression the royal family continued forcing on the people of Attilan. His leadership choices didn’t make much sense either: learning of the spread of Inhumans on Earth (as seen on Agents of SHIELD), he secretly sends Triton (Mike Moh) to recover them, complete with a secret rendezvous location in case things go bad. Why wouldn’t he tell Medusa and his master strategist Karnak (Ken Leung)? We’re never given a hint that he distrusts them and it’s clear neither would betray him. How did he send Triton, when the show makes no effort to give Black Bolt the means to communicate without Medusa interpreting for him (the Inhumans have wrist communicators, but the devices don’t have video screens or text readouts) and only Medusa and Maximus (Iwan Rheon) know how to understand his sign language? We’re also told he has a secret bunker that no one else knows about, fully stocked for several lifetimes. What if Black Bolt had been killed in a sneak attack from their “greatest enemy?” Medusa and the rest of his family would’ve never known where they could seek shelter. Keeping secrets like these made no sense and only served to manufacture cheap drama when the other characters found out and (rightly) called him on his bizarre choices. I did like that Black Bolt always maintained his self-control about using his powers, making him a clever foil to Maximus’ obsession with getting abilities, but that wasn’t played with as much as it could’ve been. Finally unleashing his voice to give Maximus the other thing he wanted—to be king of Attilan—was fitting, but I didn’t feel anything from their struggle since they spent so much screentime apart.

Karnak was introduced as an abusive and borderline psychotic womanizer—telling a servant (Jenna Bleu Forti, I believe) that within two days of dating he’d hate her so much he’d want to kill her because he could see her flaws—and his brief fling with a human (Jen, Jamie Grey Hyder) while his powers were on the fritz did nothing to convince me he’d changed. I’ve liked Leung in other roles, but making Karnak likable was a truly uphill battle. That he hit his head and messed up his powers of seeing the flaw in everything because he calmly stepped on a loose rock and fell off a cliff was absurd. Immediately abandoning his quest to find Black Bolt once his powers glitched—not to find out how to fix them, but because he felt useless—made me wonder why he was ever seen as reliable among the royal family. His truly random time on a pot farm was extraneous to the plot (especially once violence was involved), and his self-doubt momentarily changed into completely embracing a carefree lifestyle far too fast, but at least his fling attempted to provoke some character growth by getting him to not look for flaws so much. However, his inability to see them at that point deflates that growth a bit for me. Once he reunited with his family, their biggest reaction to the changes he’d supposedly gone through is that he acts without being absolutely sure now, not that he’s grown as a person or anything. He does defy royal decrees and tradition by putting Gorgon (Eme Ikwuakor) through terrigenesis a second time to resurrect him, but Black Bolt and Medusa scolding him felt half-hearted, so it didn’t seem like that big a breach in protocol. While his dedication to his friend was admirable, he was so abrasive in the beginning that I still didn’t find him likable at the end of his arc.

Questions of competency further arose around Gorgon, who seemed to be the worst head of a royal guard ever. This is a guy who, knowing they have to remain hidden, intentionally crushed exploratory rovers, stole the flag Neil Armstrong planted on the moon for fun, and told a bunch of Earth strangers about their secret moon city right after meeting them. I don’t know if it’s because he never had to actually police anything in Attilan, but he wasn’t written like someone who’d be in charge of security; he was written like a bumbling fool Karnak had to put up with. I get the buddy cop pairing they were going for—Gorgon was the fun impulsive contrast to Karnak’s obsessive planner—but too often Gorgon came off as dumb and Karnak as cruel for me to buy into their friendship very much. Don’t get me wrong; a fun-loving, jovial head of security would be a refreshing change from the standard gruff characterization—Ikwualkor seemed more than up to that task—and it would’ve been fine if Gorgon hadn’t seemed so irresponsible as well. His only response to Karnak telling the servant he’d want to kill her was “You’re your own worst enemy,” which either implies these kinds of comments are so common that he’s decided they can be laughed off or that Gorgon sees Karnak’s sex life as more important than the actual lives of the servants (“say nothing about wanting to kill them—even if you’re thinking it—and they’d sleep with you” was my interpretation of his reaction), or both. Resurrecting him as a somewhat confused “zombie” after a heroic sacrifice (possibly the only truly guard-like thing he did beyond training people to fight in flashbacks) in the later episodes didn’t help matters either. They had a chance to make him see that the royal family’s way of doing things was wrong when a group of Hawai’ian freedom fighters told him about Hawai’i’s history, wherein America forced Hawai’i to give up its monarchy—as if all monarchs are good regardless of who they are—but the writing didn’t let Gorgon realize that Maximus didn’t parallel the imperialistic Americans, Black Bolt and co. did. I found it odd that Gorgon would take these random humans’ advice about strategy for fighting Maximus (staying on Earth to make himself bait so Maximus would bring the fight to him) instead of coming up with one himself. He did have a good idea when he suggested Karnak bluff about still having his power, though, and he did show a little responsibility in eventually telling his freedom fighter pals to back off for their safety; I just wish he’d shown more of this kind of behavior. It seemed like they were afraid to extensively show his hooves, as he wore special boots that made his feet look normal in every action sequence. Triton (Mike Moh) was wasted—maybe the heavy makeup required to bring the character to life prevented them from using him much—and there was no reason for Black Bolt to keep his mission a secret except to create a later moment of internal drama. He did have pretty cool fight scenes at the end of the season, though.

Medusa fared the best by far on the show, and was the one character I was invested in. Even though they cut off her prehensile hair in the first episode—for budgetary/effects reasons, I suppose; for the record, I didn’t think the CGI hair looked bad—robbing her of her trademark powers, her arc was the best-written and acted. At first I thought she was a little too stoic, but Swan did great once Medusa was banished to Hawai’i; her reactions to the loss of her hair—effectively several limbs—were haunting and powerful. I wish we’d gotten more time to see just how intrinsic Medusa’s hair was to her everyday life so we could see how big an impact losing it had on everyday actions (how often does she use her hair when the rest of us would use our hands, for example?) or her fighting style (I did like what little we got to see of her using her hair offensively), but Swan absolutely sold her loss. I liked that her displacement revealed her as a tough fighter (and clever strategist, correctly guessing that Crystal (Isabelle Cornish) was being used to track the royals’ locations) rather than crushing her, though as I’ve seen pointed out elsewhere, a bigger reaction to seeing Maximus again in the end would’ve been appropriate. They could’ve even included the twist the comics did, where she could still control her hair to attack him even after having it cut off. I did like that she destroyed his last chance to get powers by smashing the terrigen crystal just like he stole hers, though. And she got to deliver perhaps the series’ coolest line to Maximus, “Black Bolt wants to have words with you.” Her drive to save her husband—her second call to Black Bolt on their communication devices after arriving on Earth was a great expression of their love—and reunite her family provided the urgency and stakes to the show. While Black Bolt got arrested or captured a lot early on (elaborating on Maximus’ connections on Earth) and everyone else was stuck in subplots that went nowhere and added very little to their character development (mostly they just gained an appreciation for humans, though Karnak and Gorgon once tried thinking like each other to solve problems), Medusa’s arc fit squarely into the narrative and drove most of the action. While she was abrasive when she got to Earth, her burgeoning friendship with Louise (Ellen Woglom) was well-constructed to spark her character development and it’s the one human relationship that felt real and natural. While I would've liked Medusa to spend a little more time dealing with how her rule affected her citizens, taking responsibility for the royal family’s misdeeds and acknowledging that Maximus had the right idea (just like her parents) was a good start, though we probably should’ve seen more of a reckoning for the royals in terms of public reaction to them. I also liked her getting fed up with just being Black Bolt’s interpreter and his lies in general, so I’d be very interested to see what she does with an equal share of the responsibility of ruling. Will she balance her parents’ teachings with the way Black Bolt has been leading, or will she do something entirely different? I would also watch a second season of Medusa and Lockjaw travelling the world to rescue scared and persecuted Inhumans. Medusa and Lockjaw recurring on a Ms. Marvel series, with Medusa teaching Kamala how to be an Inhuman and Kamala teaching her how to respect non-royals and humans, would be welcome too.

Medusa’s sister Crystal had the potential to go in an interesting direction, but they settled for a flimsy romance instead. Maximus seemed to nearly convince her that he was right about the horrible conditions of Inhuman society in Attilan—particularly since her parents had fought against the royalty—and it almost seemed like she might agree. Instead, she escaped Attilan the first chance she got and fell in love with the first human (Chad James Buchanan) she met, who also rammed Lockjaw with his four-wheeler. True it was an accident and he got her dog help, but he also convinced Crystal to go swimming instead of looking for her family in the middle of a coup. From what we saw of Crystal in Attilan, at no point did she need to relax more; even after the coup, Maximus let her hang out in her room. I’m not against romance in superhero stories at all—the soap opera aspect is a core component, dating all the way back to Superman and Lois’ triangle for two—but this wasn’t the time and it paled in comparison to the promise of Crystal more directly interacting with Maximus’ plot. I would have absolutely been on board with her siding with Maximus for the right reasons (minus the overtones of a forced marriage); that would’ve been far more complex and engaging than continuing to draw her as the sheltered princess they did. It also would’ve put her at odds with the rest of her family and built on the backstory of Black Bolt’s parents (Michael Buie, Tanya Clarke) putting hers to death for dissenting against the monarchy. Instead, she got a bland flirtation and her entire role in the final battle against Maximus was to ask a wall (Moses Goods) to teleport everyone to Earth, and she didn’t even have to convince Eldrac to help. Lockjaw was a delight, but he didn’t get to do anything but act as a transporter for everyone else. As I’ve seen pointed out elsewhere, I really wish we’d seen them build their relationship more.

Maximus had all the right motivations—he legitimately had a good argument about the Inhuman caste system throwing people with undesirable or no powers into literal mines (despite the fact that surely powers like Gorgon, Crystal, Karnak, Black Bolt and even Medusa had would make mining easier…no argument that limited resources necessitated the caste system holds up when all the powers useful for labor are wasted on an upper class that does nothing) while those with admirable or beautiful powers were prized—but he was trapped in Attilan without anyone to spar with beyond underlings (another reason Crystal agreeing with him but truly fighting for the greater good would’ve been the better arc). If he wanted an exodus to Earth to ease overpopulation on the moon so badly, why didn’t he just start moving people there as soon as he was in control? Using Eldrac would’ve allowed him to take his people anywhere and the royal family wouldn’t have known or been able to do anything about it. They should’ve been able to hold whatever territory they took or, more intelligently, couldn’t they replicate their camouflaging tech on Earth? Establishing a temporary, invisible home base on Earth where they could collect the newly emerging Inhumans would’ve been better than staying on the moon. Surely fulfilling his promises and leading his people into the future would’ve gone over much better than murdering anyone who opposed him, even with spinning the Genetic Council as the keepers of oppression. It would’ve been a great and complex twist if, in addition to wanting powers, he actually was a good king. When it came to his selfish impulses, he came off as another Loki scheming for power, and while I’ve seen the suggestion that an Inhumans show with multiple “houses” could’ve been the superhero Game of Thrones, that’s much harder to do when there’s only one house. The reveal that Maximus had been communicating with people on Earth and was in command of the soldiers who “killed” Triton was a genuine surprise to me, and I wish there had been more examples of his Machiavellian schemes. On the other hand, forging his parents’ signature on a decree to have Black Bolt lobotomized—inadvertently leading to Black Bolt killing them—had no effect on me; it just seemed so haphazard and random, like it was tacked on to give Black Bolt additional reason to hate Maximus. Having Maximus send out soldiers to attack the royal family got old (though at least they used super powers), and perhaps it wouldn’t have seemed so perfunctory if the royals hadn’t all had their powers undermined right off the bat. Maximus and his loyalists would’ve had to be that much more cunning and powerful if they were dealing with a royal family that had functioning superpowers instead of a scattered array of lost souls, which would’ve made for a more exciting series instead of watching drug dealers try to kill Karnak and random freedom fighters team up with Gorgon. I wish they could’ve given him his second terrigenesis to push him further into madness. I also wish we’d seen his friendship with Medusa—in flashbacks or in the present—since it was apparently so important to him; that would’ve added an understanding of how much he was either hurt by her cutting him off or how much he was willing to sacrifice to be someone important.

The series’ biggest problem was crafting the royal family as willing perpetrators of the caste system in Attilan. I’ll give the show credit for taking the hard path and making them knowingly complicit instead of just having Maximus convince the populace that truly benevolent and fair rulers were corrupt simply because it was a monarchy, but the writing didn’t do the best job of having any of the royals deal with what they were doing to their people. With Black Bolt and Co. willfully throwing Inhumans with powers that aren’t desirable or useful into slums and mines, how are they anything but the villains? Why should we root for them? Then you have Kitang (Marco Rodriguez) celebrating terrigenesis as a process which elevates the Inhumans above everyone else; however well the “Inhumans-as-mutants” parallel was going on Agents of SHIELD, comments like these destroy the idea that Inhumans can reliably stand in for mutants as metaphors for the disenfranchised and oppressed in society. Going even further, I didn’t need to see the royal family learn to appreciate humans at all. That was extraneous to their arc this season and not at all relevant to Maximus’ struggle. Though he vaguely wanted to conquer Earth to take back their “rightful home,” the royals didn’t need to know people to disagree with that impulse, as they already did before meeting anyone and Maximus’ immediate plans never involved attacking humans (except holding a few hostages once). They should’ve been learning to appreciate the lower classes of Attilan and the newly-powered Earth-born Inhumans instead; especially given that’s what brought Triton to Earth in the first place (perhaps the Earth-born Inhumans have created their own underground subculture that would contrast with Attilan’s). Accepting and protecting humans should’ve been saved for a potential Season 2, when they would’ve known they were stuck among us but still felt somewhat xenophobic, especially faced with a government that hates and fears Inhumans.

Despite a nice moment in the fourth episode of Black Bolt taking the time to move injured enemy Inhuman soldiers away from a fire, I didn’t buy that one dying soldier (Locus, Sumire Matsubara) was all it took to convince Black Bolt that their caste system was wrong from what we saw. Medusa maybe, because her parents fought it (and Black Bolt’s parents had hers executed), but I still think we needed to see more of her secretly suspecting her parents weren’t wrong all along to really sell that shift. The dots of her emotional arc were there, but they needed to be connected more clearly. Her comment to Black Bolt about killing Maximus, “Think about what kind of ruler you want to be,” was probably prompted by her dissident parents’ deaths, and mercy for Maximus also probably reflects both their childhood friendship and her friendship with Black Bolt, which started when she went to gloat about his parents’ deaths but took pity on him instead. They could’ve even introduced and justified her lack of success in effecting social change by showing her trying to push it once she became queen, but accidentally finding herself taken in by the comfort of royal life and the ease of cold practicalities (such as forcing Locus into her scout position instead of allowing her to be a healer like she wanted) without realizing it. A wrinkle like that would’ve sold the wakeup call Locus’ death was supposed to be while also bringing Medusa into conflict not only with Black Bolt, but the social awakening Crystal should’ve undertaken. These are the sources of internal dissention they should’ve gone for among the royals, not brief spats over Triton’s mission or Karnak being annoyed at Gorgon’s foolishness. Had something like this been included, I would’ve believed the pivot to a more democratic society more (if that’s even what’s happening; we aren’t really told how the royals are going to continue Maximus’ goal). 

The pacing on the whole could’ve been faster. After a quarter of the show had aired, it felt like it had gone nowhere. If this had been a super-powered Mad Max: Fury Road, with the royal family chased out, seen what it was like to be the nobodies in society—maybe in addition to Maximus’ forces hunting them, whatever is left of SHIELD should’ve been on-site to deal with the new Inhuman menaces—and then sieged Maximus’ new Earth-bound city (as the only ones equipped to do it in the wake of Civil War), it would’ve been much better and tighter. I suppose that’s essentially what it was, but the subplots on Earth didn’t really contribute to a greater understanding of the system the royals were perpetuating for the characters. I also don’t understand the intentional vagueness of the finale. Where on Earth is their new home? Who is “the Boss” that secured them this location? Who is their “greatest enemy?” There’s no reason not to answer those questions and they’re not interesting enough to be hooks for a second season. It’s also weird that, just like when Agents of SHIELD started, the people in Inhumans are right back to doubting paranormal things despite living in a world full of them. Callisto Aerospace Control Center scientist Louise gets suspended for suggesting aliens destroyed the moon rover? Aliens demolished New York! Why wouldn’t that be a priority-one, “Call SHIELD right now!” moment?

I don’t know if Inhumans will get a second season and I’m not sure I’d watch if it does. They introduced some interesting ideas, but never expanded on them as much as they could have and the budget was not there to accommodate this world or these characters, spoiling their potential and drastically decreasing the stakes. The show did make me a fan of Medusa and it was great to see another strong female character join the MCU, but I don’t know how much longer her character can carry Inhumans. However, everything can be improved, so the question is, will ABC give it the chance?