Judging the New 52: Batwoman

It's been a while since I've done one of these, so I figured I'd talk about one of the really good ones.

One of the New 52 titles I was most desperate to start reading back in September 2011 was Batwoman. A Batwoman book had been a long time coming: she was first introduced in the pages of DC's weekly epic 52 in June 2006, in a showy debut that made the mainstream entertainment press in the USA. DC promised a monthly book pretty much as soon as she arrived, but it took until 2009 for her to finally make her proper entrance in a 10 issue arc on Detective Comics. It was the first time since 1939 that someone other than Batman had been the star of that book.

Despite continued assurances that a regular Batwoman book was coming, it wasn't until November 2010 that the first issue finally shipped. It was a zero issue prologue, co-written by artist J.H. Williams III and W. Haden Blackman. The monthly follow-up was delayed, and delayed, and then the New 52 was announced and DC simply held the book back by a few more months to give it a simultaneous launch with the other 51 monthlies.

Enterprise: "Future Tense"

When the Enterprise comes across a derelict human space capsule, Archer is convinced he has found the body of legendary warp drive inventor Zephram Cochrane. Instead he and his crew have stumbled upon a starship from the far future - and it isn't long before the Suliban arrive to claim it.

That time travelling story arc rears its head again. I'm not sure what to make of it at this stage. It goes in fits and starts, usually interesting while it's playing out but too conveniently dropped and forgotten. This particular episode has some great ideas, and a wonderful sense of rising tension, but at the same time it feels annoyingly incomplete. If they were guaranteed to follow up on events in a few weeks I wouldn't mind, but I've a gut feeling it will be the season finale at least before we see more of this plot thread in action.

Who50: "The Tomb of the Cybermen"

Who50 counts down to the 50th anniversary of Doctor Who by reviewing my favourite episodes and serials over the history of the programme, counting down from #50 to #1. Today, #27: "The Tomb of the Cybermen", a 1967 four-part serial written by Kit Pedler and Gerry Davis and directed by Morris Barry.

The Doctor, Jamie and Victoria arrive on the icy planet of Telos, where a human expedition seeks to unlock and explore the long fabled 'tomb of the Cybermen'. Once inside, however, and due in no small part to the Doctor's machinations, the expedition discovers that the Cybermen may not be as dead as they first appeared.

By 1967 Doctor Who was in firm need of a new monster. By the end of Season 4 the Daleks had been written out of the series for good (or so the production team assumed),  leaving a prominent pepperpot-shaped hole. There had been numerous attempts throughout the first four seasons to produce more popular monsters: Terry Nation had tried twice with the Voord and the Mechanoids, one of which failed to capture public interest and the other proved too large to easily use in the small BBC studios in which Doctor Who was recorded. The Cybermen, a humanoid species of emotionless cyborgs, had been created by scientist Kit Pedler and writer Gerry Davis for the Season 4 serial "The Tenth Planet", and had proved remarkably popular - so popular, in fact, that within a few months they were brought back mid-season for "The Moonbase". This made them the third enemy to warrant a return appearance, after the Daleks and the Meddling Monk.

Doctor Who: "Journey to the Centre of the TARDIS"

When the TARDIS gets caught in the grip of a deep space salvage trawler, it suffers tremendous damage - leaving the Doctor outside with a trio of salvage operators and Clara trapped inside within a labyrinth of tunnels, mysterious rooms and monsters. To save her life, the Doctor and his newfound companions must... journey to the centre of the TARDIS!

In a season largely dedicated to "blockbuster" episodes, styled as largely self-contained movies for television with an appropriately high concept, "Journey to the Centre of TARDIS" may just have the highest concept of the lot. The TARDIS has always been one of the most fascinating elements of the series, and there hasn't been a proper TARDIS-based episode since "Castrovalva" back in 1982. Notably, audiences haven't been able to see much of the TARDIS bar one or two corridors since the series returned in 2005, so an episode hunting around the heart of the machine makes for a wonderfully enticing premise.

Game of Thrones: "What is Dead May Never Die"

Game of Thrones has the best opening title sequence of the 21st century.

I am a big fan of opening titles: they're a crucial part of any television series in my opinion, because they give the viewer a little pause (30 seconds, or 60) to forget their day-to-day thoughts and concerns and settle into the fictional world of the TV drama. The opening titles also set expectations for the episode to come. A properly designed set of credits will let the viewer know the genre, the pace, the aesthetic and the emotional tone of what's to follow.

The credits to Game of Thrones achieve all of that, but they also do one other crucial thing: they establish geography. While the clockwork visuals nicely echo the 'game' motif of the series, they also show the viewer where each storyline of the episode is set, and where those storylines are geographically located in relation to one another. In a series where some storylines are set on different continents, and in which they regularly fail to link up in any narrative way, this kind of information is crucial.

So, in week three of the second season, what are the various storylines up to?

The Pull List: 24 April 2013

This was a really strong week for comic books in my opinion. I bought 10 books this week, and in reviewing them I've wound up awarding five stars to six of them. Maybe I'm being too generous with my scoring system, or maybe there's some really good stuff getting published at the moment.

I was originally going to pick up a digital copy of Mark Millar and Frank Quitely's new miniseries Jupiter's Legacy, but it turns out Millar has delayed the release of that title onto digital platforms in a bid to make more readers buy a physical copy. I have a major issue with this: a comic book is a comic book, and while I appreciate his intent to drive more people into brick-and-mortar comic book shops, it does seem quite like cutting off your nose to spite your face. He could have had a sale from me this week, but as my local comic shop didn't have any copies of his comic left on the shelf I guess I'll just give it a miss. If anyone did pick up a copy, let me know what you thought of it in the comments below.

Under the cut: reviews of All-Star Western, Batman Incorporated, The Flash, Journey into Mystery, Katana, Manhattan Projects, The Massive, Star Wars Legacy, Ultimate Comics Spider-Man and Young Avengers.

Bodacious Space Pirates: "My Power, the Power of Pirates"

After her rescue from the cafe, Marika learns from Chiaki that the men watching her came from a number of organisations - police, military, organised crime - all trying to find out whether or not she would accept the captaincy of the Bentenmaru. She later trains in the use of guns with her mother, and then sets off on a voyage with the school's space yacht club. While preparing the ship for takeoff, Marika and Chiaki discover that someone is attempting to hack into the yacht's computer systems.

For a series that's supposed to be all about teenage space pirates, this episode features very little space and absolutely no piracy whatsoever. Instead we get a bit of bonding between Marika and Chiaki, and between Marika and her mother, and some fairly sedate scenes setting up to fly a space yacht. It's not bad bad, per se, but to be honest for a series titled Bodacious Space Pirates I was expecting something a little more exciting.

Doctor Who: "Hide"

The Doctor and Clara arrive at an old haunted mansion, where two investigators - an ex-army professor and an empathic psychic - are attempting to communicate with a long-rumoured ghost that haunts the building. Things are, naturally, not what they seem. Cue running, jumping in terror, and hiding.

"Hide" is not a classic episode of Doctor Who, but it does an excellent job of adopting the elements that make classic Who. The result is an episode that feels just a little bit short-changed in terms of scope and character, but is for the most part enormously entertaining.

A science fiction series like Doctor Who is always going to be on unstable ground when it tackles supernatural themes. Either it leaves them as supernatural - or at the very least unexplained - and the result is something that feels unsatisfying and possibly even annoying (such as Season 2's The Satan Pit), or it explains it away in science fictional terms. This latter approach has risks of its own, since the core element of horror is a fear of the unknown and explaining the horrors away does remove the 'unknown' part rather comprehensively.