If Krypton is to survive...
I want to like “Krypton,” the SyFy’s new TV series. I love Superman and have since as far back as I can remember. I wrote about that here. I watched every episode of ten years of Smallville. I’ve seen every Superman movie released in theaters. And I’ve checked out all series featuring the Man of Steel, like Supergirl or Lois & Clark, though I might not have watched every episode or even most of them. In other words, I’m a fan of the House of El. Heck, El is even in my first name, after all.
But “Krypton” has too many weird elements to it, and I wonder if those will allow it to survive. It also has a few intriguing elements, but those perhaps won’t be enough. Let’s start with those.
First, they made the house of Zod predominantly Black. That’s fascinating to me. They also made the house of Zod, including General Zod’s mother (I presume), a lover to Superman’s grandfather. For us, on Earth, it’s significant for those two reason that the house of Zod has been created the way it has. But what’s successful is that the complications of Lyta-Zod’s love with Seg-El, Superman’s grandfather, are more endemic to that world than by race or their descendants’ future history. That’s refreshing.
The show’s runners have paid enough attention to the show’s canon to create both their own take on Krypton and keep some long-standing elements, like Kryptonians don’t reproduce naturally and are divided by guilds, family houses and genetically determined social roles. Krypton is certainly an advanced civilization and the show keeps up with that. But...
THE STATUS QUO BELIEVES THAT OTHER WORLDS DON’T EXIST?!!! This doesn’t make a lick of sense. Seg-El’s grandfather is essentially branded a heretic and killed because he dared to believe and discuss life on other worlds? You have a civilization with hovercrafts, a dome to protect a city from the elements, and superior genetic testing and manipulation and they don’t believe in space travel? That’s crazy AND dumb. There’s suspension of belief, and then there’s making me a damn disbeliever. I nearly can’t believe anything else about the series.
My other beefs with the show are petty, admittedly. Yet, they’re important because the big issue about space travel and life on other worlds could be pushed to the back of my mind if other things weren’t so annoying. I’ll start with the pettiest issue.
Superman is a damn American icon. Now, I’m not nationalistic, especially about America. But I find it weird that nearly everyone on this show is British with use of their British (mostly central London) accents! Not one damn American? Even the putative American character, Adam Strange, is a Canadian actor. That’s just weird to me.
I wouldn’t mind a mixed English-speaking cast. But considering that the show is mostly produced in Canada, it wouldn’t seem too much of a stretch to hire North Americans. It seems that Krypton is more an analogue for the old metropole--England. And that’s like Game of Thrones and too many other shows that seem to make the tacit argument that we can only imagine another royal/feudal world as historically English.
That’s even more striking when you see that Kandor, the central city where nearly all action for the series takes place, looks a lot like a re-envisioned Victorian London, including with loads of dark back alleys. Overall, the show itself has piss poor lighting. Nearly everywhere is too dark, and that becomes a particular problem in a show that features so many Black actors. I keep having to turn up the contrast and brightness on my TV. Of course, the lighting is to set a mood that’s dystopian. We are talking about a doomed world, after all. But we don’t need to feel the world is doomed at the start of the series. I would think just the opposite.
Kandor also appears to be the only other city mentioned in the show. (After watching just 4 episodes.) That’s very weird. We’re talking about a whole world and civilization. I get that much of Krypton is a ice tundra, especially just outside of Kandor. BUT ALL OF IT? There’s no other city? Superman basically comes from a planet with one main city? He should be glad he got jettisoned to Earth and all its cities.
There are real plot challenges in the series, too. Including the ticking clock introduced in episode 1. Adam Strange travels across space and time to tell Seg-El that his grandson becomes Earth’s greatest hero. But he won’t be born if Brainiac (now more like Star Trek’s Borg) destroys Krypton. Strange brings Superman’s cape with the insignia for the house of El on it as proof. The cape’s disappearing from the hem as the ticking clock for how Seg-El’s progress against Brainiac.
Don’t think too deeply about that ticking clock unless you have super powers. First, Strange hasn’t revealed yet that Krypton is somehow destroyed anyway and that’s how Seg-El’s grandson ends up on Earth. Seg-El doesn’t seem to ask enough questions about that. Odd, since he’s supposedly so brilliant. Yet, if Braniac is so unstoppable that Superman’s advanced civilization couldn’t stop him, how will Superman? More important, I’m sure Seg-El and his son, once born, Jor-El, will work to save Krypton more than to ensure that Kal-El (Superman) makes it to Earth. In other words, Strange’s key argument for engaging this show’s hero, Seg-El, sucks. There’s a full-on fatalism here. And fatalism doesn’t make for good dramatic action, especially if we’ve decided to go back two generations before the world’s first superhero comes to Earth.
So, I think this show has already started in a deep, dark hole. I’m not sure the writers are going to find their way out. Or that I’ll come to like the show better. Too bad. I’ve already bought a season pass through Apple TV. #DahWell
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