Today was DC Fandome, an event designed to rival this year’s Comic-Con at Home. Promising exclusive panels, clips, and reveals, it was the big day for DC to present their upcoming projects to audiences in an attempt to create hype. I love DC Comics; they’re what I grew up on and I will always want the films and television shows to be good. So, I tuned into DC Fandome with a lot of nervous energy and unsure expectations. Comic-Con at Home was a bit disappointing, so I hoped DC Fandome would be better. And, largely, it was, thanks to some great edition from the DC team to make it look better than glorified Zoom calls, some great footage and announcements, and some panels filled with a lot of fan-interactions. On the whole, it was a great event that made me very excited for future DC movies and games. But, the things that everyone’s most interested in are the reveals and trailers. So, let’s break that down.
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I love Scooby-Doo. I’m way out of the age range for the show these days and I haven’t regularly watched anything from the series since the mid-2000s, but it still holds a special place in my heart. I grew up on those direct-to-VHS movies and re-runs of the old series (especially A Pup Named Scooby-Doo) on Cartoon Network. So, it’s one of those things that will always be special to me. However, I tend not to be one of those fans who get upset by changes made to the franchise. I really enjoyed the live-action Scooby-Doo films from the early 2000s and when I first saw the trailer for Scoob!, the latest theatrical reboot of the series, I was intrigued. The animation style was neat, it seemed to be teasing a pretty enjoyable story, and I was interested to see what some new talent could bring to the material. Thankfully, even with most movie theaters around the country closed, Scoob! was able to make its initial release date – just on PVOD instead of in theaters. So, having seen Scoob!, how is it? In short: it’s surprisingly solid. It’s a decent-if-predictable story with some good jokes, some beautiful animation, and a lot of heart. (Mild spoilers follow!)
I love Parks and Recreation. I love The Good Place. You would think I’d have been all over Brooklyn Nine-Nine as it’s cocreated by Michael Schur, the creator of both Parks and Recreation and The Good Place. And yet, I’m not. Well, that’s not true. It’s not that I’m not a fan of Brooklyn Nine-Nine, it’s that I’d literally never seen an episode before this year. I love Michael Schur and I love Andy Samberg and I’ve somehow never seen Brooklyn Nine-Nine. So, what would possess me to start watching the show with its seventh season? Honestly, sheer curiosity. The screeners for the premiere came out right as The Good Place was ending and I was curious to see how someone who’d never seen an episode of Brooklyn Nine-Nine might fair tuning into the seventh season? So, that’s exactly what I did. I watched the entire seventh season as it aired. I had a friend who was a Brooklyn Nine-Nine fanatic fill in background info or recommend previous episodes that would be of vital importance to understanding the context of one of the new episodes (I have no seen the first seven episodes of season one, the first three Halloween episodes, the episode with Bill Hader, and the first Jimmy Jabs Games episode). So, in that context, how was the seventh season of Brooklyn Nine-Nine? In short: it was great. It’s turned me into a fan of the show and I eagerly look forward to binging the entirety of the first six seasons as soon as possible. (Spoilers for the entirety of season seven of Brooklyn Nine-Nine.)
I’ve never read a piece of Star Trek fiction before. Well, unless you count that weird crossover comic with Doctor Who from 2012/2013. In fact, my only real exposure to Star Trek, in general, comes from a handful of episodes of The Next Generation, the first two JJ Abrams movies, and general cultural osmosis. But when the trailers for Star Trek: Picard started dropping, I found my interest piqued. It looked like the kind of show I’d be interested in, so I made a point of watching it. At this point, several episodes have aired and I’m really enjoying the show, so I went and looked to see if anything had been released to tie into the show. And lo, and behold, there was this three-issue prequel comic from IDW, written by Kirsten Beyer and Mike Johnson and illustrated by Angel Hernandez, that promised to reveal some of the events that happened prior to the start of the show. It sounded like the kind of thing I’d be interested in, so I picked up the issues and gave them a read and, I gotta say, it’s really solid. Though a bit short, Star Trek: Picard – Countdown tells a really good story that shines a bit of light on Picard’s history before the beginning of Star Trek: Picard. (Mild spoilers may follow.)
Finales are hard to pull off. Especially ones that have as much ground to cover as this one did. Where we last left off, the Doctor (Jodie Whittaker), Ryan (Tosin Cole), and Ethan (one of the human survivors of the CyberWar, played by Matt Carver) were standing in front of the Boundary, a mysterious gateway between worlds/galaxies guarded by Ko Sharmus (Ian McElhinney), face-to-face with the Master (Sacha Dhawan) who is ready to explain what terrible secret he learned about the Time Lords caused him to destroy the planet. Meanwhile, Graham (Bradley Walsh), Yaz (Mandip Gill), Ravio (Julie Graham), and Yedlarmi (Alex Austin) were trapped on the CyberShip with Ashad/The Lone Cyberman (Patrick O’Kane) and the rest of his Cybermen Army, headed directly toward Ko Sharmus’s planet. With that in mind, The Timeless Children had a lot to tie up: it needed to reveal the secret behind the Timeless Child; it needed to reveal what Ashad’s plan was and how he would be defeated; it needed to reveal who Brendan (Evan McCabe), the mysterious man shown throughout last week’s episode, fit into everything and how the Ruth Doctor (Jo Martin) fit in with the established history of the Doctor; and, most of all, it had to be a good episode. Did The Timeless Child succeed at all of this? Yes and no. It featured a lot of answers that opened the doors to even more mysteries. It uprooted everything we thought we knew about the show before somewhat-disappointingly reverting to the usual status quo. It’s solid, but its ideas need more exploration to really land. (Full spoilers ahead!)
It feels like we just started the season, but we’re already nearing the end. This week begins the first half of the season finale and my excitement levels are through the roof. The most interesting episodes this season have been the ones that have revolved around the multiple overarching plotlines – what is the Timeless Child?; who is the Ruth Doctor?; what does the Lone Cyberman want and how will the Doctor defeat it? Plus there’s been the promise of a glimpse of the Great Cyber War. Following any one of those threads would lead to an interesting story, but the promise of all of them? That’s something exciting. Of course, this first half was never really going to answer all of those questions, but it certainly would begin to tie together all of this season’s various strands into something exciting, right? Thankfully, this first half of the two-part finale does everything a first half should do: it sets up the stakes, deepens the mystery, and leaves us desperately wanting to see how it all is resolved. (Spoilers ahead!)
Thoroughly Modern Reviewer 