moon_custafer

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tv

TV

Andrew’s been enjoying Doom Patrol, especially as he’s a fan of the comics, so having seen a few comments on Umbrella Academy, I suggested he check it out as it appears to have a similar superhero-gothic/dysfunctional family theme. He just watched the first episode; I think he likes it.

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Oooo those are all things I'm into. Tell me more?

Well, Doom Patrol is a DC comic that began in the Silver Age, but Andrew’s favourite version of it is the Grant Morrison relaunch that really amped up the weirdness. The tv series includes Pierce Brosnan as the team’s manipulative-bastard leader Dr. Calder and Brendan Fraser as the voice of Cliff/Robot Man. Cliff’s a brain in a robot body— one thing the tv series emphasizes is that most of the team, due to their various conditions, don’t really age, and in this version Cliff’s car crash was in the 1980s, Negative Man was a test pilot in the 1960s, and Rita was a movie star in the 1940-50s (in the comics she could primarily shrink and grow— here she’s like Clayface in the Batman comics, able to change shape but with the need to really maintain focus or she turns into a giant lump of silly putty. I suspect that the makeup department has deliberately made her look beautiful in a slightly-too-much way, like she looks like her idealized memory of herself in her heyday.)

Meanwhile, Umbrella Academy is based on the Dark Horse comic written by Gerard Way (formerly of My Chemical Romance) and involves seven of a number of “miracle babies” who were all born at the same moment on the same day in 1989 to women who up till that point had shown no sign of even being pregnant, i.e. real Midwich Cuckoos-type stuff, except that they appear to be humans trying to deal with weird superpowers, plus the emotional trauma of having been raised by a weird billionaire who tried to mould them into a superhero team. Also one of them, due to some time-warp business, is currently a fifty-eight-year-old mind stuck in a thirteen-year-old body and also in love with a mannequin named Dolores (I’m guessing Way saw the George Pal Time Machine.)

He's played by Timothy Dalton.

Oops, right. I always get those two mixed up. Dalton was a much better Bond, though.

Well, Doom Patrol is a DC comic that began in the Silver Age, but Andrew’s favourite version of it is the Grant Morrison relaunch that really amped up the weirdness.

I had no idea this had even been adapted for TV. I look forward to the Brotherhood of Dada!

Oh I forgot to mention that the voiceover narrator is Mr. Nobody (voiced by Alan Tudyk). I particularly liked how he opened the second episode by summarizing the story so far, then commanding: “Right, roll the pretentious opening credits”: https://youtu.be/yK5oeV_JYy0

I'm mildly surprised to see Space Channel land Canadian cable rights for the show. I didn't believe this wasn't going to be Internet-only.

The Doom Patrol, especially the Grant Morrison version, is just about my favourite comic ever! It's so great that it's getting a live action version. I don't have any access to this incarnation (sob!) but have been checking fragments on youTube and it looks pretty faithful to the comics: at least in spirit. You don't get quite the great Morrison dialogue ("Take them down to Hangman's corner. String them up[ on the Cancer Tree and let them watch the end from there!" or The Brain and his ape henchman's long argument about mind-body dualism.) but that's just an artifact of switching to the new platform.

Love the fourth-wall stuff where The Chief asks Mr. Nobody who he's talking to as he's doing the voice-over exposition and he answers "Grant Morrison fans....".

And the trailer for this week says that they're going to Nurenhiem to fight the Cult of the Unwritten Book! They've got Mark Sheppard (aka Crowley - The King of Hell on Supernatural) as the alcoholic Knight Templar who acts as their guide in this caper. I wonder if they'll do the great scene where it turns out that the heads of cult are recursive puppets. They already did the puppet schtick for the Fuchtopia orientation show but maybe puppets will be a big thing on this show. (BTW The fanboy who watched that orientation show with the Doom Patrol stole the show IMHO. Then he turns into D-list villain Animal-Vegetable-Mineral Man!)

My only, slight, disappointment from what I've seen is that they didn't do the whole great origin story of Mr. Nobody. In the comics he get's a spinal shot that cuts him off from all sensation below his neck and is strapped into the inside of a soundproof white sphere. By the end of the first day he's completely crazy. By the end of the second he's one with the universe. On the third day he sees this little black dot floating around and then... On the TV he's just strapped into a machine with der blinkin lights.

Good to see Brendan Fraser working again after his breakdown.

Well, we're only a few episodes in -- I'm definitely hoping the Brain and M. Malle show up eventually.

Well we at least saw a Brain case sitting in Mento's lab in the "Doom Patrol Patrol" episode.

Have you seen the most recent one yet? Andrew and I have suspicions about who Mr. Nobody really means when he asks where “the girl” is.

Lacking actual access to full episodes I'm keeping track via youTube clips (have to be quick before they get DMCA'ed!) but have seen some of that one. Can't think of who she would be other than the cavewoman in that episode whom I'm guessing is a version of the character Dorothy from the Grant Morrison comics - although I don't know enough of her background to be sure.

The cavewoman seems both similar to and different from Dorothy— given that she and Calder were together for several years, though, Andrew and I wondered if they had a daughter who hasn’t been shown yet, and she’s Dorothy (given that both of them seem to age very slowly, a child of theirs might have taken a century to reach adolescence.)

Andrew was delighted by Animal-Vegetable-Mineral Man as well.

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Correction re: Niles Caulder

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The Greatness!

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