Smallville Season 7--Black Canary Arrives!

[catwhowalksbyhimself]

We need a new thread anyway, with the new season a week away.

Anyhow, I just discovered that Dean Cain will appear as an evil scientist, and Hellen Slater will be playing Clark's mother. (and thus the new supergirl's aunt)

[JeyNyce]

Just saw the new episode and I have a question

[spoiler]This new girl suppose to be supergirl?  The way she was dress and acted I thought she was Wonder Woman[/spoiler]

[catwhowalksbyhimself]

Yes, she most definitely is.

[AncientSpirit]

I thought her look was great.  Can't wait to see more of her next week.

[Silver Shocker]

I think Supergirl was/is really cool, and I'm not really a Supergirl fan either. Her clothes, quite obviously, like Clark are simply a red/blue motif, like thier costumes.

I'm really hoping for a Lex/Cara coupling. Lex/Lana is clearly on the outs and I thought that was an infintely better coupling than Clark/Lana (gag!)

For Canadian viewers watching the show on Thursdays on "A-Channel" it's been moved to Wednesdays starting this week.

[AncientSpirit]

Wow!  Supergirl rocked.   Great special effects.

And Lois and the Daily Planet?   So great to see the origins of Lois Lane's life there.   Poor Chloe.  The way they handled it, you really had to feel for her.

I can't believe how much I just enjoyed this episode.   If only the Superman movie franchise could be so well written.

[catwhowalksbyhimself]

It was definitely not a disappointment.  It's amazing how much the show has evolved beyond the need for the "freak of the week" format it used to be.

I too was happy with the way Kara was done.  They also seem to be borrowing a lot of plot from the current Superman and Supergirl comics where Kara is concerned, which works pretty well, I think.

[cripp12]

We need a new thread anyway, with the new season a week away.

Anyhow, I just discovered that Dean Cain will appear as an evil scientist, and Hellen Slater will be playing Clark's mother. (and thus the new supergirl's aunt)

Does this mean Clark's current mother is off the show?

[catwhowalksbyhimself]

By Clark's mother, I meant Jor-El's wife Lara, Clark's biological mother.

But yes, the character of Mrs. Kent is gone from the show.  She may make guest appearances, but I can't even confirm that.

[Mr. Hamrick]

oh if anyone cares, James Marsters is returning as Brainiac this season

[MJB]

But yes, the character of Mrs. Kent is gone from the show.  She may make guest appearances, but I can't even confirm that.

I stopped watching the show a while back, why is Mrs. Kent off the show?

-MJB

[catwhowalksbyhimself]

oh if anyone cares, James Marsters is returning as Brainiac this season

Good.  I sort of suspected he might have something to do with the whole crystal stealing thing.

I stopped watching the show a while back, why is Mrs. Kent off the show?

As far as real reasons, I don't know.  As far as in show reasons, she became a U.S. Senator thanks to Lionel's influence after the current state senator was killed as a result of some of the highly unscrupulous stuff he was messing with.

[Silver Shocker]

oh if anyone cares, James Marsters is returning as Brainiac this season

I most certainly DO care. I'm a big fan of both Marsters and Brainiac.

An addendum to my previous comment: according to the tv listings I go by, Smallville (in Canada) is back to Thursday at 8:00, but that might be because of Ontario elections which are being covered during the timeslot Smallville had last week (which was actually Wednesday, not Tuesday, I goofed) so time will tell which will be its regular slot.

[thalaw2]

I just saw the first episode.  I missed most of season six (about 20 episodes of it) so I'm a little lost.  It was a good return.  I'm wondering how powerful is heat vision?   I didn't really care for the introduction of Supergirl.  I hope she develops better later on.  It seems like a repeat of the chick that he found in the phantom zone, that was killed at the beginning of last season. 

I am glad that they included a real shot of Shanghai instead of that horrid thing they had a few seasons back.  It was cool seeing Lana walk down Nanjing Road...I'm sure it was all special effects though. 

[catwhowalksbyhimself]

I hope she develops better later on.

Episode 2 is all about her.

[Silver Shocker]

I am glad that they included a real shot of Shanghai instead of that horrid thing they had a few seasons back.  It was cool seeing Lana walk down Nanjing Road...I'm sure it was all special effects though. 

I found that whole sequence kinda funny because between Kruek herself being half-chinese (even if Lana isn't) and her having dark hair (just like the majority of the asian population, including pretty everyone in that scene) wearing a wig wouldn't be nessisary to keep from being noticed, in fact, I thought it would make her stand out MORE. If you're walking the streets of Shanghai, and everyone on the block has dark hair and you see someone in the crowd with blond hair, who do you think's most likely to immediately grab your attention?  It's almost like if Boba Fett was sitting in the middle of the Death Star run breifing, to give a way-off-topic example.

On the topic of the previous visit to Shanghai, well I have nothing good to say about that storyline, that whole season-long plot about the Countess and whatever was Lana-level gobbledegook of the worst kind.

[catwhowalksbyhimself]

A great performance, but I was waiting for them to say that one of his previous names was Vandal Savage.  Never got that.

[AncientSpirit]

Cat, is that who he's supposed to be?   I don't know much about Savage.  Can you tell me more?

Af first, I thought they were playing Cain as just a deadly doctor.  But when he pulled his SPOILER stuff, I thought it was great!

The best line of the night went to Clark talking to Cain. Something like, "We're not so different, you and I."   

But I didn'r really understand what happened between Chloe and Jimmy.  Why couldn't she tell him what was going on?

Oh ... and I really enjoyed watching Dean Cain do the pitch for the Christopher Reeve Foundation.   He's the perfect spokesman for them now that Chris and Dana are gone.   It was great seeing him wearing the Superman logo pendant.   They should make Cain the official spokesman.

[Glitch Girl]

Ancient Spirit
[spoiler]After he's shot by Lex, the doctor got up talking about taking spears from Mayans and other historical bits of inflicted pain he's experienced.  I can see how you get Vnadal Savage from that (Note: I've only seen the first 40 minutes or so - got the rest on tape)[/spoiler]

I think the whole Chloe/Jimmy things is that he seems highly prejudiced against meteorfreaks.  I don't think it was handled too well.

You're right, Dean Cain does make a good spokesman.

[catwhowalksbyhimself]

Cat, is that who he's supposed to be?   I don't know much about Savage.  Can you tell me more?

I don't know if he's supposed to be him or not, but he easily could be.

Most of what I know about Savage is from his DCAU appearances, but he's basically an ancient, immortal human who lived throughout all of human history.  His sheer knowledge and resources gathered from all that time make him a formidable foe.  All of that fits what we know about Cain's character.

While it was sort of a "freak of the week" episode, Cain did such a good job with it, and the crew weaved it into the general storyline, that it still was quite good.

[herodad1]

i resently got hooked on smallville.i watched the episode were lex got possessed by zod and liked it so well i went out and bought all 6 season box sets.if my wife knew she'd kill me!!!also seeing several posts talking about guest appearances by greenarrow,cyborg, impulse, and aquaman also pushed me in the  right direction.

[AncientSpirit]

Glitch, Cat -- thanks for the background on Savage.  But I'm still missing one important beat.   Was he a hero or a villian.  (In this episode, clearly, he's a villian ... so that probably answers my question, but I thought I ask to be clear.)

After a kickass episode with Kara... then a lukewarm one with the beauty queens (just an excuse I think to put Kara in a bikini) ... this week's hit on Kara was back to awesome, IMHO.  Also, just loved the way the writers worked in the Martian Manhunter's  name.   He's a great character.

About the only thing that didn't work for me with this episode was Lana asking if MM was from Krypton and being told, with a straight face, that he was from Mars.   Lots of cool Mars stories came out of the 40s and 50s ... but knowing what we know now, the claim that MM comes from Mars seems kind of stupid to me.   

Oh well ...

[catwhowalksbyhimself]

Was he a hero or a villian.

His sheer knowledge and resources gathered from all that time make him a formidable foe.

[Viking]

Just in case it wasn't clear, AS, Vandal Savage has traditionally been a villain.  He's shown up as a character in three separate Justice League stories (from the animated series, that is), where he also is a brilliant scientist.

Further background on Justice League Vandal Savage put in spoiler tags, just in case someone wants to avoid reading it:
[spoiler]The first time Vandal Savage appeared on Justice League, he had created a time portal, and sent a laptop computer with modern military schematics to himself in the past, so as to take command of the Nazis and win World War II.

The second time, he married into the royal family of an Eastern European nation that was funding a space program.  He took control of that operation to channel its resources such that it was building not a space observatory, but a massive rail gun in space.

The final time was the second half of a "death of Superman" storyline - Supes had actually been sent forward in time to a post-apocalyptic version of Earth.  He meets Vandal Savage, the sole survivor of the human race.  It turns out that with Superman gone, Vandal Savage was able to successfully defeat the Justice League, but his plans also threw Earth's orbit out of whack and resulted in the extinction of the human race.  Savage had since had several centuries of solitude for reflection, and helped Superman travel back to his own time with the information he'd need to stop Savage's prior plan, thereby preventing the cataclysm.[/spoiler]

[catwhowalksbyhimself]

I'm not the only one who noticed the simularities.

From the wikipedia article of Vandal Savage:

In the seventh season of Smallville, Dean Cain, who portrayed Superman in Lois & Clark: The New Adventures of Superman, guest stars as Dr. Curtis Knox, an immortal character very similar to (if not actually in secret) Vandal Savage. Like his comic-book counterpart he has used many different names over his centuries of life, one of which was Jack the Ripper. When Lex Luthor uses a photo recognition program to track Dr. Knox's previous identities, he is shown in a photo with Adolf Hitler during World War II, again a nod to the comic book version. Finally, the photos of Knox's past identities show him with a beard identical to that of Savage.

[bredon7777]

I'm sorry, I tried- but I find the new Supergirl just too painfully wooden and akward to watch. She creeps me out with that thousand yard stare of hers, to be frank.

[AncientSpirit]

I found last night's episode mediocre at best, but the coming attractions for next week seemed great ... and again focused on Supergirl.  For me this is developing into a pattern where they altnerate between episodes that really grab me and episodes that leave me luke warm.

One cool item last night, though, was the whole bit with the cape.

But I don't have a CLUE as to why they've taken Lana Lang in this new direction.   It felt ... unnecessary.

[Tomato]

It is my suspicion of my household that Lana isn't really Lana, but the clone. They could have easily just said Lana put some blood or hair or something on the seat, or even left out the DNA evidence bit entirely. Instead they jumped to a bit about cloning that currently has no place in the story.

[catwhowalksbyhimself]

Some of the ads about the show where she returns outright stated "the Lana that returned isn't the one who left."

[JeyNyce]

Just saw the episode "Action" and the coolest part is Lex comic collection.