Wolverine and the X-Men 1x16: Badlands
Nov. 6th, 2020 11:11 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
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tori_reviewsWolverine and the X-Men 1x16: Badlands
This episode...perplexes me. It's kind of pretty good and kind of pretty terrible, and with my time travel focused brain, I have questions.
This show hasn't really laid down the rules for its time travel, I get that; but there's a method implied here that I can't get behind. The Sentinels 'suddenly' have Wolverine's abilities (setting that aside for a moment), and no one in the future has seen them use that ability before; but we're meant to assume that they got it from capturing Logan years earlier. That is not a way I can accept time travel works. You can have Charles in an unchanging timeline while the X-men in the past are trying to move it to a different one; or you can have Charles affected by the changes in the timeline but unaware of it being changed/different. Another option would have been to have him existing outside of time (or that he specifically can see things as 'new' when the timeline is changed), and in places this has felt like what they were going for, that he's projecting into the future but his home time is still the present; but the people he encounters in the future still view things as if that was how it always was regardless of the changes he perceives. Maybe, if I thought this show did have a set way the time travel was supposed to work, I'd give them the benefit of the doubt and say these Wolver-nels are a new creation, or at least one rarely seen before because they weren't deemed necessary until now. But I'm not in a place where I think this show can do great with temporal logic so I'm not inclined to give them that leeway.
But on the subject of the Sentinels having Logan's power...why bother? The Sentinels are robots and these ones have claws; you can put claws on a robot without needing to lift the power from somewhere else. Maybe Wolverine's claws are a special mutation as they somehow don't interfere with anything inside his body when they're retracted, but I don't think I've ever heard of that being a thing. Also I don't think it's ever been implied Wolverine's healing factor does anything with metal or even clothing; so again what is the use to a robot? And that got me thinking...if mutant powers can be replicated by robots either the mutations are a type of energy that can be used by electrical creatures, or the robots have squishy human like bits that can take on powers (the DoFP movie went for Mystique's mimicry extending to powers, but it also could be Rogue's absorption...I only saw the Rogue cut once, was that also used there?). And then there are the mutant powers that they could just build the robots to have, like claws or tails if they're useful (the Sentinels started out as more practical tanks). In some ways this just comes back to my question why there are giant robots in X-Men.
This episode did nothing to answer my question in the last future episode as to what the rest of the world is like. Where are the people of this time? Are they dead? Are there human settlements? Do they turn mutants over to the robots or try and shelter them? Are captured mutants eating soylent green of the normies less useful to robot overlords? All we see are basically combat robots, are there other robots for mining material to make new robots or do they enslave people for that? I just don't get this future; this can be somewhat of a problem in any DoFP type X-Men story, because I don't know any version that really says what the Sentinels want, or how what they were programmed to do makes sense. But you could just about stretch what we got in the movie to make it work; here I'm at a loss and we've had more time with it.
So I was about 70% right in intent with Lorna, but wrong on specifics. It did occur to me as soon as they ran into trouble in the Badlands that oh right, Lorna might just be alive in the future and will play a role, instead of already having done so. In my defense and this applies to this episode too, present-Lorna should have been drawn younger than she was. I assumed she was only a little bit younger than Wanda and Pietro (who I only know are twins because of other sources, they certainly don't look it here), but since she wasn't shown as having a mutant ability I thought maybe she either had a suppressed super powerful ability or was basically just human as she was past the age she would have displayed powers. I'd say this episode makes it seem like her powers manifested during the apocalypse, which would make sense, I just wish she looked more like she was 12-15 instead of 20. And honestly I would probably have made her on the very young side of reasonable to develop powers at that point, more like 10-12, so that her childish attitude towards what was going on in Genosha and who was to blame after would make more sense. Yes I talked last time about how Wanda (who I'm pretty sure is older than Lorna) still has a lot of that; and if they're saying Magneto was that into brainwashing his children then okay, but I think a) Wanda would have been out there fighting and b) someone older and 'useful' to Magneto would have at least some better idea of how things came to the apocalyptic point so unless it was actually Charles' fault wouldn't blame him.
But then we're back to the timeline problem. Because why wouldn't we just assume that the destruction of Genosha happened when they brought Nitro there? It could have been something else even in the 'original' timeline; but how could those in the future know how much the timeline has been changed in the past when they won't see the change either because it doesn't follow their timeline or it just always was that way for them.
Really one thing that kind of makes sense of my questions about the future is if the destruction was caused by aliens. It explains why there aren't that many people around, and that the robots/Master Mold continued to be built in spite of the apocalypse, with the mission to hunt down mutants intact, the fact that mutants were the most likely to survive the destruction gives them something to do. And their long term goal is to defend Earth against the aliens should they return, for their robotic race and what may or may not remain of humanity.
That or it's Phoenix Fire, I seem to recall the show is going to work the Phoenix Force in somewhere before the end of the series.
And as a note on the present day story; Kitty is an asshole and I hate her. I can't tell if they think they're writing her as strong and assertive or a whiny brat but all I see is whiny brat. I was kind of annoyed from the start on behalf of my newfound baby Forge; because oh we have a tech mission so we'll take Forge in spite of never treating him like a field operative or giving him proper training. Then Kitty proceeds to treat him like crap and not get called on her crap when him getting caught is 100% her fault since she dumped him in an occupied van. I guess I've been saying the smaller characters still need to have something identifiable about their character aside from their powers, and they gave Kitty something; it's just a terrible something because she's awful. Unless they're doing some dumb thing where Kitty likes Forge so she treats him like crap so no one knows she likes him then what does her picking on him accomplish for either character? (Even if they are doing that it's still dumb.)
There probably is some kind of graph I can make for how much logical sense (within the context of the story) a story has to make vs. how good/entertaining/fun it needs to be for me to like something. Because this episode seems to right about on that line. It's not a bad episode, it's even good in places; but I had so many pieces of logic broken in it that it needs to be fairly good for me to say I liked it; as is...I'm still not sure.
This episode...perplexes me. It's kind of pretty good and kind of pretty terrible, and with my time travel focused brain, I have questions.
This show hasn't really laid down the rules for its time travel, I get that; but there's a method implied here that I can't get behind. The Sentinels 'suddenly' have Wolverine's abilities (setting that aside for a moment), and no one in the future has seen them use that ability before; but we're meant to assume that they got it from capturing Logan years earlier. That is not a way I can accept time travel works. You can have Charles in an unchanging timeline while the X-men in the past are trying to move it to a different one; or you can have Charles affected by the changes in the timeline but unaware of it being changed/different. Another option would have been to have him existing outside of time (or that he specifically can see things as 'new' when the timeline is changed), and in places this has felt like what they were going for, that he's projecting into the future but his home time is still the present; but the people he encounters in the future still view things as if that was how it always was regardless of the changes he perceives. Maybe, if I thought this show did have a set way the time travel was supposed to work, I'd give them the benefit of the doubt and say these Wolver-nels are a new creation, or at least one rarely seen before because they weren't deemed necessary until now. But I'm not in a place where I think this show can do great with temporal logic so I'm not inclined to give them that leeway.
But on the subject of the Sentinels having Logan's power...why bother? The Sentinels are robots and these ones have claws; you can put claws on a robot without needing to lift the power from somewhere else. Maybe Wolverine's claws are a special mutation as they somehow don't interfere with anything inside his body when they're retracted, but I don't think I've ever heard of that being a thing. Also I don't think it's ever been implied Wolverine's healing factor does anything with metal or even clothing; so again what is the use to a robot? And that got me thinking...if mutant powers can be replicated by robots either the mutations are a type of energy that can be used by electrical creatures, or the robots have squishy human like bits that can take on powers (the DoFP movie went for Mystique's mimicry extending to powers, but it also could be Rogue's absorption...I only saw the Rogue cut once, was that also used there?). And then there are the mutant powers that they could just build the robots to have, like claws or tails if they're useful (the Sentinels started out as more practical tanks). In some ways this just comes back to my question why there are giant robots in X-Men.
This episode did nothing to answer my question in the last future episode as to what the rest of the world is like. Where are the people of this time? Are they dead? Are there human settlements? Do they turn mutants over to the robots or try and shelter them? Are captured mutants eating soylent green of the normies less useful to robot overlords? All we see are basically combat robots, are there other robots for mining material to make new robots or do they enslave people for that? I just don't get this future; this can be somewhat of a problem in any DoFP type X-Men story, because I don't know any version that really says what the Sentinels want, or how what they were programmed to do makes sense. But you could just about stretch what we got in the movie to make it work; here I'm at a loss and we've had more time with it.
So I was about 70% right in intent with Lorna, but wrong on specifics. It did occur to me as soon as they ran into trouble in the Badlands that oh right, Lorna might just be alive in the future and will play a role, instead of already having done so. In my defense and this applies to this episode too, present-Lorna should have been drawn younger than she was. I assumed she was only a little bit younger than Wanda and Pietro (who I only know are twins because of other sources, they certainly don't look it here), but since she wasn't shown as having a mutant ability I thought maybe she either had a suppressed super powerful ability or was basically just human as she was past the age she would have displayed powers. I'd say this episode makes it seem like her powers manifested during the apocalypse, which would make sense, I just wish she looked more like she was 12-15 instead of 20. And honestly I would probably have made her on the very young side of reasonable to develop powers at that point, more like 10-12, so that her childish attitude towards what was going on in Genosha and who was to blame after would make more sense. Yes I talked last time about how Wanda (who I'm pretty sure is older than Lorna) still has a lot of that; and if they're saying Magneto was that into brainwashing his children then okay, but I think a) Wanda would have been out there fighting and b) someone older and 'useful' to Magneto would have at least some better idea of how things came to the apocalyptic point so unless it was actually Charles' fault wouldn't blame him.
But then we're back to the timeline problem. Because why wouldn't we just assume that the destruction of Genosha happened when they brought Nitro there? It could have been something else even in the 'original' timeline; but how could those in the future know how much the timeline has been changed in the past when they won't see the change either because it doesn't follow their timeline or it just always was that way for them.
Really one thing that kind of makes sense of my questions about the future is if the destruction was caused by aliens. It explains why there aren't that many people around, and that the robots/Master Mold continued to be built in spite of the apocalypse, with the mission to hunt down mutants intact, the fact that mutants were the most likely to survive the destruction gives them something to do. And their long term goal is to defend Earth against the aliens should they return, for their robotic race and what may or may not remain of humanity.
That or it's Phoenix Fire, I seem to recall the show is going to work the Phoenix Force in somewhere before the end of the series.
And as a note on the present day story; Kitty is an asshole and I hate her. I can't tell if they think they're writing her as strong and assertive or a whiny brat but all I see is whiny brat. I was kind of annoyed from the start on behalf of my newfound baby Forge; because oh we have a tech mission so we'll take Forge in spite of never treating him like a field operative or giving him proper training. Then Kitty proceeds to treat him like crap and not get called on her crap when him getting caught is 100% her fault since she dumped him in an occupied van. I guess I've been saying the smaller characters still need to have something identifiable about their character aside from their powers, and they gave Kitty something; it's just a terrible something because she's awful. Unless they're doing some dumb thing where Kitty likes Forge so she treats him like crap so no one knows she likes him then what does her picking on him accomplish for either character? (Even if they are doing that it's still dumb.)
There probably is some kind of graph I can make for how much logical sense (within the context of the story) a story has to make vs. how good/entertaining/fun it needs to be for me to like something. Because this episode seems to right about on that line. It's not a bad episode, it's even good in places; but I had so many pieces of logic broken in it that it needs to be fairly good for me to say I liked it; as is...I'm still not sure.
