​"Light-Years From Home – Krypton S02E01 Review

And so the little show that could on SyFy begins its second season. For those not familiar with the program, Krypton is about Superman's homeworld two generations before he's born. Superman's grandfather, Seg-El (Cameron Cuffe) is the main character. His grandfather Val-El (Ian McElHinney) was banished to the Phantom Zone and the El family has been in disrepute ever since.

Since then, the Vexes have risen to power, and in the "present" of two generations before Superman, they have a lot of influence on Krypton's politics. The leader of the family is Daron-Vex (Eliot Cowan), and his daughter is Nyssa-Vex (Wallis Day). The Zods are the head of the military, and the ranking member is Jayna-Zod (Ahn Ogbomo). Her daughter is Lyta-Zod (Georgina Campbell).

Krypton is divided into Ranks, and at the bottom are the Rankless. Seg is a Rankless along with his parents and his buddy Kem (Rasmus Hardiker). Our protagonist is involved with Lyta, but eventually meets with Nyssa and they have a child together, Cor-Vex. Nyssa discovers she is a clone of the original Nyssa, who died in a skimmer accident with her mother.

Confused yet? There's more! Adam Strange (Shaun Sipos) arrives via Zeta-Beam teleporter device from Earth in our present of 2018. He's has Superman's cape, and it's slowly disappearing as Superman disappears from the time stream in Adam's present, so he's come back in time to make sure Superman is shot away from Krypton as it blows up. And then Brainiac (Blake Ritson) arrives on his galactic tour of shrinking down civilizations' major cities and "preserving" them aboard the spaceship. Oh, and the General Zod of 2018 (Colin Salmon) also arrives.

If this all sounds vaguely Game of Throne-ish, and a little like Dominion for those who remember that, then you'd be right. There's a lot of back-stabbing and palace intrigues and people popping up and rising to power, and assassinating those who are in their way. Krypton is an odd mix of concepts and genres. It taps into the Superman mythos, by focusing on a little known bit of his backstory: his grandfather Seg. Who on the show is young and very Superman-ish. Except without the superpowers.

The first season ended with Brainiac and Seg banished to the Phantom Zone, Zod rising to power two generations before his "time", and Adam discovering that Earth as he knew it in 2018 is conquered by Zod as Zod led the Kryptonians on a galactic conquest to take over other planets. That brings us to "Light-Years From Home", which focuses on four things. The first is that Zod is growing in power on Krypton as its new ruler. Lyta is helping him, and they're recruiting the Rankless into their military (i.e., the "Sagitari"). There's a resistance, led by Val, Nyssa, and Jax-Ur, the scientist who revealed to Nyssa that she's a clone. Adam returns from 2018 to help out, and as with season 1 he's there a) to provide comic relief, and b) to give us human viewers a human character to empathize with. Because without Adam, the show would be a bunch of humanoid aliens doing vaguely human and vaguely alien things.

In a rather muddy sequence, Nyssa gets a lead on Daron and finds him digging through shit in the city's tunnels. She complains that he never told her she was a clone, and just as he starts to answer her questions, he gets shot in the head by Lyta and her Sagitari.

The Sagitari also close in on Jax, Val, and Adam. Val and Jax escape, and Adam uses the Zeta-Beam device to teleport away to... Colu.

Seg is trapped in the Phantom Zone, and sees a future where Zod strangles Lyta. Then Seg's subconscious creates a manifestation of Val who tells him how to use a Sunstone he has to bust out of the Phantom Zone. Except the Val manifestation reveals he's actually Brainiac. They end up on Colu, which is your typical Canadian forest. Brainiac says he and Seg should work together, but Seg isn't having that. Despite Brainiac having immobilized him earlier with a gesture, Seg somehow manages to beat Braniac's head in. That's when Adam arrives. They share a manly hug and then get knocked out by the alien bounty hunter Lobo (Emmett J. Scanlan), who drags them away into the forest.

Back on Krypton, Zod has the baby, Cor, and tells Nyssa to either cooperate with him to end the Resistance or she will never see Cor again, and Zod will raise the baby as his own.

And that's about it: one thing I'll say about Krypton is that any given episode moves along fairly quickly. There's no appearance by Jayna, Kem, or Dev-Em (Aaron Pierre), who was in the Sagitari with Lyta and was in love with Lyta but she was in love with Seg. Doomsday gets a mention since Zod plans to use him in his war of conquest to take out planets that stand against him.

Last season and this season, Krypton is an odd mix of Superman mythology, original material, and Game of Thrones intrigue. Krypton does have some of Superman's Rogues Gallery: Brainiac and Zod, for starters. We got Doomsday near the end of last year, and we have the alien bounty hunter Lobo this year. But it's not like Seg-El is a major character in the Superman mythology. The show has slowly developed bits of Superman to latch onto, but you wonder who it's aimed at? Superman fans? The show tries to get their attention with Superman elements like the cape, and Brainiac, and Doomsday, and Zod, and Lobo. But those are mostly features of the animated movies and various TV shows.

Adam Strange fans? Adam is not a major player in the comics. And even less in the TV shows and movies.

Game of Throne fans? The show often comes across as watered down GoT intrigue.

What does carry Krypton along, is the strength of several of the performances. Cameron Cuffe makes a decent protagonist, Sipos and Hardiker are decent as his sidekicks, and Ritson is an eerily effective Brainiac. McElhinney's Val-El has popped up since being banished to the Phantom Zone: first as a hologram at his "Fortress of Solitude", and then being freed from the Zone to physically appear on Krypton and help lead the rebellion.

I like Colin Salmon, but his Zod is a bit too vague to get a handle on. He's a displaced time traveler who has gone back two generations to conquer Krypton before he was born. Zod doesn't seem at all concerned about the timey-wimeyness of it all. Wouldn't altering the past of Krypton alter his own past, just like it is altering the timelines of Superman and Earth? But Zod doesn't seem worried about that. He just pops up to be the tyrannical ruler and a main villain for season 2. And to drag in a bit more of the Superman mythology.

The rest of the main cast is okay. Given we only see Lobo for a few minutes, it's hard to tell if he'll be a worthwhile contribution to the show. All one can say at this point is Scanlan has the basic mannerisms down. We don’t know why Lobo is involved at this point, and there doesn't seem to be much of a role for a freelancing bounty hunter other than just random conflict. Hopefully, they'll explain more about why he's on Colu next episode.

So overall, "Light-Years" is a decent reintro to the show. It reintroduces the basic plots, and makes Adam more of a major player than he often was in season one. In many ways Adam is the anchor of the show: not from a plot point, but from a "Why should us viewers on Earth be interested in the going-ons on an alien planet two generations ago?" point of view. While the plots and the performances just barely manage to keep one's attention, the creative team giving viewers something to latch onto would be helpful. Otherwise, Krypton is just watered-down GoT. What's the point of having Kryptonians if they're just going to act like Earthlings?

So I'm still waiting for the creative team to give us that "something" to latch onto. Brainiac almost was that something, but a) he's dead, and b) it was the Brainiac of two generations ago. So even if you were into Brainiac, he's seemingly dead at least for the time being. No doubt the creative team could find a way to bring him back: he even says his consciousness is spread out throughout the universe. But the two-generations-removed means that he still feels removed from the Superman mythology. And without that connection to the mythology... what's the point?

And that's my opinion about Krypton in general. I don’t know who it's aimed at, and it doesn't seem to have anything to say. The planet Krypton doesn't seem that interesting. We're not finding out anything about Superman's background--it's not the "origin" of Superman. And unless I missed it, no one is wanting to hear the tale of Superman's grandfather. It all seems several steps removed from the character that is the reason for the show: Superman. I like the show despite the factors that are against it, but I have strange tastes in TV shows sometimes. Why there would be enough of an audience to warrant a second season, I have no idea.

So whether you liked or disliked Krypton in season one, I'd say that's nothing changed. If you didn't watch it before, I'd say give it a chance. You're jumping into the middle of things, but that's what "Previously"s are for, right? You might be surprised. It's not quite superhero stuff, it's not quite Game of Thrones stuff. It's... unique.

But that's just my opinion, I could be wrong. What do you think?