Tuesday 22 January 2013

A Neat Solution

In the sixth episode of Smallville, the elderly precog, Cassandra Carver, introduced in this episode, tells Clark that someone close to him will die soon. Clark, having seen that Cassandra's foresight works, is understandably concerned about Jonathan, Martha and Lex.

In fact, a guy with a demented motive for murdering Jonathan goes to the Kent farm and, finding Martha first, nearly kills her but Clark, knowing that she is in danger and using his X ray vision to see through walls, arrives just in time to save her life so it seems that Cassandra's prediction was wrong. However, meanwhile, Clark has become close to Cassandra herself...

This neatly solves two problems:

the prediction is fulfilled without killing any regular cast member;
a character, Cassandra, who knows something of Clark's secret dies so that the secret for the time being remains within the Kent family.

This is a powerful story in its own right and did not require the meteoric rejuvenations of the murderer. The characterisation and drama within Smallville could be strong enough to carry a story without requiring the additional drama of a different super-villain every week.

The meteoric radiation affects people through their minds. Cassandra must have known of the mythological character after whom she was named. The murderer wanted to be young again to enact his revenge: an old guy full of malice who gets the chance to attack people as he wants to - a truly horrible idea but that's comic book villains' motivations for you.

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