What happens when you mix Doctor Who with some of DC’s more colorful heroes and villains? You get Legends of Tomorrow. The CW unveiled its latest DC Comics inspired show Thursday night with a much different premise thanArrow and The Flash. Legends is far more sci-fi than the shows that have preceded it. Warning, spoilers ahead…
The premise is very simple. Immortal bad guy Vandal Savage (Casper Crump) is hell bent on ruling the world ala Napoleon and Hitler and looks to have done just that in the 22nd Century. Enter Rip Hunter (Dr. Who alum Arthur Darvill), a time master with a personal vendetta against Savage. Hunter commandeers a ship and time travels to 2016 and enlists the help of the Atom (Brandon Routh), White Canary (Caity Lotz), Firestorm (Franz Drameh and Victor Garber), Hawkman (Falk Hentschel) and Hawkgirl (Ciara Renee) as well as a couple of villains Captain Cold (Wentworth Miller) and Heatwave (Dominic Purcell) to save mankind from its dreaded futuristic fate. That’s quite a lineup and you know what, after one episode I like the makeup.
As an offshoot of Arrow and The Flash, I like that Legends is a bit quirky with its mixture of good guys and not so good guys. The challenge they face however is unlike Arrow and The Flash, Legends has to establish itself and create their own identity that separates them from the others. Given a very solid cast, I think they can do just that.
Legends marks the third series on the CW and the fifth overall on network television with Supergirl on CBS and Gothamon FOX. This is not even mentioning what Marvel has going for itself on ABC. Over-saturation of the product may not be a real fear when it comes to the big screen but on the small screen where week-to-week ratings are strongly scrutinized, the fear is real. Between the films and TV, it’s a wonderful time to be a comic book fan. I say enjoy it while we can.
May the Dork be with you,
JPB
The Dork Knight