I’ve mentioned this one before, but I gotta write something, so I might as well get back to complaining about how I don’t like Superman being about “Hope”. And to get more specific, I’m gonna talk about a story from the “Future State” event a year or so back.

I don’t have the energy to explain what “Future State” was, but the story I am particularly gonna talk about is about a future when Superman is missing and a young woman goes on a pilgrimage to Smallville and meets up at a meeting with a bunch of people who had been saved by Superman over the years. They share their stories about how Superman saved them and feel bad because they assume he’s dead.

The main character is not happy with these survivors. She thinks it’s shameful that they’ve given up hope that Superman is still out there. PDR is not happy with these survivors because they got saved by Superman and it seems like all they took from it was that Superman sure is great and we need him to be around forever. Unlike main character (whose name I have not committed to memory), I don’t care if these people think Superman is dead.

I have to be clear, these Future State issues do point out that Superman’s supposed “giving us hope” was accomplished via doing good acts. The main character says she was helped by a story he wrote as Clark Kent and she says of Superman: “If his powers had never come, he still would’ve been what he was. He’s just have saved people in different ways.” She’s clearly saying that Clark’s actions are the good thing here. But she also says “We didn’t call him Superman because of what he can do! We called him Superman because of who he is!” and that’s where the argument fails for me.

I agree that it isn’t what Superman can do (his powers) that makes him special. But I do think it’s what he actually DOES do that makes him Superman. I don’t like the idea that Clark is just inherently a good person and he is a symbol of whatever whatever good stuff. If any one of those people at the meeting said “Superman saved me, which made me realize I should be helping other people, so that’s why I became a teacher or doctor or whatever” then I’d respect them. I don’t care if they’re full of hope. They could be utterly hopeless and working to do good and I’d respect the hell out of them. That would be keeping Superman’s spirit alive whether he is alive or not.

I don’t know, I feel like I’m repeating myself and not making my point any clearer. I don’t know that it can get any clearer. This story was by the guy who is still writing the main Superman book and he has continued to weave “Hope” into his stories. The run has been popular on the Internet circles I travel in, so I feel bad that I mostly only comment on the flaws I see in it. But just remember this isn’t just a flaw I see in this run of comics, it’s a flaw I see in the entire public perception of the character! That’s… better… right?

Naturally, my attempt to watch the show had to get complicated. According to Wikipedia, this episode aired as the second last episode of the entire show when it was on television, but is episode six on the DVDs. That’s not an insignificant difference. So I’m going to watch it at this point in the run, assuming the DVDs know better and that the original airing was the result of network meddling or whatever. That means I won’t be getting the same viewing experience that Little PDR had, but maybe this one will be better. It does make me worry about a potential lack of status quo progression as the show continues, if this episode could air that late. Ah well, we’ll see.

In this episode, Yale does the narration, but the story doesn’t even pretend to be about him. This is an Alonso and Bess episode. Alonso (as ever) is the less interesting part, so let’s get that out of the way: Alonso hates that he’s still recovering from his injuries and trapped on this world (the planet is called G-889, by the way). Alonso is used to the life of a space pilot, so he’s feeling doubly grounded by this experience. In this episode, he gets so upset he tries to kill himself. He is stopped by the Terrians, who then give him a dream (even more like the Prophet stuff from DS9 because it involves him interacting with an image of someone from his life) and then he feels better. Good for him.

Bess’s story is more important. Bess and Morgan are feeling like the rest of the group think they’re idiots (and the group is correct to do so), so Bess tries to prove her worth by bartering with a Grendler (who seems like not the same one that was following Morgan before) for food, and then for other items. This goes well until it doesn’t. When Bess manages to trade for a fancy piece of technology that “locks up land” so it can’t be mined and, Bess figures, Terrians would not be able to move through it. Morgan (who is in extreme unpleasant form this time) recognizes this as a chance to stake a claim on valuable minerals on this new planet and become wealthy, and Bess is easy to convince because she hates the way Devon has been treating her as an idiot or, at best, an employee. Instead of Morgan continuing that redemption arc from last thing, he sways his wife away from the group. It’s also worth noting that when they were wed, apparently the couple took a vow to “forsake all others” which I don’t think is standard in the real world of today. We also learn in this one that Morgan has been coping with life on the planet by developing a bit of a VR addiction. I’m still hoping this couple can turn things around and stop being a convenient source of drama among the Utopians, but I’m beginning to doubt.

What else? Well, 1) I caught on that Dr. Julia is genetically enhanced. I don’t know if that’s come up before, but it definitely occurred to me that this show had a genetically-enhanced doctor before DS9 (knew that it) did. 2) I like that the group is having a lot of trouble finding edible vegetation on the planet. I’ve already commented that it’s a shame the plants look exactly like Earth plants (granted that’s because it’d be awfully hard to make a whole landscape of alien plants to film in), but making it so that they are clearly not as easy to eat as Earth plants does help. 3) Was Gaal trying to steal vehicles because he thought that he’d be able to trade them to Grendlers for something cool? No, that can’t be. He was keeping them addicted with blood, he wasn’t trading with them. 4) They used the stock eagle sound effect again. I wonder how often they’ve done that before I noticed. BUT MORE IMPORTANT: They used sound effects I recognized from Doom! I’ve often heard the stock sound effects that were used in Doom in other things (especially the doors!) because I’m sure it’s the cheapest sound pack available or something. In this case it wasn’t the doors. I think it was a dying Pinky, but it may have been an Imp, I’m not going back to check. I’m just always happy to hear these sounds that I will always associate with a computer game that happened to use them. Better than a Wilhelm Scream every time.

This time Devon is narrating again, but it isn’t really her episode. This one is mostly about the crash that left our cast stranded on this planet.

Tensions are running high among the survivors and they’re looking for someone to blame for the crash that got them all into this. This leads to Devon ordering Yale to scan his computer memory for any details of the crash to see if he can tell it was an accident, or if there was something more going on. Devon doesn’t get the answer she wants: there was something more going on.

Concurrently, the group stumble across one of the other evacuation pods that came down to the world and there are more survivors! But just barely. Most of them are dead and those who remain are stricken with an illness. Danziger is among those who discover this group, so he imposes a quarantine while he and the others start dying and Dr. Julia has to race to find a cure. (I respect how quickly the crew realizes they need to quarantine the members who were exposed. It’s nice to see people respect a quarantine).

Alongside that plot, our resident selfish bastard Morgan has been feeling like his selfish bastardry has been making him less popular among the survivors AND he has been seeing a Grendler that has been following him around. Not the group, but it’s been following Morgan specifically and hiding from the rest of them. Morgan confesses about his selfish bastard behaviour to his wife Bess and her reply boils down to “Yeah, I know you’re a selfish bastard. But let’s confess to the crew to make it better” so they do that (Bess does most of the talking).

These plots weave together like this: The saboteur who caused the ship turns out to be one of Danziger’s friends who happens to be among the sick survivors in the other pod. It’s not her fault though, because the evil government types had stuck a behaviour chip into her, like the one in Yale, to make her do it. The government had also intended to blow up the Eden Project’s ship, so they were REALLY into destroying this excursion. When it is determined that Grendler saliva can cure the disease, he begins a redemption arc in earnest by putting himself in danger by meeting with the Grendler that has been following him and acquiring the saliva to make the cure, which he does by suffering the indignity of having to give the Grendler his clothes. The cure is made in time to cure Danziger and the other exposed member of the crew (a recurring character named Baines), but the other pod’s remaining survivors don’t make it, but do find peace in knowing that the saboteur had been brainwashed, not actually acting with ill intent.

In the end there is a bit where Dr. Julia secretly contacts someone else saying “I’ve joined you on the planet” so there is someone she knows about on this world. But she doesn’t seem to like them and she isn’t happy they caused the crash. I guess she’s talking to government folk. Now this has to be what the Terrians were talking about when they said humans had been to the world before.

Assorted other thoughts:
1) While none of the other pod’s survivors that we meet survive the episode, we are told that they had split into groups and gone other ways when they crashed, so there still could be more of them out there. 2) True screams again in this one. I skipped mentioning it last time it happened, but I ought to be thorough. True’s Scream Count is up to at least six now, assuming I’ve not missed others. 3) At one point we hear a stock eagle sound effect (which is, I believe, some other bird that is always used for eagles because real eagle sounds are less majestic), which means some alien on this world makes that classic sound. 4) I don’t think I’ve even mentioned that the crew has a humanoid robot to help out because it has mattered so little this far, but Zero, as it is known, does get to bring supplies to the quarantined crew in this one. 5) We’re told that Grendlers secrete saliva from every orifice. Good for them. Also, we’re never really told why this one is following Morgan in the first place. He’s still there even after he gets Morgan’s clothes.

If anyone actually visited this site and looked around, they’d see that there has been a “Store” section on here that was completely unused for a long time. Since 2010 or so it has consisted only of the following:

Well the future is now! I have begun a shop on Etsy on which I am selling a little printable colouring an activity book called The Many Monsters of Mackestry Manor. I hope to turn that into a series of such books, but hopefully I will have other things on the store as well down the line.

I have opted to keep using the name Bottomless Hippopotamus to maintain a continuity in my attempts to accomplish this. Maybe I only ever sold one or two things on Cafepress (not including the Adventure Dennis mug I still own), but it was still a part of my past that led to this shop here, so the name continues and I can tell myself this is what I’ve been building toward after all these years of failure and stagnation. This is, hopefully, me taking a step in the right direction.