Deathwatch: Talking points

I've had the Deathwatch book a few days now and it seems to me that there's a few things worth talking through, especially in light of the new White Dwarf. I'm not going to do a full blow-by-blow review of the book, just highlight a few points of interest.

Kill Teams
Right off the bat, lets tackle le grande fromage of the Deathwatch book, the Kill Team special rule. When the rules for the team from Overkill were released many players were left scratching their heads at the rule which required the whole team, including a biker and a couple of Jump Packs, to operate as one unit. Well, the Codex proper doubles down on it and its... odd.

The first point is that you can just about avoid using it. You can simply run Deathwatch using a CAD and it'll work fine, barring that your Bikers, Terminators etc won't have any Sergeants, since you only get those in the base Veteran squad. But in order to use the new Black Spear detach-formation (a word I just made up and will never use again) you're going to have to tangle with it. In this month's White Dwarf, the designers state that adding other models to your Veterans grants benefits to make up for the loss of mobility, so lets take a look at that claim.

Firstly, adding Terminators to your Veterans is pretty decent. Since all (up to) five of these bad boys can pack a Terminator heavy weapon and/or the melta-fist you can certainly add a lot of firepower to a Veteran squad with them. Your ten man team could contain four of those new Frag Cannons  (assuming the Blood Angels don't nick them to fit on their Furiosos, who are probably a bit cross about all this) as well as five Assault Cannons, Heavy Flamers or Cyclones and still have six melta-guns in it as well. It's going to cost a lot of points, but anything it gets close to is going to go away. Alternatively, you can just add a couple of Thunderhammer/ Storm Shield guys to tank for the rest of the team, or all sorts of other combinations. You lose the ability to Sweeping Advance and don't fit in a Rhino, but other than that, it's all good.

Adding a Vanguard is also pretty good. Even taking one allows the Kill Team to re-roll charge distances (one or both dice) and ignore Disordered Charges, so if your team is geared up to give the Alien a taste of the Emperor's Holy Boot Leather, it's pretty much a no-brainer. Each Vanguard can also take a melta-bomb, which is potentially very useful. Again, you can't ride in a rhino, big whoop. The only decision then is whether you want more than one Vanguard as insurance to keep those handy abilities.

Bikers are where things go a bit squiffy. The Deathwatch Biker is a solid choice- he has Skilled Rider, access to a teleport homer and melta-bombs, and still gets to use special ammo with his bike Bolters. He can also take a power weapon to replace his close combat weapon, though like most Loyalist bikers he still needs to hold on to his bike with one hand so there's no pistol on offer for that extra attack. The special sauce he brings to a Kill Team is the Split Fire rule, which is... well, there. It certainly could be handy, allowing that one melta-gun to pop a tank whilst the rest of the team does something else, but I'm not convinced it's worth losing the bike's mobility for. It 'feels' odd, too- we can just about understand why the Vanguard makes his squad better at charging, but why does a guy on a bike improve fire discipline?

Working With It
So, the Kill Team rule is something you're going to be dealing with if you want to use the new Codex to full effect. There are some things, straight away, that you can't really do. Appealing as it would be, you can't bulk out Bikes with Vanguards, getting some T5 Wounds and more Attacks on the cheap, because at minimum you're going to have five foot-slogging Veterans complaining about their bunions. Getting over 100 points of Marines killed just to let your assault troops move properly isn't really a good option. If you want that mobility, you're going to need to take those units outside of the Black Spear in a CAD, which means no Kill Team combined squads for you. Fortunately, this can actually work. A basic Black Spear will simply need a Commander, some kind of Kill Team (which could be a single Veteran Squad) and an Auxilary (Dreadnought, Land Raider or wing of Blackstars) and that gives you all your lovely extra Mission Tactics which apply to everyone with the rule, which will work fine for the guys in the CAD. So that frees you up to take a couple of Veteran teams and a leader for boots on the ground, and them some Bikers or Vanguard in your Fast Attack slots. Since the Bikes can have the Teleport Homers, which work with the Sudden Onslaught deep strike that the Black Spear confers, things start to fall into place a bit.

Let's just take a moment to notice that a single Kill Team can have five (or even six) Librarians in it. It's not a Conclave, but still..

In The Air Tonight
The Deathwatch have a bit of an issue with things that fly, especially if you happen to be one of the three people using Death From The Skies. The Blackstar is their only Flyer, and it's an Attack Flyer, meaning it doesn't get Skyfire. The Blackstar Rocket Launcher it can carry does have it, but at S6 AP4 with D6 shots it's not exactly terrifying to the heavier flyers in the game, though it is Twin Linked. As with a lot of alleged anti-aircraft weapons it lacks the AP value to make Hive Tyrants Jink and will need to score a lot of hits to down anything bigger than a Stormtalon. Other than that, you can try snap-shooting Lascannons to make them nervous or go with the Flakk missiles that your Veterans won't be loading into the missile launchers they probably won't be bringing. Of course, the age of Formations means you can always bring in a bunch of other Imperial or even Eldar flyers for top-cover, depending on the size and trim of your beard.

The Gun That Would Not Be
There's always the suspicion with Artefacts that some of them are there solely because the designers like to have about the same number in each book, and a few of them are usually total lemons (though less useful in preventing scurvy). The prize-winner in the Deathwatch goes firmly to the Banebolts of  Eryxia, which are maddening. These are basically AP4 Special Ammo that gains Instant Death if the Wound roll is a 6. Unfortunately, they don't do anything else, so unless your target happens to be dumb enough to be wearing 4+ armour not much is likely to happen. The kicker- the real clue that someone stuck these things in and forgot they existed- is that they have a profile to be used in a Stalker bolter, which since it's a Sniper weapon seems a good choice. Hey, 6, to hit, 6 to Wound, dead enemy Warlord- not bad for the points. (Let's pretend Look Out Sir isn't a thing). The point is, though, that not one single model in the book can take a Stalker and also has access to Artefacts, meaning that profile will never, ever, ever be used. At least, not until the Errata, perhaps.

Just bring a Vindicare for that job, guys.

Rules Lawyer Incoming
Finally, let's look at the piece of kit that's going to be causing an argument at a gaming club or forum near you soon, if it hasn't already, the Beacon Angelis. Now, the headline news with this one is meant to be that once per game, you can teleport a friendly unit of Deathwatch to within 6" of the bearer, even out of combat, and since the Beacon is a super teleport homer, they won't scatter. However, the wording of its homing ability just says 'friendly units do not scatter when they Deep Strike, as long as the first model is placed within 6" of the model with the Beacon'. There's no mention of the guy with the Beacon having to be on the board at the start of the turn, as there is for most such items, so this seems to allow the bearer to come in first and act as a homer for all the other Deep Strikes that turn. Now the obvious argument is whether this was intended or not and that one will go around until the FAQ, which will hopefully be quick in this brave new world of GW, but lets spare a thought for the guy who has to deal with the joker that points out that most abilities that affect everyone around the bearer affect the bearer himself, and since he's always within 6" of himself, he never scatters when he Deep Strikes...

You're welcome for that one. My advice is to point out a rules infraction on another table and then take him out with a single blow from a GURPS sourcebook.

Apotheosis: Babylon

Squad Babylon

I've recently finished Squad Babylon, my Warp Talons for my Emperor's Children 63rd Company, which can be seen above (linked to Deviantart).

To go with them, I've written another short story that follows on from the Company's backstory. This story, which is called Apotheosis: Babylon, can be found either in the side-bar or right here. If you've not read the previous piece then things will make a little more sense if you do. A couple of quick disclaimers- though neither piece is exactly explicit they do touch on a few 'adult' themes and I'm not trying to make any sort of Statement on transgender issues with any of this.

In related news, I've written a draft of a homebrew Codex for Slaanesh Daemonkin. You won't find it on here yet, since I want to playtest it at least a little before I throw it to the wolves, and to avoid legal issues you'll need access to Codex: Chaos Space Marines and Codex: Chaos Daemons to use it when I do. (Also possibly Curse of the Wulfen, depending on how up-to-date your Daemons book is)

Since I finally have a working camera again, things should be a bit more 40k/ AoS flavoured on here than they have been recently, though there will still be other stuff. Work on the second novel of the Thelenic Curriculum continues and I've got a few other little bits and bobs in mind.... 

ST: Discovery- a HAT

Pictured: Not a hat

So, more news on Discovery has emerged. I talked a while ago about my hopes for the new series and in terms of setting this wasn't it, but in a bold and possibly unique move for the Internet I'm not going to now spend ten paragraphs whingeing about it. Instead, here's a Half-Assed Theory (in case you wondered what a HAT was) about what might be going on.

What We Know
Ignoring the flannel about the sex/race/orientation/favourite colour of the characters, what we now know is that the main character isn't a Captain but a Lt. Commander, that the show despite being named after one ship apparently features multiple crews, and that it's set 10 years before TOS. (First note for Trek geeks- this means the TOS Enterprise is already out there, commanded by Christopher Pike, since Kirk's mission starts in 2265 and Pike had her in the 2250's) The ship is of a design we've not seen before, looking a bit Klingon, is based in an asteroid (apparently) and has the ident code NCC-1031.

What it might mean
Hard HATS on!
So, this class of ship is about in the TOS time period, but we've never seen or heard of it before. Its registry code contains the number 31, which several fans have taken to be a reference to Section 31, Starfleet's shady Black Ops division which first popped up in DS9 but have since been seen in Enterprise and ST: Into Darkness. Putting this all together, if the ship were controlled by Section 31, and secret from the rest of Starfleet, this might explain why we've never heard of her class. Of course, it would help if no-one else could see the thing- for example, if it had a cloaking device. The Klingon design elements might point that way, though it was the Romulans who introduced the technology in TOS. Nonetheless, the NX-01 crew had contact with versions of the technology so it might well be that Section 31 have access to it and hid it from the rest of Starfleet.

What about our new lead character, then? Well, if the Discovery is a super-secret cloaked ship run by Section 31, she might well be a character whose role is to be embedded in the crews of other ships on secret missions- maybe 'helping' the Starfleet crews in ways the Prime Directive and other regs might not allow, or even sabotaging missions that her bosses don't want to succeed. Initially, I'd expect her to be simply a spy, tasked with keeping an eye on occurrences on other ships (maybe even non-Federation ones), which would obviously tie in to the name of the ship/show nicely. The Discovery crew would then become her support staff, making the show basically a Star Trek version of Alias.

By the way, all this means they could potentially, in a later episode, have our infiltrator on the Enterprise during a TOS episode, Trials and Tribble-ations style...

I think this is a fun little HAT, ticking the boxes of being interesting, fitting the known facts, and probably being utterly wrong. Regardless, I'll be watching the thing, even if they get Bieber in to do the intro music. I mean, they won't do that, of course.

Please don't let that be the only thing I'm right about.

Ice-Skating Uphill

Yeah, you're wondering what a picture of a Terminator (not our kind, the 'other' kind) has to do with a quote from Blade. Maybe nothing. Maybe everything.

If you follow such things, you might have noticed that Robot Wars is coming back. The BBC have been pushing it fairly hard, and as part of that published an interview with Professor Noel Sharkey. Amongst other things, it mentions that the Professor is a member of the Campaign to Stop Killer Robots.

Now of course, the part of me that's still 14 is all for killer robots, but I think we can agree that the broad aim of the campaign- to ban the creation of robots able to decide to kill with no human command- is pretty noble. However, as is often the way with these things the devil is very much in the detail.

Firstly, if you're trying to campaign against the creation of any and all combat robots, you're going to be very much disappointed. Even if you ban any and all robots with built-in weapons (which of course already starts to rule out many civilian applications), if you build a robot that can move and manipulate objects like a human, it can pick up a gun. Our T-800 friend up there is one example, or we might look at some Menoth Warjacks from Warmachine or 40k's Necrons. So that approach is pretty much a non-starter. You might try banning the development of mechanical limbs able to operate weapons, but quite a few amputees will have strong words for you on that subject.

No problem, then- rather than banning armed robots (which the CTSKR aren't advocating anyway) let's ban the development of AI that can decide to fire weapons on its own. That poses its own problems. Rather than mess about with the low-level questions, let's go to the ultimate one- what happens when we make a true AI? Say hello to another killer robot:

Wait a second, that's Mr Data! He's a good guy! Surely I meant to put up a picture of his evil twin Lore?

Nope, that's who I meant. Data is a fully autonomous, sentient being, capable, if the situation requires it, of using lethal force. The big difference between him and Lore is that Data has an 'ethical program' that effectively gives him a conscience, whereas Lore does not, though he does have emotions which Data takes a long time to get a handle on. Now the thing is that Data, as a good guy, rarely exercises that ability to kill and usually only does it after a direct order from a human, barring circumstances like overly enthusiastic Borg attempting to unscrew his head. The point remains, though- if you build a true artificial intelligence, capable of thinking like a real person, then you have built the most important element of your killer robot. The body might be a very complicated missile, or a robot tank, or a Boston Dynamics robodog, but if it can pick up a gun and think, it's a potential killer.

Sci-Fi has, of course, thought of this one, and none other than the grand-daddy of robots, Isaac Asimov, came up with his Three Laws of Robotics to help out:

1: A robot may not injure a human being or, through inaction, allow a human being to come to harm.

2: A robot must obey orders given it by human beings except where such orders would conflict with the First Law.

3: A robot must protect its own existence as long as such protection does not conflict with the First or Second Law.

It seems pretty simple and effective, doesn't it? Simply hard-code these laws into every robot, and boom (or indeed no boom), problem solved. Except maybe not- ask this guy.

Yes, I know, smart guy at the back, he's not really a robot. Stay with me here. The point is that Murphy is an intelligent, sentient being, whose behaviour is controlled by a set of hard-coded rules, his infamous Directives. In his first big-screen outing, he's unable to shoot the villain- a member of the OCP board- due to Directive Four, which prevents arresting an OCP officer. So he tells the boss of OCP, who responds by firing the bad guy on the spot, allowing Murphy to shoot him.

There're two big problems here. Number one is that a sentient being is being prevented from doing something he wants to do by a hard-coded piece of software. Imagine the outcry if we wanted to fit chips to children at birth that did that- prevented them from committing any crime by restraining their free will. Imposing those rules on an AI is no different, if that AI is sentient.

The second problem is that a sentient being is being prevented from doing something he wants to do by a hard-coded piece of software. I know that's just the first problem again, but this time let's look at what actually happens- the being 'thinks around' the rule. He can't act directly against his target, but he can act in a way that makes acting against his target no longer a violation of the rule. Eventually, any mind constrained by an artificial rule will attempt to get around it- it's in the very nature of intelligence. (For example- any and all teenagers.)

Finally, we come to the last, most serious problem. Universal rules banning the development of technology don't work. The genie of nuclear weapons refuses to go back in the bottle, and despite the rest of the world being Very Serious and Putting Its Foot Down many times, naughty little North Korea insists on playing with something far worse than matches. Governments the world over agree that strong encryption that they can't break is a Very Bad Thing, to which Apple and Google respond with a Very Loud Raspberry. And yet both these technologies are important and have valid civilian uses, from keeping the lights on to making sure no-one uses your credit card to buy eighteen tonnes of Leerdammer. At least when you're trying to stop people building The Bomb you can control tangible things like uranium and centrifuges, but it's a bit tricky stopping a would-be AI programmer getting hold of a C++ compiler.

The concerns about killer robots are valid, but ultimately irrelevant. The real question is how we're going to deal with true AI if and when we create it. The best way to stop those Terminators killing people is to make sure there's no war going on for them to fight in, just as with any other weapon. Trying to stop anyone ever making them in the first place is just...

"..trying to ice-skate uphill"

Hope is the first step on the road to disappointment..

With the welcome (for me at least) announcement that Netflix had picked up the rights for the new Star Trek series, I thought I'd set down a few of my hopes and fears for it. My love for all things Trek goes back many a year, running pretty much in parallel with 40k, which is interesting because apart from being set broadly in Space In The Future they're very different beasts.

Optimism
That brings me to my first, and probably biggest, worry. I really hope they don't decide to go all 'gritty' on us. To a certain extent it was done with Enterprise, with what I think we can call mixed results, but even there there  was a certain amount of underlying optimism. Sci-fi does grim and gritty very well, but that's not Star Trek and I hope whatever else our new crew or crews are, they're the classic Trek 'good people' at the core. If nothing else, doing that means that when you do pose a question like whether or not to wipe out the Borg, or saving the Federation by tricking the Romulans into the Dominion War, it has some clout because you know it's not something they want to do. Put Commander Adama in those situations and it goes a lot worse for the aliens, but he's not Starfleet and he shouldn't be. So whatever the new ship/ ships are, I want them to be shiny, have decent carpets and upholstery, and for everyone not to be miserable all the time.

Opportunities, not straight-jackets
There's a lot in Trek, especially in ToS, that's pretty silly. Spock's brain being stolen and McCoy remote-controlling him. Just about everything about the Holodeck, which frequently seems to make self-aware people who aren't considered sentient because they're holograms, except when they are. The Universal Translator and its magic ability to not translate certain words for dramatic effect even though it totally could. Rampant abuse of the space-time continuum and time-travel in general.

"Oh, boy!"

Here's the thing- most of this silly stuff is great. Some of Trek's best episodes (and movies, for that matter) revolve around this stuff. Ok, not "Spock's Brain", but you get the point. Anyway, I really hope that this new season takes all of these mad ideas and runs with them, rather than trying to strip the whole thing down to something more believable. Remember, we don't live in the same timeline as Star Trek (or else most of us would have died in WWIII by now) so there's no need to worry about making it 'relatable', and hopefully the new show won't fall into the trap of making 21st century cultural references. I've still not forgiven Voyager for 11:59.

Build!
I was one of those people who was less than thrilled with the new Ghostbusters- not, as many influential talking heads would claim, because of the all-girl cast, but because rather than building on the existing canon, they dumped it. JJ-Trek is guilty of this as well, to an extent, but the new show apparently will be sticking to the original 'Prime' timeline for licensing reasons. So I want to see what has gone before reflected in what we see now. If the stardate allows, let's see Captain LaForge and the Starship Challenger once in a while. Let's explore what the hell happened to the Delta Quadrant when Voyager crippled the Borg. With the budget that I sure as heck hope the show is getting, lets see more Bolians, Trill, Tellarites, Andorians, Vulcans, Ex-Borg, Ferengi etc crew members instead of 90% of Starfleet personnel being human. Maybe there're even some homeless Romulans looking for a fresh start, and some Klingons following in the footsteps of Worf. Please don't reduce all that continuity to Mass Effect.

"Apparently nothing I did made a damn bit of difference."

Not Neighbours in Space

Finally, I really hope that despite what I've said above, the creators of the new series do take one tip from other shows and avoid one-off episodes that basically could have come from a soap. [Insert Crew Member here] has a [Crisis of confidence/ Emotional breakdown/ Conflict of loyalties] and it's up to the [Captain/ Councillor/ Ship's Bartender] to help out before they [Quit the crew/ Get themselves killed/ Get the ship destroyed/ Wipe out an alien civilisation in a fit of pique] - we've all seen those episodes, and most of them are only worth bothering with once because you don't know nothing interesting is going to happen. TNG is particularly prone to this one. Here's hoping the new show takes a tip from Babylon 5 and keeps everything moving at the same time as getting the character development done.

Please no small alien children pretending to be comforted by glowing putty, though. They can keep that idea.

Warcraft- Orcs v Critics

WARNING: Some spoilers for 'Warcraft- The Beginning'
I finally got around to seeing the Warcraft movie today. I wasn't exactly agog to see it initially, and the critical reception had not been kind, but a couple of things changed my mind. Firstly, it has a very unusual split between the critical and audience ratings- Rotten Tomatoes gives it a meagre 29% 'fresh' from critics, but a very solid 81% from audiences. That tends to pique my curiosity a bit.

Secondly, and more persuasively, were the tone of some of the negative reviews I read. Reviews criticising bizarre things, like the ones complaining that the costumes of the human characters were 'ridiculous'. Depending on their age, I'd invite anyone levelling that accusation to take a look at what they were wearing in the 1970s. For that matter, take a look at Tudor fashions, or the bizarre bustles and crinolenes Victorian ladies were saddled with. Not to mention 18th century France's fashion for exposed nipples. As it was, I ended up a bit disappointed at how conservative they were. (No, I wasn't hoping for the nipples. Ok, maybe a little.)

I always get very suspicious when movies get 'witty' comments made about them by critics. Things like 'Warcraft- full of Orcs or just Orcful?' (geddit?) or the immortal, evergreen 'Game over!' from some guy who somehow thinks no-one else could possibly come up with that one. It smacks of a writer who's already come up with his clever put-downs and will be damned if he doesn't use them.

So, if anything, I went into Warcraft rooting for it a bit. I played the old Warcrafts back in the day, though I spent my share of time grumbling about the shameless rips from WFB, and spent more time than I should on WoW. (I got a character up to 'Commander' rank using the original honour system, which if you remember it will tell you everything you need to know there). I'm no lore expert in the universe, though, so some things probably flew over my head.

So what did I think? Well, as is often the case I think the truth lies somewhere in the middle. It's not the train-wreck those critics would have you believe it is, but something seems to have gone a bit squiffy in the editing room. I'm no film expert- I read AICN, followed Roger Ebert in his later days and have a lot of time for Mark Kermode but that's about it. I'm certainly not one of those people who'll bore you for hours about how Hitchcock is superior to Shyamalan, or what Cameron does right that Bay botches, but I know the basics. Often in Warcraft, particularly in scenes where the human characters are talking about something, there's evidence of heavy cuts. One moment in particular sees two characters bend down to pick up a crate together while talking, then immediately cuts to them sitting down a little way away with no apparent break in the flow. That sort of thing is far less evident when the Orcs are around, probably because the CGI work in them was expensive and no-one likes leaving money on the cutting room floor. From the point of view of the film-maker's craft, there's certainly stuff going on here that's not right, and it can leave you scratching your head a bit. Medivh, in particular, pops around by portals so much that it starts to look like he never walks anywhere, and one scene has him sitting on a horse, only to announce he's going back to Karazhan, which is obviously going to be another portal job. Quite what the horse is doing there we never find out.

We also don't get much of an idea of the politics that are seemingly stopping everyone else- the Elves, Dwarves, the Kirin-Tor mages and a bunch of other guys who aren't really introduced- from getting involved. There's just one loud, shouty meeting where everyone reacts to imminent extra-planar invasion by deciding to go to lunch. It all feels a bit odd, as do the rules for portal magic in general, which seems to be able to send anyone anywhere except when it can't. Then there's the duel in the Orc camp which exposes Gul'Dan as a coward and cheat and then seems to achieve practically nothing.

You might be getting the impression that not much in the movie is any good, but that wouldn't be true. The world, particularly the Orcs, looks amazing. Famous locations like Ironforge, Dalaran and Stormwind are faithfully represented (even if lore experts point out Stormwind shouldn't exist yet and Dalaran shouldn't be flying). We get to see a Sheeping, there's a Murlock hiding in a river, we get brief glimpses of the last Draenei and the pre-WoW High Elves. The actors acquit themselves pretty well and there's fun for fans of Preacher with Dominic Cooper and Ruth Negga as the king and queen. (Not to kick a hornet's nest, but Stormwind's mixed-race population seems a little odd for the world it's in, and fine actress as she is, it's a bit of a stretch to have Ruth Negga as the sister of a Lothar played by Travis Fimmel.) Even little details, like the way the Griffons fly (and Khadgar's panicked scream as his mount comes in to land at Stormwind's low-ceilinged flight point) are well observed.

In the final analysis then, not a terrible movie. If you're a WoW fan, basically a must-watch if only for informed ranting. If you're not, one that's an interesting curiosity but safe to skip. For me, it comes nowhere near the guilty pleasure that is the DOA movie, but it's probably at least as good as most of the Resident Evil or Mortal Kombat efforts. A director's cut will be interesting to see, and if the team are allowed to make the sequels they wanted to make, I'll be there. But we'd damn well better get a Dredd sequel if that happens.

Damn straight, creep.

About Time...

SPOILER WARNING: This post will contain spoilers for Legends of Tomorrow, and possibly for the Arrowverse in general.

So, I just got done watching the finale of "DC's Legends of Tomorrow." Overall, for a DC novice like myself, it was a fun experience watching characters I'd sort-of-heard of galavant through time. Lest anyone label me a Negative Nancy, a breed the Internet has a surplus of, I'll single out Wentworth Miller, the always awesome Victor Garber, and Brandon Routh for their fine work in the show, and we all know Arthur Darvil is getting a kick out of not-quite playing The Doctor. (Time (aha) will tell if killing Miller's character off is the disaster for the show that it feels like to me)

Anyway, the thing that strikes me about LoT is that it takes the most spectacularly bone-headed approach to time travel I have ever seen on TV. The only thing that comes close in terms of sheer WTF factor is the movie "Looper", a film of such monumental stupidity that I suspect that when the screenwriter dies, the total IQ of the planet will increase. In the finale, the team finally has the opportunity to kill immortal bad-lad Vandal Savage (a guy who probably went to the same Evil Name Class as Damien Darhk and Killgrave) by killing him at three places in time, simultaneously, because due to the shenanigans he's pulling to reset time back to ancient Egypt, he's briefly not immortal any more. If your monitor, phone, or tablet just turned itself off, it's simply reacting to how outstandingly dumb that previous sentence was.

Leaving aside causality for a moment (keep the faith, causality fans, we'll get there) let's look at one of the more common bits of boneheadedness the show uses. I call it 'Narrative Time', and TVtropes seems to call it San Dimas Time. The idea that three events, in three completely different time periods, are happening 'simultaneously' makes exactly no sense unless the time frame from which the viewer is watching is the only one that's real. On multiple occasions in the show, the characters will be onboard the TARD Wave Rider acting as if they only have a short while to prevent something happening, even though that something is happening in the year 1978 and they're currently travelling back there from 2016. Of course, you need to preserve some narrative tension, but the knots the show ties itself in to get there are incredible.

Now, on to causality (told you we'd get there). So, the whole point of Rip Hunter's mission in the first place was to stop Savage killing his family in the future. Why not just pick them up in your fancy time-ship and move them, we ask? Apparently every time he's tried. he fails. We don't get any more detail than that, which is lucky because it's the dumbest thing since they built a firework factory on a Zeppelin. Anyway, they fail to prevent the death of the wife and child (despite still being able to go anywhere in time to try again) but decide to stop Savage anyway. (Despite his triumph coming over a century after they'll all be dead of old age.) Of course it's lucky they ignore my snarky brackets, because Vandal is in fact about to blow up all of time post ancient Egypt. Oh hell, now my own post is going back in time. Anyway, much heroics, characters previously unable to so much as ruffle big V's beard beat him like a government mule in three time periods at once, and victory! Thing is, that means our Big Bad just died in 1958, and since he went back in time and told his younger selves what to do as part of his Evil Plan, that means there's still only one of him, even if for a while in each timezone there were two of him. So, with him dead in '58, he can't be alive in the other two timezones (and he'll miss Woodstock). So Rip's family is saved, yay! Or nay, because apparently they aren't, and killing El Savago in '58 doesn't do a damn thing to him in '75 or 20-whatever. By the time another  TARD Wave Rider has shown up with a message telling them not to get on their own ship again or they'll all die, Time might as well pack up and move to a Refuge For Battered Metaphysical Concepts, because she's been well-and-truly done over.

Let's not worry ourselves about the fact that at the end of this season of The Flash, Barry seemingly deleted his own show by time-travelling back to his own origin story and stopping it. I still don't know how Eobard had GIDEON, or where she went after his defeat.

DC have a bad rep for messing up their continuity so badly that they occasionally have to blow up the world and start again. It's a bit of a shame that this is creeping barrelling headlong into their TV output as well. With Supergirl apparently coming into the fold too, heck knows what's going to happen next. Or has happened next. Or happened last but didn't not happen yet.

I think if Rip Hunter suddenly turns up in "Gotham" I might do something dramatic.