Justice League: Secret Origins Part Three

Screen Shots

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Episode Credits

Synopsis

The invasion of Earth continues. Having wiped Mars clean of life a race of unnamed aliens have turned their attention towards the Earth. The last survivor of the Martian holocaust, J’onn J’onzz, has assembled Earth’s greatest heroes to stand against the invaders, but the cost has already been high. Superman and Hawkgirl have been captured and the Batman is feared dead. See Secret Origin: Part One and Secret Origin: Part Two for more details.

The Deep Space Monitoring network that the invaders had sabotaged (in Part One) is repaired just in time to detect the approach of a massive space craft. Ex-astronaut, turned US Senator J. Allen Carter urges the public to stay calm, but  looting and civil disorder erupt across Metropolis. Wonder Woman fears that her mother’s warnings about Man’s World may be correct, but J’onn councils that the people are acting out of fear and points to people helping dig children out of the rubble. Moments later Flash and Green Lantern arrive back in Metropolis to help J’onn and Wonder Woman free the captive Superman and Hawkgirl.

The Flash creates a diversion that brings an alien tripod crashing down in sheets of flame. The other three sneak unnoticed into the alien factory using the breech that Superman created (in Part Two). J’onn then uses his shape shifting ability to ambush a pair of guards, but the other aliens use the same trick to fool the quartet of heroes into thinking they’ve found Superman and Hawkgirl. The alien’s trap is only revealed after the cell holding “Hawkgirl’ and “Superman”  floods with a sleeping gas that incapacitates the remaining heroes.

The effects of the gas wears off just in time for arrival of the Imperium (the central intelligence that guides the alien drones) aboard the approaching mothership. It is a foe that J’onn admits to having encountered before. Senator Carter is also there to welcome his master as he reveals himself as one of the alien invaders (the real Carter never returned from Mars). The Imperium itself, a massive levitating blob of transparent protoplasm, recognises J’onn and takes satisfaction in personally trying to kill the last Martian. It tentacles pull J’onn into its body and where it tries to absorb him.

The Imperium senses that J’onn is hiding something, but moments before it penetrates his mind he calls out for the Batman to enact their plan. J’onn had been telepathically hiding Batman’s presence from the aliens allowing him to infiltrate the their stronghold and to learn their weakness. He reverses the “ion charge” on the alien’s cloud machines causing a blue charge to sweep through the alien’s systems. It disperses their blanket of cloud and allows sunlight to stream down upon the city. Batman had discovered that the aliens have no natural immunity to the ultraviolet light dissolve into smoke upon contact with sunlight.

The skin of the Imperium bubbles and boils forcing it to cough up J’onn. Batman then frees Superman who blocks the alien soldier’s fire while the rest of the heroes free themselves from their bonds. Wonder Woman and Green Lantern rip holes in the factory’s exterior allowing sunlight to flood inside and dissolve the invaders. Imperium senses defeat and tries to flee back to the mothership leaving the fake Carter to dissolve with the rest of the foot soldier drones. However, Wonder Woman lassos the Imperium’s shuttle’s tail and Hawkgirl’s attack sends it crashing down into the factory. The Imperium dies in the impact.

The destruction of the Imperium starts a chain reaction in the factory and it begins crashing down around the heroes. They rush to save the captive people that the aliens had been impersonating. The seven heroes watch the explosion of the alien’s former factory from a nearby rooftop. The clouds finally finish clearing as the invaders mothership flees the solar system. The heroes then make short work of the remaining pockets of alien resistance, but the question of what to do in the event of future invasions remains.

Batman is inspired while watching a speech by General Wells. His answer to the defense of Earth is a line item in the Wayne Tech aerospace R&D budget – a permanent orbital “Watchtower” from where the heroes can watch for the approach of other invaders. Superman admits to his new allies that he once thought that he could defend the world on his own, but he was wrong. Following his suggestion they decided to stay together as a permanent team, a Justice League.

Commentary

The Martian’s overcame the alien invaders by using a nerve gas and twice the aliens use a similar gas to incapacitate separate groups of heroes.

The orbiting Justice League Watchtower is a combination of two Justice League headquarters from the comic books. The original League’s second headquarters was an orbiting space station called the Satellite. That was destroyed and after a few different Earth-bound headquarters the League finally ended up back in space, but this time in a lunar base called the Watchtower. The DCAU League’s Watchtower takes the name of the lunar facility and the location of the orbiting Satellite. A different Watchtower appeared in the 2-part Batman Beyond episode “The Call.” It featured a future incarnation of the Justice League whose headquarters was a Watchtower based in Metropolis.

Great Moments

“…a group of Super Friends?” – the Flash’s quip about the new group’s name.

Oddities

J’onn seems to be using his telepathy at several points, but the glowing eyes effect that they used in the in the first two parts is missing.

Batman’s believed dead, the world is in peril, but the Flash has time to do his road runner shtick with the alien war machines.

My thoughts

Secret Origins is an odd beast that in hindsight appears quite weak. The opening is fantastic and builds nicely on the Batman and Superman animates shows. The alien threat is also nicely built up, but somewhere along the line my interest in them just peters out. Its about the 30 minute mark – half way through the second episode, just after the Manhunter’s explanation of the alien’s lack of origin. The idea is great – a race of alien vampires (the factors are there: psychic parasites, shape-shifting, vulnerability to sunlight, etc) who stomp around in tripod war machines from War of the World – but the creative team haven’t yet built up to the darkness and depth that, in later seasons, would have made this story sing.

I always felt that the Imperium spacecraft was something of a let down. It’s very impressive looking, but its a little too obvious that it’s a static matte painting. The animation of this final part feels a little less realistic than the other two parts – especially the Flash’s shtick against the alien tripod – but its doesn’t seriously detract from the story. The music in this episode is a definite improvement over the last half of the previous episode. The synth aspect is played down and it feels more like a proper soundtrack. There is a really nice upbeat march that gets played when the League have the upperhand. It sometimes feels too optimistic for the threat their facing, but its still a great tune.

As a pilot story Secret Origins is okay, there are flaws for sure, but its still excellent fun.