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Justice
League Unlimited
Chaos at the Earth's Core
Original Airdate - 09/24/05
Because
Godzilla has Saturday nights off, the Justice League is
called in to fight a giant fire breathing radioactive turtle
that is attacking Tokyo. Green Lantern, S.T.R.I.P.E. and
Stargirl seem to have every thing well in hand when Supergirl
arrives to deliver the knockout blow. Stargirl is jealous
that Supergirl not only gets a hero's welcome from the adoring
Japanese but she also got a costume makeover and Stargirl
didn't.
The
team heads back to the Javelin because…actually there is
no good reason because they can all fly and the League has
transporters, but for the sake of the plot, they do. While
flying over the North Pole someone, probably a kid with
a laser pointer, causes the Javelin to crash land into a
magical ice hole that leads to a land where dinosaurs still
roam the Earth.
This
sounds far-fetched, but seriously, I know a guy whose second
cousin did the same kind of thing when he crashed his Dodge
Dart into a drainage ditch.
Naturally
the team isn't there two minutes when lizard men riding
dinosaurs attack them. Supergirl is the first to step up
and fight them, but she quickly discovers her powers are
substantially weakened. This tickles Stargirl to no end.
The
team is able to defeat the lizard men with the help of a
stranger that arrives. He introduces himself as Travis Morgan,
the Warlord of Shamballah. Warlord explains that the team
is now on a world known as Skartaris and that it was he
who is responsible for bringing the Justice League here.
He offers to pay for their crashed Javelin, but conveniently
left his check book in his other loin cloth.
It
seems that Skartaris is under siege by an evil wizard named
Deimos who commands an army of lizards, dinosaurs and other
medieval bad guys. Warlord would ordinarily handle the threat
of Deimos on his own, but recently Deimos' army has been
attacking with technology far beyond anything that exists
in Shamballah, all in an effort to acquire "The Great Stone."
The
Justice League agrees to help Warlord fend off the attack
by Deimos but not before seeing "The Great Stone" for themselves.
As luck would have it, "The Great Stone" turns out to be
a "Great Stone Big Chunk of Kryptonite."
Elsewhere,
one of Deimos' minions reports that strangers defeated their
raiding party out in the jungle. Deimos asks for details
about the strangers and all the lizard man can report is
that one of them wore the Superman crest, which means nothing
to Deimos. Fortunately, every evil wizard comes with not
one but two evil advisers. Deimos asks his two newest advisors
what the Superman crest represents. Silver Banshee and Metallo
give each other a knowing glance and wonder what planet
he's from.
"Chaos
at the Earth's Core" has the kind of quasi-medieval
plot that shows up in superhero comics now and again which
almost always bore me to tears. Think Lord of the Rings
meets Land of the Lost meets Justice League
with special guest appearance by Gamera. The plot and pacing
are handled skillfully so the episode does move at a very
enjoyable pace, but ultimately won't be making any top ten
list in my book.
If
I didn't know better, I would have said this was clearly
one of those crossover episodes that sets up a Warlord spin-off.
Even if the
fantasy elements didn't grab me, there were lots of details
to get wrapped up in this week. The League is clearly fighting
Gamera at the beginning of the episode. Even if you're not
a fan of Godzilla movies or Mystery Science Theater 3000,
the sight of a flying, spinning turtle with flames shooting
out of its leg holes is worth two chuckles.
Supergirl debuts
her new costume to match the costume she wears in her newly
relaunched comic book. "We'd been gradually 'maturing' Supergirl
personality-wise throughout the course of the last two seasons
of JLU, and thought maybe it was time to update her costume
as well," Bruce Timm told The Continuum. "We debated the
pros and cons of it, the deciding factor being that her
belly-tee/Doc Martens 'riot grrrl' outfit was very much
of its time, and since it ain't the 90's no more, we should
go ahead and give her some new threads."
Giselle Loren
debuts as the voice of Stargirl. She did a great job but
the real reason I mention it was that I was convinced for
the entire episode that it was actually Sarah Michelle Gellar.
Turns out I wasn't that far off because Giselle provided
the voice for Buffy in both of the Buffy the Vampire
Slayer games for the Xbox.
The
overall Legion of Doom plot takes another baby step forward
as we begin to see that the Legion's top priority right
now is weapons gathering. That can't be good.
Warlord makes
his WB universe debut. He's a well spoken Conan the Barbarian
type protecting his family and town. Can't say I'd read
his comic or watch his TV show based on this appearance,
but I wouldn't condemn him to burn in Hell either.
Hey
Derek, has Silver Banshee ever fought Black Canary?
Derek's
Continuity Corner
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