Review of Netflix’s Daredevil Season 2

This MVU show premiered on Netflix in March of 2016, produced by Marvel Television in association with ABC Studios, with Doug Petrie and Marco Ramirez serving as showrunners. Principal stars are Charlie Cox as Matt Murdock, Deborah Ann Woll as Karen Page, Élodie Yung as Elektra Natchios, Jon Bernthal as Frank Castle/Punisher, Elden Henson as Foggy Nelson, and Vincent D’Onofrio as Wilson Fisk/Kingpin. This review contains spoilers.

The Kingpin’s fall has left a vacuum, and local crime escalates in Hell’s Kitchen as various gangs and new vigilantes fight for turf. Confronting one of the vigilantes, Matt is shot in the head. His Daredevil helmet saves his life, but he is down and out for a while until his hearing recovers. When Matt encounters the vigilante again, the Punisher captures him and ties him up, offers him the chance to either kill an informant or Castle himself. Matt chooses to escape instead. Castle kills his informant, but eventually turns himself in to the police through the firm Nelson and Murdock. Matt starts a budding romance with Karen, but his nighttime activities have attracted the attention of his old martial arts instructor Stick and his old college flame Elektra Natchios. They both turn up and try to draft him into a war against a nebulous Japanese cult called the Hand (Hand of Darkness in Japanese) bent on reanimating corpses and taking over large swaths of Manhattan for unknown purposes. Castle refuses the plea deal Nelson and Murdock negotiate for him and they have to go to trial. Matt has a ragged attendance and Foggy and Karen do most of the work, almost swaying the jury, but Castle admits to his crimes on the witness stand and is sentenced to prison, where he makes a deal with Fisk to get at the man who killed his family and then escape. Foggy uses the exposure he’s gotten at the Castle trial to find a high-paid job at another law firm, leaving Nelson and Murdock. At a final great battle against the Hand, Daredevil and Elektra are faced with overwhelming odds. She dies, but with Frank Castle’s help, Matt and Stick prevail. Unknown to them, the Hand steals her body to resurrect her. Unwilling to lie to Karen any longer, Matt reveals to her that he is Daredevil.

This season has a lot of moving parts, with Castle, Elektra, the Hand and the Iron Fist legion of ninja warriors taking up huge amounts of air time. Matt’s life pretty much falls apart, as he is unable to keep up with his job as an attorney while fighting in the war Elektra and Stick have going on with the Hand. The constant siege on his moral system provides the main theme here, as Castle, Elektra and Stick try to use Daredevil as a weapon, encouraging him to kill, while Foggy still insists on the rule of law. Elektra, especially, is a huge temptation to Matt, as she enjoys killing, and in fact, seems to be the great champion the dark Hand is expecting. In the final episode, Matt tells Elektra that the experience he’s living has freed him, and he’s willing to leave his old life to go with her—effectively giving up on his belief system. When she dies, he is left in a sort of emotional limbo.

I consider this the weakest of the three seasons, although the action crowd will likely prefer it because it launches the Punisher and Iron Fist shows and provides a lot of amazing stunt work in the battles with the Hand. Minor annoyance: all the native English speakers mispronounce yakuza, while all the native Japanese speakers get it right. Couldn’t they have gotten together on this somehow? Events that set up the plot in season 3: Fisk’s deal with Castle in the prison leaves Fisk in control of it. Looking for information, Matt visits Fisk/Kingpin in prison, where Fisk attacks him. Fisk is a really big man who kills people with his bare hands, but once he’s had his hands on Matt, he knows there’s something wrong. This is going to mean trouble down the road.

Three and a half stars.

Review of Death’s End by Cixin Liu

Okay, I’m finally done with this novel. It’s a finalist for the 2017 Hugo Award, translated by Ken Liu and published by Tor. It runs about 600 pages.

Cheng Xin is an aerospace scientist. The Earth has been in contact with the Trisolarians and has benefited from their science, while a program of dark forest deterrence ensures the two civilizations will respect one another. The Trisolarian fleet is on the way to Earth, and scientists there send out a probe with the brain of the cancer patient Yun Tianming. Cheng Xin goes into hibernation and wakes to find the probe has gone missing and the deterrence Swordholder Luo Ji is retiring. Cheng Xin is elected the new Swordholder, but when the Trisolarians launch an invasion, she falters, setting the human race up for extermination. A backup system on an interstellar ship acts, and the Trisolarians flee. This it to no avail, as their home world is destroyed by a dark forest strike against their sun. The interaction also exposes the Earth’s position to dark forest cleansers. A surprise contact with Yun Tianming provides possible defenses against a strike, so scientists start to prepare. Will the human race be ready in time?

This is a narration that crosses centuries to the end of time, addressing Earth’s attempt to join the community of outer space and the challenges that have to be overcome. It’s a tour de force of theory and ideas, as Liu imagines threats and technical responses on a grand scale. There’s probably still a lot lost in the translation, but some of the elegance of Liu’s prose comes through in this novel. His imagery is front and center this time, including descriptions of technical matters and some moments that are just for pure enjoyment. It’s definitely hard SF, as the problems, solutions and developments are all based on hard scientific theory.

On the negative side, Liu’s characterizations still tend to be weak, as he’s clearly more interested in the historical sweep and the technical details. Cheng Xin feels passive and doesn’t seem personally involved in any of the conflicts. I can’t see why people defer to her, as she seems to have no particular authority and tends to pass off responsibility or obligation. I suspect this might be a Chinese view of modesty and selflessness, but I think she needs a stronger power base in order to be the main protagonist.

Four and a half stars. Recommended.

NOTE: The dark forest is explained in the previous volume of this series, titled, appropriately, The Dark Forest. It’s based on the Fermi Paradox, i.e. there should be other civilizations out there, so why haven’t we heard a peep out of them?

Cons are underway! Take care!

DragonCon got off to a good start, I gather, as I don’t see any crises from Atlanta in the news. Other conventions apparently didn’t fare quite so well. For example, I see a news article about Fan Expo at the Metro Toronto Convention Centre which was also scheduled to start on Thursday. The kickoff was heralded by reports of firearms on the GO transit. As a result, police recommend that any cosplayers should keep their more realistic accouterments under wraps until they actually get to the con. This follows the arrest of a man dressed as Zorro Monday morning during the panic at LAX.

In the current climate, it seems important for people to remember that cosplay can easily be misunderstood. In September of 2014, cosplayer Darrien Hunt was shot and killed by police near a strip mall in Utah. According to the police report, Hunt “brandished” his replica samurai sword at them, but a witness took a picture that showed Hunt smiling and talking with the officers just before he was shot. Take care, folks!

Review of “A Single Samurai,” short story by Steven Diamond

Still reading and reviewing to vote for the Hugo Awards. This story was published in The Baen Big Book of Monsters, Baen Books.

A monster kaiju (think Godzilla) the size of a mountain is devastating Japan, and a single samurai manages to cling to it. As the kaiju monster rampages on, the samurai climbs upward, meaning to find some way to kill it. As he travels, he reminisces about swords, honor, the hara-kiri suicide of his father. He battles minor monsters and is severely injured but finds a cave that allows access to the kaiju’s brain. Inspired by his father’s words, he strikes at the brain with one sword and commits hara-kiri suicide with the other, knowing this will kill the monster.

I didn’t quite follow this one. It had a lot of potential in the set up, and the conclusion is very dramatic, but I just don’t understand the metaphysical suicide thing. I gather the man’s death will be transmitted through the sword to the kaiju’s brain so it understands death, but this hasn’t been sufficiently discussed/foreshadowed elsewhere in the story to make me think it’s a reasonable way to kill the monster. If this is symbolic in some way, I can’t see that, either. I generally like samurai stories, but this one just doesn’t supply the logic I need. It comes across as a deus ex machina, a.k.a. a plot device where an unsolvable problem is suddenly solved by a magical event. The story also contains somewhat too vivid descriptions of mayhem and minor grammatical errors. One star.