Relationship Spotlight: Brainiac-5 & Nia Nal (Supergirl)

Ah, Nia and Brainy, two great tastes that taste great together – in this case, two additions to Supergirl who’ve both brought a lot to the show on their own and who are quite delightful as a pair.  At the moment, they’re what I’m most curious about for season 5 (Brainy-Nia-related spoilers.)

First of all, Nia and Brainy have a wonderfully badass meet-cute.  They happen to be in the same pizza place when Brainy’s image inducer (which disguises him as a human) is hacked, briefly exposing his natural Coluan form.  The guys at the pizza place freak out to be in the presence of an alien, and Nia steps in to stop the altercation from turning violent and to lay some serious “shame on you” on the people trying to hurt Brainy.  Given that Brainy’s just experienced people that he’d been friendly with turning on him the instant they realized he wasn’t human, meeting a complete stranger who defends him knowing full well he’s an alien has to be a good feeling – I know Brainy likes to claim that, as an AI, feelings factor little into his reasoning, but we all know that’s not super true.

Since Brainy basically screams “I’m an alien AI from the future” with every fiber of his being, it’s probably good that Nia knows off the bat that he isn’t human (his friends’ attempt to “cover” for him in front of Nia during their early interactions are laughable.)  She isn’t as forthcoming about her own half human/half Naltorian heritage, but Brainy has knowledge she doesn’t and has already figured out that secret.  Being, again, from the future, Brainy knows all about Nia’s famous descendent, a hero who has the same powers that Nia is just starting to manifest.  As Nia gets evasive with Kara and co., not wanting anyone to know that she has prophetic dreams, Brainy recognizes the signs.  He brings Supergirl and Nia together, knowing that Nia needs help/training and that her dreams could in turn help team Supergirl.

This is what leads to Nia and Brainy being more than passing acquaintances who are always surprised, pleased, and kind of awkward whenever they run into each other.  With Brainy’s 31^st-century knowledge, he’s well-positioned to help with Nia’s training, helping her learn how to take agency within her dreams, start to understand what she’s seeing, and use her powers in varied ways.  But even as it brings them closer together, this new dimension to their relationship can also cause friction between them.  Once Nia begins coming to terms with powers, she’s eager to learn as much as she can as fast as she can.  Brainy, though, is wary of doing anything to mess with the timeline, and so he uses what he knows from the 31^st century without telling her about it, trying to control what she knows and when.  Needless to say, this doesn’t go over well.  (I should point out that this doesn’t really feel like an instance of a man keeping secrets from a woman or trying to limit her power out of a paternalistic wish to “protect” her.  Rather, it all stems from Brainy’s concern about the timeline and his AI tendency to not really think about how humans might respond to his actions.)

From their first episode together, it’s clear that the show was at least dancing around a romantic connection between these two.  And boy, do they dance!  Again with Brainy and his whole “not understanding human nuances” thing, Nia spends a not-inconsiderable part of the season basically low-key flirting with a motherboard.  After their initial meeting, she tells him her name and coyly suggests he “find” her, wanting to create a little sense of mystery around herself and give him a puzzle to solve in chasing her.  Brainy, for his part, completes his task (figuring out who she is, where she lives, and an inadvertently-stalkery-sounding list of other factoids) and calls it good – after all, she told him to find her, not call her or otherwise meet up with her again.  A lot of their more romant-ish moments are like that, Nia implying and Brainy missing it, even as he very gradually starts recognizing that he has feelings for her.  When they do finally kiss for the first time, Brainy immediately decides that any relationship borne in the throes of upheaval (they kiss at an intense, chaotic moment in the middle of an adventure) is doomed to fail and ends things before they begin.

Yeah, I side-eyed that scene so hard.  Artificial/forced obstacles between couples are ceaselessly annoying, and as someone who likes Nia and Brainy’s awkward-but-endearing energy together, I wanted more than two minutes of them as a thing before they were arbitrarily pulled apart.  Come on, Brainy – silly AI!  Luckily, though, the season four finale rights the ship on these two in a big way.  Seeing Nia in danger cuts through Brainy’s cold/calculating “aligned” mind and brings back our favorite techno-organic with a declaration of love?  Okay, yeah, I’ll forgive a lot of past mistakes for something like that.

When we next see Brainy and Nia, they’re casually together, and I can’t wait to see what they’re going to be like in season 5.  I know they’re both supporting characters, but I hope we get some good plots with their relationship.  Brainy dating is bound to be gold, I love that Nia being trans hasn’t factored into their interactions at all, and I can’t help but wonder whether Brainy’s more overtly-alien behavior in public will cause Nia (who was raised on Earth and easily “passes” for a full human) some harassment by association.  Whatever we get of these two, I’m ready to thoroughly enjoy it!

Cabaret (1966)

I’m putting “1966” on this because that’s when the musical first came out, although I’m most familiar with my cast recording of the 1998 revival with Alan Cumming and Natasha Richardson. There’s also the movie, which I’ve seen as well, Christopher Isherwood’s Berlin Stories that inspired the show (particularly Sally Bowles,) and Isherwood’s memoir of his experiences that inspired the stories, Christopher and His Kind (although the memoir doesn’t lean as heavily on the people who inspired the Berlin Stories characters as the BBC adaptation of it does.) What I’m saying is, I have a lot of exposure to the various permutations of this material.

The American writer Cliff Bradshaw comes to Berlin in the 1930s, where he takes a flat and begins the quintessential starving-artist lifestyle in a city where the coming rumble of thunder is drowned out by the nightlife. Cliff becomes entangled with Sally Bowles, an English dancer at the seedy Kit Kat Club. As Cliff and Sally get caught up in their own lives, which bring equal parts elation and heartbreak, the specter of the approaching war becomes harder and harder to ignore.

Cabaret is such an interesting show, probably my favorite of Kander & Ebb’s. I love the juxtaposition between the decadence/debauchery of the Kit Kat Club and the building Nazi presence in the city, as fascism/anti-Semitism roots deeper and deeper while everyone is dancing. Isherwood’s characters, like the stoic landlady Fräulein Schneider and the inimitable Sally, are brought to life on the stage with as much individual immediacy as they bear on the page. Cliff, I think, feels a little more Standard-Issue Protagonist (he’s the character that acquires a new mostly-interchangable identity in every permutation of the story,) but then, he’s a straightwashed stand-in for Isherwood himself, who wrote The Berlin Stories with a much more outward focus – “I am a camera,” he famously said.

Then there’s the music, which brings the story across and pulls out the themes in such an effective way. It knows when to shift from bright to dark, when to be flippant and irreverent, and when to get real. The opening number, “Willkommen,” is a classic, as is the showstopping “Cabaret” (I love it when upbeat music is used during sad/dark moments – what a treat for the actress who plays Sally.) I also adore slower numbers like “Maybe This Time” (added for the film and incorporated into subsequent productions) and “I Don’t Care Much” (also a later addition,) and I’m really enamored with the peppy-but-twisted “If You Could See Her.”

Overall, an engrossing show that I’ve only come to appreciate more as its own invention since digging into more of the source material. I saw a regional production of it a few years ago and greatly enjoyed seeing it onstage (if “enjoyed” is the right word – it’s a fine show, but in an unsettling way.)

Warnings

Strong thematic elements, language (including anti-Semitic slurs,) sexual content, drinking/smoking, and violence (including hate crimes.)

Favorite Characters: Ellen Ripley (Alien)

A favorite hero/punching bag for sci-fi/horror/action directors between the 1970s, ‘80s, and ‘90s, Ellen Ripley is a stone.  Cold.  BAMF.  She’s thrown into several serious crucibles over the course of the tetrad, and though she can never be fully said to come out on top, she always comes out fighting (premise spoilers for the Alien franchise.)

We meet Ripley at the fairly unremarkable start of the day that will irreparably change and consume the rest of her life.  She’s one of the upper-ranking crew members on a deep-space freighter, and she and her shipmates are woken from their cryosleep early when the ship detects a distress call on a nearly planetoid.  Like the rest of the crew, she feels no reluctance about a small team going down to investigate.  A little out of the way, but nothing they can’t handle…

But that’s when everything punches sideways and the world slips off its axis.  One of her shipmates is attacked by a hatchling from an extraterrestrial egg, and despite her hardline against allowing a possible contagion/foreign body back onto the ship, she’s overridden, and what follows is a neverending stream of bewilderment, terror, grotesque violence, grief, and sick manipulation.  The alien proves formidable and nigh-unstoppable, and one by one, her shipmates are claimed by the monster.  But that’s only the beginning.  No matter how much time passes or how far Ripley goes, the aliens find their way back into her life, no one ever heeds her warnings until it’s too late, and the cost is always devastatingly high.

It’s even more horrible when you think about the implications of the cryosleep that bridges the gap between each film.  Even though the story spans decades and planets, Ripley is always on ice between installments.  That means, after her initial encounter with the alien, her life is quite literally a constant series of one alien encounter after another.  After all that intense danger and pressure, it’s a wonder she’s able to walk upright and form complete sentences, let alone kick ass and take names.

But Ripley just won’t go down.  No matter how battered, how beaten, no matter how much is taken from her, she keeps on going.  Death after death, peril after peril, through abject horror and the loss of pretty much everyone she’s ever cared about, Ripley continues to put one determined foot in front of the other.  And the thing is, yeah, she’s a licensed badass, but she’s not a straight-up action heroine, not exactly.  This isn’t a Black Widow situation.  While Ripley is highly-competent at her work, quick to consider the possible ramifications of any threat, and able to press on despite paralyzing fear, she’s not a natural guns-blazing type.  She escapes the first alien by the skin of her teeth through sheer ingenuity, and with every subsequent encounter, she hits the ground running, picking up the skills she needs to survive during the (insanely) brief reprieves between attacks.  Her best quality isn’t her marksmanship.  It’s not her resourcefulness, her bravery, or even her intelligence.  All those things are impressive, and they all work in conjunction to keep her alive, but when it really comes down to it, what I admire most about her is simply this:  Ripley just won’t quit.

Top Five Big Damn Hero Moments: Leela (Doctor Who)

Obviously, as easily the most badass classic Who companion, Leela has no shortage of Big Damn Hero moments.  The Sevateem warrior is handy with a dagger (and a Janis thorn, despite the Doctor’s objections,) knows her way around hand-to-hand combat, and is a quick study on guns.  As with most of the Doctor’s more badass companions, though, I’ve tried to put together a list that’s a little more varied than “five times Leela kicked someone’s ass” (spoilers.)

Fighting Mister Sin (Series 14, Episode 23 – “The Talons of Weng-Chiang:  Episode 3”)

Leela is prepared when Mister Sin arrives at Professor Litefoot’s house.  Having already knocked out the professor, Mister Sin creeps toward her, knife outstretched, and Leela returns like for like, grabbing a steak knife off the table and expertly throwing it straight into his neck.  Of course (because Who isn’t about to have Leela actually kill someone by knifing them in the jugular,) it turns out Mister Sin don’t go down that way.  When he’s unphased by the knife attack, Leela does the smart thing:  fall back and regroup.  She also does the cool thing, vaulting over a chair, running across the table, and diving out the window – Leela gets all the action moves!

Tailing Li H’sen (Series 14, Episode 23 – “The Talons of Weng-Chiang:  Episode 3”)

Brave and smart!  Leela follows Li H’sen back to the theatre, taking cover while he puts his hypnotic mojo on an unsuspecting woman.  Then, when Li H’sen is out of the room, Leela swaps clothes with the woman and hides her away, getting Li H’sen to instead take her back to Greel’s lair with him.  Since Leela is only pretending to be hypnotized, this gives her valuable intel on where to find the baddies and a primo opportunity for a first skirmish with Greel; nicely done.

Killing the Rutan (Series 15, Episode 4 – “Horror of Fang Rock:  Episode 4”)

While the particulars of this moment aren’t anything extraordinary – Leela fires a mortar at the Rutan – it’s here for the swagger points.  Leela seeks it out afterwards and finds the Rutan dying in the stairwell, where she scoffs at its promise of revenge.  “Enjoy your death as I enjoyed killing you.”  I know the Doctor doesn’t approve, but seriously, how badass is that?

Fighting the Infected (Series 15, Episode 7 – “The Invisible Enemy:  Episode 3”)

While the cloned Doctor and Leela are miniaturized and injected into the Doctor’s bloodstream to locate the nucleus of the Virus (it’s Who, just go with it,) the Infected are keen to stop that happening.  With the Doctor himself unconscious, it’s up to Leela (and K9) to hold them back.  This is a fun example of how Leela adapts over the course of her time on the show; while she fights as strategically as ever, she also learns her way around weapons she would’ve never used as one of the Sevateem, like blasters.  Cool action scene that shows off Leela’s boldness, as well as her smarts.

Keeping the Faith (Series 15, Episode 23 – “The Invasion of Time:  Episode 3”)

At this point in the story, everything seems to suggest that the Doctor is in league with the bad guys.  He’s been shifty and secretive, he lowered Gallifrey’s defenses to let the enemy in, and he appears to have turned on Leela personally, banishing her from the Citadel.  But Leela remains loyal, sure that it’s all part of the Doctor’s plan, calm in the knowledge that she doesn’t have to understand it to help him carry it out.  Rodan argues with her, insisting that “reason dictates” that the Doctor is a traitor.  Leela, fiercely, replies, “Then reason is a liar!”  This is maybe an odd Big Damn Hero moment to include, especially for a companion who regularly kicks so much ass, but this display of trust and devotion is brave too, and I love that Leela is unflinching in her belief in the Doctor’s character.