DVD Review: Smallville Season 8

Despite regular rumours of impending cancellation, WB’s Smallville just keeps on trucking.  Season 9 is now well in production, with the first episodes due to air in the US in September.  Today, though, we’re taking a look back at Season 8, which has just had its stateside release on DVD and Blu-Ray.

First the official blurb, then a pretty picture, then we’ll get stuck into the review proper…

Another season of Smallville means more exciting new characters, adventure and conflict, as the longest running “Superman” TV series continues to deliver great entertainment with the release of Smallville: The Complete Eighth Season on DVD and Blu-ray™ on August 25th. Fans will thrill to this collectible multi-disc set with all 22 episodes of the eighth season, plus amazing bonus features, including unaired scenes, cast & crew commentaries, and several never-before-seen featurettes including “Smallville’s Doomsday: The Making of a Monster.”

And now for that picture I promised you.

Smallville Season 8

Right, that’s the formalities out of the way, let’s get down to business.

To be honest, I lost track of Smallville for a few years.  Considering I’m a massive Superman fan (literally – I’m 6″4′) this should tell you all you need to know about the standard of some of the previous seasons.  Sure, there were some good episodes, but by season 4 – with its stupid witch plot and blisteringly uninteresting storyline about caves and stones – the rot had started to take hold.

Then came season 5, and man, season 5 stunk all kinds of bad.

Things picked up a little with season 6, before the atrocity that was season 7 almost killed the series stone dead.  But then, as is only numerically appropriate, after season 7 came season 8.  The show’s creators, Alfred Gough and Miles Millar, were no longer involved in the show’s production.  The loss of Lex Luthor and Lana Lang drastically reduced the alliteration in each script, and some new characters were brought in to replace them.

So did the cull work?  Is Smallville Season 8 better than some of the clunkers that have come before?

Yes.  Yes it is.  It’s by no means perfect, but it’s at least a step in the right direction, and it held my attention where the other seasons had not.

The villain of this season is everyone’s favourite exo-skeleton-faced rampaging behemoth, Doomsday.  Those of you who follow the Superman comics will know that Doomsday is the genetically engineered Kryptonian killing machine who, in 1992, kicked the crap out of virtually every DC Universe hero, before battering the Man of Steel to death in the middle of Metropolis.

He was a virtually indestructible monster, capable of tearing the collective eyes of the entire Justice League out through their collective asses, so when I heard he was due to appear in Smallville, my heart sank.  How could this show, with a relatively small production budget, possibly do justice to the Doomsday character?

The answer was, they couldn’t.  But fortunately, they knew they couldn’t, which was why they changed the original mythos, turning Doomsday into a Hulk-like alter-ego for new series regular, Davis Bloome (played by the excellent Sam Witwer).

Surprisingly, this works pretty well, thanks mostly to the fact that Davis Bloome is infinitely more interesting than Doomsday.  As with all the best monster movies, Doomsday only appears briefly in most of the episodes, and in the fleeting glimpses we see of him he looks a lot like his comic-book incarnation.  There are also moments where he looks like a big bloke in a rubber suit, but the least said about those the better…

The other newcomer to the show, Tess Mercer, replaces Lex Luthor as the head of Luthorcorp.  She’s an OK character, no more or less annoying that many of the others (although obviously less annoying than Chloe, but then everyone’s less annoying than Chloe).  She has ties to Green Arrow (another character on particularly irritating form this season), she’s quite good at karate, and she stares at things a lot.  That pretty much sums her up right there.

While the season has many flaws – Chloe, mainly – and while some of the episodes are absolute stinkers – those dealing with Lana’s brief return to the show will likely have you stabbing forks into your own eyes – overall it’s well worth a look.

I particularly liked how we get to see the strands of Clark’s destiny begin to pull together.  He’s in Metropolis, working as a reporter for the Daily Planet, alongside Lois Lane.  He’s out saving the good people of the city, streaking along so fast he appears as a red and blue blur, prompting some creative genius to brand him “The Red Blue Blur”.  Now, I’m aware that superhero names can be quite ridiculous, but even for a company who brought us Matter-Eater-Lad (he can eat anything!  Except anti-matter), The Red Blue Blur is pretty damned awful.

What’s more, no-one ever shortens it to “The Blur”.  Not once.  It’s like Warner Bros have trademarked the words “red” and “blue” and get paid a dollar every time someone uses them on TV.  I swear if I hear Chloe use the phrase “The Red Blue Blur” again I’ll punch myself in the face until I lose consciousness.

But I digress.

Smallville Season 8 is, as I’ve said, a big improvement over previous seasons.  Those who once enjoyed the show might find they start enjoying it again, although – like me – they may be left going “huh? Is that it?” after the final episode’s anti-climax.  Still, it bodes well for the future, and I can’t help but find myself looking forward to season 9 – a season which, if the final episode’s teaser is to be believed – promises plenty of a character very close to this site’s heart…

Looking for more info on Smallville Season 8?  Check out the official site.