DC EU: The Suicide Squad roll call

 The full roll call for The Suicide Squad has been released. Here's the rundown of the various villains and antiheroes we'll be seeing in James Gunn's sequel treatment.

Viola Davis as Amanda Waller

Waller is the most important element in the plot given that she's the badass who brings the various lunatics together. Davis, always an powerful actor, reprises her role from the first Suicide Squad, providing much needed continuity.

Joel Kinnaman as Rick Flag

Also reprising his role as the commander of the team in the field, Kinnamen's looking particularly hard-as-nails in this role call. He was one of the better elements of the first film so it's good to have him back.

Michael Rooker as the Savant

It's a James Gunn movie so a role for Rooker is obligatory, but he's never anything less than watchable so we don't mind. Real name Brian Durlin, the Savant is a hyper-intelligent vigilante who basically set himself up as a rival to Batman in his early appearances in the Birds of Prey comics. A chemical imbalance in his brain menas he struggles to retain his memories.

Flula Borg as Javelin

DJ Flula is a German YouTube personality-cum-comedian who's apparently a bit of a big deal these days, but I lose track of these things. He's got a lot of voice work under his belt including some DC cartoons, and he looks great as Javelin. A former athlete who has turned to a life of crime, Javelin is one of the sillier characters to be included in The Suicide Squad and I'm thrilled they're going with these sort of daft C-list villains. Anyway, javelins are well nasty.

Margot Robbie as Harley Quinn

The other returning star and the big draw of the film, after her scene stealing turn in the first film and her headlining of Birds of Prey (which I still haven't seen but will honestly get round to soon). It'll be good to see her take on the role of the SS's best and barmiest without the Joker's shadow over her.

David Dastmalchian as Polka-Dot Man

Oh my word, they're using Polka-Dot Man! Abner Krill uses a miraculous costume that utilise its polka-dots as various weapons, which is the sort of mental idea DC films just don't have the guts to use often enough.Weirdly, he never appeared on the 60s Batman series, and his only film appearance before this was a non-speaking cameo on The Lego Batman Movie. Dastmalchian has form as Abra Kadabra on The Flash and was brilliant in Ant-Man, so stoked for his casting.

Daniela Melchior as Ratcatcher 2

Another Batman villain, the original Ratcatcher, Otis Flannegan, originated in Detective Comics in the 80s. Melchior's version would seem to be a follower of the Flannegan, perhaps his daughter.Presumably she can talk to rats like her predecessor. Melchior is a Portoguese actor who I'm totally unfamiliar with, and is playing one of the newest members of the Squad. At 23 she's the youngest member of the cast.

Idris Elba as Bloodsport

Big name star Idris Elba is a huge addition to the cast. Early rumours suggested he'd be replacing Will Smith as Deadshot, (and that was probably the original idea) but it's probably better that he's getting his own character. There have been various villains called Bloodsport in DC Comics, ususally as Superman enemies, but Elba's is the original, Robert DuBois. A mentally scarred veteran, DuBois utilises extremely advanced weaponry including kryptonite bullets, and his inclusion in the film hints at some link to Lex Luthor, who commonly employed him.

King Shark

The metahuman/shark-hybrid/demigod (origins vary) was one of the most fun elements of The Flash series and it'll be good to have a monster character on The Suicide Squad. He's going to be CGI, of course, and Steve Agee has been involved with the voicework, but it's not confirmed he's in the final film. Taika Waititi is rumoured to be re-recording the lines.

Mayling Ng and Mongal

An alien warrior, Mongal is the sister of Mongul and is a perennial enemy of Superman and Green Lantern. Extremely strong, she's perhaps the most powerful of the squad. Ng is an actor and martial artist who's previously had roles on Wonder Woman and Scorpion King: Book of Souls.

Peter Capaldi as the Thinker

The most exciting casting for me, the great Peter Capaldi is taking on the role of Clifford DeVoe, the hyperintelligent mastermind who's been a major enemy of the Flash over the years. Neil Sandilands played him on season four of The Flash but wasn't very interesting in it; I can't wait to see how Capaldi plays him.

Alice Braga as Sol Soria

The talented Brazilian actor Alice Braga won acclaim for City of God and has genre experience from Repo Men, I Am Legend, Elysium and Predators. She's also going to be in The New Mutants when it finally appears. Sol Soris seems to be a version of Juan Soria, a minor villain who's a wannabe superhero.

Pete Davisdon as Blackguard

Richard Hertz aka Blackguard is a mercenary bestowed with technologically advanced armour. Best known as a comedian and comedy actor, Pete Davidson won acclaim for his role as star and co-writer of The King of Staten Island earlier this year. He has presence.

Nathan Fillion as TDK

The Firefly and Castle star is always good value and another favourite of James Gunn. Floyd Belkin is a metahuman from the far future in the comics, originally going by the name Arm-Fall-Off Boy. One of the most ridiculous of DC's characters, he can detach his limbs and use them as weapons. This should be... interesting to see onscreen. Belkin changed his name to Splitter, but here seems to be going by TDK, although what that stands for we can't yet say. Surely he's not calling himself The Dark Knight? I've heard suggested that it's The Dismemberment Kid.

Sean Gunn as Weasel

Another obligatory James Gunn casting choice, it's his brother Sean, who provided the motion capture for Rocket Raccoon on Guardians of the Galaxy. This time it seems he'll be voicing the character as well, but there's the risk this will be more of the same. John Munroe is a low-life who becomes a costumed villain in the comics, although the movie version seems to be based more on the rebooted New 52 version, and looks like he's actually part weasel.

Jai Courtney as Captain Boomerang

One more returning cast member. Courtney was great fun as the wonderfully loopy Captain Boomerang in the first film, and it's good to have him back. He can take comfort that he's no longer the owner of the most ridiculous name on the squad.

John Cena as Peacemaker

The legendary John Cena plays Christopher Smith, the Peacemaker. Described by Cena as "a douchey Captain America," Peacemaker believes in peace at all costs, and it doesn't matter how many people die to get it. Pretty much the most American character ever, then.

DC EU round-up!

 So, there's been a huge amount of news and material released by DC/WB as part of its DC Fandome, its online convention this weekend. Here' are my thoughts on some of the more interesting titbits.

The Batman

Hmm, not sure about this. I mean, it looks stunning, but also miserable as hell, and I'm kind of done with grimdark Batman for now. I'm still not entirely sold on Robert Pattinson as Bruce Wayne (although I do like the guy), but we've been wrong before about unusual casting choices in the Batman films. He's very emo-looking in this, but then again, I guess Bruce is a bit of an emo. I'll see this, but it looks so joyless I'm not sure it's going to work for me. Best comment on YouTube: "Looks like a Batman who's watched his parents die as many times as we have."

Flashpoint

Which might actually just be called The Flash, but in either case is a) the long-delayed Flash movie and b) an adaptation of the Flashpoint comics arc. The Flash TV series already did a version of that, but this is likely to be closer to the source material since they can actually use Batman, and we're, astonishingly, getting two of them: both Michael Keaton and Ben Affleck are returning to the role, presumably as alternative versions of the character. We've had it confirmed that the Ezra Miller iteration of Barry Allen calls himself the Flash now because he got the name from Grant Gustin's version in Crisis on Infinite Earths, so the door's open for even more unexpected cameos. (If John Wesley Shipp turns up I'll scream.)

Wonder Woman 1984

This is more like it. There's an edge to it, yes, but it looks fun and colourful in a way The Batman just fails to capture. Gal Gadot as Wonder Woman is one of the best things in the DCEU so it's a treat to have her back headlining a film, but I'm most excited about the wonderful Kristin Wiig as the Cheetah. I love it when the films aren't afraid to embrace the very silly villains of the source material. Good to have Chris Pine back as Steve Trevor, bringing to mind when the 70s TV show jumped ahead thirty years and recast Lyle Waggoner as the son of the original Trevor. That doesn't seem to be what's going on here though.

Black Adam and Shazam 2

We've had confirmation at last of the Shazam! sequel, provisionally titled Shazam: Fury of the Gods, which will apparently feature the comedian Sinbad in some capacity. Other than, not much info.

The long-gestating Black Adam film starring the Rock is still in the works, with confirmation that Noah Centineo is signed up to play the Atom Smasher. Intriguingly, it's been revealed that Adam will be forming his own Justice Society, seemingly as a rival to the Justice League, and has recruited Hawkman, Cyclone and Dr. Fate.

The Suicide Squad

Both a trailer and roll call for this one, but it has to be said, having James Gunn behind the wheel is the most important thing. The previous film was flawed to say the least, although it had its moments, and I'm hopeful about this one. Peter Capaldi as the Thinker is my most favourite thing for a while. Full roll-call analysis coming up!

TREK REVIEW: Lower Decks 1-3 - "Temporal Edict"

"Temporal Edict" was a very good episode of Futurama. Not such a great episode of Star Trek, though. It's very funny, can't fault it there, and I enjoyed it plenty, but it's far more like a parody of Trek than the first two episodes, which worked as Trek episodes in their own right. As funny as it to see a starship go to pot due to her captain working the crew into the dirt, it's hard to believe it's something someone in Starfleet would actually do.

It's good to spend a bit more time with the captain and first officer. The episode focuses heavily on Boimler and Mariner, pairing them up with Captain Freeman and Commander Ransom respectively, while Tendi and Rutherford don't feature much, but there's no way a half-hour episode can give everyone a big slice of the pie, and switching it around like this works well. The episode is split into two storylines, which are designed clearly to show how different Boimler and Mariner are. Mariner introduces the idea of "buffer time," the built-in downtime that Starfleet crewmen factor in to their duty estimates. It's basically the Scotty school of engineering statements: multiply each estimate by four so you look amazing when you do it in quarter-time. When Boimler lets this slip to Freeman, it leads to the uptight captain to create an impossible-to-meet work rota with zero slacking built in.

We follow Boimler through the consequent chaos on the ship, as the crew are driven to exhaustion and mental collapse by their punishing duty regime. Boimler loves it, of course, because he's a workaholic; it even prompts him to say, "Space, the funnest frontier?" in his log (he's presumably the only one ahead of schedule enough to record a log). He intersects with Freeman, who's increasingly desperate attempts to keep the bridge running while the rest of the crew collapses from exhaustion makes for some good comedy moments. Still, it's hard to see how someone with this poor an understanding of human capacity can ever have got command of a starship, even one on an undesirable mission.

Meanwhile, Ransom leads a team including Mariner on a mission to Gelrak Five, home to a race of primitive humanoids who've just been indicted into the Federation. I mean, they can't be that primitive if they let them in, they must have warp drive as a basic qualifier, but they use spears and worship crystals and seem pretty backward. They certainly don't look like prime Federation material, but only five years earlier (in-universe time)  on Insurrection we learned the UFP was letting in newly warp-capable civilisations at the drop of a hat just to keep their allies numerous following the Dominion War. (On the subject of the Dominion War, the Cerritos was supposed to be heading to a conference on Cardassia Prime, but apparently no one wants to go there. Except me. I'm dying to see post-war Cardassia.)

Mariner clearly has the smarts for these missions but she's so disrespectful and aggressive here that it's amazing she was just demoted before. I'm getting the feeling the only reason she's still in Starfleet at all is because her parents are a captain and an admiral.While Boimler's the Starfleet poster boy, Mariner's the fan stand-in, making jibes about the 2260s and squeeing at the old-school Trek stuff on the planet's surface. She and Ransom have an interesting relationship, with a mutual lack of respect moving to grudging respect as a result of this mission, helped out by some serious attraction on both sides. 

The trial by combat is, of course, classic Trek material, and it even sounds like the original series during the fight (although Futurama would have used the actual TOS fight music, which was sorely missing here in favour of something with a similar feel). I liked the big, beefy champion actually being the smartest, most sensitive of the Galrakians, and Ransom's prodigious use of Kirk Fu. The "geode of judgment" or whatever it's called, however, is lifted directly from an episode of Futurama (4.6, "Where the Buggalo Roam"). A Futurama feel is fine, but that series should be lifting from Trek, not the other way round.

The plotlines meet when the Galrakians invade the ship and the crew are so exhausted and behind schedule that they can't even fight back, leading to Boimler convincing Freeman that she has to cut the crew some slack. ("The crew are only human... and Vulcan, Orion and Bolian... and there's that Benzite...") The episode has a decent punchline, with the new edict for the crew to slack off and take it easy being named the Boimler Effect, with Boimler unable to comprehend that he has a rule named after him that's about breaking the rules.

It's a pretty good episode, but it hasn't the punch of the first two, and it just feels like a comedy in space with Trek references rather than an actual comedy episode of Trek. Still, it's all worth it for that fantastic coda, where in the far future we see a Federation teacher tell her class about how the Boimler Effect changed Starfleet forever, before revealing the most important figure in Federation history. I won't spoilt it here because it prompted the biggest, barking laugh of the series so far, but rest assured he never quadrupled his engineering estimates. 

Aliens of the week: 

The Galrakians are pale green humanoids with slit-like nostrils instead of noses, worship rock formations and hate the wood-worshipping people of Magus Prime.

Life forms encountered by Commander Ransom include horned gorillas, sentient tar and "spores that make you hook up with your best friend's sister," so he's either been rifling through the Trek back catalogue or he's actually visited Neural, Vagra Two and Omicron Ceti 3.

The Federation classroom in the distant future has students who look human, but also Ferengi, an Andorian and, astonishingly, a Borg.

WHOTOPIA 36

 Issue 36 of the Doctor Who fanzine Whotopia is now available for download. This special, one-off issue features an in-depth review of Series 12 (refreshingly positive, as well), features on the Thirteenth Doctor, a piece on the soundtrack to The Krotons of all things, and my last installment of "Master Who," looking at Michelle Gomez's glorious Missy.

The issue is available for free download via Dropbox.

TREK REVIEWS: Television Heaven series reviews

I've four new reviews up on Television Heaven covering the breadth of Star Trek for your reading pleasure.The cute and underrated kids' spin-off Star Trek: The Animated Series, the flawed but watchable Star Trek: Voyager, the equally flawed Enterprise (but my do I have a soft spot for it), and bringing us right up to date, a review of Star Trek: Picard S1 as a whole, to sit alongside my episode reviews on the blog.

While we're at it, John Winterson Richard and Peter Henshuls have covered the ever popular Star Trek: The Next Generation, the connoisseur's choice, Star Trek: Deep Space Nine, and along with site runner Laurence Marcus, they've gone back to the beginning with a look at the original Star Trek.