In the wake of his parents’ loss, Seg seeks meaning and a way to move forward. Adam Strange seeks to convince Seg and Kem of the truth behind his warning. Lyta steps up to prove herself to her mother and her comrades the only way she knows how.

On the plus side, the latest episode of Krypton does feel less as if it is clinging to the tail of Superman’s cape – with a couple of exceptions, there are very few direct references or callbacks to the parent property for the first half of the episode. Then there’s a whole bit in Val-El’s Fortress of Solitude that rather spoils this, but then it’s back to actual Krypton-specific business.

Unfortunately, that business mostly consists of clunky expositional dialogue, delivered in an ongoing series of scenes in which a person/people walk into a room, deliver whatever chunk of world-building wordiness the script has told them to in a fashion which feels in no way organic, and then walk out again.

In this episode we therefore get unasked-for history lessons about the Gods of Kryptonian legend, the faces of the Voice of Rao, the specific nature of the research carried out by Val-El and the wondrous technological advances he made (which in and of itself makes little sense) and the ancient rite of trial by combat among the military forces and its origins. It’s not that the audience doesn’t necessarily need some or even most of this information, but this feels like screenwriting 101: show, don’t tell. Having stilted delivery of turgid chunks of dialogue be your expositional device is surely the most basic of writing sins, yet here it is repeated often.

The other issue is that even when the action does get going, it never really satisfies, playing exactly like something scripted, rather than something organic. There’s a fight scene which ends in a way that is not logical or explicable, given the course of the fight itself, save for that ‘the script said it went that way’.

Additionally, Seg doesn’t really feel like a character, so much as a cypher pushed from one scene to the next by narrative convenience. One moment he’s swearing almighty vengeance, the next he’s being cool and calm. One scene he doesn’t give a damn about Strange and his story, the next scene he’s desperately invested in the quest the Earth Man has offered. On and on this goes, giving us a lead who’s plenty charismatic, but in no way feels like a real person.

It’s plain that the aim here is for a sort of Game of Thrones-style epic, full of courtly intrigue, drama, politicking and machinations. Unfortunately it all falls limp because of poor execution. Where Thrones took years to build characters and develop their darker, more duplicitous sides, Krypton expects to be able to pull the same trick in its second episode, with zero prior investment. Someone needs to tell the showrunners that just because they have the majority of the cast speaking in an RP English accent, doesn’t automatically make the material they’re delivering with it any smarter.

Verdict: Ironically, having spent last week desperately wanting the show to step out of Supes’ shadow and be its own thing, this week I really felt like we needed Kal-El to come and save the day. There’s decent actors here, obviously a big budget involved and renowned writing talent, but something just isn’t working. 3/10

Greg D. Smith