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The Doom Patrol: The Complete Third Season (blu-ray series review).

As I’ve said with the previous ‘Doom Patrol’ seasons, the most obvious thing in the opening and closing credits, only creators writers Arnold Drake, Bob Haney and artist Bruno Premiani are noted, yet other members came from Grant Morrison and Cyborg was a Marv Wolfman/George Pérez creation. It isn’t as though it would take more than a couple lines to add to the main credits. More so as Morrison’s use of Dada comes to the fore this season. In credits of the last episode, there are a lot of thanks there, including Morrison but considering so much of his material, like the Dada regime, turned from a brotherhood to a sisterhood is still essentially his.

Considering the disaster that befuddled the Doom Patrol at the end of season two, the resolution here quickly moves things on and back to character moments with some spoilers, more so as the Chief, Niles Caulder (actor Timothy Dalton), is dead but still goes on. Not a zombie I hasten to, just a ghostly presence who wants to finally end it.

In the meantime, Rita Farr (actress April Bowlby) finds herself being given the key that makes her their leader and literally has a meltdown. Carried in a bag by her team-mates, they spend time at a health resort and run into assassins sent their by the Brotherhood Of Evil decades ago. They were only supposed to go after Rita but the one who wouldn’t stop gets them all. A surreal visit to the outskirts of Hell while their applications are being dealt with is…well, weird especially when two ghosts, Edwin Payne (actor Ty Tennant) and Charles Rowland (actor Sebastian Croft) from the Dead Boy Detective Agency take Larry Trainor (actor Matthew Zuk/Matt Bomer)) with them to the rescue.

Hardly a spoiler or the series won’t continue. The arrival of an amnesic time traveller (played by Michelle Gomez), knowing only she has to find Niles Caulder and has to go back further in time to find him but her time machine has broken down. Meanwhile. Willoughby Kipling (actor Mark Sheppard) has returned, dug up Caulder’s body, actually just his head, as a means to communicate with him. None of which is helped that the repercussions of returning from Hell have now reached zombie status.

As this season progresses, we learn Cliff Steele (actors Riley Shanahan/Brandon Frazer) has a gambling problem caused by taking too many drugs to sort out his Parkinson’s disease. Crazy Jane (actress Diane Guerrero) has various problems with her various personalities. Vic Stone (actor Jovian Wade) forfeits a lot of his cyborg technology for a normal physiology.

Larry has lost his negative self but gives birth to, for the want of a better word, a maggot and told to get rid of it by the amnesic lady, who is preparing them for battle and then they find themselves all teleported away.

You do have to wonder if they are brave or stupid to go after the Brotherhood of Evil when they don’t have their power strength. Considering how Fog or Mist (actress Shelley Byron) from the Sisterhood of Dada helps them out, you would think they would offer her membership of the team.

I’m being careful to manoeuvre around spoilers here and there are still a lot of them. The Doom Patrol is a dysfunctional team kept together by their differences and compelling viewing.

This time we have a lot of extras. Everything from a quick yap with Michelle Gomez about her character, a look at the season, clips of the crew on how much they like working in Georgia and clips of Robot-Man’s best moments. The best is a quarter of an hour with the key cast about their characters.

It’s easy to become a fan of this series because they tend to be people first and do occasional heroic things because they have to from time to time. As such, it tends to give an edge to this series that makes it more interesting than the others and less predictable.

GF Willmetts

January 2023

(pub: Warner Bros/DC Comics, 2022. 3 blu-ray disks 529 minutes 10 * approximately 50 minute episodes and extras. Price: I paid about £29.00 (UK). ASIN: 3000092192)

cast: Diane Guerrero, April Bowlby, Brandon Frazer, Matt Bomer, Matthew Zuk, Joivan Wade, Abigail Shapiro and Michelle Gomez

check out website: www.warners.com

UncleGeoff

Geoff Willmetts has been editor at SFCrowsnest for some 21 plus years now, showing a versatility and knowledge in not only Science Fiction, but also the sciences and arts, all of which has been displayed here through editorials, reviews, articles and stories. With the latter, he has been running a short story series under the title of ‘Psi-Kicks’ If you want to contribute to SFCrowsnest, read the guidelines and show him what you can do. If it isn’t usable, he spends as much time telling you what the problems is as he would with material he accepts. This is largely how he got called an Uncle, as in Dutch Uncle. He’s not actually Dutch but hails from the west country in the UK.

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