TV Retrospective: Young Justice: Invasion Episodes 1-5

It’s time to get started with Young Justice Invasion

Happy New Year

We open with the end scene from the end of the last episode. If you’re waiting for the answers… they’re not in this episode, prepare instead for more questions.

In Gotham City, Superboy is hunting down Clayface, Clayface ambushes him but is saved by Miss Martian who’s sporting a slightly different look than before. She calls in ‘delta squad’ to support, we see some electric disks hit Clayface but this is ineffective. But Superboy has what I presume is a dehydrant capsule. Robin is also sporting a new look and we’re joined by Beast Boy, Blue Beetle and Bumblebee.

Miss Martian calls in the cave, and we reveal that she’s reporting to Nightwing, 5 years have passed since the incident on the watchtower. This was a controversial move but one I think was necessary for the show to move to the next level. It does have some issues and they’ll come forward before the episode is up but sometimes you can’t cover everything with this many people over that sort of period, especially with a continuous story like Young Justice has.

In the Cave, Nightwing has defeated Lagoon Boy in training combat. Delta squad return to the cave and we see that Mal Duncan is part of the team too and he is brushed off by Bumblebee, meanwhile it’s Miss Martian and Lagoon Boy now. Robin reports to Nightwing as Captain Atom calls in the team, the United Nations is under attack. But what are the odds? The team have their beta squad in the vicinity. Who’s in beta I hear you ask? None other than Batgirl and Wonder Girl.

It’s Lobo that’s attacking the UN, completely invulnerable to bullets and largely speaking in interlac, the language of the United Planets in the 31^st Century. He begins translating, his contract demands that he put on a show for the locals. Wonder Girl attacks Lobo whilst Batgirl tries to get UN Secretary General Tseng to safety.

Wonder Girl isn’t a match for him. Batgirl uses defensive tactics like smoke to cover her and the general. Treating Wonder Girl like a punching bag will become a pattern in this series. Lobo eventually captures him and tears him apart, revealing an alien inside. His contract complete he leaves on a bike.

The footage is shown on GBS with our latest addition to the News Network, G Gordon Godfrey. Voiced by none other than Tim Curry. He points out that anyone could be alien and asks why the Justice League can’t provide scanners. Trivia note, the Justice League logo in the background is from the DCAU series.

Oh and Rocket and Zatanna are now members of the League, the two least developed characters of the team are no longer members, ah well, character is not this show’s strong point. We cut to the watchtower where John Stuart overviews the aliens, the small alien that Lobo captured is a Krolotean, and they travel in packs. Martian Manhunter introduces Adam Strange, one of the Star Labs technicians that helps maintain the zeta tubes.

Martain Manhunter links their minds so they can be provided with visuals. He was teleported to Rann, a scientist there named Sardath, some of his zeta tech had been stolen. There had been transmissions between a location on Rann and multiple locations on Earth, he’s been given a device they can use to track them.

Captain Atom instructs that they conduct raids on the targets whilst sending a league contingent to Rann with strange but there’s a problem. The League is not well liked by Rann, and 6 leaguers there are wanted criminals, you’ll never guess which 6. 2 problems here, why did none of them consider that Savage sent them into space, when Black Canary, Red Tornado and Red Arrow clearly saw them arrive by BOOM TUBE!? Also, how come the Guardians of the Universe, who John answers to, didn’t know about this?

Nightwing says he can send a squad from the team, who aren’t as well known as the League. Zatanna reminds Miss M Superboy and Nightwing that all 3 of them have an open league invitation to the League, but they’re happy where they are… Jesus Christ this summary is long.

Nightwing splits the teams. He and Wonder Girl are alpha, Batgirl, Bumblebee and Wolf are Beta. Blue Beetle, Lagoon Boy and Robin are gamma. Lagoon Boy is not happy, presuming it to be a soft gig. Nightwing selects Robin as team leader and yes, this Robin is Tim Drake. He has some insecurities about leadership, especially after Jason but we’ll get to that, but otherwise is one of the characters they skip out on developing.

Gamma squad head to New Orleans, they find a tool shed which they presume is housing a zeta tube. Blue Beetle argues with himself about being comfortable with that. Blue Beetle gets the Lion’s share of character development this season, it’ll make sense later. They begin their attack but it really was a tool shed. Robin’s convenient scanner thing shows the source to be underwater.

Lagoon Boy finds the hidden entrance and uses his enlarged form to open the way for the others. They find a massive base with hundreds of Kroloteans and multiple zeta platforms. Robin reports and Mal tells them to lay low, but they’ve already been spotted.

Now time for a segment I like to call “over-explaining the point” this will happen a lot this season, especially when Batgirl is involved

“We found a zeta platform, the kind Strange described”

Moving on… Robin, Lagoon Boy and Blue Beetle engage and not doing a bad job all things considered. One of the leaders spots Blue Beetle and orders them to retreat. Blue is able to understand their language. The base is set to self-destruct in 4 minutes and there was a mention of sacrificing the playthings below, human prisoners specifically.

They head to the lower levels and find the human prisoners, Lagoon Boy get their cage open, frightening them a bit in the process. Blue Beetle manages to communicate with a Krolotean they captured to find a faster way out before the entire base explodes. In a mimic of the first episode, the team and the league descend upon them. Nightwing congratulates Tim.

Miss Martian, Superboy and Beast Boy arrive on Rann.

Man, that was a lot to go through for one episode, it was a relentlessly paced episode, but it does leave you with even more questions. Aqualad, Kid Flash and Artemis are noticeably absent from the team’s roster and Red Arrow is no-where to be seen. We’ll get these answers along with exactly what happened in the missing 16 hours thankfully sooner than later.

Rating 8/10

Earthlings

We open with a flash forward, the invasion’s gone wrong and they’re under attack. Business as usual then.

Flash back to Rann, we’re introduced to Sardath and Alana, the scientists from the last episode. Miss M links them telepathically and serves as a ‘psychic translator’ not sure how that works logistically but what the hey?

Beast Boy examines an alien animal, I’m going to try and skip as much as I can from this episode given the last episode's length description. Beast Boy is able to transform into the animal. Alana reveals the idea of a zeta shield, a way of preventing unauthorised zeta transmissions between planets.

They’ve discovered the new Krolotean base, Alana will have to guide them through the jungle for them to ass through. They head on a mag train but the science command begin checking IDs for some reason. Adam creates a diversion by accurately quoting the Jabberwocky poem, the creature is called the Jabberwock!

They approach an ideal spot as Beast Boy shares some good memories of their time together. They jump from the train and head through the jungle, Beast Boy sees a pretty flower but it’s a blue sand bog, a trap. They find the base and Miss M heads in to investigate. She opens an entrance on the roof and calls them in. Their plan was to use target explosive to disable the platforms.  Beast Boy and Miss Martian head to plant them. But as they’re about to leave, the base is to receive a zeta transmission, the antenna raises right through their exit.

The bombs go off and they make their escape, the head Krolotean orders the mechs brought out. Superboy hears them coming and we get a repeat of the opening. Superboy and Alana find cover in a cave, Miss M and Beast Boy lose them through camouflage and shape-shifting. Alana quickly realises that they were a couple and we get explanation of what we already know. The one interesting bit is that Superboy dumped her, and she left him no choice? We’ll have to wait for an answer about this one

Meanwhile, Beast Boy discovers a waterfall that remind him of the one that Queen Bee forced his mother to drive over. Oh yeah, and his powers are partially down to the blood transfusion. Although I think the monkey bite was still involved. Miss M comforts him. This by the way happened about a month after they first encountered her. It’s explained in a tie in comic.

Anyway, a mech spots them, knocks them out and captures them. The others lose translation, alerting Superboy. The bas is revealed to be a space-ship which begins to take off. Superboy takes out a mech, which Alana leads another into the blue sand bog, kindly giving the Krolotean inside a means of escape. Superboy rescues Miss M and Beast Boy, who is conscious again. He and Superboy head to the ship, which is firing upon them, they begin trashing the ship.

Miss M wakes up and interrogates the Krolotean general, leaving him in a vegetative state. She removes his banner for a souvenir for Beast Boy. She knows know what has happened during the missing 16 hours.

It begins setting up Miss M’s character arc. It’s sad that Beast Boy isn’t prominent in any other episode, because they did such a great job setting him up and this was a decent episode, and the only episode to entirely feature an alien planet.

Rating 8/10

Alienated

You remember Bibbo’s diner, where Bruce and Clark argued over Superboy. Yeah, we’re back here. Jamie and Karen enter the diner, Bibbo instantly recognises Jamie and runs, he’s about to escape but the real Bibbo knocks him down. The Krolotean exits the suit and escapes using a jet ski bike thing conveniently located in the sewers, although he was injured by bumblebee. He heads to a manta-sub and is greeted by Black Manta, the sub dives.

Oh by the way, there’s no opening title sequence, that sucks. So, the team arrive from Rann. And it’s time for another edition of over-explaining the point. Rather than getting straight to point, she mumbles on about how the Kroloteans set up their base and began doing boring sh*t, not to mention telling us what everyone in the room already knows... I'll spare you the details, just read my previous reviews. Anyway, turns out the 6 spent the 16 hours on a rampage on the planet Rimbor. This is what brought Earth to the Krolotean’s attention.

They head to the Hall of Justice where a tour group is being shown the Apolaxians, the alien energy beings that first brought the League together, this is important for later. Miss M has been asked to interrogate the Lrolotean gamma squad captured. Question, why isn’t Wonder Woman helping? She has a lasso of truth, unless that isn’t the case on Earth-16 but seriously, a lasso of truth would be kinda useful.

Miss M rips the intel, they have a base on Malina Island that they evacuate to. The manta-sub drops off some Kroloteans there and we see Black Manta report to Black Manta? Wait, it turns out that the Manta we were following is in fact Kaldur’ahm aka Aqualad

A team of both team members and leaguers are heading to Malina Island. They approach drop zone beta where Lagoon Boy and Aquaman are to investigate from the water. Their next stop is for Nightwing, Batgirl, Robin and Batman, they begin to take out a squad of guards. The kroloteans lament their losses, one of them mentions the ‘competitor’ who likely hired Lobo to expose them. He also remarks that he was attacked by one of their warriors. We’ll get into that later.

Aqualad notices one of his squads aren’t answering. He heads out of the sub, helmet on and if spotted via holocam. Nightwing and co head in from above. Aqualad spots them and destroys the holo-cam. They all begin attacking them. Meanwhile a shadowy figure plants something in the base and runs off. Batman kicks a lot of ass in this episode. Seriously, he defeats more manta troopers than anyone else. Speaking of Manta, Kaldur knocks Aquaman back and reports to a partner but is informed the device is already primed. 5 minutes and he needs to get his men out.

Nightwing calls in Delta Squad. Superboy, Superman, Wonder Woman and Wonder Girl. Superman and Superboy are far more effective together than they used to be. Wonder Girl is a bit naïve and almost gets killed from a fangasm. Meanwhile two suspicious kroloteans gets out a disk. La’gaan provides a distraction for Aquaman to punch Manta, knocking off his helmet. Apparently Tula died (in a video game) and of course he discovered Manta was his father. He fires a missile which Superman takes in his stride. Nightwing pursues him, with Superboy at his side. He points out the bomb. Superboy attacks but Aqualad rather easily takes him down. Remember Superman and hence Superboy are vulnerable to magic.

Nightwing reports the bomb and tells everyone to evacuate, Batman echoes this to the others. Superman stays behind and does what Superman should do, begs them to let him save them. Turns out the two mysterious Kroloteans were Miss M and Martian Manhunter in disguise, they gained some intel. The bomb goes off and Superman is blasted into the Water. Aquaman saves him but he won’t be happy that he couldn’t save the Kroloteans.

Aqualad reports to Black Manta who reports to the Light, who call him the right choice to replace ‘poor disgraced Ocean Master’

So the 6 leaguers, plus Hawkman, Icon and the other 2 Green Lanterns are heading to Rimbor to stand trial for their actions. Remind me what Batman’s response to that was before.

Anyway, it’s actually a neat idea to take some of most prolific heroes off the grid. Whilst Aquaman, Green Arrow and the Flash are still about, they have plot reasons for being about, well GA and the Flash do anyway. It’s really nice team members partner up with their respective mentors.

Rating 9/10

Salvage

We open with a robber being stopped by Red Arrow, he gives back the money but keeps a bit for himself. Green Arrow is watching and reports that it’s worse than we thought.

The League activate the zeta shield in an eerily quiet way. Beast Boy’s studying with snapper Carr, Lagoon Boy and Miss M having movie night (yes, seriously) Superboy decides to forcibly take Blue Beetle on a mission. You couldn’t explain anything to him, at all?

On a roof top in Star City, Roy is confronted with Green Arrow, Nightwing, Wally, Black Canary and the former Guardian, Jim Harper, and you’ve probably guessed it but he’s also a clone.

He says he needs the money to find Roy Harper, now the others have given up. We finally hear the voice Blue Beetle has been talking to. Anyway, the mission goeth thusly. Since the alien tech that destroyed Malina Island was of alien origin, they suspect it was smuggled via boom tube. He’s been keeping tabs on Whisper of Intergang and she’s meeting with her boss, Bruno tonight, they’re heading for the Hall of Justice.

I’m going to summarise the Roy bits since there’s not a lot to them. But later, we have a reference to Ted Kord, the second Blue Beetle, the first one will be mentioned later, they think Ted created the scarab, that’s adorable, frankly. Anyway, Whisper and Bruno use an apokoliptic thingamabob to merge the former apoloxian husks into a single golem creature. The thingamabob also has an adverse effect on Blue Beetle, for the record apokoliptic tech is ‘not compatible’

Superboy and Wolf attack it whilst Sphere uses a counter-signal to free Blue, unfortunately his attack is redirected and knocks them all out. Not wanting to waste time, Bruno orders them to leave, the golem sprouts wings. After another bit with Roy and co. Superboy chews Blue out for using a sonic attack.

They track the golem as it makes some sad groaning music, Bruno wants the golem to be his enforcer. Superboy destroys the device, now the golem in uncontrolled. He sees a nuclear power plant and heads towards it, leaving his enemies defeated. Meanwhile two people in the shadows, one of whom is clearly Sportsmaster, as we soon see, discuss what their best options are, the shadowy guy says that taken to its ultimate extreme, the scenario could prove useful. You might understand why later…

Superboy pins them to a tree and Blue Beetle makes sure they stay there, they deploy to stop the golem from breaching the reactor. The scarab reveals it’s possible to communicate with the golem.

OK, to conclude the Roy story. He doesn’t take their help and brushes them all off. It’s not that isn’t interesting it’s just a lot of sitting and talking, it’s not heavy on plot and I’m I can skip through since not a lot happens. It’s actually considerably more interesting than the apolaxian plotline.

Anyway, Blue manages to communicate, the golem wants to destroy itself, rather worryingly Superboy says he can relate. Anyway, the shadowy guy uses a sonic attack and instead of being absorbed and redirected it… destroys it. Right…

Whisper and Ugly are in a catanoic states thanks to Sportsmaster’s drug. They’ve strayed from the path of the Light. (wink wink) Wally returns home to Artemis. It’s Valentine’s Day, and he remembered, finally. And so did Artemis, who spent a hell of a lot of money on food.

Meanwhile Roy returns to his house and is confronted by Cheshire, his wife. She left because his desire to find speedy was all consuming, they have a daughter, Lian who hopefully won’t die in a pathetically pointless way like she did in the comics. Anyway, she’s found one final lead that could lead them to Roy, but that’s a story for another episode.

Rating 7.5/10

Beneath

Time for more Blue Beetle stuff, but here’s a guy you may not know called Tye Longshadow, in this version he’s a friend of Jamie Reyes, Blue Beetle. He’s off on a bus to Houston, he calls Jamie to stay goodbye but he’s kidnapped soon after he hangs up.

Meanwhile, Nightwing briefs alpha squad: Miss Martian, Bumblebee, Batgirl and Wonder Girl. They’re tasked with scoping out Boom Tube hotspots and finding anything matching the bomb. Nightwing explains since Queen Bee could be about and she can control men, this a female squad. Batgirl asks if he’d feel the need to justify an all-male squad for a mission, just to mess with him.

Psimon is supposedly still in a Qurac hospital, where Queen Bee’s thrall now rules, nice… (Oh yeah, I did say their victory in Qurac was fleeting, Queen Bee put in a backup plan mere days after that victory)

Jamie goes to see Tye’s mother to enquire about Tye. She hasn’t heard from him since he and Maurice got into an argument last night. Maurice is home, apparently he’s a school employee and threatens to report him but he’s on a free period. That was a lousy threat. The scarab reacts with hostility to Maurice’s hostile nature, almost forcing Jamie to attack.

I get the impression that he’s an abusive husband, rather disturbingly. Anyway, no hotspots the girls have found thus far have had anything but this one has heavy security. Wonder girl is disappointed for being given lookout duty. She notices a truck approaching. Mammoth, devastation, Icicle Jr and Shimmer are aboard, and Psimon was their driver. With the psychic link now a problem she goes in the hard way and warns Miss Martian. Wonder Girl heads off to warn Bumblebee but she’s spotted flying between the hangars by Devastation.

At the Happy Trail’s Caravan Park, it seems Tye’s uncle is able to communicate with the fabric of the universe via water. I’m going to gloss over this bit. Back in Bialya, the alarm is sounded and the hangars are locked down. Wonder Girl escapes and Psimon orders the facility searched.

Bumblebee escapes into the air shaft and stumbles upon Batgirl, she’s discovered the hangars connect to compound 20 metres below them. It’s some sort of temple, Batgirl disappears briefly and we’ll see what she does in another episode. She spots some human prisoners but is herself knocked out by Psimon. Icicle Jr isn’t happy about taking her as a captive, she will be missed but with Batman out of the picture, Psimon doesn’t care. Except you know, Miss Martian, the person who put you into catatonia, not to mention people like Captain Atom and more worryingly for you (since he has no mind) Red Tornado.

Shimmer opens the hangar door for the plane, allowing Bumblebee to escape. Meanwhile Jamie investigates a shed Maurice just locked. He picks the lock but is thrown back by Maurice. His scarab wants him to armour up but he resists. Anyway, the shed contains only pirated DVDs. You know Jamie, you have a scanner, you could’ve checked from a distance and saved yourself some trouble. Anyway, Jamie’s going to turn him in for it, despite his threat.

Bumblebee returns and has a plan. Miss Martian knocks out shimmer and poses as he. Bumblebee rescues Batgirl and zaps her into consciousness, she’s the only one who can fly the plane. Miss M locks out the troops, Psimon notices and they go into psychic battle. He may not have a good record, but he only needs to hold her attention whilst they kill her in the material world.

Batgirl gets the plane going so Mammoth and Devastation head in pursuit. Icicle Jr closes the hangar doors but Wondergirl rips them open and engages Mammoth and Devastation. Bumblebee knocks out Psimon with a sting to the brain, allowing Miss M to take care of Icicle Jr. Wonder Girl knocks Mammoth and devastation of the plan but Mammoth takes out one of its wings. It’s too heavy for Wonder Girl and Miss Martian to carry but they manage to catch it with the bio-ship.

They report to Nightwing, who tells them that Psimon had tricked the doctors. Basically the kidnapped humans were being delivered to an unknown partner. He congratulates the team for a job well done and the fact that an international incident is on the way since they were spotted is negligible.

Queen Bee berates the 4 for their failure, even though as we’ll find out later, it must’ve been planned. And they have second shipment, including Tye.

It’s an intriguing episode that keeps the questions coming.

Rating 8/10

Next time we’ll have a new speedster, a weapon’s expert, Aqualad stepping up his attacks, we’ll see the Terror Twins go big and we’ll find out who the big bads are this season. 

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