Legends of Tomorrow Season 1 Episode 7 "Marooned" Review and **SPOILERS**

Breaking Up is Hard to Do

Starring: Victor Garber, Caity Lotz, Brandon Routh et al.

Story By: Anderson Mackenzie & Phil Klemmer

Directed By: Gregory Smith

First Aired: March 3, 2016

*Non Spoilers and Score At The Bottom*

Hey everybody! Ready to tuck into another installment of Papi Nacho’s recaps and reviews of Legends of Tomorrow? Well tough luck! He had better things to do and asked me to fill in for him. If you’re not reading my recaps of the Flash and Supergirl every week, then you should know I run a tight ship! I don’t stand for all of this tomfoolery and nincompoopery that the other writers on this website allow. Sit up straight! I have been tasked with writing a review of Legends of Tomorrow and by god almighty I will mold each and every one of you into a Legends of Tomorrow review-reading automatons, or my name isn’t Reggie Eisenhower! Now face forward and read on to receive the episode recap, if you consider yourself worthy!

Explain It!

This episode is mainly the Secret Origin of the Berlantiverse Rip Hunter, but it also has a lot of great moments where we learn more about various characters and how they relate to each other. The episode begins with Rip in his captain’s quarters looking at some holographic mail from his wife Miranda and his son Whatsizname, essentially some “Daddy when are you coming home?” business. Doc Martin Stein shows up to wake Rip from his masturbatory reverie, and informs him that he’s been locked up in there a week, and apparently wearing the same clothes without changing them, hint hint. Rip bemoans the fact that they’re in a bit of a holding pattern because the ship's computer Gideon needs a software update so they can locate Vandal Savage and also install the latest patch for Fallout 4. Since Rip is on the outs with the Time Masters, he can’t exactly call technical support and ask them to send an updated floppy disk. Just then, Gideon gets a distress call from Captain Eve Baxter of the Acheron, pride of the Time Masters’ fleet. Ah, the Time Masters, what a time that was…it’s almost as if Rip can recall it in a flashback sequence to Time Master Training Academy, where he and Miranda—a prospective Time Master herself!—did an exercise together wherein Miranda hit an airlock and flushed a bunch of Time Pirates into space, where they probably asphyxiated and exploded into paste thanks to the crushing pressures of the void. Professor Creepy-Ass Time Master tells Miranda she did a great job and then leaves the two to a heavy makeout session that is expressly forbidden by the Time Master code, but then he returns because he forgot his briefcase and catches them in the act!

There’s a little back-and-forth about saving Eve Baxter, but ultimately the Legends decide she might have good snacks aboard, so Rip, Doc Stein, Jax and Rory head out on a jump ship to check things out. Rip leaves Ray in charge of the Waverider, and Ray immediately geeks out to the fullest and attempts a Captain Kirk impression. Kendra points out that it’s more like Captain Picard, which of course is like totally the most flirty thing you could say. Meanwhile, leaving Stein in charge of the jump ship, Rip, Ajax and Rory board the Acheron only to find it’s a trap—led by Time Pirates! Captain John Valor of the Time Pirates is already a fan of Rip Hunter’s, which he demonstrates by contacting the Waverider and demanding they give him the ship or he’ll kill Rip. Actually, he didn’t say it quite that way, but he should have. Rip says some magic words that makes Gideon assume control of the Waverider and it attacks the Acheron with space lasers! This is a pretty cool scene and I was impressed, it was like early 90s space movie quality which is fairly good for network television. The Acheron fires back on the Waverider, puncturing its hull, but the Waverider escapes further attack after some more Rip trickery. Captain Valor, sick of his shit, throws the lot of them into the brig with Captain Eve Baxter. Martin Stein, cut off from his teammates due to circumstances, decides it’s all up to him and slinks aboard the Acheron himself.

Back on the Waverider, Leonard Snart and Sara Lance go to the hull breach and fix it up temporarily using Snart’s cold gun. Why Sara is even there, I have no idea. Eventually, the cold gun runs out of ice cubes and Sara and Snart get locked into the bulkhead as a safety measure. Wouldn’t they have been sucked against the opening in the hull and shot out into space like so much distended human slurry? Instead, they get very chilly and face the strong possibility of death by hypothermia or maybe asphyxiation, I could never tell which. Back on the Acheron, Captain Baxter informs Captain Hunter that she’s got nothing but contempt for him, which of course sends him into a flashback about the woman he eventually married because women are such nags, am I right? Rip recalls a time that he and Miranda stood before the tribunal of Time Masters, who all sit in their own ascending balcony seats arranged in a circle like some kind of inverted bird feeder. They tell Rip and his honey that they have committed a grave time traveling sin because if Time Masters have personal responsibilities to the people they love, then they might wield the awesome power of time travel to aid them no matter what the cost to the larger timeline. Rip Hunter is like, who me? Nahhh.

Sara and Snart (it just rolls off the tongue, doesn’t it?) are dying on the Waverider, and have a little chat about what a bummer it is. Leonard tells the story of how he first met Rory: Snart was at juvie hall, getting his ass kicked, when Mick waded in and saved his hash. They’ve been friends ever since. Oh yeah, I forgot to mention that Rory is totally pissed off at Snart because he knocked Rory out last episode when they were in the year of 2046, when evil had taken over and Rory wanted to stay. This is why he wanted to go on the jump ship with the rest of the team over to the Acheron, because he’s pissed off at Leonard. Speaking of the rest of the team over at the Acheron, there Hunter is just bullying the shit out of Mick, telling him that he wanted only Captain Cold on the team, but Snart made it a package deal. Rory decides he’s sick of being treated like a big idiot, so like a big idiot he calls to the guards and arranges a deal: he will deliver the Waverider and then Captain Valor will take him back to 2016 so he can punch Rip Hunter in the face, which is something I think we’d all like to see. The plan is that Mick will “escape” to the Waverider and bring a boarding party to take over, and to make this more authentic Valor punches Rory in the face several times. Meanwhile, Ray hops in his Atom suit and goes on a spacewalk to fix the ship’s hull from the outside. His suit isn’t pro-rated for spacewalks, though, so he needs Kendra to yammer on while he performs a delicate welding operation in deep space for some reason. Will Kendra's incessant, probing questions somehow increase his oxygen? Back on the Acheron, Rip has another flashback: his Time Masters court martial or whatever is cancelled because Miranda took full responsibility for their relationship, which I guess it’s tantamount to admitting mind control? Not long after that, Doctor Stein, who knocked out a Time Pirate and dressed in his uniform earlier in the episode, strolls over and lets everyone out of the brig. Ray fixes the hull but can’t hang on to consciousness and slips away from the ship. His suit kicks in and brings him back aboard the Waverider, but Kendra finds him all looking blue and dead when she takes off his faceplate. Kendra beats the crap out of Ray’s chest until he revives with a start, and then all hell breaks loose.

Rory broadcasts to the Waverider that he’s escaped and is coming aboard, but when he does—surprise!—like twenty Time Pirates hop out with him. Rory tries to get Snart to join up with them, but Snart blasts a Pirate with his cold gun so we know how it is. Rory takes off to steal the Time Drive, which I guess is like a Time Ship transmission, but Sara stops him with her kung-fu prowess. He’s about to get the upper hand, but Leonard shows up and blasts Mick with his cold gun, because I guess it really isn’t bros before hos. Aboard the Acheron, Rip, Jax and Stein make quick work of the dwindled Time Pirates by pulling the very same air lock move that Rip learned from Miranda in the first flashback! Rip also punches the crap out of Captain Valor, which was pretty satisfying to watch. And oh, the Time Pirates aboard the Waverider also get their asses kicked so all is well. Captain Baxter has changed her tune after watching the Legends in action, so she gives Rip some intel on Vandal Savage, who can be found in Oregon in 1958. This leads to Rip’s last flashback, where Miranda explains to him why she took the fall for their illicit relationship: because she loves him. So basically, the Time Masters and their code against personal attachments is completely justified. Ray and Kendra smooch, then the team talks about what they’re going to do with Mick. Cold says he’ll handle it, and in the last scene it looks like he’s taken Heatwave’s unconscious body to some field at night, where he blasts him dead with the cold gun!

Despite being somewhat of a placeholder episode, this was a lot of fun and had much more characterization than in other installments. I was fairly well invested in most of the intrigue: between Leonard and Mick, between Leonard and Sara, between Leonard and everybody. Okay so I really like Captain Cold, I think he’s such a smarmy, mealy-mouthed prick and I can’t get enough of it. I assume this was, by production standards, a “budget saver” episode since it was primarily filmed on soundstages, but the special effects in space were not terrible at all for the format. This show is a fun time! You should be watching it unless you are more of an Upstairs, Downstairs kind of person.

Bits and Pieces:

This episode is mostly an origin story for Rip Hunter, but a lot of other cool stuff happens, too. It’s sort of a placeholder until the team can fight Vandal Savage again, but it is here we learn a lot more about characters like Leonard Snart and Ray Palmer. Martin Stein also kicks a little ass which I am finding increasingly enjoyable. Can’t wait until next episode, which will take place in the year that the Silver Age of comic books began!

Also Russia launched Sputnik and Elvis Presley joined the Army.

8.5/10