#Her whole mindscape is so pretty I’m actually planning to do an analysis on it soon | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

kalinara · 7 years

Text

So today’s Rip Hunter Appreciation Week topic is favorite episode. And honestly, that’s hard to decide! I think I talked about Out of Time for the last Rip Hunter Appreciation Week. So this time, I’m going to pick Land of the Lost.

Land of the Lost is basically an episode that seemed like it was designed solely with "appeal to Kalinara" in mind.

One of the things that strikes me about Land of the Lost is how smoothly it wraps up Rip's season 2 story. I remember back when the season was supposed to have only 13 episodes, without an announced back orders, the creators had said that they planned to finish season 2's arc by episode 13, and use the back half for something new.

Obviously they didn't do that. Probably because four episodes isn't really long enough to establish a completely new plotline. So the Spear and Legion arc got stretched out a bit. But I think they kept Rip's own arc on its original time table. I honestly think Rip's Moonshot storyline was an early jumpstart on what he'll have in season 3. (I've mentioned before that, assuming Darvill stays a regular, then his departure in Aruba makes complete sense as part of a storyline branching off of Moonshot.)

But I digress.

As Rip Hunter's season finale, Land of the Lost is a great episode. It doesn't particularly make sense, but if I watched Legends to make sense, I'd probably have a concussion by now. What it is, however, is awesome.

Outside of Rip's plot, we have dinosaurs (awesome), an explicit acknowledgement of Amaya's significance to the timeline (which I've wanted for ages), a look at Ray's time in the prehistoric, and Mick actually deciding to use his Chronos experience. All things that I am happy to check off my wishlist.

And in Rip's plot, we have:

1. Evil Rip being hot and competent, effortlessly taking over the ship. And then that truly lovely bit of "fuck you" defiance when he was pinned down, in a ship with an active self destruct, and decided to turn around and (awesomely) blow up the medallion instead of surrendering.

And how awesome was that shot? Off hand and without aiming!

2. Sara and Jax getting the main heroic plot to save damsel Rip from his own mind. They're a great team up that work really well together, and I particularly liked how the episode subtly underscored Rip's relationship with both characters.

3. A mindscape! I was a bit sad they couldn't or wouldn't get any of my wishlist characters back (Miranda, Jonas, baby Rip, Savage, Druce, et al), but I thought they did a pretty good job with the budgetary and other constraints. I thought the concept of the mindscape was coherent (the idea of Rip's conscious mind as the dominated ship, with the warped view of the team works very well with his overall arc.)

And there are so many interesting things to explore ABOUT the mindscape and what subconscious!remnant!Rip might have experienced during the who-knows-how-long period of time he was trapped in his own head.

My "possible future posts" list has so many bits from this episode on it. It's ridiculous. (Subconscious Rip vs. Conscious Evil Rip, Evil!Mick, Subconscious Rip's attitude toward the crew(s), and so on!)

4. GIDEON! This episode did an amazing job of fleshing out Gideon as a character, rather than just a cheery, sometimes sarcastic/sassy voice that banters with Rip. From the beginning, we got the whole brig conversation, in which Gideon appeared to be defying orders to speak to evil Rip at all. (But really, how could she ignore her long-time partner when he called for her?)

Mindscape Gideon was such an interesting kettle of fish. Not in the least because we finally got to see the woman behind Gideon's voice. But there is so much interesting analysis about Gideon as a mental projection/concept of Rip, and what exactly that means from his perspective, and then of course how Gideon-the-AI intersects with that concept.

And of course, Time Ship.

(As someone who grew up gobbling Anne McCaffrey's ship series, I find the romantic potential between a man and his AI partner/ship incredibly interesting. Oddly, I don't have a whole lot of interest in versions of the pairing where Gideon gets a human or physical body, though. For me, the appeal in the pairing is in all of the unconventional ways they can explore their feelings and regard for one another.)

5. We actually got to see Rip's bedroom! In season 1, I had generally started to worry that he didn't have one at all and maybe just slept in his office. Assuming he slept. And it was amusing to see that he's STILL a packrat.

6. Phil isn't dead! Or he is. :-( But Rip does remember being Phil, so at least a little bit of that poor helpless fellow is still alive.

7. Cognitive Intrusion is creepy and violating as fuck, and I am both thrilled and amused that the show finds a way to make the Time Masters worse and worse every time they're mentioned. I love that Rip disliked the procedure too.

My only tiny quibble is that I wish the crew had shown a tiny bit of doubt in using the machine on Rip. I'm not saying that they shouldn't have done it. It was absolutely necessary if they were going to save Henry. But still, I would have liked them to hesitate a moment when they learned how violating it actually is.

It does appeal to my gallows humor that two mind-rapes make a right though.

8. And of course there was the reunion at the end, which was everything I could hope for. Rip, all fragile looking but safe now. The cautious welcome back.

I still think "I liked you better when you were killing people" is objectively speaking the worst thing any of the protagonists on this show have said to each other. But Rip doesn't seem to mind.

There is just so much to unpack and dissect and well, it's probably a good thing we have a long hiatus between seasons because my blog audience is going to be SO SICK of all of the crazy follow up posts I'll be making about it.

#rip hunter #legends of tomorrow #ripappreciationweek

30 notes · View notes