The feature inspired by great cosplay and fan art where I imagine various DC properties taken to the small screen and wonder aloud just what their shows would be like. Today's pitch: Doom Patrol.
Cosplay by: Joanne (taken from Comics Alliance Reader Halloween Costume Spooktacular 2012)
While every proposed series comes with a large potential supporting cast, just as the actual TV shows do, neither those real or imagined have actually been about superhero TEAMS. The Justice League is big enough for the silver screen, but television can explore more obscure corners of the DCU. My choice: The Doom Patrol. Its got the right elements. A compact cast of superheroes with the potential for more. Lots of tortured souls to fuel the subplots. A conspiracy meta-arc as they discover the Chief engineered (or did he?) each of their situations, and perhaps foreshadowing of their demise as "doomed" characters. Powers and looks fairly easy to create on today's television budgets - a guy in a wheelchair, a size-changer, a clunky robot, and a guy in bandages (or skip right to Negative Woman to balance the cast). To this cast, we can eventually add (or replace them with if the show survives past their deaths) Mento, Celsius, Crazy Jane and the like. Bumblebee can be in it or not, but I love the idea of a superhero team with its own live-in therapist. Cliff would be the soul of the team and of the show, and the reason you'd keep watching no matter how damaged the rest of them got, or how bizarre the adventures.
I'd probably never take is as far as Grant Morrison did, but I would like DP to be WEIRD. The oddest villains. The strangest situations. Like Doctor Who at its darkest. From Morrison, I'd obviously take the journey into Crazy Jane's mind, the Painting that ate Paris, the romance between the Brain and Monsieur Mallah, Danny the Street, and all manner of plots poached from Borges and Lovecraft. Whatever happens, "doom" has to be an important factor. I'd be tempted to have the show start with their deaths, then flash back through several seasons of their prior adventures. You'd always know they were done more. Or perhaps take a page from the Tangent version, heroes from the future who have come back in time to prevent something terrible from happening, but soon lose the plot and might even be responsible for the doom that awaits us all (kind of like the much under-appreciated Sarah Connor Chronicles).
What would YOU do with the world's most alienated and traumatized heroes?
While every proposed series comes with a large potential supporting cast, just as the actual TV shows do, neither those real or imagined have actually been about superhero TEAMS. The Justice League is big enough for the silver screen, but television can explore more obscure corners of the DCU. My choice: The Doom Patrol. Its got the right elements. A compact cast of superheroes with the potential for more. Lots of tortured souls to fuel the subplots. A conspiracy meta-arc as they discover the Chief engineered (or did he?) each of their situations, and perhaps foreshadowing of their demise as "doomed" characters. Powers and looks fairly easy to create on today's television budgets - a guy in a wheelchair, a size-changer, a clunky robot, and a guy in bandages (or skip right to Negative Woman to balance the cast). To this cast, we can eventually add (or replace them with if the show survives past their deaths) Mento, Celsius, Crazy Jane and the like. Bumblebee can be in it or not, but I love the idea of a superhero team with its own live-in therapist. Cliff would be the soul of the team and of the show, and the reason you'd keep watching no matter how damaged the rest of them got, or how bizarre the adventures.
I'd probably never take is as far as Grant Morrison did, but I would like DP to be WEIRD. The oddest villains. The strangest situations. Like Doctor Who at its darkest. From Morrison, I'd obviously take the journey into Crazy Jane's mind, the Painting that ate Paris, the romance between the Brain and Monsieur Mallah, Danny the Street, and all manner of plots poached from Borges and Lovecraft. Whatever happens, "doom" has to be an important factor. I'd be tempted to have the show start with their deaths, then flash back through several seasons of their prior adventures. You'd always know they were done more. Or perhaps take a page from the Tangent version, heroes from the future who have come back in time to prevent something terrible from happening, but soon lose the plot and might even be responsible for the doom that awaits us all (kind of like the much under-appreciated Sarah Connor Chronicles).
What would YOU do with the world's most alienated and traumatized heroes?
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