S:TAS reviews: Warrior Queen

In Warrior Queen, Hilary Bader retreads a lot of the same ground already covered by Paul Dini in his exemplary The Main Man, an intergalactic adventure that comically accommodates outrageous science fiction phenomena into familiar types and genres. But unlike Dini’s loose, fun simplemindedness, Bader deviates from the whimsy of her subject into a bloated lecture on the ills of dictatorial rule.

At first, the episode strikes a cord of Star Trek-like sci-fi silliness, filter-feeding us the political and marital dynamics of a planet called Almerac in campy declarations that spell out in no unsubtle terms that fight and flirtation are one and the same. Maxima is the hotheaded, boy-crazy queen, De’Cine the power-hungry monster who strives to conquer her (the one prerequisite for matrimony), and Sazu her duplicitous right-hand maiden. In the effort to obtain a mate, Maxima goes to Earth in the hopes that Superman will defeat her in battle.

This amusing premise is cleverer on second glance, given that Maxima is simultaneously a hormonal woman hungry for a lover and a masculine warrior ready for battle. Her stint on Earth concludes with a bit of hilarious irony, as after her girlish excitement that Superman has defeated her, she immediately knocks him over the head and forces him homeward upon his refusal to be her betrothed. Other smile-inducing moments include Maxima’s nonchalant assault on several forthcoming, salivating males, Angela Chen’s soon-to-detonate sit-down with Maxima on the morning news, and a grouchy old couple straight out of Bewitched who provide a running commentary on Superman and Maxima’s confrontation. The last of these yields the funniest moments and most closely approach the genius of The Main Man, as the last corny aside cleverly undercuts Superman’s idealism and most concisely encapsulates Bader’s wit in approaching gender (Double Dose is rife with similar examples).

Sadly, Superman’s naïve idealism extends to his ultra-moralistic spiels about just rule and fair governing in the episode’s latter half, only by that point the subversive humor has been all but abandoned. When De’Cine’s mutinous takeover develops into a matter of serious concern, the story has capsized, the campy fun has worn off, and all that’s left is obligatory action. The giant monster Superman and Maxima must defeat bears comparison with the creatures from The Main Man, although the kind of raucous humor on display in those battle scenes is nowhere to be found here, Lobo’s gasp-inducing exhibition of alien-skinning a far cry from Superman’s lengthy tactics. Curt Geda is at his most by the numbers in the ensuing scuffles, replete with silly affronts against the minimal standard for cartoon physics and an overdose of stiff long shots.

Just when all the fun seems drained out of what is now a synthetic political thriller, Lobo comes blazing into Maxima’s palace on his flying motorbike. But Maxima, having learned the ways of responsibility and leadership and now lacking her warrior-like edge, is now all hormones, and this last-minute cameo does little to remedy the third-act nosedive.