Smallville 2.17 - Rosetta

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I've been waiting anxiously for this episode, ever since Al Gough stated that "Rosetta" is his favourite episode in the whole series. Now that it's come, I realise that I remember the episode, I just didn't remember that it was called "Rosetta". It's one of the very few Smallville episodes that I can clearly remember, which shows how good it is.

One of the things that makes the episode outstanding is the appearance of Christopher Reeve as Virgil Swann. As most people know, he played Superman in the 1978 film and its sequels. He was paralysed in a riding injury in 1995, which made it saddening to see him on screen.

Al Gough appears as a guest in this week's podcast. He said that it was important for him from early in the series to get Christopher Reeve onto the show. He just didn't know when and what role it would be. He finally approached Christopher's agents, and they put him in touch with Christopher himself. He said that he regularly watched "Smallville" and he liked the man who played Superman. That was a wonderful endorsement for the series and for Tom Welling himself. The role of the scientist Virgil Swann was picked for him. Christopher wasn't able to travel to Vancouver, so Tom Welling and Greg Beeman flew to New York to film the scenes with Christopher. Al Gough was also there, although Tom can't remember him being present. If there are ever disagreements between the recollections of Tom and Al, I always accept Al's version of the story. His memory is phenomenal.

It was originally expected that the filming in New York would last two hours. Greg Beeman was a perfectionist, and it lasted seven hours. Christopher enjoyed the work, but his nurse was getting increasingly impatient. Eventually she said that if they didn't leave she would call the police. That's harsh, but it was understandable. Christopher wasn't a healthy man.

But let's get to the episode itself. It begins with Clark having a dream of flying into the Kawatche caves and inserting the octagonal disc into the wall painting. There's a blinding flash of light, and he wakes up. He's had the same dream three nights in a row, but this time he wakes up in the middle of the road.

This is the first of two scenes that reminds me of "Donnie Darko". Was it a deliberate homage?

A car is approaching fast, but it brakes in time. It's Lex Luthor, of course. Who else would be out and about in the middle of the night? Everyone else has to work.

The next day (or rather, later in the same day) Clark's class is given an assignment, in which the children have to write about their family trees. It's a difficult assignment for Clark, Lana and Chloe, because they've all been adopted. Pete Ross is the only one of the four friends who comes from a normal nuclear family.

Clark suddenly hears a deafening sound that gives him a headache. Nobody else can hear it. He feels like it's calling him home, so he leaves school and heads back to the farm as fast as he can.

At the farm he feels guided to a metal box in the barn. He breaks it open, and he sees the octagon glowing brightly.

When he picks up it goes back to normal.

The dreams have told Clark what to do. He goes to the cave drawing.

He inserts the key in the middle. It's a perfect fit.

The octagon and the surrounding symbols begin to glow.

The whole painting shines brightly in front of Clark.

The octagon opens.

A beam of light fires through the hole in the octagon, penetrating Clark.

This scene also reminds me of "Donnie Darko".

The beam lifts Clark from the floor. When it stops, Clark falls to the floor unconscious. He lies there until Lex Luthor arrives, accompanied by Dr. Walden. This is the second time that Lex has found Clark unconscious in one day.

The next morning (presumably a Saturday, because Clark doesn't have to go to school), Clark tells his parents that he slept peacefully without any dreams. He's working outside with his father, stacking hay in the truck. Then Clark hears a ringing sound again. He loses control of his powers. He fires a heat ray at the barn. Clark and Jonathan extinguish the flames, and they see that he's burnt a symbol into the side of the barn.

Clark tells his father that the symbol means hope. The penetrating beam of light in the caves has given him the knowledge of understanding the alien symbols.

This could have been kept secret, but Chloe picks this moment to visit the farm. She arrived too late to see Clark starting the fire, but she makes a photograph of the symbol. It's not just a front page story for the Torch, it's a new addition to the Wall of Weird.

Later in the day, Clark goes to the Talon to drink a cup of coffee while he's working on his school assignment. He could have done it at home, but then he wouldn't have seen Lana Lang.

Clark has been scribbling on the sheet for his family tree, presumably the translations of the words "father", "mother", "grandfather", etc. Lana asks him what it is, and he says it was just random doodling. He screws up the paper and throws it in the bin. Obviously accurate aiming isn't one of his powers, because he misses.

Clark leaves the Talon just as Lex arrives. Is Lex checking out his investment as co-owner of the Talon, or is he checking out Lana's curves? Whichever it is, he sees the piece of paper thrown away by Clark. He picks it up, and he recognises the alien symbols from the caves.

Now here's something that doesn't make sense. I thought the Torch is the school newspaper of a small town in Kansas. I didn't think it would be read in New York. The reclusive scientist Virgil Swann sends an email to the Torch, asking to speak to the person on whose barn the symbol was seen. Clark contacts him, and Virgil sends a message. Clark can read it. It says "I'm a friend".

Clark has no idea who Virgil Swann is, so Chloe fills him in. He's a brilliant physicist, and he used to be one of the richest men in America, but he sold his company and gave most of his money to charity. Now he lives and works in rooms adjoining the New York Planetarium. He's dedicated his life to making contact with life on other planets.

Clark travels to New York to meet Virgil. He's not what he expected. He's paralysed, and he's sitting in a cluttered office. Virgil says that he received a message beamed from space 13 years ago, on the day of the meteor shower. He managed to decrypt the message.

"This is Kal El of Krypton, our infant son, our last hope. Please protect him and deliver him from evil".

Virgil never knew where to find Kal El until he saw the symbol on the barn door. He's lucky that school newspapers are delivered to New York City. Clark denies that he's Kal El and wants to leave, but Virgil persuades him to stay by telling him there's another message.

"We will be with you, Kal El, for all the days of your life".

Clark wants to know where this planet called Kryton is located, but Virgil has bad news. He calculated where the message came from, but there's no planet at that spot any more.

Clark returns to Smallville with the news. He tells his parents that his real name is Kal El and he was born on a planet called Krypton. He now knows what to do with the rectangular part of the ship. It's the ship's heart. He has to insert it to receive a message.

I had no idea what this object was when I saw it in the episode. It suddenly appeared as if it were something everyone should recognise. I found an explanation from Al Gough in the commentary track. He said that the rectangular object had last been seen in the pilot episode, but now it looks different. Ah ha! So I loaded my season one Blu-ray to rewatch the pilot.

This is the object. Jonathan Kent showed it to Clark the first time he told him that he was from another planet. He told him it was a message from his biological father.

Glowing symbols appear in the ship. Clark can read them.

"On this third planet from the star Sol, you will be a god among men. They are a flawed race. Rule them with strength, my son. That is where your greatness lies".

This scares Clark. He's been sent to conquer the Earth, but he doesn't want to do evil. Jonathan comforts him and tells him that he's his son, and he's always taught him to do what's right.

That's heavy stuff. Tom Welling can still feel the emotion today.

One thing that puzzled me was the word Rosetta. What does it mean? In the episode Lex says to Dr. Walden that Clark Kent might be the Rosetta Stone they need. Once more, no explanation in the episode, and it wasn't discussed in the podcast. Luckily I have a computer with Internet and Google.

This is the Rosetta Stone. It's a royal decree that was written in Egypt in 196 BC. It contains the same text written in Egyptian hieroglyphics, an Egyptian script (Demotic) and ancient Greek. Studying this stone gave linguists the key they needed to understanding the Egyptian languages. Ah ha! So it's sort of relevant, except Clark himself isn't the Rosetta Stone. Maybe the piece of paper he scrawled on in the Talon could be considered a Rosetta Stone.

Miles Millar was also a guest on the podcast. It's good to see Al and Miles together, or at least hear them together. They're talented as individuals, but they reach their full creative potential as a team. As a comparison, consider John Lennon and Paul McCartney. It's true, they wrote some good songs after the Beatles split up, but their greatest songs were the ones they wrote together. So which half of the Gough-Millar team is Lennon and which is McCartney? Al Gough is the most talkative of the two, if that's a clue. So he's McCartney?

From what he said, Al Gough was the one who had to deal with political issues. While "Smallville" was being made, J. J. Abrams wrote the script for a Superman film in which Krypton was never destroyed. Al was horrified by this, because such a different film would grate with "Smallville", so he visited Paul Levitz, the head of DC comics, to urge him to reject the film script. As he amusingly put it, he was an outsider trying to persuade DC not to abandon 75 years of Superman lore.

As things turned out, J. J. Abrams' Superman film was never made, but I'm still curious enough to want to read it.

Michael Rosenbaum asked Miles Millar to name his three favourite Smallville episodes. He answered "Rosetta", "Ryan" and "Memoria", in that order. ("Memoria" is an episode in the third season). Michael was surprised that he didn't name the pilot. Miles stuck to his choices, then added that he also liked "Insurgence" a lot. 

Al's favourite three episodes are the pilot, "Rosetta" and "Memoria", but he also liked "Reckoning" from the fifth season, in which Jonathan Kent died. He says that the actor John Schneider argued with him about being written out of the series, but it was necessary. It's part of Superman lore that Clark's father died and he had to live alone with his mother.

This is the only episode in the series with a mid-credits scene. Tom Welling and Christopher Reeve ask for donations to Christopher's Paralysis Foundation. The web site is still active today.

Tom Welling got on well with Christopher Reeve when they met to film. They were like old friends. Tom says that he's met every actor who's played Superman, with the exception of Henry Cavill, and they're all nice guys. Being nice seems to be a prerequisite to play the role. Tom evidently didn't think over what he was saying. He couldn't have met George Reeves, the second Superman actor, because he died in 1959, before Tom was born. And did he meet Kirk Alyn, the first Superman, who died in 1999? I think that Tom meant that he's met all the Superman actors from Christopher Reeve, the third Superman actor, onwards.

Here's a list of the Superman actors:

1. Kirk Alyn (1950)

2. George Reeves (1951 to 1958)

3. Christopher Reeve (1978 to 1987)

4. John Newton (1988)

5. Gerard Christopher (1989 to 1991)

6. Dean Cain (1993 to 1997)

7. Tom Welling (2001 to 2011)

8. Brandon Routh (2006)

9. Henry Cavill (2013)

10. Tyler Hoechlin (2016 to 2018)

The Blu-ray release contains two commentary tracks. They were recorded in the middle of filming the final episodes of season three, so they were probably recorded for inclusion on the season two DVD release. The first commentary track is by Al Gough and Miles Millar. The second track is by Greg Beeman, James Marshall, Tom Welling, Michael Rosenbaum and Kristin Kreuk, but Kristin remains silent after introducing herself.

The first track is informative, but I listened to it after watching the podcast, so there was almost nothing in it that I didn't already know. The main exception was the information about the ship's heart, which I mentioned above. One more amusing anecdote was how the series had to deal with Clark's height. In the first season, Clark always towered over Lana and Chloe. From the second season onwards Tom Welling wore no shoes in his scenes with them to stop them looking so small.

Al and Miles also spoke in depth about the film sets, especially the hospital and the Talon. In both cases, they started with small sets, and then they were extended week by week by adding bits on whenever the budget allowed it. The hospital started with a single room, then a corridor was added, and then an elevator. The Talon was a more complicated project and needed seven weeks to reach what Al and Miles intended.

Al admits that he and Miles didn't know much about Superman when they started making "Smallville". They knew he was a strong man in a red, blue and yellow costume who could fly. That was it. They relied on Jeph Loeb as an expert in the 75 years of Superman lore. Al and Miles were respectful with the source material. They frequently bent the Superman mythology, but they never broke it. An example of the bending in this episode is that Kal El was sent to rule the Earth. That's something that we never find in the comics. J. J. Abrams was breaking the mythology when he said that Krypton never exploded.

The second track is less informative. The participants joke so much that it's difficult to tell what's true and what's a joke. For instance, in close ups of Clark's hand they repeatedly said it wasn't his real hand, it was someone else's, but I still don't know if this was true. It could be true. In "The Ninth Gate" a body double was used for all the close ups of Johnny Depp's hands, although I have no idea why.

Greg Beeman speaks the most, followed by James Marshall and Michael Rosenbaum. Greg sounds excited in the commentary track, almost manic. Evidently I'm not the only person who didn't know what the Rosetta Stone is. Greg said that it was an ancient stone written in three languages that was used to translate the Bible. Michael Rosenbaum corrected him and said it was used to translate hieroglyphics, but Greg didn't back down, saying it was what he'd learnt in school. I hope he's googled it since then.

We only see the Talon's exterior briefly, so we don't know what the sign says. "Two for one lattes on Friday"? "Open Mikes on Thursday"? "Topless waitresses on Wednesday"?

"Rosetta" has a sub-plot that I almost didn't mention, but I think it's significant enough to tag it onto the end of my review. Chloe and Lana have an argument in the Torch. Chloe allows Lana to use her computer to do her family tree assignment, but Lana finds the photos that Chloe has kept of herself with Clark at the spring formal in the episode "Tempest". That's a sensitive subject. Chloe bans Lana from the Torch offices. Back at Chloe's house, Lana begins to pack. Where can she go to if she moves out of Chloe's house? We never find out. Chloe shows Lana her family tree; she's entered Lana as her sister.

The two girls have to stick together, even if they both love the same boy.

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