In the
CW Arrow series,
Oliver Queen (along with
A.R.G.U.S.) has
a secret island prison, in which they stash particularly troublesome prisoners. No trial, no hope of release.
Sure, that seems 100% the
opposite of what the
Bronze Age Green Arrow would accept...but this is another universe,
yada yada.
On the CW
Flash show,
Barry Allen and friends (including a respected police detective and a reporter) secretly keep any number of meta-humans prisoner in a secret prison in the basement at
S.T.A.R. Labs. No trial, no hope of release, not even bathrooms, as far as we can see.
But they're dangerous,
right? So it's OK,
right?
On the
CBS Supergirl show, the
DEO keeps their prisoners--you know where I'm going here--in secret extra-judicial prisons. No trial, no hope of release.
And before you say "
they're just aliens," what about
Max Lord, eh?
The
DC TV shows, whatever else you want to say about them, have set as their default position that troublesome people, once captured,
should be imprisoned permanently, with no recourse to lawyers, or judges, or juries, or any semblance of any kind of justice of civil liberties.
It's not just one show, where maybe you could make some argument about need or justification or the misguided efforts of good people or whatever. All
3 shows use black prison sites to stash captured felons, and no one--not scientists, nor police officers, nor reporters, nor government officials, nor even the super-heroes themselves--have one bit of hesitation, one bit reservation, or the least bit of conscience about locking up the people they've just beat up for life sentences, throw away the key.
Hell, even
Batman turns the worst of the worst over to the authorities.
We can accept storytelling shortcuts. We can accept that not all characters have the same viewpoint on some issues. But when the same creators on three connected show resort to the same practice, is it just laziness, or are they giving us their moral viewpoint on how justice should be handled?
I know that "
Is this how we want our heroes to behave" should be the subtitle of my blog...but really,
is this how we want our heroes to behave? Are
Geoff Johns,
Andrew Kreisberg,
Greg Berlanti, and the other producers just so lazy that they
cut and paste the same set-up from show to show? Or does this repetition mean that they really believe that Supergirl is no different than the
Master Jailer, that Barry Allen cares
nothing for civil rights, that Ollie is a dick. OK, never mind that last one. Have they started locking up bad guys in the basement of the
TARDIS Waverider yet on
Legends Of Tomorrow?
I know that we're all distracted by shiny fan service and token Easter eggs they toss out like candy to cover up some of the shows' deficiencies. Yeah, yeah, we saw one second of a
Legion ring. But does that make it right that every DC TV show is running their own
Guantanamo? Or have we abandoned hope that even our aspirational heroes should care about justice and rights and the Constitution?
Oh, look, 3 seconds of a CGI
King Shark! How cool....what was I saying now? Ah, well, it couldn't have been too important.
