The SYFY Channel got a lot of weird looks when they announced Krypton. A show in the Superman world without Superman that starts two generations before he’s born? Has anyone asked to see that?

So out of the box thinking and the potential is there for something interesting. It’s an alien planet with a society that’s been talked about in the comics for generations but has never been explored in any extensive way. Superman is part of the DC trinity so there’s a lot of love and expectation there.

The premiere kicked off this week and I like what I’ve seen so far. The production is really good, SYFY put up the money to make Krypton on TV. Great sets, costumes, and attention to detail. CG set extensions and full CG scenes (cityscapes and ships) are very well done. So the world looks believable. What about the characters?

I don’t recognize any of the actors, so for me, there’s no cast hook to reel me in. I’m fine with that and it usually makes it easier for me to like characters and suspend disbelief. I don’t know the actor from anything else so the role they are playing “is” them. So far I like all the cast I’ve seen too. The writing can be a bit on the nose (scenes are clearly built to push you on one side of the good/evil character scale) but I’m OK with that for a pilot. The show is doing everything it can to get the audience onboard as quickly as possible. Here are your main characters and here’s the problem: find out what happens next with us!

So without Superman. what is this show about? The show is called Krypton and it takes place on Krypton so the built-in canonical story of Superman’s home blowing up cuts any “gee, what’s going to happen here?” off at the knees. So what’s the pitch here? Adam Strange travels back in time (and to another planet, another good trick) to deliver Superman’s 21 year old grandfather, Seg-El, a dire message. Something is coming to Krypton to keep the galaxy’s greatest hero, Kal-El, from being born. And that thing is The Destroyer of Worlds, Brainiac.

In terms of Superman villains, they don’t get any more dangerous than Brainiac. A major foe in every metric, it makes sense for the android alien collector to come up with the idea of going back in time to keep the biggest thorn in his side from making it to Earth. They show him too and he looks amazing! An actor (Blake Ritson) in prosthetics, it looks like they’ll be using little to no CG for his portrayal. This gives us all sorts of angles to consider

First, we get to see the society of Krypton and Kal-El’s family explored in ways we’ve never seen before. And what’s Brainiacs full plan? Kill Seg-El? His wife or maybe both? Wait until they have a child (Jor-El, Superman’s father) and kill him? Then we have the destruction of Krypton, the reason why Kal gets sent to Earth. Does Adam Savage tell Seg-El about it, potentially messing with what happens? Does Brainiac offer to help stop the destruction of Krypton, saving billions of lives? He could make the deal that no Kryptonian leaves the planet in return (and also the promise that he himself won’t harvest from the planet and destroy it)?

There are some shades of Game of Thrones on display. Family names are a big deal on Krypton and there is a very clear class system at work. While Krypton is really technologically advanced, if you’re not born into the right family, it looks like your life is going to be way more difficult. The show starts with the House of El being ripped of it’s standing so we’ll be seeing a lot of that.

Finally, one thing jumped out at me. While everyone speaks English for obvious reasons, I don’t think I heard one attempt at making new vocabulary. All slang is American, even “shit” is used as a curse. That jumped out at me as being very odd for a world that is very far from our own.

I’m excited to see where this goes. If they can keep this quality and improve on the few sagging bits, SYFY could have their next The Expanse on their hands.