Grace O’Malley. Blackbeard. Captain Hook. Jack Sparrow. Sir Francis Drake. These names bring up visions of swashbuckling pirates and, in certain cases, some profound guy-liner.
A name that may not come to mind, but has a reputation as an interdiimensional pirate, is none other than DC’s LEGENDS OF TOMORROW’s Vandal Savage (guest star Casper Crump).
In the DC print canon, Savage’s crew included Blockbuster and Lady Shiva and took on Doctor Fate (late of SMALLVILLE and print media).
In tonight’s episode, Rip Hunter (Arthur Darvill) pilots the Waverider into deep space to rescue another timeship, the Acheron, a name sometimes associated with ghosts, supernatural beings and the underworld.
Stein (Victor Garber) is thrilled to be able to explore one of those unknown realms of the galaxy. When a distress signal is received from Captain Eve Baxter (guest star Stephanie Cleough) of the timeship Acheron, Hunter sets a course for the rescue and arranges a boarding party. (One must assume that in his hundreds of years on Earth, Hunter never saw what happens to the “red shirt guys” in a boarding party on STAR TREK.)
Rip, who trained aboard the Acheron and met his wife there, decides to answer the call in order to use the other ship’s computer to track Savage. The team has well-founded suspicions that the distress call may be a trap, but Hunter ignores the warnings.
Leaving Ray (Brandon Routh) and Kendra (Ciara Renée) in charge of the Waverider, Rip’s boarding party is met aboard the Acheron by time pirates led by Captain John Valor, who immediately imprisons Jax (Franz Drameh), Rory (Dominic Purcell) and Rip.
With no sign of Captain Baxter, one is left to wonder if her distress signal was a ruse, a desperate act before being shanghaied by Valor, a cosmic remnant of sound and video waves echoing from the past, or another of Savage’s devious traps.
With the others on the rescue team thrown into the brig, Dr. Stein must find a way to rescue them. As a result, Garber gets to deliver one of the best lines of the week, “I’ll teach you to mess with a nuclear physicist.”
DC’s LEGENDS OF TOMORROW also stars Caity Lotz, Wentworth Milller and Amy Pemberton as the voice of Gideon. Also guest starring in tonight’s episode, “Marooned,” is Aatash Amir. “Marooned” was written by Anderson Mackenzie and Executive Producer, Phil Klemmer. Gregory Smith directed the episode.
DC’S LEGENDS OF TOMORROW airs tonight on The CW in the United States at 8:00 p.m. and on CTV in Canada at 8:30pm.
