Fannnish5: Most surprising moments in any canon
Which shall be spoiler-cut, as not everyone on my list is familiar with the fandoms in question, but just might become in the future. Of course, this list is highly subjective and among other things illustrates why it's great to remain unspoiled, because there might be some more moments here if I hadn't been spoiled for them. Also, I chose to define "surprising" in the positive sense, not "oh, show, how low have you fallen, and that makes no sense whatsoever".
No question about it, the triple whammy of War Without End - Future!Londo is controlled by a ghastly creature named a Keeper! Londo and G'Kar are friends at this point and don't kill each other out of hate but because Londo asks G'Kar in order to ensure his keeper doesn't prevent Sheridan and Delenn escaping! Sinclair is Valen! My jaw, it never quite recovered from dropping. And I really pity anyone missing out of the chance to watch this unspoiled. Also, it amuses me that depending on priorities I've seen reactions to this episode going "OMG LONDO!!! - wait, wasn't there also something about some Valen guy?" (andrastewhite) and "OMG Sinclair! Wait, wasn't there also something about Londo?" (nolivingman) As for me, Centauriphile or no, the Sinclair revelation did have almost equal impact - but I must admit the Londo ones did have priority. I constantly switched from fretting about the keeper to being amazed and delighted at the "my old friend" prospect.
Just because I've broken up with the show doesn't mean I don't remember what it felt like when I became captured to begin with. Which happened at the end of the pilot. Until then, I thought it was nice, but nothing special, and I felt a bit impatient for it to finish because it was obvious that Peter would jump, fly and finish that very typical origin story of the Marvel-type hero who starts out ridiculed and then discovers his superpower. Why, thought it, do they drag it out? And then Peter finally jumped. And didn't fly. And Nathan did. And I sat there, glued. An ambitious politician type with superpowers? Now THAT I hadn't been prepared for. At all. Off I went, immediately aquiring the next episode. Despite my break-up grief, I maintain that this final moment, and the way it foreshadowed the season finale, was incredibly well done.
I was unfortunately spoiled for the big Irina Derevko reveal at the end of season 1/ start of season 2, and am reasonably sure I might have guessed anyway because there was no way Sydney's mother and her backstory would have been brought up so often and so prominently in season 1 otherwise. And I was spoiled for the big two years jump at the end of s2. However, I was completely unspoiled for Emily surviving beyond the s1 finale, and so the final ten minutes of The Getaway, in which we find out Arvin Sloane fooled both the Alliance and the CIA, set up Ariana Kane, conned a fortune out of the Alliance and saved his wife to boot remain my favourite Alias surprise twist. Like the best surprise moments, it made complete sense when one looked back to all previous episodes.
The tag scene of the first season finale, To Shanshu in L.A., revealing that the creature Wolfram and Hart went to so much trouble to bring back was actually Angel's dusted sire, Darla. In retrospect, there were signs - to wit, the flashbacks featuring Darla during two previous episodes, reminding the viewers who she was - but at the time, I had no idea, had had no guess as to the content of the box and couldn't wait for the second season once Darla was revealed. Alas I was spoiled for most other twists until season 5, which was when I managed to kick the spoiler habit, including scenes like Angel locking the lawyers with Darla and Dru and firing his friends, otherwise these might have made the cut. But Darla was a complete surprise and still my favourite example of how to bring back a dead character and improving the story by this to no end.
Utopia - "I am the Master." Am I ever glad to have remained unspoiled for that one. I mean, I knew he would be back, because the Independent had mentioned it in a John Simm profile, though there were hasty denials by Team Cardiff later, but I did NOT know John Simm wouldn't be the first actor to play the Master on New Who. All I knew about Derek Jacobi's character in advance was that he'd be a kindly old professor. (Though wee_warrior guessed; she's good at that.) I had an inkling something was up with Yana through the episode, and thought he might be a future version of the Doctor or a descendent of Timothy Latimer at various points, but the entire sequence from the moment he starts to get audio flashbacks to previous Master incarnations and Martha discovers his fobwatch till the end of the episode is just breathtaking, with Derek Jacobi's ability to transform himself from Yana to the Master just via the expression in his eyes remains one of the best pieces of acting on this show. The crowning brilliance of this episode is that revealing the Master as a cliffhanger from another identity is of course a tried and true Old Who gimmick, done dozens of times, which makes this particular revelation both traditional and entirely fresh. I adore it.
No question about it, the triple whammy of War Without End - Future!Londo is controlled by a ghastly creature named a Keeper! Londo and G'Kar are friends at this point and don't kill each other out of hate but because Londo asks G'Kar in order to ensure his keeper doesn't prevent Sheridan and Delenn escaping! Sinclair is Valen! My jaw, it never quite recovered from dropping. And I really pity anyone missing out of the chance to watch this unspoiled. Also, it amuses me that depending on priorities I've seen reactions to this episode going "OMG LONDO!!! - wait, wasn't there also something about some Valen guy?" (andrastewhite) and "OMG Sinclair! Wait, wasn't there also something about Londo?" (nolivingman) As for me, Centauriphile or no, the Sinclair revelation did have almost equal impact - but I must admit the Londo ones did have priority. I constantly switched from fretting about the keeper to being amazed and delighted at the "my old friend" prospect.
Just because I've broken up with the show doesn't mean I don't remember what it felt like when I became captured to begin with. Which happened at the end of the pilot. Until then, I thought it was nice, but nothing special, and I felt a bit impatient for it to finish because it was obvious that Peter would jump, fly and finish that very typical origin story of the Marvel-type hero who starts out ridiculed and then discovers his superpower. Why, thought it, do they drag it out? And then Peter finally jumped. And didn't fly. And Nathan did. And I sat there, glued. An ambitious politician type with superpowers? Now THAT I hadn't been prepared for. At all. Off I went, immediately aquiring the next episode. Despite my break-up grief, I maintain that this final moment, and the way it foreshadowed the season finale, was incredibly well done.
I was unfortunately spoiled for the big Irina Derevko reveal at the end of season 1/ start of season 2, and am reasonably sure I might have guessed anyway because there was no way Sydney's mother and her backstory would have been brought up so often and so prominently in season 1 otherwise. And I was spoiled for the big two years jump at the end of s2. However, I was completely unspoiled for Emily surviving beyond the s1 finale, and so the final ten minutes of The Getaway, in which we find out Arvin Sloane fooled both the Alliance and the CIA, set up Ariana Kane, conned a fortune out of the Alliance and saved his wife to boot remain my favourite Alias surprise twist. Like the best surprise moments, it made complete sense when one looked back to all previous episodes.
The tag scene of the first season finale, To Shanshu in L.A., revealing that the creature Wolfram and Hart went to so much trouble to bring back was actually Angel's dusted sire, Darla. In retrospect, there were signs - to wit, the flashbacks featuring Darla during two previous episodes, reminding the viewers who she was - but at the time, I had no idea, had had no guess as to the content of the box and couldn't wait for the second season once Darla was revealed. Alas I was spoiled for most other twists until season 5, which was when I managed to kick the spoiler habit, including scenes like Angel locking the lawyers with Darla and Dru and firing his friends, otherwise these might have made the cut. But Darla was a complete surprise and still my favourite example of how to bring back a dead character and improving the story by this to no end.
Utopia - "I am the Master." Am I ever glad to have remained unspoiled for that one. I mean, I knew he would be back, because the Independent had mentioned it in a John Simm profile, though there were hasty denials by Team Cardiff later, but I did NOT know John Simm wouldn't be the first actor to play the Master on New Who. All I knew about Derek Jacobi's character in advance was that he'd be a kindly old professor. (Though wee_warrior guessed; she's good at that.) I had an inkling something was up with Yana through the episode, and thought he might be a future version of the Doctor or a descendent of Timothy Latimer at various points, but the entire sequence from the moment he starts to get audio flashbacks to previous Master incarnations and Martha discovers his fobwatch till the end of the episode is just breathtaking, with Derek Jacobi's ability to transform himself from Yana to the Master just via the expression in his eyes remains one of the best pieces of acting on this show. The crowning brilliance of this episode is that revealing the Master as a cliffhanger from another identity is of course a tried and true Old Who gimmick, done dozens of times, which makes this particular revelation both traditional and entirely fresh. I adore it.