Thursday, May 3, 2018

A Case of Dream Girl

Disclaimer: going to make a few TV references here.

I can say that Nura Nal of Naltor was never one of my favorite characters.  Somedays I like her more than others.  And maybe its no surprise considering she can go from manipulative schemer to intensely clever, from wilting flower to bodacious blond. Usually, she is portrayed as highly intelligent with a scientific background and many remember her successful run as the leader during the Great Darkness Saga.  She has often been acknowledged as being powerful enough to be the next High Seer of Naltor, but often times, her premonitions are just vague statements that become plot MacGuffins. "I saw a Legionnaire die!"  Well which one?!

To be fair, Precognition is one of the worst powers in comicbookdom. For many characters, it's accompanied by blindness and they often talk in riddles. Thankfully, we don't see that with Dream Girl. In her first appearance, Dreamy could actually see future events, her problem, though, was she had no context of the event.  What she thought was a ship full of Legionnaires was just a bunch of dummies.  Realistic looking dummies, obvi.  So that's one way premonition can work.

However, Dream Girl has shown multiple forms of telling the future.  She could intuit an opponents moves, similar to how Spider-Man can anticipate a punch before it's thrown. Sometimes, her premonitions came while she was sleeping, sometimes it came on like a ton of bricks. It appears she also trained to enter a meditative state that would help produce visions. Sometimes it was just like turning the pages of a comic book.




I wonder, still, what makes Nura so special.  I don't think many people watched the TV show Minority report a few years ago. It was probably the best exploration of Precognition that I had ever seen.  You had three precogs.  The main character had horrific visions of murder scenes.  Another character had the ability to pull specifics like names on the victims.  The third could see the murder through the victim's eyes.  Separately their powers didn't do much, but working together their powers were able to stop a murder before it began.  Many times, it's like Nura doesn't get more than a feeling, or in the case of a dying Legionnaire, some vague impression.  Sometimes, she has no inkling of danger at all, like when Computo took control of Danielle Foccart.  This is the next High Seer?

Maybe I'm a bit harsh here, but remember, some Naltorians have no gifts at all.  If the majority of Naltor can only predict minor events, like a paper cut, perhaps they need to find another claim to fame for their planet.  No, I think Naltor is just unexplored as a culture.  In fact, we barely had another Naltorian to compare to until Dream Boy (Rol Purtha) in the Threeboot Legion.  Rol was considered a second-class precog. He could only see events seconds to hours before they occur, but he could also touch objects and get impressions from them.  Finally!  Someone tried to better define a Legionnaire's powers.  And honestly, his powers probably were more useful that Nura's were were ever portrayed

I think Nura should be able to do multiple things with her powers.  Like the Supreme Witch from American Horror Story, maybe the High Seer needs to exhibit several different levels of precognition, from controlled visions, to a danger sense, to predicting both events big and small.  I think my main concern though is not confusing precognition with some type of clairvoyance/extra sensory perception. I've seen this happen with Nura, where she was able to ascertain where a robot's power core was and remove it during combat.  I would argue that's not quite how precognition works.  Also, this would possibly infringe on Sensor Girl, Dawnstar or Shikari's powers, whichever may be used in the next version of the Legion.

I feel a few things need to happen with Dream Girl. Define her powers so creative stories can be told and she doesn't become a plot device.  Then, revisit her personality and background for the next generation.

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