Dan Liebke's Astonishing Tales

When one is rocketed to Earth from the exploding planet Krypton, almost all safety engineers recommend doing so in a spaceship of some kind. And, thus, the young Superlad arrived on Earth in an officially sanctioned, safety-inspected spaceship.

You or I might have left it there. Thanks spaceship, job well done. But the writers of Smallville had different ideas – why, they thought, should modes of transportation be limited to their primary function? Why can’t they also possess the spirit of one’s dead father? Yes, yes, I know. An obvious idea in retrospect.

And so it came to pass that the Smallville spaceship, the SS Jor-El, became an integral part of the cast – so much so that one is almost tempted to place it in the cast list. It flies around on its own, righting wrongs and wronging rights. It lands in cornfields, it wails demonically in Superlad’s ear drums and convinces him to be naughty. It’s perhaps the most well-rounded character on the show.

Heck, even when Superlad goes off the deep end and blows the ship up, that doesn’t seem to stop it. Nope, the spirit of the SS Jor-El simply flies into those damn caves and continues on its way. Just without, y’know, the flying and stuff.

Of course, even the advanced technology of Krypton had its limitations and, like many of the races of the outer rims, that limitation is most noticeable in the field of anti-theft devices. Using an octagon for a key?? Repeat after me, Kryptonians – regular polygons do not security devices make.

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