7.21 Apocalypse by TW and AM (Part I)

as retold by Bill C

[The writers' room. Everyone is present except KK.]
AM [hands out scripts]: Okay, where's our resident agent provocateur?
MR: I think she said something about her meeting with the WGA being today.
AM: Maybe she'll get a job writing for Gossip Girl or something.
TW: Gossip Girl can kiss my ass.
AM: ...or commercials. Maybe she can come up with an updated Enzyte ad.
MR: We need a new Smilin' Bob?
ED: Your contract's almost up, Michael. You can do it!
AoT: I think I would actually pay money to see Michael with that huge fake grin on his face.
MR: Only if I can grow my hair back out first. Lex Luthor does not fake grin.
JG: Let's get going, kids. Kristin can catch up.
TW: Right. Okay, so we open once again with "Previously on Smallville..."
AoT: My turn for that, I believe.
JG: No, mine.
AM: Let's see...Steppenwolf delivers his demand for Kal-El's surrender...
MR: Chloe fights with Fake Shake Chloe.
AoT: And gets beaten for the most part.
AM: Not helping.
ED: Clark offers to let Chloe kill him.
JG: And Lionel talks to Steppenwolf about capturing Kal-El.
MR: You mean he gets his marching orders.
JG: Quiet.
TW: And we go from the "previously" stuff to a wide shot of Clark sitting on the ground in the FoS. Some brooding dark music starts up in the background.
AM: I thought we were going with You're Not One Of Them again?
TW: Right.
ED: Oh, he's "brewing" again.
JG: Tom, you're not going to boil over again, are you?
TW: No, I think I'm done for the time being.
JG: Just checking.
AM: Clark's just sitting there, looking morose, while the camera does a slow pan around him. After a while he gets up and walks around, pacing back and forth, and he starts talking to himself.
MR: "Lana, where are you? I could really use your help now!"
TW: Oh, shut up. "Chloe..."
AoT: "Why didn't I kill him when I had the chance?"
TW: "...Pete..."
JG: "Why didn't I stay wherever the hell I was?"
TW: "...Nell..."
MR: Dammit, I've got nothing!
TW: "...Lex."
MR: Okay, Clark saved the best for last.
ED: Ain't love grand?
TW: "Darkseid...dammit! Darkseid destroyed Smallville...just to get to me...he hurt all of my friends, just to get to me--"
JG: Which he will follow up with accelerating global warming and melting the ice caps in order to flood Metropolis just to screw with him that much more. Oh, and destroying every pie vendor on Earth.
AoT: Clark would tear him in half for that. You do not get between him and pie.
MR: Okay, hold it. So...if Lana was standing between Clark and a pie...would he go through her to get the pie?
[silence for a few seconds]
JG: The world may never know.
TW [sighs]: Clark is still pacing, but looks increasingly agitated as the camera tracks him back and forth. "Thousands of people dead because of me. I--I can't let billions of people be put in danger because of me. I will not let that happen." He stops pacing, and pan around to a frontal shot as a really grim expression appears on his face. "I can not let that happen."
ED: Clark finally embraces his destiny and becomes Superman?
TW: Clark looks around the FoS. "I have to get away from Earth. If I--"
ED [surprised]: He's chickening out?
MR: He's once again embracing the crazy logic, I think.
ED: But he's chickening out!
AM: It's the Smallville way.
ED [thinks]: Okay, you've got a point. But still!
TW: Clark goes on. "If I can somehow get off the planet, Darkseid won't have any reason to attack it. Even if it means revealing who I am to the world...I've got to lead him away, get away--"
MR [sings]: I want to get away! I want to flyyyyy awaaaaay...
AoT [shakes head]: Keep your day job, Rosenbaum.
MR: Oh, come on! It was right there!
TW: Quiet, you. "I've got to lead him away, get away from here. I can't let anyone else die just--just by being here!"
AM: And after finally embracing the crazy along with everyone else, Clark super-speeds out of the shot. The camera tracks rapidly to follow him and it turns into a crossfade to a wide shot of a snowy plain with a city in the distance, and a title card fades in at the bottom of the shot: "Fairbanks, Alaska."
JG: Okay, what's in Alaska?
TW: Death and destruction.
AoT: Of course.
AM: We cut from the wide shot to a couple of tracking shots of a snow-covered city street, people walking around, blah blah blah. Then zoom on a young couple walking along who stop to peer into a jewelry store's front window, when their windowshopping is interrupted by a gradually increasing whining noise.
MR: Clark?
ED: Lana?
AM: No, Darkseid. Or rather his troops, since we see the couple turn from the window and look up into the sky...pan up to see a group of winged parademons fly by overhead, and track to follow them as they start firing their staff weapons at the street below, taking out a couple of cars and sending people running.
ED: Starting the carnage already?
TW: We have to. So we go from that scene to another wide shot of the city, only this time we see this horde of flying parademons and those small angular Apokoliptian ships we saw way back in Escape advancing towards it...and then we jump to a high-speed overhead zoom-out from Fairbanks to a view of North America, sound fading out as the shot widens.
AM: Hold for a second or two on that shot, and then we do a high-speed zoom-in to a busy street in Washington, D.C. and through a manhole--
JG: How long is this shot?
AM: --and for a few seconds it zooms through a narrow rock crevasse, following some sort of pipe or cabling, and as it does that we start to hear an alert klaxon going off. The shot ends as the camera reaches a square metal grating and zooms through it, and we end up with a bird's-eye view of a large Mission Control-style chamber with a giant screen at the far end showing a global map. The klaxon is going and people in various military uniforms are frantically running around or talking on telephones, and then we see a red dot appear on the map where Fairbanks would be.
ED: Armageddon. You are here.
AM [snickers]: And then we start hearing this authoritative male voice saying...
TW: "Alert Condition One. Alert Condition One. This is an Athena event. Repeat, this is an Athena event. This is not a drill."
MR [snaps fingers]: Why couldn't you have named it Cobra Command?
ED+AM: What?
MR [sighs]: Never mind.
TW: As the voice recites that, we cut to a close-up of a grizzled four-star Air Force general looking up at the map. He then picks up a nearby phone and dials a number. "This is General Weiss. Athena deployment is go. Fairbanks, Alaska...yes, an attack is in progress. Alien activity is confirmed. Godspeed, General."
ED: Wait...is that the--
TW: Yes, it is.
ED: Cool!

TW: General Weiss hangs up the phone, waits about a second, then picks it up again and dials another number. "Weiss. I need to speak to Lex Luthor."
MR: Iron Lex takes charge!
AM: And we cut to Lex's office at LuthorCorp as Hope hands Lex a telephone handset.
MR: I got this. "Yes, General. I see...we'll be ready, General." Lex hangs up, then looks at Hope. "Ready the transport. We're going to Alaska. And tell Colonel Miller to prep Unit One."
ED: Okay, hold it. Why can't Unit One be called something cool, like...uh...like Omega Command, or the Black Angels, or something like that?
TW: Because.
ED: That sucks.
TW: We cut back to Fairbanks, only now there are small fires all over the place as parademons and fighters and now human military aircraft zoom overhead. Cut back to the original snow-covered street as a Humvee skids to a stop in the center of it and a gunner pops out of the roof hatch and starts firing a machinegun mounted there at something above and off-camera.
AM: Quick reverse shot on the Humvee to see what the gunner is shooting at: one of the Apokoliptian fighters. Switch to a frontal shot of the fighter as it fires a ball of green energy directly at the camera, and the second the ball fills the screen we cut hard to the credits.

Continued...