Sanctuary, Season 3
Nov. 18th, 2011 09:54 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
selenakOverall verdict: maybe it's the dvd watching effect, i.e. no week or months between weaker and better episodes, but given that everyone told me ahead of time it was supposedly a very uneven season with some of the best and some of the worst episodes, I was surprised how good it was overall, not just in individual eps. It may be my overall favourite so far. Also, it feels weird to have watched all the dvds there are and now be only half a season behind everyone else.
Early on I felt a bit let down that Terrence devolved into a raving admiral (tm Star Trek). (Sidenote for none Trekkers: a popular cliché in various Trek shows from TOS onwards is the Starfleet superior who shows up to take over from our lead. Of course, sooner or later that guy (or woman, but mostly a guy) loses it spectacularly and if not shown up as a raving lunatic is shown up as an incompetent twat so our lead shines all the more brightly. Which is why I dig not just the Picard and Gul Madred scenes in Chain of Command but really really appreciate what TNG did with Jellico, Picard's temporary replacement, in the other plot. He's not nice. He's not chummy with our heroes. But he gets the job done, efficiently, his alternate view points are at least worth considering, and instead of wondering whether Starfleet only has one crew and captain at a time who are supposed to be good at their jobs, you can see why both the Picards and the Jellicos are necessary for the organization.) Otoh this came with the crew of his ship making up their own minds instead of being treated as mindless props, so kudos for that.
Of course, once we were done with Kali the two seasonal plots were, intertwined, the ones the super abnormal/avatar thing led to, Hollow Earth and Adam Worth. Late19th century adventure stories so inform this show that I'm not surprised we'd get into the Verne and Welles territory of a real inside the planet, or that missing guy from the late Victorian set of archetypes, Jekyll & Hyde. Incidentally, do not put down Robert Louis Stevenson and his cocaine inspired novellas, Helen, you and your pals are so very much Stevensonian characters. More about the later in a moment, but first let me say my three favourite Hollow Earth related scenes were:
- Helen and Nikola (more Delgado!Master than ever, who had this body space invading while cooperating on a science project with the Third Doctor down to a t) working on the holographic map
- Will and Helen chased by the obligatory dinosaur (insert correct scientific name for species here) with Will, mid-being chased, stopping to exclaim this is actually pretty cool, and Helen agreeing (this is one of many reasons why I adore the Helen and Will relationship)
- Helen and Ranna performing surgery on a lava superbeing
I was expecting someone to find Icelandic runes at some point to pay homage to the master, but no. Never mind. Maybe travelling to the surface on an exploding volcano is still in the cards though Doctor Who actually did that, sort of, already and recently, so maybe not.
Before there was Hollow Earth, there was the Adventure of the Undeliberate Bank Robbery which was a nifty showcase for Kate, and also pleased me by letting Helen be confident in her and letting her run the show the entire time. And the Case ofDelgado!Master Nicola Tesla and the Gigantic Intelligent Insects which had Will act more Companion-like than ever (he should talk to Jo Grant on the subject of their Doctors and their agenda-having old academy friends with a penchant for world domination schemes) and Helen produce that priceless sarcastic line "maybe he wants to be king of the mountains and needs me as his queen" which is funny not least because you can see Will think "actually, I could buy that theory". More seriously, I appreciate that through the season up until and including Awakening Tesla's temporary turned human status is an issue for him, never to a point where it overwhelmes the plot but as something which someone who spent a century as a vampire and as opposed to certain other 'verses loved being one just couldn't possibly be too keen on. And speaking of emotional continuity, Nikola's slight pause and change of phrase so he doesn't have to say "Ashley" in front of Helen when giving his explanation as to how he came across the ex Cabal lair was a good one, too. This being before the introduction of Adam, it was also a useful reminder of how very personal the loss of a daughter in gruesome circumstances is for Helen these days.
I must say, as post Stevenson Jekyll and Hyde presentations go, Adam Worth isn't the best, not least because there is not so much difference between both sides and it ignores one of Stevenson's basic concepts (as a young Charles Xavier points out to Hank McCoy in X-Men: First Class, it's not about good vs evil, it's about repression, Jekyll's unwillingness to admit to it and wish to have his cake and eat it, live out his impulses without being thought of doing so), plus Alan Moore did it so much better in the original League of Extraordinary Gentlemen. I get why the show makes the connection, given the late 19th century literary and scientific background of the Five, but I wish they hadn't because applying J & H to Adam is only a headache (it doesn't really) and they already have the "two souls do dwell in me" concept with John Druitt. However, as his own character and disconnected from the literary type he's supposed to have inspire, Adam Worth works. I'm glad they gave him an additional motivation for his enmity towards the Five, because "the cool kids wouldn't let me play with them at Oxford!" alone would have been too pathetic, whereas the death of his daughter makes more sense and hits Helen where it hurts these days. Also, the Five accepting the goverment blackmail/bribe in For King and Country is a good (and Moorish) twist in the way it's presented as morally questionable, and in a way, the season finale showcases how it comes to bite them. If you accept money and support from the goverment(s), then you can't really be surprised the goverment(s) regard(s) you as part of the system they can override when wanting to, and that between your priorities and their priorities, theirs will always win. Mind you, it's hard to see how a global Sanctuary network could function without support of at least some of the goverments (being an underground rebel group sounds cool, but how do you finance yourself? Bank robberies and drugs?).
Another good thing about this season: the way elements from seeming standalone eps would show up as important later, like Adam's time stopping device from his introduction episode (which was also the annual "Helen in a two person episode being incredibly bad ass" contribution), or Nikola Tesla's World War II device from the insects eps proving crucial in later shows. Makes me wonder whether there will be even a pay off for Will's stint as a lizard. Note to show runners: there is a reason why that Voyager episode is so widely ridiculed. Just because Kafka and Cronenberg could do it doesn't mean you can, not with a regular whom we know will be his old self again in the next episode. Well, at least it had a nice Helen and Will scene in it. Did I mention I adore their relationship? Seriously now, I continue to do, not just because of the continuing rarity of m & f friendships on tv that never are set-ups for future romances but also of the even greater rarity of older woman & younger man mentor & protegé relationships; it really is a reverse gender Doctor & Companion set up, and greatly contributes to my enjoyment of the show. I found myself missing their annual field trip of doom together until Carenton, when it did happen somewhat belatedly, complete with Declan & Kate subplot, who also should go on a field trip of doom once a year now, clearly.
Normandy: in which we learn Peter Wingfield's German is as bad as Adrian Paul's, but this is an actual plot point. Incidentally, I noticed that Gillian Horvath, who was one of the crucial people in the Highlander production/scriptwriting department, joined team Sanctuary both as scriptwriter (giving us not one but two nifty Helen & Nikola episodes) and in a supervising capacity. So I wonder whether Our Heroes being immediately discovered because of their atrocious accents when speaking German is an aftereffect of the HL episode Valkyrie. (Otoh, the actors playing actual Germans also have an atrocious accent when speaking the language, which slightly mars the effect when the German soldier tells James Watson there's no way in which Watson is Bavarian because he is - both of them sounding anything but Bavarian, or German, for that matter - but still: A for effort.) With another after effect being that the question "so if you have a teleporter specializing in murder at hand who actually is not for the Nazis, how come he didn't try to kill Hitler?" is adressed in a way that directly relates to one of many good scenes in Valkyrie, the discussion between Methos and Duncan about whether individiuals do impact history enough to matter (Methos argued that even if Ingrid had managed to kill Hitler, it would not have made a difference). Incidentally, and for what it's worth, I think due to the in-fighting of the upper party hierarchy the infrastructure of the Third Reich would have crumbled but not immediately, so I can buy the episode's position. It's a side issue anyway, with the main point being: watch the Five having a World War II adventure. The until this point shadowy Nigel Griffin gets fleshed out as a character and basically turns out to be Ringo Starr, which is rather endearing. Meanwhile, I finally see where the Druit/Watson slash comes from. (Sorry, but their scene in Revelations from season 1 while conveying they used to be good friends and the Jack the Ripper twist hit Watson hard didn't yet feel subtexty to me.) "Hurt her or hurt you?" was one hell of a scene. Also, said scene upholds the rule that insults between the Five are so efficient because they usually know what they're talking about. Druit does behave like a schoolboy with a crush re: Helen, and James is upset on his own behalf, not Helen's. Meanwhile, Nikola Tesla is interestingly un-cynical yet (and still friends with everyone else) which makes me wonder what in the post war age triggered the rather worse state of affairs we're presented with when Nikola first shows up on the show.
As entertaining as Normandy is, though, my favourite episode this season is Awakening. I'm not surprised Nikola Tesla hasn't read Anne Rice, but it might have been useful for him in this case before thinkingAkasha Athena could be a good idea; ancient vampire queens never are. I was amused that the twist to this particular story trope was that Athena turned out to be way more into Helen than into Nikola in terms of "who could be useful for my ressurected empire and to have UST with?", btw. (Understandable on her part. Helen isn't just a genius but immortal - a non-ending blood supply, plus she doesn't have world domination schemes of her own.) But the reason why this episode in particular captured my heart isn't Akasha Athena, of course, but the Helen and Nikola interaction, gloriously culminating in the scene where she refuses to let him die and revamps him. "I have never been more attracted to you than in this moment" indeed; v. v. understandable, Nikola, I think the entire audience felt the same way. I think what makes me so charmed by the relationship in general is that in addition to the combination of bickering, flirting and life saving they have going on, they do accept each other the way they are without illusions. (Not accepting in the sense that Helen would let him get away with damaging others, accepting in the sense that she knows what he's like without rosy glasses. And vice versa.)
Which is not something that can be said of that most Victorian of Victorian characters on this show. Colour me entirely unsurprised that John lets himself be played by Adam Worth for the third time in a row because he thinks time travelling and changing his past so he never becomes Jack the Ripper and gets a happily ever after with a non-immortal Helen is just the best idea ever. I don't mean that in a dissing way. Like responding to his renewed killing stint with brooding and drugging himself with opium earlier this season, it's so very reaction-of-his-time on John's part and it works for me even more because unlike the others, he hasn't experienced the intervening years between Oxford and the present as something with a lot of positive to balance the negative, and wanting to change the past so he never becomes a killer at all is all too understandable. Except that it's also incredibly selfish in regards to the general damage any geek can tell you changes of the past can do the timeline and humanity as a whole, and, as Helen points out, utterly disregarding of her as a person. Wanting to wipe out her entire life post Oxford in favour of the idealized past together is not a decision he has any right to make and basically an assassination of the person she is now without anything like Helen's life at stake and/or the fate of the world justifying it. In conclusion: ask Henry to get you a lot of tv shows and films showing you why this is not a good idea, John, the next time you even contemplate it. In light of this part of the finale, I find out telling that in the immediately preceding episode where Helen and Will are actually in an alt!verse (though a mind-created one), she was married and divorced from John without any Ripper interference and decidedly not charmed or happy when he showed up to reunite and declared his continuing devotion. Which leads me to wonder whether Helen's continuing love for John - because yes, she loves him - isn't really depending on the fact she never got that life with him and can't ever not feel guilty because the source blood made him Jack the Ripper; that in that dream scenario John was sold on by Adam that love would have ended and they would have drifted apart, as they did in the last-but-one episode alt!world.
Now: present day Helen in Victorian London is a very promising scenario. Not least because the one factor I hadn't talked about is that one the one hand, you have Jack the Ripper's victims, and on the other, Imogen, and preserving any of their lives might be a temptation. Helen is hardcore and I believed her when she told John she wouldn't put the life of one person above the lives of millions, but fate being what it is, I wouldn't be surprised if she ended up in a Fires of Pompeii situation of having to cause the death(s) (again) so that the timeline can play out, which, triple ouch. Bring on season 4!
Early on I felt a bit let down that Terrence devolved into a raving admiral (tm Star Trek). (Sidenote for none Trekkers: a popular cliché in various Trek shows from TOS onwards is the Starfleet superior who shows up to take over from our lead. Of course, sooner or later that guy (or woman, but mostly a guy) loses it spectacularly and if not shown up as a raving lunatic is shown up as an incompetent twat so our lead shines all the more brightly. Which is why I dig not just the Picard and Gul Madred scenes in Chain of Command but really really appreciate what TNG did with Jellico, Picard's temporary replacement, in the other plot. He's not nice. He's not chummy with our heroes. But he gets the job done, efficiently, his alternate view points are at least worth considering, and instead of wondering whether Starfleet only has one crew and captain at a time who are supposed to be good at their jobs, you can see why both the Picards and the Jellicos are necessary for the organization.) Otoh this came with the crew of his ship making up their own minds instead of being treated as mindless props, so kudos for that.
Of course, once we were done with Kali the two seasonal plots were, intertwined, the ones the super abnormal/avatar thing led to, Hollow Earth and Adam Worth. Late19th century adventure stories so inform this show that I'm not surprised we'd get into the Verne and Welles territory of a real inside the planet, or that missing guy from the late Victorian set of archetypes, Jekyll & Hyde. Incidentally, do not put down Robert Louis Stevenson and his cocaine inspired novellas, Helen, you and your pals are so very much Stevensonian characters. More about the later in a moment, but first let me say my three favourite Hollow Earth related scenes were:
- Helen and Nikola (more Delgado!Master than ever, who had this body space invading while cooperating on a science project with the Third Doctor down to a t) working on the holographic map
- Will and Helen chased by the obligatory dinosaur (insert correct scientific name for species here) with Will, mid-being chased, stopping to exclaim this is actually pretty cool, and Helen agreeing (this is one of many reasons why I adore the Helen and Will relationship)
- Helen and Ranna performing surgery on a lava superbeing
I was expecting someone to find Icelandic runes at some point to pay homage to the master, but no. Never mind. Maybe travelling to the surface on an exploding volcano is still in the cards though Doctor Who actually did that, sort of, already and recently, so maybe not.
Before there was Hollow Earth, there was the Adventure of the Undeliberate Bank Robbery which was a nifty showcase for Kate, and also pleased me by letting Helen be confident in her and letting her run the show the entire time. And the Case of
I must say, as post Stevenson Jekyll and Hyde presentations go, Adam Worth isn't the best, not least because there is not so much difference between both sides and it ignores one of Stevenson's basic concepts (as a young Charles Xavier points out to Hank McCoy in X-Men: First Class, it's not about good vs evil, it's about repression, Jekyll's unwillingness to admit to it and wish to have his cake and eat it, live out his impulses without being thought of doing so), plus Alan Moore did it so much better in the original League of Extraordinary Gentlemen. I get why the show makes the connection, given the late 19th century literary and scientific background of the Five, but I wish they hadn't because applying J & H to Adam is only a headache (it doesn't really) and they already have the "two souls do dwell in me" concept with John Druitt. However, as his own character and disconnected from the literary type he's supposed to have inspire, Adam Worth works. I'm glad they gave him an additional motivation for his enmity towards the Five, because "the cool kids wouldn't let me play with them at Oxford!" alone would have been too pathetic, whereas the death of his daughter makes more sense and hits Helen where it hurts these days. Also, the Five accepting the goverment blackmail/bribe in For King and Country is a good (and Moorish) twist in the way it's presented as morally questionable, and in a way, the season finale showcases how it comes to bite them. If you accept money and support from the goverment(s), then you can't really be surprised the goverment(s) regard(s) you as part of the system they can override when wanting to, and that between your priorities and their priorities, theirs will always win. Mind you, it's hard to see how a global Sanctuary network could function without support of at least some of the goverments (being an underground rebel group sounds cool, but how do you finance yourself? Bank robberies and drugs?).
Another good thing about this season: the way elements from seeming standalone eps would show up as important later, like Adam's time stopping device from his introduction episode (which was also the annual "Helen in a two person episode being incredibly bad ass" contribution), or Nikola Tesla's World War II device from the insects eps proving crucial in later shows. Makes me wonder whether there will be even a pay off for Will's stint as a lizard. Note to show runners: there is a reason why that Voyager episode is so widely ridiculed. Just because Kafka and Cronenberg could do it doesn't mean you can, not with a regular whom we know will be his old self again in the next episode. Well, at least it had a nice Helen and Will scene in it. Did I mention I adore their relationship? Seriously now, I continue to do, not just because of the continuing rarity of m & f friendships on tv that never are set-ups for future romances but also of the even greater rarity of older woman & younger man mentor & protegé relationships; it really is a reverse gender Doctor & Companion set up, and greatly contributes to my enjoyment of the show. I found myself missing their annual field trip of doom together until Carenton, when it did happen somewhat belatedly, complete with Declan & Kate subplot, who also should go on a field trip of doom once a year now, clearly.
Normandy: in which we learn Peter Wingfield's German is as bad as Adrian Paul's, but this is an actual plot point. Incidentally, I noticed that Gillian Horvath, who was one of the crucial people in the Highlander production/scriptwriting department, joined team Sanctuary both as scriptwriter (giving us not one but two nifty Helen & Nikola episodes) and in a supervising capacity. So I wonder whether Our Heroes being immediately discovered because of their atrocious accents when speaking German is an aftereffect of the HL episode Valkyrie. (Otoh, the actors playing actual Germans also have an atrocious accent when speaking the language, which slightly mars the effect when the German soldier tells James Watson there's no way in which Watson is Bavarian because he is - both of them sounding anything but Bavarian, or German, for that matter - but still: A for effort.) With another after effect being that the question "so if you have a teleporter specializing in murder at hand who actually is not for the Nazis, how come he didn't try to kill Hitler?" is adressed in a way that directly relates to one of many good scenes in Valkyrie, the discussion between Methos and Duncan about whether individiuals do impact history enough to matter (Methos argued that even if Ingrid had managed to kill Hitler, it would not have made a difference). Incidentally, and for what it's worth, I think due to the in-fighting of the upper party hierarchy the infrastructure of the Third Reich would have crumbled but not immediately, so I can buy the episode's position. It's a side issue anyway, with the main point being: watch the Five having a World War II adventure. The until this point shadowy Nigel Griffin gets fleshed out as a character and basically turns out to be Ringo Starr, which is rather endearing. Meanwhile, I finally see where the Druit/Watson slash comes from. (Sorry, but their scene in Revelations from season 1 while conveying they used to be good friends and the Jack the Ripper twist hit Watson hard didn't yet feel subtexty to me.) "Hurt her or hurt you?" was one hell of a scene. Also, said scene upholds the rule that insults between the Five are so efficient because they usually know what they're talking about. Druit does behave like a schoolboy with a crush re: Helen, and James is upset on his own behalf, not Helen's. Meanwhile, Nikola Tesla is interestingly un-cynical yet (and still friends with everyone else) which makes me wonder what in the post war age triggered the rather worse state of affairs we're presented with when Nikola first shows up on the show.
As entertaining as Normandy is, though, my favourite episode this season is Awakening. I'm not surprised Nikola Tesla hasn't read Anne Rice, but it might have been useful for him in this case before thinking
Which is not something that can be said of that most Victorian of Victorian characters on this show. Colour me entirely unsurprised that John lets himself be played by Adam Worth for the third time in a row because he thinks time travelling and changing his past so he never becomes Jack the Ripper and gets a happily ever after with a non-immortal Helen is just the best idea ever. I don't mean that in a dissing way. Like responding to his renewed killing stint with brooding and drugging himself with opium earlier this season, it's so very reaction-of-his-time on John's part and it works for me even more because unlike the others, he hasn't experienced the intervening years between Oxford and the present as something with a lot of positive to balance the negative, and wanting to change the past so he never becomes a killer at all is all too understandable. Except that it's also incredibly selfish in regards to the general damage any geek can tell you changes of the past can do the timeline and humanity as a whole, and, as Helen points out, utterly disregarding of her as a person. Wanting to wipe out her entire life post Oxford in favour of the idealized past together is not a decision he has any right to make and basically an assassination of the person she is now without anything like Helen's life at stake and/or the fate of the world justifying it. In conclusion: ask Henry to get you a lot of tv shows and films showing you why this is not a good idea, John, the next time you even contemplate it. In light of this part of the finale, I find out telling that in the immediately preceding episode where Helen and Will are actually in an alt!verse (though a mind-created one), she was married and divorced from John without any Ripper interference and decidedly not charmed or happy when he showed up to reunite and declared his continuing devotion. Which leads me to wonder whether Helen's continuing love for John - because yes, she loves him - isn't really depending on the fact she never got that life with him and can't ever not feel guilty because the source blood made him Jack the Ripper; that in that dream scenario John was sold on by Adam that love would have ended and they would have drifted apart, as they did in the last-but-one episode alt!world.
Now: present day Helen in Victorian London is a very promising scenario. Not least because the one factor I hadn't talked about is that one the one hand, you have Jack the Ripper's victims, and on the other, Imogen, and preserving any of their lives might be a temptation. Helen is hardcore and I believed her when she told John she wouldn't put the life of one person above the lives of millions, but fate being what it is, I wouldn't be surprised if she ended up in a Fires of Pompeii situation of having to cause the death(s) (again) so that the timeline can play out, which, triple ouch. Bring on season 4!
no subject
Date: 2011-11-18 10:34 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-11-19 10:56 am (UTC)http://selenak.livejournal.com/719944.html?thread=10769224#t10769224
Now that I'm two more seasons along the road, let me add that I adjusted to the Ripper-Druitt bit not least because fictional Druitt being utterly unlike real Druitt goes along with fictional Nikola Tesla not being like the genuine article, either (who obviously wasn't a vampire), so he's not alone, and the fact that the other members of the Five are literary characters treated as real (i.e. Doyle's Watson who however is the true genius, a la that film with Ben Kingsley, and Griffin the Invisible Man who is a sweetie instead of a mean nutter) helps with disassociation further. (Helen Magnus has no literary or real life precedent.)