Atlantis
2.1 A New Dawn - Part One
Well that was busy, Minos was buried, Queen Ariadne sent Jason and his sidekicks to fetch a sonorous-voiced adviser as Pasiphae flexed her battling muscles. Drop in some exposition to get us up to speed and enter Medea - her obvious fear and competence made her likeable, although the palace guards are as rubbish as ever, I see. (I don’t actually remember/know Medea’s significance. To Wikipedia or not...I didn’t quite catch what Pasiphae said about her - it sounded like ‘princess of the gods’ which makes no sense. Anyway, she can wield a knife and do magic.)
More Ancient Greek was uttered than I remember in the first series.
We had another scene that made me really wish the Oracle had turned out to be Jason’s mother.
The show remembered that its beating heart is the Three Amigos, although they seem to be ramping up the Pythagoras = Spock parallels. Hercules nailed it by complaining about these ridiculous missions. Addy’s great. (Medusa got name-checked, awww.)
The special effects were okay and they did their best to suggest the scale of the battle on their budget, although most of the episode was in the dark so I really wished I’d been able to watch it live on a proper TV set rather than my laptop.
The show is still mostly ridiculous and very mockable, mind, but it isn’t trying to be serious dramah.
Part two
I don’t get why you would nick so many beats from The Two Towers and The Return of the King and do it on a smaller budget unless if you were doing something transformative, like using paintball guns in a community college or using action figures and funny voices or something. So, the battle stuff was the least interesting bit, although it all looked better on my telly than the laptop as I thought it would. And as we were reminded that the situation at court and for Atlantis has shifted, I just hope Pasiphae won’t be constantly besieging the city like that. Probably not - they couldn’t afford it.
Still, I kind of respected Queen Ariadne and her sense of duty towards Atlantis and its people, which is more than I normally do.
Ariadne/Jason leaves me cold. I don’t care that blah blah they can’t be together although if he knew and Pasiphae acknowledged him as her son, wouldn’t that make it okay? I’m far more invested in the Three Amigos (or the Three Walkers here, as Hercules WAS Gimli, Jason WAS Isildur’s Heir Who Got The Army of The Dead to Help, and Pythagoras drew a bow and arrow). It was actually interesting that Hercules discovered Pasiphae is Jason’s mother, and made me want more scenes between him and the Oracle.
Medea seemed to have noticed something about Pasiphae’s relationship with Jason too, and I’d like to see more of her relationship with Pasiphae, although Medea seems less evil than Pasiphae (Parrish was good, though.)
It looks as if next week’s episode is going to rectify the lack of Jason shirtlessness in these opening episodes. And his healing after fainting and Pythagoras staunched the bloodflow was impressive/ridiculous given the bloodloss. Still, I almost admire them for having the hero basically have to be dragged around passive and unconscious for a good fifteen minutes of the beginning.
This entry was originally posted at http://shallowness.dreamwidth.org/142457.html.
Well that was busy, Minos was buried, Queen Ariadne sent Jason and his sidekicks to fetch a sonorous-voiced adviser as Pasiphae flexed her battling muscles. Drop in some exposition to get us up to speed and enter Medea - her obvious fear and competence made her likeable, although the palace guards are as rubbish as ever, I see. (I don’t actually remember/know Medea’s significance. To Wikipedia or not...I didn’t quite catch what Pasiphae said about her - it sounded like ‘princess of the gods’ which makes no sense. Anyway, she can wield a knife and do magic.)
More Ancient Greek was uttered than I remember in the first series.
We had another scene that made me really wish the Oracle had turned out to be Jason’s mother.
The show remembered that its beating heart is the Three Amigos, although they seem to be ramping up the Pythagoras = Spock parallels. Hercules nailed it by complaining about these ridiculous missions. Addy’s great. (Medusa got name-checked, awww.)
The special effects were okay and they did their best to suggest the scale of the battle on their budget, although most of the episode was in the dark so I really wished I’d been able to watch it live on a proper TV set rather than my laptop.
The show is still mostly ridiculous and very mockable, mind, but it isn’t trying to be serious dramah.
Part two
I don’t get why you would nick so many beats from The Two Towers and The Return of the King and do it on a smaller budget unless if you were doing something transformative, like using paintball guns in a community college or using action figures and funny voices or something. So, the battle stuff was the least interesting bit, although it all looked better on my telly than the laptop as I thought it would. And as we were reminded that the situation at court and for Atlantis has shifted, I just hope Pasiphae won’t be constantly besieging the city like that. Probably not - they couldn’t afford it.
Still, I kind of respected Queen Ariadne and her sense of duty towards Atlantis and its people, which is more than I normally do.
Ariadne/Jason leaves me cold. I don’t care that blah blah they can’t be together although if he knew and Pasiphae acknowledged him as her son, wouldn’t that make it okay? I’m far more invested in the Three Amigos (or the Three Walkers here, as Hercules WAS Gimli, Jason WAS Isildur’s Heir Who Got The Army of The Dead to Help, and Pythagoras drew a bow and arrow). It was actually interesting that Hercules discovered Pasiphae is Jason’s mother, and made me want more scenes between him and the Oracle.
Medea seemed to have noticed something about Pasiphae’s relationship with Jason too, and I’d like to see more of her relationship with Pasiphae, although Medea seems less evil than Pasiphae (Parrish was good, though.)
It looks as if next week’s episode is going to rectify the lack of Jason shirtlessness in these opening episodes. And his healing after fainting and Pythagoras staunched the bloodflow was impressive/ridiculous given the bloodloss. Still, I almost admire them for having the hero basically have to be dragged around passive and unconscious for a good fifteen minutes of the beginning.
This entry was originally posted at http://shallowness.dreamwidth.org/142457.html.