Merlin - Arthur's Bane part 2
Oct. 13th, 2012 10:00 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
daibhidcHmm...
I'm honestly not sure what to make of this episode. It seemed to be more interested in setting up future stories than in actually telling one itself.
First up, new rule: Dragons in Merlin shouldn't interact with real things, like, ever. It's never come up before, because the regular dragon is too big to rest its head on a bed, but goodness, that looked bad. I was more annoyed with the effect than I was pleased the White Dragon was back. And the main point of its scenes were to establish that Something Bad had happened to it, but not what.
Blue Mysterious Woman turned out to be completely pointless (it would have been a nice twist that she turned out to be the McGuffin ... if we'd ever been given any indication of what Morgana thought the McGuffin was or why she wanted it. It's the blue woman! So what?) And no, healing Merlin and Gwaine doesn't count as a point; if she wasn't there they just wouldn't have been that badly hurt (it's hardly the first time Merlin's been slammed into a rock face by magic). I suppose this could be setting up something with her in later episodes, but I can't imagine what.
Back in Camelot, Gaius at least got a few lines this week, and Gwen proved she's learnt the most important aspect of Camelot royalty: to create your own villians through a combination of poor judgement and incompetence. Yes, let the girl who has actually repented of spying and seemed to genuinely want to be your friend last week believe you intend to execute her, so that you can capture or kill her father. Nothing can go wrong there, clearly.
Nu-Mordred, meanwhile, is unique amongst Merlin villains in that he's actually interesting[1]. He's torn between a determination to see the Old Religion legalised, and a knowledge that Arthur's actually a good person, and then again, he's still outlawed magic, so it's confusing. Basically, he's what Morgana should have been two seasons ago, only she went into ranting supervillain mode instead.
Some nice moments, but basically it didn't seem to add up to a story.
[1] Yes, Cela's dad was interesting. And now he's dead, so so much for that.
I'm honestly not sure what to make of this episode. It seemed to be more interested in setting up future stories than in actually telling one itself.
First up, new rule: Dragons in Merlin shouldn't interact with real things, like, ever. It's never come up before, because the regular dragon is too big to rest its head on a bed, but goodness, that looked bad. I was more annoyed with the effect than I was pleased the White Dragon was back. And the main point of its scenes were to establish that Something Bad had happened to it, but not what.
Blue Mysterious Woman turned out to be completely pointless (it would have been a nice twist that she turned out to be the McGuffin ... if we'd ever been given any indication of what Morgana thought the McGuffin was or why she wanted it. It's the blue woman! So what?) And no, healing Merlin and Gwaine doesn't count as a point; if she wasn't there they just wouldn't have been that badly hurt (it's hardly the first time Merlin's been slammed into a rock face by magic). I suppose this could be setting up something with her in later episodes, but I can't imagine what.
Back in Camelot, Gaius at least got a few lines this week, and Gwen proved she's learnt the most important aspect of Camelot royalty: to create your own villians through a combination of poor judgement and incompetence. Yes, let the girl who has actually repented of spying and seemed to genuinely want to be your friend last week believe you intend to execute her, so that you can capture or kill her father. Nothing can go wrong there, clearly.
Nu-Mordred, meanwhile, is unique amongst Merlin villains in that he's actually interesting[1]. He's torn between a determination to see the Old Religion legalised, and a knowledge that Arthur's actually a good person, and then again, he's still outlawed magic, so it's confusing. Basically, he's what Morgana should have been two seasons ago, only she went into ranting supervillain mode instead.
Some nice moments, but basically it didn't seem to add up to a story.
[1] Yes, Cela's dad was interesting. And now he's dead, so so much for that.
