Merlin - The Dark Tower
Nov. 10th, 2012 09:07 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
daibhidcYipes!
That was deeply creepy and disturbing. The madness Gwen was subjected to, all while Morgana claimed to still be her friend ... well, I don't know about the kids in the audience, but I'm certainly going to have nightmares tonight.
The Radio Times was a bit sarcastic about the fact it never occurred to the knights to go round the Impenetrable Forest, but in the episode it's pretty clear the forest surrounds it (unlike the magic castle last season that was "hidden" behind a waterfall, but surrounded by rolling fields in every other direction).
When Mab (and is she being set up for later use, or is she just a one-episode bit of weirdness, like Mysterious Blue Woman in the season opener?) predicted one knight would not return, I automatically went into Prophecy Twist mode, trying to work out what this actually meant. The possibility that it meant exactly what it sounded like never occurred to me, so that came as a shock. Although not as much of one as the actual ending. Like I said, yipes!
Mythwatch: The Dark Tower is from Childe Roland to the Dark Tower Came and thereby from Childe Rowland and Burd Helen, in which Helen is kidnapped by the King of Elfland and her brother Rowland must rescue her. Unlike Elyan here, Rowland survives. (In some versions Rowland and Helen are the children of Arthur and Guenevere.)
Queen Mab is from a speech by Mercutio Romeo and Juliet, in which she's basically a fairy troublemaker.
The sword that fights by itself has various precedents, but as far as I can find out, no Arthurian ones. In fact the only actual mythical example I can find, rather than 20th century fiction, is Freyr's sword "which swings itself if wise be he who wields it".
That was deeply creepy and disturbing. The madness Gwen was subjected to, all while Morgana claimed to still be her friend ... well, I don't know about the kids in the audience, but I'm certainly going to have nightmares tonight.
The Radio Times was a bit sarcastic about the fact it never occurred to the knights to go round the Impenetrable Forest, but in the episode it's pretty clear the forest surrounds it (unlike the magic castle last season that was "hidden" behind a waterfall, but surrounded by rolling fields in every other direction).
When Mab (and is she being set up for later use, or is she just a one-episode bit of weirdness, like Mysterious Blue Woman in the season opener?) predicted one knight would not return, I automatically went into Prophecy Twist mode, trying to work out what this actually meant. The possibility that it meant exactly what it sounded like never occurred to me, so that came as a shock. Although not as much of one as the actual ending. Like I said, yipes!
Mythwatch: The Dark Tower is from Childe Roland to the Dark Tower Came and thereby from Childe Rowland and Burd Helen, in which Helen is kidnapped by the King of Elfland and her brother Rowland must rescue her. Unlike Elyan here, Rowland survives. (In some versions Rowland and Helen are the children of Arthur and Guenevere.)
Queen Mab is from a speech by Mercutio Romeo and Juliet, in which she's basically a fairy troublemaker.
The sword that fights by itself has various precedents, but as far as I can find out, no Arthurian ones. In fact the only actual mythical example I can find, rather than 20th century fiction, is Freyr's sword "which swings itself if wise be he who wields it".
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no subject
Date: 2012-11-10 09:35 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-11-16 04:42 pm (UTC)As far as Elyan goes ... I've been thinking about this, and perhaps I'm being overly generous, but it really does seem to me they'd written themselves into a corner.
The whole point of the episode is that Gwen is subjected to as much trauma as possible. And while she'd certainly have been shocked and saddened if Percival or Leon had been killed trying to rescue her, it wouldn't have had the same vicereal trauma as losing her brother. Arthur would have, but obviously that's not going to happen. And Lancelot might have worked, only they've already killed him off. So it has to be her brother. And her brother, of course, is black.
So we've got the ironic situation that they kill of the black secondary character because one of the primary characters is black...
(Of course, even as I write this, it occurs to me there's no reason there couldn't also have been a black knight who isn't related to Gwen...)
no subject
Date: 2012-11-16 07:48 pm (UTC)Oh, I found an Arthurian link to the sword which fights by itself. In Thundercats! One of the original cartoons had Excalibur go on a floating, flying duel, with the Sword of Omens (and Excalibur won!). Technically this is Arthurian, right?