Sleepy Hollow: For the Triumph of Evil

So this week’s Sleepy Hollow changed tracks a little, or at least it felt like it did. This time around the focus is on Abbie, giving us more insight into her background and relationship to her sister whilst Ichabod plays a supporting role (and Katrina is nowhere to be seen). Ironically, though it has a much stronger and memorable villain than last week, the story is also a bit clunky – at least the middle bit is.

Nightmare demons are nothing new, I’ve seen them in everything from Buffy the Vampire Slayer to Torchwood, from Charmed to Justice League, but this was a nice spin on the old tale. The Sandman isn’t just going to spook people when they’re asleep, but also works as a sort of demonic judge and jury, forcing people to confront their guilty consciences and driving them to suicide because of it.

The character design of the elongated fingers, hollow eye-sockets, sealed mouth and sand pouring from every orifice was beautifully done, though I can’t help but suspect that somewhere behind the scenes there’s a big fan of Pan’s Labyrinth (the Pale Man, anyone?)

Having the episode start with Abbie experiencing a prophetic dream made for a great hook, particularly when she started connecting the dots and realizing that it all came back to her experience when she was a child. Or more specially, how she handled that experience as a child and what it meant for her relationship with her sister. I liked how the episode framed both sides of her predicament: on the one hand, Ichabod points out that she was very young and afraid, and so it’s difficult not to sympathise with her decision to keep her mouth shut.

On the other hand, she knows deep down that she betrayed her sister and that Jenny is the one who told the truth, leading to the very real feelings of guilt that the demon preyed on.

That’s what I like about this sisterly dynamic. In any other story, Jenny would be the protagonist; the “crazy woman” who was dismissed and locked away, the Sarah Connor who works out in prison while awaiting the end of days, the one who makes a dramatic escape in order to head out and save the world. Instead it’s Abbie, the girl who did the wrong thing, who is our main character and who now has to cope with the consequences of her decision. Though it’s easy to understand why she lied, I’m glad that the show is making it tough for her to work through these issues, and it’s clear that she still has a long way to go before reconciliation with Jenny. It’s an interesting twist on the “mercy versus justice” theme, in which Abbie still isn’t going to be let off the hook for what she did in understandable circumstances.

The unfolding mystery was nicely played-out, with immediate hints given out in the dream as to Abbie’s guilty/doubtful conscience (“she didn’t do anything wrong…did she?”) and the accusatory nature of the other people in the room (Vega, Irving, Ichabod and finally the Sandman himself, each one shifting their attention more exclusively on Adult!Abbie).

But I’m going to assume that the flashbacks to the interrogation room were filtered through Abbie’s guilty and warped memories of the place, as I find it hard to believe that Jenny would have been forcibly dragged from the room like that (or that they were even in an interrogation cell to begin with).

By the time Abbie wakes up and reaches the jumper on the ledge, it’s obvious that it’s going to be Vega, to the point where we really didn’t need to get that split-second flashback to her dream. Everything worked much better later on in Ichabod and Abbie’s shared dream, when Ichabod walks into the police station and sees Vega, Gillespie and an empty noose hanging from the ceiling – that summed up the whole situation without any need to spell it out for us.

It was about the time that Ichabod and Abbie went after Mr Gillespie that the plot began to get a bit wonky. First of all, the whole “hostage crisis” sequence went on for far too long and resulted in Abbie and Ichabod realizing things that the audience had already figured out for themselves ten minutes ago (and had Ichabod needlessly run through the police line only to do nothing in the resolution of the situation).

Secondly, what was with that odd little sequence in which Mr Gillespie snags his leg on a nail, blots it with a cloth, and then sets it aside in a close-up shot so that the audience can see that a Native American symbol has seeped into it? Why did his blood do that? That symbol was meant to act as protection from the Sandman, so why does it appear when he’s being haunted by it? And Ichabod and Abbie never find it (Abbie tracks down the identity of the Sandman by researching dream demons) why even include it in the first place?

Plus the actor playing Mr Gillespie wasn’t all that good. Did he look particularly scared or horrified or guilt-ridden to you?

Then after they’ve identified the Sandman as a Native American spirit of retribution, Ichabod states that they need to find a Mohawk shaman. Now, I’m not even an American let alone a Native American, so I’m not even remotely qualified to speculate on the veracity of what happened in this sequence, but from a purely narrative point-of-view, it’s remarkably silly for Ichabod and Abbie to go to a random Native American car-dealer under the automatic assumption that he would be able to provide the shamanic services they needed.

But hey, what do you know – this guy has a sweat lodge outside of town filled with Native American paraphernalia. And he doesn’t mind leaving work in the middle of the day in order to help them out free of charge. And he lets Ichabod guilt-trip him with the old “all it takes is for one good man to do nothing” adage even though if their little foray into the spirit world had failed, he would have been left with two dead bodies full of drugs and scorpion venom to dispose of. Try explaining that to the police.

Thankfully it all got back on track with the third act in which Abbie literally faces her demons and rescues Ichabod from the Sandman. The atmosphere of the forest was particularly well down, especially the surrealism of Ichabod coming across the red door of the police precinct in the middle of the trees.

But if anything, it was Ichabod who was slightly ill-served by this script, for at this point the writers are running the risk of making him a bit too good to be true. His transition into modern life is marked out by a few comedy sequences of him trying to cope with new technology and fast food, but there’s no indication of trauma or shock or fear whatsoever.

Now granted, this is a fairly light-weight supernatural/horror show, so obviously they’re not going to delve too deeply into the mental state of a person thrown out of their time, but his flippant attitude in regards to his wife and all his long-dead friends means that he’s bordering on Dissonant Serenity. I mean, how does he feel about being trapped in the 21^st century? Does he miss his own time? Is he curious about what’s happened between then and now? There are some nice little touches here and there (such as him referring to the secretary as a “charwoman”) but in this episode he comes across as far too confident and calm. Hopefully we’ll get a quiet scene in an upcoming episode in which he’s allowed to be angry or melancholy or heck, even interested about what’s happened to him.

That said, this episode’s theme of truth and trust was well served by his established personality, especially in contrast with Abbie’s. Abbie is all about the lie she told as a child and how it destroyed her relationship with her sister (and almost her own life), yet Ichabod practically beams conviction and honesty and sincerity. It’s almost his superpower, as it allows him to connect with people and read body language and draw out information, as we saw him doing with both Jenny and Abbie. It’s rare to see such intuitiveness in a male character, but whether it’s pre-emptively answering Abbie’s questions or instinctively knowing when she’s holding back, it’s a great character trait that has the added bonus of nudging the plot along.

Miscellaneous Observations:

In the opening sequence Irving states that Ichabod is interrogating a witness and I rolled my eyes because – no way. I’m still not entirely sure in what capacity Ichabod is “working” for the police force, but at least this detail was the first clue that Abbie was dreaming.

That said, I thought it was interesting that Ichabod took on a threatening persona in her dream, and it kind of matched up with Ichabod’s insistence throughout the episode that she divulge the truth to him. And that said, the white-eyed Ichabod in her dream was also the one to give her a clue as to how to defeat the Sandman: “the truth will set you free.”

I don’t know what the script is calling for, but when Abbie mentions that she had a dream about him, Tom Mison plays his lines in a flirtatious tone. Don’t deny it.

So will these prophetic dreams be a staple part of Abbie’s life now that she’s the Second Witness as identified in Revelation?

That was a pretty realistic jump that Mrs Vega took out the building.

Abbie gets ticked off when Ichabod lifts the police tape for her. Heh.

I like that the sisters are called Abigail and Jennifer Mills. These names have an old-fashioned quality when said in full, though are easily modernised by calling them Abbie and Jenny. That said, I like that Ichabod refers to Jenny as “Miss Jenny”.

“It’s all over but the crying.” Great spooky line from Jenny!

There were other lines here and there that fitted in neatly with the theme of the episode, namely Ichabod’s “you’re secret is in the way of a truth that we must uncover” and “I’m too tired to lie.”

The receptionist that Abbie spoke to is the same one that gave Jenny her pills last week. I’m betting she’s up to something… there’s just something shifty about her if you ask me.

This show loves those quirky “upside down” shots, where a scene either begins or ends with the camera revolving 360 on its establishing shots. So far there’s been one each episode.

Ditto the recurring image of the cracked mirrors, which I suspect is less of a stylistic feature and more of a deliberate motif that we should be paying close attention to.

All the buildings in this show are beautiful, especially the brick facades. Must visit Tarrytown one day...

It was very sweet that Ichabod immediately decides to trail Abbie through the dream-world, though I’m surprised that the demons (or whatever else is in there) didn’t try to distract him with a vision of Katrina. Though seeing the state of the fandom at the moment, perhaps that would have just added fuel to the already-rampant ship wars.

They give us a scene of Ichabod discovering Red Bull but not television?

I’ll admit, right at the end there I was afraid that Abbie would enter her sister’s room only to find her hanging from the ceiling. (After all, there was that foreshadowing of the third noose in her dreams). But nope, Jenny and Abbie’s reconciliation with her will have to wait for another day. Whew.

So in short, this episode was a nice character-study for Abbie, answered some question about what happened to her and her sister, and provided a nice hook for next week. There were a lot of the usual horror tropes at work here: nightmares, strange eyes, suicides, sleep deprivation and so on, all of them so overused that I wasn’t actually scared at any point, but I enjoyed the elegant way it was strung together. Basically: a better villain in a weaker story than last time, but still plenty to look forward to.

In Hindsight:

Not a whole lot to add here; this story was designed to introduce the dynamic of the Mills sisters, though it's clear even this early that Jenny was going to be of utmost important down the track.

Of most interest is the fact that all the talk about how Jenny and Abbie hearing the voice in the words that said "come and see" actually had nothing to do with them at all. They just happened upon Moloch raising Jeremy from the dead and were dealt with accordingly with a bout of amnesia.

And they did manage to address some of my complaints about Ichabod: he does come across as a bit too-good-to-be-true here, but later episodes certainly deal with his pride in not wanting to admit when he's wrong and his other foibles in putting his wife's wellbeing over that of the bigger picture.    

Sleepy Hollow: Blood Moon

Blood Moon was exactly what I expected from the second episode of this show – not that that’s a bad thing. The writers are still establishing the character dynamics, building up their mythos and sowing seeds for future storylines, which means all the stuff about the witch was far less important than the scenes involving Ichabod/Abbie bonding, Abbie’s sister and ex-boyfriend, Ichabod’s dreams about his wife and Fish Out Of Temporal Water situation, Irving’s attitude, John Cho’s resurrection and Clancy Brown’s brief reappearance.
 
So let’s get Serilda out the way first. She was a fairly standard “filler” villain, the kind that simply serves to give Ichabod and Abbie an enemy to fight while the more important stuff happens in between scenes. The bits with the necklace were elegantly done (emerging out of John’s throat, being placed on a plinth under the blood moon, ending up around the witch’s neck) though at this point I think the Burn the Witch trope has all but run its course.
 
By today’s standards witch-burning has become such a potent symbol of patriarchal cruelty/medieval superstition that any depiction of a woman getting tied to the stake is bound to make an audience feel sympathy rather than satisfaction at her demise, regardless of whether or not said woman is actually evil. I think the writers tried to compensate for this by having the whole good coven/evil coven dichotomy going on, with Katrina (rather than a priest) being the one to sap Serilda’s powers.

On that note, this episode very much revolved around good witchcraft versus evil witchcraft, with Christianity put on the back-burner, so I’m still looking forward to seeing how the good coven managed to co-exist alongside the church and how Katrina dealt with her secret life.
 
There was a rather odd Red Herring regards to John Cho specifically asking Serilda’s victims for their names and insisting that he had to hear them in full (suggesting that it was somehow part of a spell that was needed to establish them as the intended sacrifices) but then it turned out that Serilda was just searching for the descendants of the judge that had her executed. So he was just… confirming their identities?
 
Okay whatever, it was a neat little twist that Serilda wasn’t after the little kid at all, but instead made off with his (adopted) father’s ashes. I have to say that her demise was a little anti-climactic, but I do wonder if that’s the last we’ll see of her. She was described as the leader of the dark coven and hinted at a history with Katrina (“you carry her stench in your heart”), giving the sense that her place in the mythos was one of relative importance. I guess we’ll have to wait and see.
 
Poor John Cho! (No one else seems to be bothering with his character’s name, so we’ll just stick with John Cho). That was a pretty gruesome sequence when the demon brought him back to life with his neck still yanked all the way over his shoulders, though I have to wonder why it killed him in the first place if it was just going to resurrect him again. Does resurrection put him under some sort of duress that he didn’t have whilst still alive? I only ask because it didn’t seem as though he wanted to do the demon’s bidding (apologising to his victims, grousing about digging up Serilda’s bones, etc) so hopefully we’ll eventually get some answers on how and why he got wrapped up in all this.
 
And what was up with him stalking Abbie in the tunnels without touching her? He didn’t look like he wanted to do her harm, in fact the expression on his face suggested he need help.
 

I’m still not really feeling Ichabod/Katrina. This is mainly because the writers are (at this stage) simply using her as Mrs Exposition, but also because Ichabod’s reactions to her seem a little off. Twice now he’s seen his long-dead wife, but reacts to her quite nonchalantly. In seeing her in his dream, he doesn’t think to move closer to her or try to embrace her in any way, and doesn’t seem particularly cut up about the fact that she’s a) dead and b) a witch. (Whereas he seems utterly fascinated by Abbie, just sayin’).
 
The only time I really get the sense of them as lovers is in that brief scene in the opening sequence. Hopefully there’ll soon be flashback sequences between the two of them so I can get a fix on what their relationship was like.
 
Of the two new characters, I must say I’m more interested in Abbie’s sister than her ex-boyfriend. Luke is certainly good-looking, and there’s the potential for more amusing alpha-male tension with Icabod, but I feel that Jenny is going to be much more integral to the story. Clearly she hasn’t dealt with her childhood trauma in the same way Abbie was able to, and apparently the demon is still interested in her. And judging by her fitness regime – she knows it. Can’t wait to meet her properly!
 
That said, there’s no way any self-respecting facility would a) have its staff goad the patients about monsters, or b) be so easily fooled by a patient hiding pills under their tongue. Though I suppose the only response to that is that this isn’t a self-respecting facility.
 
Miscellaneous Observations:
 
That was a fantastic cold opening with Headless Horseman being joined by the other three Horsemen of the Apocalypse. What is it about horses galloping in slow-motion that always sends a chill down your spine?
 
I’m disappointed that the other officers recanted their testimonies. I liked the idea that the existence of the supernatural would be an open secret in the town of Sleepy Hollow (and it would have given Ichabod a legitimate reason to be allowed into various crime scenes), but now it seems that they’ll ttake the usual “don’t ask, don’t tell” route, with Abbie treated as the misfit with the inexplicable sidekick that the rest of the force side-eyes.
 
I probably wasn’t meant to laugh at the footage of John Cho running headfirst into the mirror.
 
Scenes of time-slip characters trying to adjust to whatever new period they find themselves in will never not make for quality television. I especially loved Ichabod’s satisfied little expression when he uses the hair-dryer to dry his clothing (hey, we’ve all done it in an emergency).
 
I love Ichabod’s complete conviction in what he’s doing, and his need for Abbie to believe in him. “Something’s given you reason to doubt my veracity.” Perfect line and delivery.
 
Those opening credits are GORGEOUS! The flow from period to contemporary was a particularly nice touch.
 
I don’t know what’s cuter: Nicole Beharie’s eyes, nose or mouth.
 
“Help me understand.” Possibly the most romantic line I’ve heard since Aladdin asked Jasmine: “do you trust me?” or Sybil told Gwen: “your dream is my dream now.” Sorry, I don’t know how these comparisons spring to mind.
 
So I guessed they’ve tried to cover for last week’s nonsense over a condemned witch being buried in a churchyard by stating that Katrina’s remains are elsewhere and that the headstone was just a ruse to hide the Horseman’s head – but that still doesn’t explain how a witch’s headstone was allowed on consecrated ground. Maybe the decapitated priest had something to do with it…?
 
Great detail on the saggy folds of skin around John Cho’s neck.
 
The burnt makeup on Serilda wasn’t that impressive, but I loved the effect of her merging with her bones and seeing the embers of her skin flying upwards. Still, it’s a bit of an oversight that the writers didn’t really get across the consequences of her resurrection. I think Katrina mentioned something about her being the first of the Horseman’s army? Or something?
 
So is Clancy Brown going to be Abbie’s guardian angel now? The “believe in yourself” shtisk and needless riddles could get old, but I suppose we need some benevolent supernatural figures to offset all the darkness.
 
In Hindsight:
 
This early on the good/evil covens and Katrina’s role as a witch leader felt much more important than they ultimately ended up being. Serilda wasn’t particularly important in the long run either.
 
Though we got our first hint of the crush that Andy has on Abbie (stalking her in the tunnels without touching her) we never learn much more about how he initially became a servant of Moloch – and there’s a good chance we never will considering Andy Cho is now starring on Selfie.
 
All in all, I think I was pretty spot-on in calling this an episode that was more involved with establishing the central cast than adding important facets to the mythos.

Review: Mortal Fire

Okay, listen up people because I have one heck of a recommendation for you.

As I’ve already prattled on about extensively, I attended the Christchurch Writer’s Festival last weekend, and (among plenty of other authors) attended two seminars featuring New Zealand writer Elizabeth Knox.

Since the tickets were booked well in advance, I had the opportunity to rectify the fact that I’d never actually read any of Knox’s books. I knew that her Dreamhunter duology (comprised of Dreamhunter and Dreamquake) had been showered with accolades, and was surprised to realize that she was the author of The Vintner’s Luck (adapted into a film a few years ago), but I eventually settled on her most recent novel Mortal Fire, assuming that would be the one she’d most want to discuss.

It turns out that it’s set in the same continuity as the Dreamhunter duology, and that those previous books establish some of the historical backdrop that plays a part in Mortal Fire. Otherwise, the setting is a world so similar to our own that only a few name changes and the presence of hidden magic differentiates the two (and for the record, I had no problems reading them out-of-order).

The story is set in 1950s Southland, a large island republic in the South Pacific, and our protagonist is Canny Mochrie, a sixteen year old math genius who is forced to accompany her stepbrother Sholto and his girlfriend Susan on a research project to the town of Massenfer. Sholto has been instructed by his father (a writer and professor) to collect testimonies from witnesses concerning a somewhat strange mining accident that took place there thirty years earlier.

Canny has to go because her mother Sisema is returning to her home of the Shackle Islands where she’s to receive a medal for her actions during WWII (she paddled a canoe carrying two wounded soldiers from the Islands to Southland, saving their lives from Japanese occupiers), though she’s reluctant to accompany her stepbrother as it means leaving her best friend Marli in hospital, slowly succumbing to polio.

But once she reaches Zarene Valley, other things begin to monopolize her attention. Not least is the strange Zarene family, which seems to be composed of the very old and the very young, with no adults in between. Canny also realizes that what she calls the “Extra”, a type of magic that for most of her life has been only visible to herself, is being used by the Zarenes to keep hikers, wanderers, and other curiosity seekers from venturing too close to a strange house on the hill.

What is inside the house that the Zarenes seem so determined to protect and contain?

Canny makes it her business to find out, and when Knox spoke on the subject at the Writer’s Festival, I was amused to hear her describe Canny as “a female Odysseus” who uses cunning and trickery to achieve her goals. Her name is a clear indicator of the type of person she is: Canny (short for Akanesi, but clearly an allusion to her shrewdness) and Mochrie (which sounds too much like “mockery” to be a coincidence).

She’s certainly not above lying to and manipulating her long-suffering stepbrother Sholto – but it’s important to note that her motive in all of this is pure, for the reason she wants to master magic is so she can use it to heal her friend Marli. Canny is also an incredibly intelligent teenager, and Knox is equally clever enough to show rather than tell us this. A reader has to pay close attention to what Canny thinks, says and does if they want to keep up with her, which makes it all the more satisfying when we realize what she’s been up to the whole time. 

Knox’s grasp of language is glorious. Often it’s not so much the story as how you tell that story which takes a book from good to great, and there were passages throughout Mortal Fire that made me sigh with gleeful envy at how beautifully they conveyed ideas and descriptions, such as:

A silence came into the room and, like a cat, turned in a circle a few times, trampling down all arguments to make itself comfortable before settling.

Or:

When her dark fingers flashed, the bees calmed and time itself seemed to slow till the late afternoon sunlight was as thick, lucent, and golden as honey.

Or:

The path continued beside the river, passing between willows with fronds hanging in the water- drowned leaves, yellowing and furred with algae – and gentle slope covered in young birches and elderflower bushes.

Furthermore, Knox has a wonderful grasp of how to use the supernatural to shape her story and characterization. It’s not just something that informs the world-building, but is an intrinsic part of who these characters are and how they behave. If you’re a fan of Margaret Mahy (especially The Changeover, The Haunting and The Tricksters) you’ll love the way that Knox infuses the strange and wonderful into everyday life, conveying magic with a matter-of-fact tone that does nothing to rob it of its beauty and mystery. By keeping a sense of psychological realism to her characters and their reactions, Knox can meld the supernatural into the plot in a way that feels totally organic.

Also worth mentioning is that the book contains subtle moments of insight into gender and race, such as how Canny is forced to downplay her mathematic skills by pretending to consult with her male companions at math competitions (even though she’s doing all the work), or how her skin tone influences the way other characters respond to her, whether it be the curiosity of children or the vague suspicion of certain adults. Consider this great sentence, slipped almost casually into Canny’s pondering that the magic no longer exclusively belongs to her:

The sadness Canny felt was similar to the feeling she had when her teachers talked about 'our European Heritage,' and she went on for a time, head down, scuffing her feet, and whispering, 'Not mine, not mine’.

In short, Mortal Fire is a fascinating story, beautifully told, with a unique heroine and an engrossing plot. It’s also quite a thick book, so you can be assured of a few days’ worth of reading. Though it takes a couple of chapters to get cracking, I can honestly say that my first impulse on finishing was to flick straight back to the beginning and start it all over again. Do you know how many times that happens? Not very often.

And if you REALLY want to make your reading experience complete, then be sure to read Knox’s short story A Visit to the House on Terminal Hill. It serves not only as a prologue but a wonderful taste of what’s to come. It’s right here.

Christchurch Writer's Festival

This has been one of the longest weekends of my life, all thanks to the biannual Christchurch Writer’s Festival.

On Friday I was very lucky to have the opportunity to interview author Laini Taylor about her Daughter of Smoke and Bone trilogy. The vid is currently posted on Fantasy.Lit, so please check it out. Laini was very generous with her time and enthusiastic about her trilogy, with plenty to say about her inspiration, the creative process, and the upcoming film adaptation.

Eventually I’ll post it here as well, but I want the site to have exclusivity for a few weeks.

On Saturday I attended two panels, the first called The Truth About Writing KidLit with Gavin Bishop, Melinda Szymanik and Tania Roxborogh, and the second The Changeover: Thirty Years On with Stuart McKenzie, Elizabeth Know and Karen Healy.

The first dealt with the discussion on whether or not children’s literature should be ranked alongside adults in terms of quality and respect (yes!) and gave each of the three writers a chance to share the difficulties in writing for children – basically you have to say more but with less words.

The seminar on The Changeover was special – although this book by Margaret Mahy wasn’t a formative book of my childhood (though it was actually published the year I was born), it is a hugely important one in regards to how the supernatural can be used to accentuate characterization and theme. If you haven’t already, please read it.  

Plus I found out that a film adaptation is in the works, which was news to me!

An amusing thing happened immediately prior: a woman approached me and said: “hi” only to blink and realize I wasn’t who she thought I was, covering her mistake with: “I’m glad you’re here!” before fleeing. Turns out she was Karen Healy, a speaker at the second panel.

And on Sunday I attended Supernaturally with Laini Taylor and Elizabeth Knox, moderated by my friend Helen Lowe, which was filled with insight, compliments, and the inevitable Twilight discussion. Now this I can share with you:

The rest on this playlist.

And yes, if you watch both this and my Laini Taylor interview you’ll notice that the presence of beverage holders threaten to overthrow both recordings – first a disposable coffee cup and then a water jug. Let’s pretend they have thematic significance as symbols of creativity and replenishment (there’s only so much I can do with a Tablet).

And finally I attended Beyond the Veil: Historical Ghost Stories, with Diane Setterfield, Rosetta Allan and Coral Atkinson, admittedly because I wanted to hear Diane Setterfield, author of The Thirteenth Tale (though I’m certainly going to track down the published work of the others).

I even summoned up the courage to ask her what she thought of the BBC adaptation of her novel (she liked it, and said it was the closest she’d ever get to seeing inside the mind of a reader considering it was a creative endeavour that was more-or-less completely outside her control).

There were a lot of familiar faces there; I ran into my MA supervisor and my old high school English teacher, and was pleasantly gratified that both of them recognised me. I chatted to a few nice people and came home feeling re-galvanised in regards to my own creative efforts – which is naturally the main point of any such festival.

Which also means I’ve entered my most recent manuscript for the Tessa Duder Award, a New Zealand based competition for YA books. I don’t hold out much hope for actually winning, but at this stage it’s all about just getting your work out there.

Sleepy Hollow: Pilot

As part of the countdown to Sleepy Hollow season two, I’ve decided to rewatch the first season and repost my original reviews (with a few up-to-date notations). Here goes...

Any pilot episode has the challenge of (a) introducing the show’s premise, (b) introducing the main characters, and (c) delivering a reasonably satisfying and self-contained forty-five minute story, whilst (d) providing a hook for future episodes. It ain’t easy, and very few pilots manage to balance out all these aspects in a way that doesn’t make one element feel irrelevant or for the whole thing to come across as cluttered.

The most difficult aspect is always (c). The writers naturally want to give each character a memorable introduction and establish the dynamics that exist between the main cast members. Likewise, it’s considered a given that not everything will be resolved in a single episode, and that certain plot-threads will be tantalizingly left up in the air.

But most viewers will always want a sense of closure, however small. Therefore (c) will usually involve a standard Monster of the Week who has minimal motivation and a sliver of a plot that runs through the course of the episode. Remember Mary Collins from Merlin? Or Jeremy Creek from Smallville? Or Luke from Buffy the Vampire Slayer? Yeah, me neither. Their purpose was simply to generate minor conflict for the main cast to resolve before the closing credits, largely to showcase their abilities and demonstrate their personalities.

So I found it interesting that in the case of Sleepy Hollow, the writers not only go straight for the Headless Horseman as an antagonist (though granted, they make clear that there’s a Bigger Bad lurking somewhere in the background), but leave him undefeated by the end of the episode.

Abbie and Ichabod get hold of his skull, but the best they manage to do is hold him off until the sun rises, and things are far from resolved between them. As such, this felt very much like the first chapter in a larger story than a “formula setting” opener that tells the audience exactly what to expect from the rest of the show.

That said, I think the show has set itself up pretty nicely to follow a “weekly monster/crime” scenario whilst developing characters and deepening the mythology as it goes. Sheriff Corbin’s hidden file of unsolved mysteries (much like Chloe Sullivan’s Wall of Weird) and the idea of Sleepy Hollow being the epicentre of supernatural events (hugely reminiscent of Sunnydale’s proximity to a Hellmouth) means that Ichabod and Abbie could hypothetically be solving weird mysteries on a weekly basis while clues as to their pasts are gradually metered out with the Apocalypse scheduled for the season finale. The next episode should tell us which route the writers plan to take.

***

The strongest aspect is undoubtedly the characters. Ichabod is not only hot with a cute accent and a Badass Longcoat, but there was a great balance of the character being curious/overwhelmed/delighted at all the modern tech that surrounded him as well as a clear sense of his intelligence and heightened instincts when it comes to “reading” the people around him and following the signs that appear to him.

As for Abbie, I don’t think I’ve ever felt such instantaneous warmth towards a fictional character since…ever. I’m a sucker for the outward feistiness/inward vulnerability trope, and Nicole Beharie captured that without going too overboard in either direction. In shows like this you almost always have a Mulder and Scully type partnership, with one as the cynic and the other as the believer, yet here both sides exist (and are at war) within Abbie. She’s clearly already half-convinced by Ichabod’s claims, and that the writers have already inserted her into the mythos regarding her experience as a child was a stroke of genius. Their dynamic felt oddly like that of a religious leader and a reluctant disciple that has to be convinced of her own importance.

And what’s special about that is that Ichabod isn’t being mysterious or deceitful about the roles he thinks they’re going to play (and yes, on the heels of Merlin I can’t help but compare it to Arthur and Merlin’s supposed “destiny” that Merlin knew all about but never shared with Arthur, thus rendering it unattainable). Instead of that enigmatic Obi-Wan Kenobi half-truths and murky prophecies bullshit, Ichabod is being completely open and sincere and truthful about what he believes in, and I think that conviction alone is what compelled Abbie to stay in Sleepy Hollow. She may not believe what’s happening, but she knows that he does, and she wants to stick around for that.

As for shipping…well, I’m an easy-going shipper at the best of times. If it happens, it happens. If it doesn’t, it doesn’t. Either way I’ll be squeeing over the height difference and the way they look at each other. What’s that thing called when a baby animal hatches and latches onto the first thing that it sees? That’s totally what’s just happened with Icabod and Abbie.

Though I suppose the presence of Katrina throws something of a spanner in the works, and I’ll admit that I’m not quite sure what the writers have planned for her character. She doesn’t really fit into the Disposable Woman category (since she’s apparently a cast regular who is permanently trapped somewhere in the netherworlds) but I didn’t really get a husband/wife vibe from her two scenes with Ichabod. Instead I got the sense that they didn’t really know each other that well, exemplified by the fact that Icabod didn’t even know she was a witch.

The rest of the cast is promising, particularly Captain Irving (get it? GET IT?) I’m not entirely sure what he’s up to yet, though I think he’s eventually going to come down on the side of the angels. It’s not just the name, but the fact that he’s so clearly being telegraphed as dodgy. It seems a typical Red Herring Mole scenario.

 

***

As for the mythology – that was all over the place. Let me see if I’ve got this straight…
The Headless Horseman is in fact one of the four Horsemen of the Apocalypse (identifiable by the brand on his hand and his pale horse). Specifically, he’s Death. Ichabod was ordered by George Washington to kill this mercenary Horseman in order to prevent the coming Apocalypse and save the world.

There are currently two covens at work within the world: one good and one evil. Presumably the evil one is working to assist the coming Apocalypse while the good one is trying to prevent it. Katrina and the priest (did he get a name?) are part of the good one, and after Ichabod is mortally wounded after killing the Horseman, they discover that there’s now a mystical bond between them. So they engineer it so that Ichabod will sleep until the Horseman rises again. The Horseman’s body is thrown in the river, and his skull buried in Katrina’s fake grave, for he can only fulfil his purpose if he’s whole.

Ichabod wakes up only because someone else awakened the Horseman first.

Somehow it’s all connected to an experience Abbie had as a teenager in which she and her sister come across four white trees in the forest, hear the voice of a strange demon, and wake up later on the side of the road. Apparently the exact same thing happened to a farmer in 1882, who believed that the trees were symbolic of the four Horsemen and that the demon was sent there to raise them.

Katrina’s spirit is somehow trapped in the netherworld, Ichabod and Abbie are the first and second witnesses mentioned in the Bible who are brought together for seven years (seven seasons?) worth of tribulations, and John Cho’s character was somehow in cahoots with the demon that is apparently causing all this – only for him to be killed for his failure.

Got it.

***

The atmosphere of the show was exactly what I’d hope for; not only a great blend of Old World charm and modernity, but with a style that was reminiscent of Tim Burton’s Sleepy Hollow and M. Night Shymalan’s The Village (yeah, the latter was a stupid movie, but you can’t say that it wasn’t gorgeous to look at).There was even a bit of Pan’s Labyrinth thrown in there what with the strange white demon at the end.

Two final things (which are really the same thing): that the immediate popularity of Sleepy Hollow and the success of Elementary are indicative of the fact that you don’t have to have a white boy bromance to get an audience’s attention. After those rather depressing statistics over what type of pairings fandom is utterly obsessed with, it’s heartening to know that some people (perhaps quite a lot of people) are just getting plain old sick and tired of that dynamic.

And on that note, the role of Clancy Brown as Sheriff Corbin made me smile. Think about it: this is the character that has devoted many years of his life to accumulating a file full of strange and supernatural occurrences. He’s the conspiracy nut that’s been waiting for the day when his unusual hobby will be validated by the appearance of a man like Ichabod. In any other show, it would be him and Ichabod teaming up to kick demon ass. Ichabod would be the answer to his prayers, the proof of his crazy theories. Abbie would be just another component of another mysterious event; a guest-star of the week that the menfolk help and then forget about.

But here, Sheriff Corbin’s role is to die in order to facilitate Abbie’s journey. She’s the one that’ll be dipping into that file in search of answers. She’s the one that’s going to be teaming up with Ichabod in order to solve her own mystery, hopefully on her own terms. And it would appear that they’ll be introducing her sister as soon as next week.

This show is awesome.

Miscellaneous Observations:

I’m always deeply interested in the fictional portrayals of the relationship that exists between Christianity and witchcraft/paganism/magic, whether it be conflict or complimentary. The existence of a priest with magical powers and a witch that uses the Bible in her spells would suggest Sleepy Hollow is going with the latter option, so it’ll be interesting to see how they handle that from here.

Was there a reason the Horseman went to that particular farmhouse first, or was it just authorial fiat at work? (After all, they’ve got to have the Horseman demonstrate how much of a threat he is somehow). But he goes after the priest specifically and for obvious reasons – so why the people at the farmhouse?

Great effect on the red-hot blade of the Horseman’s axe, so much so that I was disappointed when he upgraded to a rifle (or whatever it was – I know nothing about guns). But was his horse meant to be an Evil Albino? It was obviously “a pale horse” as per the Biblical description, but its eyes looked more pink than Red Eyes, Take Warning.

It seems a bit unlikely that Ichabod would be hauled in as a suspect for the murders at the farmhouse when Abbie saw the killer and Ichabod was clearly miles away. I’m going to assume that John Cho’s character knew what was really going on and took him in as a diversion from the Horseman.

Years ago, on the first season of Charmed, John Cho featured as a guest star (a ghost to be specific). The funny thing is that that show had a cop called Andy Trudeau, and at one point John Cho’s character sarcastically complains that his fate is in the hands of a cop called Andy. Guess what his name is here…

Ichabod says that he was ordered to kill a mercenary who was “recognisable by a mark on his hand.” Not by the weird metal mask he was wearing?

Why did Katrina’s gravestone look brand new? And if she was burnt as a witch, why was she buried in consecrated ground? I suppose you could argue that her body was never there to begin with and it was just a hiding place for the skull, but it was probably my biggest nitpick of the episode.

I laughed when the Headless Horseman “hid” on the couch in Andy’s house. All he had to do was sit down!

Abbie must have had razor sharp teeth to make Andy’s thumb bleed that much.

Most interesting is that by the end, the cat’s out of the bag in regards to the supernatural happenings in Sleepy Hollow. Two cops saw the Headless Horseman and it’s going to be impossible to explain or cover-up Andy’s death. So it’ll be an intriguing twist on the genre to see Ichabod and Abbie working without the need to hide the supernatural aspect of their cases from their colleges.

It’s the Book of Revelation, singular, not Revelations, plural. Just saying.

In Hindsight:

I was wrong about the formulaic aspect of the show, as even though there were a couple of episodes that dealt with Abbie and Ichabod facing off against one-shot monsters, for the most part Sleepy Hollow is highly serialized. By the end I was pretty impressed by the foreshadowing and continuity that was prevalent throughout the season, with components of the Myth Arc strewn across each episode in a tight on-going storyline.

I was completely wrong in my assumptions about Captain Irving – I was under the impression that he definitely knew more than he was letting on, but that the show was trying to make us believe he was an antagonist. It turns out neither was true – he was completely oblivious to the supernatural occurrences in the area and definitely a good guy. And on that note, it’s rather disappointing that the initial exposure of the supernatural to the police force was almost instantly covered up again.

They never did really figure out what to do with Katrina, did they? Pity. And the whole “good coven versus evil coven” never really went anywhere either.

And on that note, who was it that actually resurrected the Headless Horseman? Was it John Parish? Or Moloch? Bits of this mythology definitely got more convoluted than was strictly necessary.

My observation that John Cho plays a cop called Andy and once complained about that very name on Charmed did not go unnoticed by the rest of fandom. There’s a GIF set out there somewhere of both scenes spliced together.

Outlander: The Gathering

So it wasn’t just me, this episode was a bit of a dud, right? It was comprised of three distinct parts which had absolutely no thematic or narrative connection to one another, and which all conclude in disappointing anti-climaxes.

We start with Claire continuing to plan her escape by tying hair ribbons to tree branches in the woods, covering her actions with a hunting game she plays with the local children. She’s got a horse and provisions prepared, and she believes that the upcoming Gathering – in which every man of the clan swears their allegiance to Colum – will provide the perfect distraction for her nocturnal escape. She’s even got a sedative prepared for her personal guards.

So she’s plotted her escape with a fair amount of guile, but it all comes to naught when she bumps into Jamie and is informed that the woods are guarded by extra men. Just like that, she gives up.

Oh, and I forgot to mention the requisite attempted rape, not only from a bunch of drunken men, but from Dougal, who initially saves her from the aforementioned drunks. She clouts him over the head with a stool and Jamie laughs it off, telling Claire that a) Dougal was drunk, and b) he won’t remember it in the morning.

I’m not sure how to react to this, for up until this scene I found Dougal to be one of the show’s strongest characters. He’s rightly suspicious of Claire, his rivalry with Jaime is interesting, and I’m not quite sure where he stands in regards to his brother. Is he as loyal as he says, or is he just waiting for the opportunity to slip a knife in between his ribs?

He gets more interesting material later when it comes to his interactions with Jaime and Geordie, but for me it’s always going to be tainted by his attempt to force himself on Claire. And no, I don’t want to hear the old “that’s how it was back then” excuse – rape has never been condoned in the manner with which it was depicted here, and from a Doylistic point-of-view it’s a clear indicator that we’re not supposed to trust or like any character who partakes in it.

But I’m getting ahead of myself. After her escape attempt is thwarted, Jamie offers to escort her back to the castle, only to get roped into the Gathering. Turns out this creates something of a Succession Crisis. If Jamie swears allegiance to Colum, he’ll become his legal heir and so bump Dougal out of his position, but if he doesn’t swear allegiance it’ll be considered a dire insult that demands retribution. Either way, he’ll earn both men’s animosity.

Claire is distraught, whispering “it’s all my fault”, even though it’s technically the fault of the men who are keeping her at Castle Leoch against her will, and Jamie for not coming up with a simple excuse to avoid the great hall. But luckily, though Jamie is stymied at the thought of simply not entering a room, he finds a loophole in the technicalities of the oath-swearing in a way that placates both men. The problem is resolved before you even have a chance to hold your breath.

Finally, the last quarter deals with a pig hunt that Claire is super-indignant about considering it involves the death of a poor defenceless pig. Hey, you do want to eat tonight, don’t you? But after the pig fatally gouges a man to death, Claire wins the respect of Dougal by not only handing the blood and gore, but easing Georgie into a peaceful death with talk of his home.

Oh, and early in the hunt, Dougal actually saves Claire’s life by shooting another pig that was all posed to charge her. If not for the attempt rape in the corridor, I’d be officially more intrigued by the Dougal/Claire dynamic than the Claire/Jamie one.

So Dougal commissions Claire to travel with him on his journey to collect taxes from the surrounding neighbourhood – and the episode ends on a rather ominous note as she accompanies him and the other men into the countryside.

Altogether, this episode wasn’t particularly compelling, though I liked the odd little scene here and there. Laoghaire’s request for a love potion and Claire appropriating lines from The Wizard of Oz was very cute (though I’m sure it’ll be back to bite her later on), and Geillis continues to read Claire like an open book in regards to her plans and intentions.
On that note, I love that there has so far been three major female characters on this show, and all of them (Laoghaire, Geillis and Mrs Fitz have shown friendliness and solidarity to Claire – though when the inevitable witch accusations emerge, there’s a good chance that Laoghaire will turn on her).

The voiceovers are still awful, and this week were even spliced BETWEEN spoken lines of dialogue; so superfluously that it beggars belief. The 1950s music that softly plays as Claire moves through the corridors of the 18^th century castle is a much better way of showing us what’s going on in her mind.

And we get a look at Shinty – a game where apparently the only rule was no eye gouging. Yikes.

Oh, and apparently Diana Gabaldon had a cameo appearance in this episode – she was the woman on the balcony that told Claire to “shush.”

Doctor Who: Into the Dalek

As ever, twelve brief thoughts on this latest episode.

1. Apparently it wasn’t enough that Irene Adler was virtually identical to River Song, for now the Doctor is more-or-less indistinguishable from Sherlock Holmes. More interested in the problem than the people? Rude and condescending to those around him, even when they’re struggling with grief or trauma? Lines like: “she cares so I don’t have to”? All of this could just have easily been material for Cumberbatch’s Sherlock.

I know everyone makes empty threats to flounce away from a show if their threshold of intolerance is crossed (without the slightest bit of intention of actually doing so), but if I have to put up with yet another asshole protagonist who gets away with treating people like crap because he’s good at what he does, I really am quitting. I totally mean it this time!

2. Every new Doctor needs at least one Dalek story, regardless of how overused they are at this stage. It’s just the rule. I’ll get to the moral implications of “a good Dalek” further down, but I generally liked the premise of a sick Dalek needing a doctor, and of the Doctor and his companions being miniaturized in order to fix it from the inside.

I especially liked the little bit of world-building that established the participants had to keep breathing as they shrank, comparing the situation to poking holes in the film of a microwave dinner. Nice touch.

3. So this episode actually had POC in it. More than one! Danny Pink seems likeable enough, even if the introduction to his soldier background was a little heavy handed (that single tear? Really?) though Journey Blue remained more of a cypher. I have no idea why she wanted to travel with the Doctor after such an unpleasant adventure and his complete callousness over the death of her brother, so I suspect that it was simply to establish the Doctor’s newfound aversion to soldiers.

You could argue that he wants to distance himself from the military side of things after the events of Trenzalore, but I suspect it had more to do with setting up tension with Danny Pink when they inevitably cross paths further down the line.

4. I’m assuming that the last names Blue and Pink were not only deliberate, but hold some deep significance?

5. On the topic of Journey and Danny, I still can’t get as attached to supporting characters as I did in the RTD era. It can’t just be because I feel the acting isn’t as good (as that would mean they’re inexplicably casting subpar actors for every role) so I’m going to say it’s because the actors are given one-liners and dramatic inflections instead of naturalistic dialogue. None of them come alive for me as people.

Even the death of Journey’s brother is turned into a witty quip: “he burnt to death a couple of hours ago so he’s really letting me down today.” Hah...hah?

6. But I thought the splicing between different times actually worked well this time around, mainly because it was used to keep things brisk, not to demonstrate cleverness. (I’m referring to Clara and Danny’s conversation and Danny’s agonised recap of it afterwards).

7. Another appearance from Missy, this time welcoming Gretchen into heaven – or what passes for heaven. These bits are quite disconcerting. Not only does Gretchen’s arrival at Missy’s table undermine her sacrifice, but it suggests she hasn’t died in the truest sense of the word. So what’s really going on? As ever, when the characterization is shallow it’s the questions raised by the plot (LOST style) that keep me tuning in.

8. Because this show is so ever-changing and expansive, it’s almost impossible for me to pay close attention to continuity and/or character development. I’ve seen plenty of other reviews contrast Into the Dalek to previous episodes, trying to plot the course of the Doctor’s characterization and the show’s general themes from one season to another. That way lies madness. The only way I can watch this show (especially in the Moffat era) is to take each episode as its own separate entity with a singular thread of plot-points that are occasionally and unsatisfactorily explained.

I mean heck, there was absolutely nothing in this episode to indicate that Clara was originally introduced as a Dalek. There is no continuity here; just Moffat ideas that are brought up and cast aside just as quickly.

9. The question of whether or not there could be a good Dalek was an interesting enough question to pose, though not untangled properly by the narration, and stymied by the fact that they never really articulated what they meant by “good”. At the beginning of the episode the Dalek was crying out for the extermination of the Daleks, and by the end it was... crying out for the extermination of the Daleks. Only by this point, no one can bring themselves to call it “good”.  

A better theme to explore would have been nature versus nurture (or rather, nurture versus programming) and whether what’s happened to the Dalek (on witnessing the birth of the star) is a true epiphany or just a malfunction. That a Dalek overcoming its hatred could be considered a glitch easily repaired and erased was an interesting point to make, one that calls into question what exactly “good” is, but the message got a bit muddled when the Dalek absorbed the Doctor’s memories and reasserted its “destroy the Daleks” mantra based on the Doctor’s personal hatred of their race. Back to square one.

10. In short, it became more about the Doctor than the Dalek, which is unsurprising, but undermines poor Rusty’s acknowledgement that resistance against life is futile. Yet perhaps it was all worth it for the creepy last “stare” it gave the Doctor and the line: “you are a good Dalek.” The Doctor is just as capable of dishing out death and destruction as any Dalek, and the only thing that differentiates between the two is that at least the Doctor is defending the innocent when he does so.

11. The Doctor asks Clara: “Am I a good man?” I dunno. But he’s definitely not a nice one.

12. Um... I like Clara’s outfits.