This episode certainly began on an ominous note, for slipped in between the ending of the opening credits and a short repetition of last week’s final scene was a panning shot over a red coat and a razor; two objects that are highly emblematic of a certain character and suggestive of what is to follow.
Having been approached and detained by an English garrison, Clare cannot help but feel more at ease. And you can’t blame her for this; it’s human nature to be more comfortable among your own people, and despite the significant gap in time periods, it still is much less of a culture shock to dine with a group of English men. She knows how to be charming and gracious to a room of like-minded people.
But the clever thing about this episode is that her feelings of belonging gradually eroded over the course of her time with the English, until once more she is swept out into the safety and acceptance of the Scottish Highlands instead.
Even more remarkable is that a good 90% of this episode took place in a single building; a single room in fact. It is the most modern we’ve seen yet, a far cry from the gloomy halls of Castle Leoch, with wallpaper, rich furnishings, and pictures on the wall. It's not a million miles away from resembling a contemporary dining room, which makes it all the more disturbing when we see what goes on inside it during the course of the episode.
When Claire ushered into the room she’s showered with amiable attention and warmth by General Thomas; though he is simultaneously rude and hostile to Dougal, insulting his accent and attire.
Yet there’s an interesting perspective in how Clare handles this situation and the way the room responds to it – when she scolds Dougal and Thomas for acting like children, she’s tolerated; even indulged. She’s playing the part of the disapproving school marm; a role that these men recognize and value. It’s they that are disrupting the mode of behaviour she symbolizes: refinement and civility, and they apologise accordingly.
But later on in the dinner, after Dougal has left for the tavern, she speaks out against the treatment of the Scots and is met with a much different reception. Stony silence greets her outspoken opinions on politics, for now she is the one encroaching on their territory. It is not simply that she is a woman (though one of the men present cannot help but comment on it), but also due to her more modern viewpoint on borders and ownership.
To a woman who has just lived through WWII, her understanding of land and territory is conceptualized by the words “theirs” and “ours”. For this room full of soldiers, the Scottish Highlands is the property of the English monarch. Claire is an outspoken woman even in her own time, and now she’s crossed a definite line by entering a realm of discussion that she's not welcome to hold an opinion on.
Then of course we get an unpleasant visit from Jack Randall, who immediately recognises Claire from their altercation in the forest.
I initially felt that Claire seemed far too antagonistic and fiery around a man who had attempted to rape her (it’s okay to let her show fear and vulnerability in such a scenario) but then I conceded that she’s probably still confused over the fact that he’s the splitting image of her husband; is in fact his ancestor.
So what follows in their interactions is a rather heart-rending attempt from Claire to establish a rapport with this otherwise loathsome man; reminded every moment of her own loving husband. A quick flashback establishes a further link between them: Claire witnesses Randall getting shaved, and recalls a similar time in which she did the same to Frank (told you that razor was symbolic!)
Credit has to be given to Tobias Menzies for differentiating between Frank and Jack so thoroughly – they speak, move and even look different despite being – you know, the same actor. It’s not quite a Tatiana Maslany level transformation, but then again, it shouldn’t be. There needs to be enough of a resemblance beyond the physical for Claire to let her guard down around him.
Having found in him the empty dining room, what can only be called a “casual interrogation” follows. Randall is convinced that she’s a spy of some kind, and having already played the part of the English Rose for the benefit of the other Englishmen, Claire now slips into the role of Lovelorn Fool. She spins a story about how she followed a man to the Highlands, another acceptable role for a woman, but uses her true emotions to infuse it with sincerity. In between her lines of loving a soldier only to find that he was cruel and unworthy is her own experience of following Frank to Scotland and finding Jack Randall instead. Naturally, he doesn’t buy her story for a second.
It’s uncomfortable watching how Randall owns the room; how the two of them partake in a sinister game of musical chairs as they move about, with Randall deliberately sharpening a pencil with his knife and sketching her portrait (I initially assumed it was to cross-check her story with the officers, but perhaps it was just to unnerve her) before sharing his own story.
He describes flogging Jamie in erotic terms (exploding, shaking, fluttering are but three of the adjectives in his monologue) but manages to fool Claire into thinking he’s ready to change over a new leaf. And once again, Claire slips into a role, this time as the typical “missionary”, the type of woman that so often likes to rehabilitate broken men.
Of course, this is born out of Jack's likeness to her husband and her recognition of what sounds like PTSD, but for a second there it really feels as though she loses her centrality in the narrative; that by offering Jack her sympathy and comfort the scene becomes more about him than her.
And how many times have we seen a female character become subsumed by her desire to “save” a man from himself? You certainly feel the first hint of that when she begins to insist upon his capacity for redemption. Suddenly the scene revolves around his experiences.
And yet Frank is playing with her just as surely as she initially tried to play him. He certainly doesn’t regret flogging Jamie and his sadistic streak is demonstrated when he promises to take her to Inverness, ascertains that she’s happy about it, and promptly punches her in the stomach when she stands.
I half expected it, and it was still pretty shocking.
While on the floor he orders one of his underlings to kick her, and in a strange way I find this sort of snivelling coward (who reluctantly obeys) to be worse than Randall. That youth, however cowed he may be and however much he believes he has to follow orders, knows on a fundamental level that kicking a woman is a terrible thing to do – you can tell by the expression on his face. But he did it anyway. Though we know next to nothing about this character, it’s an uncomfortable reminder of how easy it is to do something terrible simply because we’ve been told to.
But luckily Dougal is at hand to stop things getting further out of hand. I would appreciate this newfound rapport between the two of them more were it not for that damn altercation in the corridor of a few episodes ago. My only choice at this point is to pretend it never happened. And you don’t need me to explain the implications of that.
But he also comes up with a plan that will keep Claire out of English hands: marry a Scotsman. Jamie in fact – who has been absent for most of this episode, another fantastic reminder that though he’s technically the leading man, this is Claire’s story and he is her love interest. And another fun subversion in their courtship is established – only one of them is a virgin, and it’s not the heroine.
So it ends on Claire agreeing to marry Jamie in order to protect herself from Randall. From her attempt to connect with the man whose hereditary line will eventually lead to the birth of her husband springs the irony of her having to marry another man in order to protect herself from him; eventuating in the very unfaithfulness that Frank himself half-expected of her back in the very first episode. On the heels of Doctor Who, I can’t help but feel that this is a time-travelling trope at work, though on a much more subtle level than anything to be found in that other sci-fi show.
As it happens, this may well be my final Outlander review. Though I’ll continue to watch and no doubt post my final thoughts at the show’s conclusion, I only ever started in order to tide myself over until Sleepy Hollow returned – and since there’s only so many hours in the day, I’m going to put this one on the backburner for a while.
1. So this was an episode that’s going to make my twelve bullet-point system really difficult to maintain. It’s also the first episode of Doctor Who in a long time that I’ve been compelled to watch twice.
2. At first glance (or at least judging from the trailer) Listen is the requisite scary monster episode. And let’s face it – Moffat is good at these. The Weeping Angels, the Silence, Prisoner Zero, that kid with the gas mask... you know they scared you.
But as it turns out, this wasn’t the requisite scary monster episode. Everything was shaping up to be another round of “don’t look, don’t blink, don’t hold your breath, it’s there in the corner of your eye, in the reflection, just behind your shoulder” suspense, with all the usual boxes ticked: the creepy noises, the spooky atmosphere, the shrouded figure you couldn’t see or understand.
Yet at the denouement of this episode we learn ... there was nothing there at all. Or if there was something there, we don’t get a proper explanation for it. Was it a kid playing a prank? A figment of an overworked imagination? A creature that just doesn’t want to be seen? The embodiment of the nightmare?
We don’t know. More importantly, it doesn’t matter. Whatever it is or isn’t, it only exists in order to get us thinking about fear.
And that’s what fundamentally separates the episode from what is otherwise its closest relative: the entity in Midnight. Whatever the Midnight creature was, it was real. It was a character. It had power and impact. The terror of it came from the fact that the Doctor couldn’t define it, couldn’t identify it, couldn’t explain it. It was the focus of that particular story.
Not so here. From a Doylist perspective, whatever is lurking in the shadows of Listen is less important than how the characters respond to it. The focus shifts from it to them.
2. It starts a little randomly, with the Doctor ruminating aloud to himself about the theory of evolution and the possibility that some creatures having perfected the art of hiding.
This sequence is mostly just to introduce the premise and themes of the episode (though I give Moffat credit for trying to justify the Doctor’s audible pondering by speculating that talking to oneself is an unconscious side-effect of someone else listening), but from this point the script jumps a little too abruptly to the hypothesis that everyone has had the same identical nightmare at some point in their lives.
How do we get from Point A to Point B? No idea. But it gives us a mystery to solve. In this case: a nightmare that everybody throughout history has had (except me, apparently). There’s even a short montage of people in a variety of eras experiencing it: of waking up, sitting upright, and feeling something under the bed grab their ankle.
3. So already there are some classic Moffatisms at work. He’s the master frightener, so of course he would raise concepts like a nightmare shared across history/around the world, and a theory that postulates you’re never truly alone. There are also plenty of echoes of his previous work: the orphanage filled with the Silence (here a boy’s boarding school) and the Weeping Angels that you can’t take your eyes off (inverted here when the Doctor orders Danny and Clara to ignore the thing on the bed), as well as bits and pieces of other episodes: the aforementioned Midnight entity, an early time-traveller that ends up in the wrong place (Hide), and a visit to the very end of the Universe (shouldn’t there be a rocket ship heading for Utopia somewhere out there?)
Another Moffat staple is of course giving ordinary happenstance a sinister edge. We’ve all had those moments where we’ve glimpsed something out the corner of our eye, heard something we can’t understand, gotten dizzy for no particular reason – and Moffat loves to spin out out supernatural explanations for such things.
Here it’s not only talking aloud to oneself and the prickle on the back of your neck, but of putting things down and finding them elsewhere: a piece of chalk, a coffee cup – and yet a second after it disappears, we realize the cup that goes missing from the janitor’s desk was taken by the Doctor himself.
This is a clue.
4. But I’m getting ahead of myself. The Doctor has a plan to investigate further by using Clara and the Tardis to travel back to a point in her past – the point in which she had the nightmare. Slight problem: she gets distracted by her terrible date with Danny Pink and takes the Tardis back to a point in his past.
Naturally it’s the Doctor’s meddling with Danny that inspires him to become the very soldier that Clara was struggling with on their date with each other. Textbook stuff. But then we get the chilling scene that depicts Clara proving there’s nothing scary under the bed, only for something unseen to get on top of it.
As the episode goes on, more Moffatisms pile up. The practical utilization of the Tardis that allows Clara to return to her date moments after leaving it (despite a lengthy interim). A random appearance from an equally random individual that’s only given context afterwards. A spooky nursery rhyme. And of course, a Brick Joke – specifically the merging of Clara’s wide face and her need for three mirrors.
It all accumulates in the sublime twist that it was ultimately Clara herself who was the bogeyman hiding underneath the Doctor’s bed.
But how do we get to that point?
5. As we’ve already seen, Clara and Danny find themselves on an excruciatingly awkward first date, even though the writer of Coupling can’t help but give them dialogue that’s a bit too witty for actors who are trying to act tongue-tied. Never mind; Danny is still super-touchy when it comes to his military past and is soon listing all the life-saving activities he did whilst serving.
Clara storms out, only to be dropped off at the restaurant mere moments after her past self left it. She doesn’t fare much better during her second attempt; Danny is suspicious that she’s somehow picked up the name Rupert, and then a guy in a space suit strolls in and gestures to her.
Assuming it’s the Doctor, complaining that this night can’t get any more surreal, she storms back into the Tardis only for the helmet to come off and reveal that it’s Danny.
Actually it’s not; it’s Orson Pink, a man heavily implied to be Clara’s descendant. He’s a time traveller; one of the first in fact, only he was accidentally shot way too far into the future.
The episode is evenly divided between Danny’s past and Orson Pink’s future, with Clara’s date taking place at the beginning, midpoint and end. You have to admit, it really is wonderful the way Moffat actually uses time-travel like this, slipping back and forward to the recent past and the distant future within a forty-five minute time frame. It’s only when he tries to pack too much into any singular episode that he fails; tries to convince us that the multiverse is at stake at the end of every season finale, that things spiral out of control. But this? A lengthy expedition that’s enclosed within the beginning and end of a single date? That works.
6. Here’s another Moffatism – the way he sets up scares. Remember in The Girl in the Fireplace how the Doctor noticed that all the clocks were broken and then asked what was ticking? Or in The Eleventh Hour when he noticed how blasé Amelia Pond was about his appearance and so inferred that whatever was in her room MUST be terrifying?
Here the same logic-based build-up is used when the Doctor tests Danny by asking him if he wants to stay one more night and then pointing out that even though they’re at the end of everything, that there’s nothing else left alive in the entire Universe – the door is still locked.
7. Significantly less scary than the thing on the bed is the Doctor and Clara hearing knocks and creaks at the end of time. It’s the same general premise, but simply not as immediate as the bedroom scene. Still, the same logic applies – there are definite noises, but nothing’s there. Just as the thing on the bed could have been a child playing a silly prank, all the rational explanations the Doctor and Orson give to explain the end-of-the-world phenomena might well be the correct ones.
But the Doctor is determined to test his hypothesis, to learn whether creatures that have evolved into the perfect hiders will emerge when there’s only one person left in the Universe to see them. He’s knocked unconscious before finding out.
8. And there’s a final stop once the Doctor is knocked out and Clara ends up in a barn. Assuming she’ll be somewhere in Orson’s time line, she doesn’t realize she’s in the Doctor’s childhood.
This is where things get a bit ... iffy.
Clara goes exploring the loft where a child lies crying in bed and swiftly hides under it when she hears people coming. My first problem is that both the crying from the child and the voice-overs from the adults were awfully fake. Both sounded like a tape recording, and left me with the false impression that Clara was walking into some sort of trap.
The adults come in for no real reason but to drop exposition that the child in bed is the Doctor before leaving almost immediately, and when the boy sits up in bed, Clara instinctively grabs his ankle. Aha!
She gently tells the boy that it’s all a dream, and he goes back to sleep. Nicely done. But Moffat just can’t help himself. Clara doubles back and starts a seemingly endless monologue about fear and superpowers and listening and what it all means.
Oh, and on top of that, we learn that this is the very barn that the War Doctor will enter to detonate the Moment. And yes, I recognise the thematic relevance of a reluctant soldier that was established with Danny earlier in the episode, but at this point it just felt like overkill. Much like the play on the word “fear” as the Doctor’s constant “companion.”
Too much, Moffat! Rein it in!
At the same time, I felt that the episode was too coy over not showing us the young Doctor’s face. I know there are some hard-core fans that freak out every time there’s even a hint of the Doctor’s past or the interior of the Tardis, insisting that it must remain mysterious at all costs, but honestly. It wouldn’t have harmed anyone to see this boy’s face; in fact, it would have been an amazingly humanizing moment for a character whose current incarnation is extremely irritable and aloof.
10. The sight of Clara comforting the Doctor by his bedside as a child will no doubt lead to another round of Mary Sue and Special Snowflake accusations, confirming my belief that a Mary Sue is generally defined as a character who does anything important whilst female. Clara’s rapport with children has already been well established, and her behaviour in the barn had more to do with closing a Stable Time Loop (in giving him his treatise about fear) than authorial insistence on how special she is.
The glorious fact that she’s currently being given a personality outside her travels with the Doctor means that she’s no longer the Impossible Girl, she’s a normal girl who occasionally gets the chance to do impossible things. Seeing her in these past few episodes: dating, teaching, even just curling up on her bed, make her more real than anything else she’s done since her arrival on the show.
And I even dig her arrangement with the Doctor – instead of being a constant fixture on board the Tardis, she instead lives her own life on a day-to-day basis and gets picked up by the Doctor when he needs her. It’s a change in dynamics, and that’s good.
Plus I loved her outfit in this episode; that dress, those rings. They should start a website where you can track down these clothes.
11. I still wonder if perhaps the colour “pink” is going to be thematically important later on. Danny was very much linked with this colour throughout: first the pink shirt he wore in the restaurant, then the pink lighting in his bedroom, and finally the desolate pinkness at the end of the world. Stay tuned.
12. Finally, I want to point out that there’s a big difference between perfect clarification and deliberate ambiguity. Some readers demand answers to every question that’s raised – I don’t. In fact, I think shining a light too brightly on a story can be detrimental to its sense of mystery and beauty. So I don’t mind if we never find out what was really under that blanket.
But of course, you can definitely go too far in the opposite direction, which is when you end up with the likes of Lost and A Series of Unfortunate Events. I’m on the fence about certain things in this episode and whether or not they could have used a bit more clarity – namely the nightmare.
From what I gather, everyone got the nightmare because of this experience the Doctor had in his early childhood. Somehow the psychic emanations from this event “leaked” out into the dreams of all mankind. But every other supernatural occurrence in this episode, from the “listen” on the chalkboard to the monster on the bed to the noises at the end of the Universe was a manifestation (or perhaps just a symbolization) of the Doctor’s own fears.
This is demonstrated with him adding a flourish to the “listen” on the blackboard, to taking the coffee from under the janitor’s nose, to Clara being the monster under the bed – everything we saw and heard was just him in some capacity the whole time.
Right?
Ultimately, this was an episode about fear and Moffat had a LOT to say about the subject. Perhaps a little too much. He has his characters rhapsodize about the superhero qualities of fear and giving instructions on how to deal with fear sitting on/under your bed and why being a soldier without a gun is so important when it could all be distilled pretty effectively into the old adage: “there’s nothing to fear but fear itself.” And that’s something you can easily show instead of discussing at length.
And naturally a hefty dose of sentimentality – the Doctor is the toy soldier without a gun! So brave he can protect the whole world without one! Get it?!
You know what worked better? Joining the dots in hindsight. The Doctor writing “listen” as an echo of his experience with Clara, just as Danny was inspired to become a soldier after his night-time talk with her. The Doctor’s evolution theory and obsession with “poking in the shadows” being traced back to his old childhood fears. The fantastic foreshadowing that it was the Doctor himself who was the cause of the nightmare, hinted in him taking the coffee cup and switching off the television, or of the ultimate non-reveal of the monster by having the Doctor search for Wally in a book that isn’t even a Where’s Wally book.
None of this is spelt out, so it’s much more rewarding to think about. Similarly, the journey of the toy soldier. Blatant symbolism aside, tracking its passage through time is a lot of fun: from Danny’s childhood to the very end of the universe to the bedside table of the Doctor in his childhood. Suck it, Steadfast Tin Soldier. You only got swallowed by a fish.
Oh Moffat. You do so infuriate, but sometimes you write stuff like this. I may even watch it a third time.
Well, this is officially my favourite episode thus far. The plot was a change from the usual defeat-the-monster-of-the-week, every featured character had something interesting to do, we got a look at Ichabod's darker side, there was plenty of continuity, and insight into several key aspects of the show itself. So ding-ding-ding, we have a winner!
Picking up right off where last week's episode left off, Ichabod and Abbie have successfully trapped the Headless Horseman in the underground tunnels of the police precinct thanks to some hex candles, hefty chains and the power of UV light. Now they've got a chance to interrogate him and get some answers about the spooky goings-on in the town - but how does one interrogate a man without a head?
The answer lies with poor undead Andy Brooks, who they've realized is able to communicate with the Horseman and so who might be talked into aiding them (not least because according to Ichabod, he still has unrequited feelings for Abbie). Despite his reluctance, he's taken to the cell and acts as a mouthpiece for the Horseman, complete with black eyes and deep demonic voice, riling up Ichabod and revealing his hidden identity.
Meanwhile, Captain Irving is encouraged by Abbie to track down her sister, just released from the mental hospital, who ends up joining him on a call-out. One of her old contacts has been robbed of materials that will break the hex that surrounds the Horseman, and the two of them quickly realize that the Hessians responsible will attempt to cut power to the town, thereby shutting off the UV lights that hold the Horseman at bay.
Going into this episode, I had assumed that perhaps the Horseman would be kept in the cell indefinitely, that it was an easy way of keeping a powerful villain out of commission until the time was right to have him break free (probably for the season finale), and so I was impressed that the writers didn't take this easy way out. Instead, the bad guys waste absolutely NO time in trying to release the Horseman before Ichabod and Abbie can find out too much from him.
There was great continuity at work when one of the hunters that comes across "the pale horse" in the woods ends up being another sleeper agent of the Hessians, and they immediately leapt into action, giving our heroes a real run for their money. The battle was on two fronts: Irving and Jenny at the power station, and Abbie and Ichabod in the tunnels.
Plus, a more personal element emerged when Ichabod got in a bit over his head when it came to goading the Horseman.
At the beginning of this series I remember a few people stating that they felt Ichabod was too good to be true: too chivalrous, too open-minded, too knowledgeable. Well, we certainly got a look at his feet of clay in this episode. Pumped up by his victory and thrown by the appearance of Katrina's necklace, he gets increasingly erratic and snappish when it comes to trying to force answers out of his foe. It's consistent characterization with a man who has always been rather prideful; as we've seen plenty of times, he doesn't like to ask for clarification when it comes to modern lingo that he can't understand (I liked his frustrated "acronyms!" to Abbie).
But then we get into the real nitty-gritty of the episode. It turns out that the Headless Horseman was once a mortal man. Not just any man, but Ichabod's best friend and eventual rival Abraham von Brunt (a possible play on the name Brom Bones the original short-story?) After Katrina breaks her engagement to Abraham out of love for Ichabod, he makes a rather ill-timed confession to his friend as to the real reasons for Katrina's rejection. A duel ensues, the Hessians aren't far behind, and Ichabod has to make a dash for the woods.
What he doesn't stay to watch is the Hessians taking Abraham's dying body and converting him (either with or without his will; it isn't totally clear) into one of them. So this episode's big twist is that Abraham himself - Ichabod's friend, Katrina's one-time fiancé - is the Headless Horseman. After all their discussion on finding the Horseman's weakness, we find that it's the same as Ichabod's: Katrina, currently being held in Purgatory by Moloch either as a prize, a bribe, or a hostage for Abraham.
I'm in two minds about this development. On the one hand, it certainly clarifies a few things concerning the Horseman's vested interest in Ichabod and the reasons behind Katrina's captivity. On the other, it changes a couple of things about the nature of the show. First of all, I generally hate love triangles. A few manage to be sophisticated enough to pass muster, but we haven't been given enough background on any of these three characters and their bond with each other to derive any emotional impact from what was lost between them.
There are just too many gaps missing. How did Katrina get involved with Abraham in the first place? How and why did she fall in love with Icabod instead? What's it all got to do with her identity as a Quaker and a witch? How'd she get trapped in Purgatory? Sadly, making her captivity all about her relationship with Abraham and Ichabod makes her feel even less of a person and more of a plot-device than she did as the Exposition Fairy of the first half of this season.
And I can't help but feel that as Ichabod's apparent best friend, Abraham should have been mentioned, however briefly, before now - even if it was just to give us the sense that Ichabod was holding back on a guilty secret. And I'm sorry, but I'm STILL not getting much of a "true love" vibe between Ichabod and Katrina. He speaks more lovingly of Thomas Jefferson!
Second of all, something about the Horseman's mystique has been lost now that we know he was once a mortal man who was thwarted in love by Ichabod. How does that equate with him being the embodiment of Death? Does this mean the other three Horsemen were also once mortal men? Why did he of all people get picked for such an important role?
Perhaps answers are still forthcoming. Either way, this episode captured some of the eldritch quality that was so prevalent in the first three or so episodes, then sort of faded a little as the show went on. But this really felt like a quintessential episode of Sleepy Hollow, one that you would show to a newcomer to give them an idea of what the show is really about.
Miscellaneous Observations:
Katrina. Okay writers, here's the thing. I don't dislike her. Heck, I want to like her. I'm ready and willing and able to be a fan of this character. But I have no idea what you're trying to do with her. First she was a secret witch. Then she was a Quaker nurse. Now she's a spirited Georgian lady. She seems to be a different person every time we meet her, and I'm still no closer to getting a fix on her character or a grasp of her relationship with Ichabod than I was at the start of the show. Now it seems she's going to be a crucial component in upcoming episodes, and I really need you to step up and give me a reason to invest in her beyond her importance to the plot.
According to the credits, there are three actors who play the horseman: Jeremy Owens, Richard Cetrone, and Craig Branham. The middle is credited as "weapons" and the third as "horseback", which means that it's probably the first who performed the cell scenes with Ichabod. And it's necessary to know this since I thought (as bizarre as it sounds) that it was incredibly good acting. Whether defiant, threatening or quietly biding his time, you could read the Horseman's attitudes simply from his body language. I mean, the guy has NO HEAD and you can still tell what he's thinking.
Of course, it helped that Andy Brooks was standing by in order to act as his conduit. I really want to get some more backstory on this character, namely how he got roped into this situation in the first place. Obviously he's having second thoughts about being an undead servant of pure evil, but his line "the decisions I made when I was alive" suggest that he entered this pact of his own volition.
Here's hoping he gets some redemption before the end; he did after all "save" Ichabod by calling Moloch's minions into the room to grab the Horseman, and his parting words were: "tell Abbie I'm sorry." I've got my fingers crossed for him.
Performance-wise, there was a nice parallel between Andy's gasping before he was used as the Horseman's mouthpiece and the appearance of the emerald necklace with the scene back in Blood Moon in which he regurgitates the necklace that was used to resurrect Serilda. Likewise, the strange talisman that was used to call up the sewer-demons had to be pulled from his own body. It's gross, but it's consistent: that Moloch is somehow giving him the tools he needs by placing them inside his own body.
It was a great prop too, reminiscent of the demons fought in The Lesser Key of Solomon: a circle of tormented faces that screamed and groaned.
Abbie teaches Ichabod how to fist-bump and it is the most wonderful thing in the entire world.
I hope Mr Adams the storekeeper turns up again. From what little we saw of it, he and Jenny had a brief but strong rapport, and as the show is called Sleepy Hollow, it would be nice to see more of its citizens.
The circular cell, complete with its round door, candelabras, triquetra symbol on the floor and criss-crossing chains holding the horseman was a beautiful set. It's almost a pity that he was able to escape it so soon!
The opening credits began fourteen minutes into this episode. I only mention it because - wow, that's late!
I liked that the necklace was an emerald: not only did it suit Katia Winter's red hair, but it also nicely symbolized the green of jealousy.
I loved the sequence of Irving and Jenny at the power grid. So often when a man tells a woman to stay behind, you'll inevitably see her disobey him only to end up getting held hostage. But this time it played out with Jenny being just as competent as she KNOWS she is. And Irving was smart enough to call for backup, even if they weren't in time to find the bomb. I really hope that next week's episode doesn't just forget that they arrested all these would-be terrorists, and though I'm glad that they remember and utilized the sleeper community of the Hessians, I'm still dying to know more about the two covens.
Nice (albeit brief) flashbacks to the dead Masons and Sheriff Corbin, as well as Katrina on the brink of telling Ichabod why she thinks she's stuck in Purgatory.
Great moment when the A and B plots converged; the explosion at the grid followed by Abbie and Ichabod reacting to the UV lights dying down in the tunnels.
Not calling for backup in the tunnels because they didn't know who to trust among the police force was a little iffy (surely it was more important to contain the Horseman and keep him from another rampage) but I'll let it slide for the sake of plot convenience.
Those sewer minions were great in regards to their speed and out-of-nowhere appearances (I jumped when they leapt down from the ceiling), but they were rather easily dispatched. One bullet and they just explode? Still, at least it was great to see the Mills sisters fighting back-to-back.
Anyone else notice the rubber wall that bounced when Ichabod was thrown against it?
Nice editing in the intercutting of sword fights between Ichabod/Abraham and Ichabod/Horseman. I'll confess, it wasn't until that moment that I realized who the Horseman was.
To end, my most pressing questions are currently: where is the Horseman's horse (having been found wandering in the wood by the Hessians) and where is Jenny staying now that she's out of the institute?
In Hindsight:
Watching the second time around made it clear that this episode raised more questions than answers.
Katrina's storyline still remains hopelessly convoluted. For some reason I keep thinking that her flashbacks are being shown out of order, though in fact we do see her go from meeting Ichabod to breaking her engagement to Abraham to (next episode) giving birth to Jeremy. Perhaps the reason I remain so fuzzy on them is because they're all so disjointed. Here she mentions that her betrothal to Abraham was "arranged." Okay, but arranged by who? Her family? The coven? The Quakers?
Though everything technically holds together in regards to continuity (this episode echoes the Freemason's assertion that Katrina angered her coven by saving Ichabod, and her own admission that she's being held in Purgatory for a specific reason) she remains more of a plot-point than an actual person.
Likewise, my hope that more answers on Andy were forthcoming were not fulfilled. We're still none the wiser as to how he got roped into this business, but having re-watched this episode I'm also rather disappointed that we never got any backstory on the Pale Horse either. Is it a real horse? The red eyes would suggest no, so ... evil spirit? Demon horse? Inquiring minds want to know.
I'm also sad that we never actually got to see Jenny and Abbie living together, despite the latter's claim that her sister had moved in.
And another reason to love Abbie: that she had it in herself to do this -
It’s been a pretty blasé couple of weeks, but a short article of mine has appeared in Awkward Paper Cut. Titled Writing Imaginatively Under Constraint, it gives a highly condensed overview of television’s mastery of storytelling, specifically how it’s learnt to draw complex narratives out over the course of forty-five minute episodes. (Mines at the bottom, so scroll down!)
I also picked up a treat for myself at the mall:
I dearly want to write on Orphan Black, but I honestly don’t feel worthy of it. The more I watch the more I’m impressed by how concise and clever the writing is: the plotting, the themes, the characterization. Perhaps with this latest rewatch I’ll be able to muster up the courage to say something meaningful about it.
This is a great piece on “concern trolling” when it comes to our treatment of female characters in romantic relationships, and the painful transparency of fandom when it criticizes girls for getting in the way of other ships being bad feminist icons because of their romantic attachments. (The article actually links to one that I originally commented on; so I like to think I may have helped inspire it!)
Eight days left until season two of Sleepy Hollow!
The other day I went for a walk in the Christchurch Botanical Gardens, and to my surprise, the door that adjourns Christ’s College (which I call the Narnia door because it reminds me of the one in The Silver Chair) was open! I’d never seen it open before, so I took the chance to slip through and take some pictures of the beautiful stonework on the buildings there:
Only a few things to say this time around as I was sick this morning and I'm still feeling blah. But this was a decent episode, which picked up almost immediately after the events of last week and ended on a (sort of) cliffhanger, making it feel like quite a transitory episode.
I'm beginning to realize that this show's appeal lies almost solely in its characters and their relationships with each other, for the plots are getting increasingly wonky. Here there was a rather disjointed effort to connect Paul Reverie's midnight ride with the murdered Freemasons and another round of "keep away" with the Horseman's head.
That said, it was a good idea to bring back the Headless Horseman, as this is by far their most frightening and effective villain. What is it about an implacable and unstoppable horseman with no head? I mean, it should look ridiculous, and yet it's utterly intimidating.
Oh, and they brought back Andy Brooks for what barely constitutes a cameo in order to scare the living daylights out of Luke and act as a messenger boy for the Horseman. His line: "reports of my death...are pretty much true" was fun, but what's he done to Luke? He wasn't looking at all well later at his desk.
It was nice to demonstrate that although Ichabod is a Fish Out of Temporal Waters, and therefore finding it difficult to adapt to the new technology, he also possesses enough first-hand information to know better than various teachers at the historical museum (though it's a bit rich watching this show suddenly insist on historical accuracy).
But I love that he leaves a phone message as though it was a letter. And that he politely declined the on-line sex worker. And that he was clearly feeling a little antsy afterwards, especially when Abbie obliviously said that it was a pity his wife wasn't present: "yes, the thought had crossed my mind, though not as a means to defeat our current enemy."
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Captain Irving's reaction to the Horseman was interesting, as he was clearly shocked at the truth of its existence. Huh. That suggests that despite giving Abbie a huge amount of leeway in the past (suggesting that he either knew more than he was letting on or was up to something) he is in fact not playing some sort of long game.
I think I'm also suffering from the fact that I know next to nothing about American history. Sally Hemmings? Paul Reverie? Thomas Jefferson? The names ring a bell, but here in New Zealand I know virtually nothing about them. I suppose now is as good a time as any to crack some books on the subject...
So James Frain's character is dead? What a waste!
I suppose my only complaint at this point is that we're now at the seventh episode and (knowing that there's only going to be thirteen episodes this season) I don't really feel as though we know enough about the periphery characters and concepts. I mean, what's the deal with Katrina and the two covens? What's Moloch up to? What about Andy? How is he involved in all this? What about Sheriff Corbin? Is he going to pop up again? What really happened to Abbie and Jenny out in the woods?
It's time for some answers.
In Hindsight:
Not much to add in regards to this episode, only that Luke's role in all this is becoming increasingly superfluous. I have no idea what the writers had planned for him (if they ever did) but knowing that his run-in with Andy goes nowhere makes it one of the weakest subplots of this season. Do we even know if the actor is scheduled to return for season two?
And any idea of what would actually happen if the Headless Horseman got his head back?
I first heard about Laini Taylor after a rave review from a fellow Fantasy.Lit commentator concerning Lips Touch: Three Times, a unique volume of three novellas that dealt with the dark side of fairy tales. The review included a sample of her prose:
“Well, okay,” Kizzy said, feigning reluctance and unwrapping one of the chocolates. It was so dark it was almost black and it melted on her tongue into an ancient flavour of seed pod, earth, shade, and sunlight, its bitterness casting just a shadow of sweet. It tasted… fine, so subtle and strange it made her feel like a novitiate into some arcanum of spice.
Sold! As soon as I saw a copy, I snagged it.
Three years later, the first book of her Daughter of Smoke and Bone trilogy was released, and I was first in fine. (Okay, that’s an exaggeration. But it definitely had an express trip up the length of my TBR pile). And whereas Lips Touch built its narratives on myth and fairy tale, Daughter of Smoke and Bone is best described as an urban fantasy retelling of Romeo and Juliet set against a backdrop of Paradise Lost. Kind of.
There are certainly creatures that bear a resemblance to angels and demons, and they’re most definitely at war with each other. But it’s the race that possesses feathered wings and flaming swords that poses the greater threat to those with gazelle horns, wolf muzzles, cat eyes, snake scales and other bestial characteristics. War has waged between seraphim and chimaera in the world of Eretz for generations, and it’s beginning to spill into our world.
But the story really starts with seventeen year old Karou, an art student in Prague who leads a double-life. On the one hand she attends classes, hangs out with her best friend, and tries to avoid an irritating ex-boyfriend; on the other, she’s an errand girl to a strange creature who collects teeth.
Brimstone – who has a ram’s head, a man’s torso, a reptile’s feet and crocodile eyes – lives in a realm that Karou refers to as “Elsewhere”, a shop hidden behind a perfectly innocuous-looking door where Brimstone and creatures like him sort through a seemingly endless supply of teeth.
Though Karou’s task in fetching shipments of teeth from around the world allows her to travel to various countries through a network of magical portals, she has no idea where she comes from, who her parents are, or why her unusual family collects teeth. They're not forthcoming on the subject, and as of late another mystery is popping up all over the city: black handprints appearing on a select number of doors and sightings of what can only be described as angels.
Without wanting to give too much away (though I’m probably about to do precisely that), Karou soon realizes she is intrinsically connected to the war in Eretz, especially regarding her relationship to an angel called Akiva. As she learns more about her past - as in, her past life - and her part to play in a crucial turning point of the war, she becomes increasingly divided between three opposing sides and their claim on her allegiance: her protectiveness of human beings, her loyalty to the chimaera, and her love for at least one seraph.
But Taylor doesn’t restrict herself solely to Karou’s point-of-view; she expands her vision to include various civilians, soldiers, prisoners, medics and victims in order to explore all facets of the war’s impact on Eretz. Like most good war stories, Taylor is careful to include monsters and heroes on both sides; like most fantasy epics dealing with worldwide conflict, the leaders of these sides are straightforwardly delineated as villains.
The angels are led by an Emperor who beds a concubine each night in order to father a private army known as the Misbegotten, an arrangement that’s so alienating for all involved that it’s hardly surprising when this legion becomes the first among the seraphim to turn on their maker and ally themselves with chimaera.
For their part, the chimaera are loyal to Thiago, a half-man, half-wolf warrior and bonus slime-ball who may well be the most effective character in the trilogy by sheer dint of his physicality, efficiency and unpredictability. He’s the type of leader everyone is terrified of, but who commands total devotion through absolute commitment to their cause.
Given that chimaera are the more sympathetic of the two sides (what with the angels being the conquerors and oppressors of land originally inhabited by the chimaera) it’s not hard to understand why an individual like Thiago exists, and Taylor has to compensate for his otherwise noble intentions in saving his race from extinction by depicting him as an unwanted suitor, bloodthirsty commander, and eventual attempted rapist.
Both Emperor Jael and Thiago are representative of power, greed and conflict for its own sake, existing largely to establish the point that it is war itself, and not the individuals who fight in it, that is the real enemy. As another character says early on: “It is a condition of monsters that they do not perceive themselves as such. The dragon, you know, hunkered in the village devouring maidens, heard the townsfolk cry “monster!” and looked behind him.”
It’s an interesting analogy to make, as throughout the entirety of the trilogy there are no “poor misunderstood villains” on display. The dragon may not recognise itself as a monster, but it’s still described as “devouring maidens” rather than innocently minding its own business, and similarly the likes of Emperor Jael and the White Wolf have no ability to recognise their own depravity, each mired so deeply in their own personal justification for waging war that the idea of peace is completely inconceivable to them.
In short, this is not a trilogy about angels versus demons, or even seraphs versus chimaera, but love versus hatred and violence. It’s made clear early on that resolution will not be found in a definitive battle, or even in cutting off the heads of each army, but in both sides finding a reason to call a ceasefire. As such Karou and Akiva are committed not to any form of victory, but in preventing further bloodshed, all the while acutely aware that they might well be making matters worse by stymying their own side.
Karou in particular finds herself in an interesting moral conundrum: having realized that she is one of the few individuals who can perform the art of resurrection (that is, creating new bodies for fallen chimaera and reviving their gleaned souls within them) she’s commissioned by Thiago to do precisely this for the depleted chimaera armies. With the power of life and death quite literally in her hands, she essentially becomes an arms manufacturer, deciding regularly who it is that should be returned to life, and what body they will inhabit when they do.
***
The strength of the trilogy lies in Taylor’s imaginative world-building and beautiful poetic-prose. Here you’ll find birds the size of jet planes, single doors that can lead to hundreds of locations, a ranking system of wishes that manifest as coins, and souls that can be resurrected into entirely different bodies. Taylor’s gift is not just in creating an elaborate system of magic, but in knowing that once they've been established, her rules can be played with in imaginative ways.
The wishes for example, ranging in power from scuppies to gavriels, when in the hands of a resourceful girl like Karou, can be used to do anything from giving an ex-boyfriend an embarrassing itch to the permanent gift of flight. The rules are only as restrictive as the limits of Karou’s imagination, and since the source of the trilogy’s conflict lies in negotiating peace between two warring factions, Taylor can revel in the super-powers she grants her heroine without endangering the plot:
She was floating. She gave a delighted hoot and put her arms out for balance, sculling at the air as if she were floating in the sea, but... it wasn’t the sea. It was the air. She was flying. Well, maybe not quite flying – yet – but floating at the threshold of the whole freaking sky. Which happened to wrap around the whole freaking world. Above her, night was huge and everywhere, full of stars and wild things – an infinitely deep, infinitely penetrable sphere, and she rose up higher and higher, claiming it.
One of the other pleasure of the trilogy is Taylor’s poetic-prose, and her seemingly effortless ability to spin an elegant turn of phrase. Her style is somewhere between Catherynne M. Valente and Patricia McKillip (the former is darker, the latter daintier than Taylor), and though I’m always afraid she’s going to tip into purple prose, she consistently manages to toe the line. In describing the wings of the angels she reports that “every feather was its own lick of fire” and that the after-effects of a nightmare were “still perched on her shoulder like a carrion bird”. Here’s her take on Prague:
The first time she’d come to Prague, she’d gotten so lost exploring these streets. She’d passed an art gallery and a few blocks later doubled back to find it, and... couldn’t. They city had swallowed it. In fact, she had never found it. There was a deceptive tangling of alleys that gave the impression of a map that shifted behind you, gargoyles tiptoeing away, stones like puzzle pieces rearranging themselves into new configurations while you weren’t looking.
And an underground cavern:
It seemed she was in a cathedral – if, that is, the earth itself were to dream a cathedral into being over thousands of years of water weeping through stone. It was a massive natural cavern that soared overhead to a near-perfect Gothic arch. Stalagmites as old as the world were carved into pillars in the shapes of beasts, and candelabras hung so high they were like clusters of stars. A scent was heavy in the air, herbs and sulphur, and smoke wreathed among the pillars, teased into wisps by breezes emanating from unseen openings in carven walls.
Throughout the trilogy, the epic backdrop of the war is grounded by Karou’s sardonic internal commentary and banter with her best friend Zuzana that wouldn’t feel out of place in Juno. Here’s dialogue between them that makes only marginally more sense in context:
“Oh, yay, airport! You’re coming home, aren’t you? You didn’t forget. I knew you wouldn’t forget.”
“Please. I’ve been looking forward to this for weeks. You don’t even know. It’s like, gross hunter, gross hunter, gross hunter, puppet show!”
“How do the gross hunters go, anyway?”
“Grossly. But forget them. Are you all ready?”
“Yep. Freaked. Ready. The puppet’s done and magnificent, if I do say so myself. Now I just need you to work your magic. I mean, your non-magical magic. Your ordinary Karou wizardry. When will you be back?”
“Friday, I think. I just have to stop in Paris real quick –”
“Stop in Paris real quick. You know, a smaller soul than I might end our friendship on the grounds of you saying obnoxious things like “I just have to stop in Paris really quick.”
“There are smaller souls than you?”
“Hey! My body may be small, but my soul is large. It’s why I wear platforms. So I can reach the top of my soul.”
Whether you’re charmed or annoyed by this exchange is probably a good indicator of where you’d stand on actually reading the trilogy in its entirety.
***
A word on Karou. There are plenty of reviews out there that disparage Karou as a Mary Sue, and in rebuttal I can only provide this link to Feminist Fiction’s We Need More Mary Sues. Karou ticks a lot of boxes in the Mary Sue litmus test: hair that grows naturally blue, tattoos on her palms that never fade, mastery of martial arts, fluency in dozens of languages, an aura of desirability that practically drives the plot, the power of flight, and astounding physical beauty.
So is she a Mary Sue? No, she’s a wish-fulfilment character, something that Laini Taylor is quite open about admitting, which serves a very different purpose than a Mary Sue in any given narrative.
Most of Karou specialized skills/attributes not only have a basis in the plot (either something she learnt in her previous life or which were granted to her by a literal wish) but she’s a dynamic and sympathetic character who consistently strives to do the right thing, often doubts her own judgment, and is regularly covered in sweat, blood and tears.
Then there’s the romance. I’ve spoken at length about my feelings on the Love at First Sight trope, concluding that it is a perfectly viable storytelling device, provided that it’s handled with care. As it happens, the love story of Karou and Akiva adheres to one of my rules (using a Romeo and Juliet template) but breaks another (basing their immediate connection on “reincarnation recognisability”), which left me less invested in their struggle to be together as I was in their individual happiness.
That their story is based on Romeo and Juliet is obvious; they’re important figures on opposite sides of a war and prominent individuals among their people. Akiva has a trace of Romeo’s hot-headedness (though is mostly melancholic in temperament) whilst Karou must deal with an unwanted suitor that everyone else thinks is totally perfect for her. The lovers even meet at a masquerade ball, though a temple takes the place of a balcony for their first secret rendezvous.
They’re in love because they’re in love, and despite the history of war crimes and the fact that Akiva’s hands are tattooed with markings to denote all the chimaera he’s killed over the years, their immediate attraction proves to be enough to overcome these otherwise insurmountable obstacles.
Taylor also captures the physicality of Romeo and Juliet, their exorbitant declarations of love, and their pain (oh god, the pain) of never being together. There are analogies of spinning, collusions, dizziness, hunger, aching and so forth, but what sets Akiva and Karou apart from the usual star-crossed lovers shtick is that each one is acutely aware of their personal responsibilities to their own people.
This Romeo and Juliet know that there’s more at stake than just the two of them, and right from the start they’re devising ways of making their relationship a microcosmic example of peace. It is Brimstone, here playing the part of Father Laurence, who endorses their union in the hopes it will prove to be a fairly literal case of love conquers all, and in a nice case of demonstrating their commitment to others before themselves, their union does not immediately follow the conclusion of the war.
However insular most Romeo and Juliet retellings are, Taylor is careful to keep just as much focus on the world as she does on the lovers. In any other book the protagonist’s best friend would either be kept in the dark as to the reality of the circumstances or end up dead; here not only is Zuzana let in on the secret, but she becomes a crucial component in the story-arc.
But perhaps Taylor’s most enjoyable innovation is when she blows the lid on the seraphim/chimaera war that’s been happening “just next door” as it were, with legions of angels flying out of a portal in the sky to take advantage of humankind’s faith and artillery. The world’s population is riveted on live footage of thousands of angels sweeping through the skies and descending upon Vatican City, and the riots, vigils, baptisms, suicides and mass panic immediately commence on a scale that goes far beyond the "new mutiny" that fills the streets of Verona.
***
As I said earlier, the Daughter of Smoke and Bone trilogy is Romeo and Juliet set against a backdrop of Paradise Lost – or perhaps an inversion of the latter considering the angels are a hierarchical tyranny of oppressive conquerors, and the horned and fanged bestial humanoids are the victims of mass genocide. The traditional iconography of angels and demons is summed up in the phrase: “like mould on books, grow myths on history”.
At times Taylor can be obtuse on the details of the war that has defined the opposing sides of her conflict – Akiva for example has tattoos that mark the amount of chimaera he’s killed, but we get no real sense of his victims. Likewise, when a group of chimaera isolate Akiva’s sister Liraz with the intent to cut off her arms as retribution for her brutality in a famous battle, she dutifully submits in recognition of her war crimes, without any further light shed on what exactly she’s being punished for.
Throughout the trilogy war is portrayed not so much as the inevitable outcome of greed or expansion or even misunderstanding, but a creature of destruction and grief that’s pitted against the hope and will-power of romantic love. The scope is impressive and the prose is wonderful; though I have to admit being more invested in the mysteries and conflicts that Taylor sows throughout the trilogy than I ever was in the sorrow of the parted lovers.
I've read it twice now; the first time as each separate book was released, and the second as one complete trilogy. Doing this made it apparent just how carefully plotted each instalment is, both by itself and as a three-part arc, with Taylor keeping impeccable control over her myriad of subplots and characters.
At this point I eagerly await the filmic adaptation. If nothing else, it will be a feast for the eyes.
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