Tuesday, November 25, 2014

Atlantis - A New Dawn


Opening the show's Second Season with a two-part episode, Atlantis returns with King Minos (Alexander Siddig) dead, Pasiphae (Sarah Parish) exiled, and Ariadne (Aiysha Hart) on the throne. With Pasiphae raising an army to retake the city, Ariadne sends Jason (Jack Donnelly), Pythagoras (Robert Emms), and Hercules (Mark Addy) on an errand to bring back an old advisor to the throne (Robert Pugh) not realizing he is working secretly for the enemy.

Wounded for nearly half of the two-part episode, the talk of Jason grabbing his destiny doesn't get off to such a promising start. Still, the unlikely trio are able to work together to reclaim the Palladium, the mystic statue touched by the gods to protect Atlantis and stolen by Medea (Amy Manson) making Pasiphae's siege to the city nearly impossible to stop, and return it to Atlantis before all is lost. The two-part opener doesn't skimp with the action or CGI which includes several battle scenes involving the siege of Atlantis and Hercules taking on a Cyclops while helping his friends return the Palladium to the city.

The season opener foreshadows Jason's further adventures aboard the Argo and the fall of Atlantis which the Oracle (Juliet Stevenson) warns only Jason may stop (and only if he never learns the truth about his mother). It also makes it clear that Jason and Ariadne's love will remain forbidden given their vastly different stations, and it doesn't appear that anyone other than Hercules will learn of Jason's true parentage any time soon. Whether or not the show's budget was increased for just these two episodes or the entire season, it appears (at least for now) that Jason's hero journey will be moving forward at a quicker pace as the hero, denied his true love, seeks now to only fulfill his destiny.

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