by Helen Langdon
The second season of any TV show leads to difficult choices. Do you continue doing what made the first season so successful? If the show is already ridiculous, do you push that even further? Or do you make things more serious, going down the grim and dark route? That last one is what the creators of Atlantis have chosen to do for their second series, although in places it’s still the ridiculously campy and fun Saturday night entertainment we fell in love with.
The second season of any TV show leads to difficult choices. Do you continue doing what made the first season so successful? If the show is already ridiculous, do you push that even further? Or do you make things more serious, going down the grim and dark route? That last one is what the creators of Atlantis have chosen to do for their second series, although in places it’s still the ridiculously campy and fun Saturday night entertainment we fell in love with.
You can tell that it’s darker because rather than kicking off with a ridiculous monster from Greek mythology, the episode starts with a funeral. King Bashir – sorry, Minos – is dead, and doesn’t even come back for a dead cameo (so this means Alexander Siddig is free to be Dr Strange, right?). Pasiphae is on the warpath, Ariadne’s now queen and Jason et al keep going off on suicide missions. When we’re not watching innocent civilians get murdered, Ariadne’s casually endorsing torture for the greater good of her people.
And because it’s serious, they’ve tried to make the fight scenes seem more immediate and dangerous by doing that really annoying thing where they use hand-held camera footage. The jerking up and down doesn’t really help, though. We’re supposed to be getting emotionally invested in Jason’s many fights, but instead it just creates a sense of nausea with all the manic whirling round. Atlantis should stick to the camera shots it does best – the slow pan round to reveal a sinister figure skulking around in the shadows (it’s nice to see that Lord Sarpedon is carrying on Pasiphae’s habits of lurking behind pillars and other conveniently placed hiding places).
“A New Dawn” is basically all about setting the tone for the season ahead. We’ve got the ongoing threat of Pasiphae (apparently discovering that Jason’s her son hasn’t done anything to create any maternal feelings). Then there’s the problem of Jason and Ariadne’s class-divided romance, although this feels more and more like a gender-swapped version of the whole Arthur-and-Gwen storyline from Merlin. Let’s be honest – no-one’s really watching to see if Jason, a poor boy from the ghetto of modern Earth, manages to become King of Atlantis. The real heart of Atlantis is the hetero life partnership (can you use that for more than two people?) between Pythagoras, Hercules and Jason.
But all these relationships might be disrupted by the arrival of the newest recurring Atlantis character, Medea. In the show itself, all we know is that she’s got magic powers, the same poorly defined gymnastics powers as Jason, and she’s got a close relationship with Pasiphae. But if you know your Greek mythology, you might be able to guess what’s going to happen. Is she going to end up as Jason’s wife? Will the BBC stop short of showing child murder on BBC One just after Strictly Come Dancing?
But all these relationships might be disrupted by the arrival of the newest recurring Atlantis character, Medea. In the show itself, all we know is that she’s got magic powers, the same poorly defined gymnastics powers as Jason, and she’s got a close relationship with Pasiphae. But if you know your Greek mythology, you might be able to guess what’s going to happen. Is she going to end up as Jason’s wife? Will the BBC stop short of showing child murder on BBC One just after Strictly Come Dancing?
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