by Helen Langdon
OK, so last week’s Atlantis wasn’t exactly the most exciting or unpredictable, but it did help to move the story along. Ariadne chose her city over her heart (girl’s gonna make a great queen) and agreed to Telemon’s proposal, believing that he was a prince who’d make a great ally. But charming men with beards who want to marry princesses always turn out to be treacherous murderers, don’t they?
OK, so last week’s Atlantis wasn’t exactly the most exciting or unpredictable, but it did help to move the story along. Ariadne chose her city over her heart (girl’s gonna make a great queen) and agreed to Telemon’s proposal, believing that he was a prince who’d make a great ally. But charming men with beards who want to marry princesses always turn out to be treacherous murderers, don’t they?
But fair play to Atlantis – this episode did contain a few surprises. Chief among which was the fact that Telemon did turn out to actually be a prince, and not just some chancer out to rise to the throne. The reveal at the beginning of the episode – Pasiphae and Medea doing some witchy chicken slaughtering and painting blood on Telemon’s chest – came as a pleasant surprise, tying the Telemon plot into the wider season arc.
BBC Sadly, “The Marriage of True Minds” was not as Shakespearean as the title promised. Telemon might have convinced Ariadne and company to stumble into an ambush, but he can’t quite get round to actually stabbing her in the face. So then it’s time for Jason, Ariadne, Pythagoras and Hercules (plus mortally wounded Dion) to flee from Pasiphae and her army, meeting some new friends along the way. It’s a chance for Ariadne to show off her shooting skills, for Jason to get injured yet again, and ends with a great cliffhanger and a half (or not, ha, Jason and Medea may have fallen to their dooms).
Last season of Atlantis pretty much exclusively stuck to the “monster of the week” formula. On the basis of these first four episodes, season two sees a change of direction with stories running together to form a coherent whole. And that definitely works in this episode’s favour. Taken by itself, it’s a bit of a mishmash, jumping around from a conspiracy to murder Ariadne to a long trek through the desert. Putting it in the context of a larger storyline makes perfect sense. That's also helped by Jason meeting another one of his Argonauts in the form of Orpheus. Here he's dispensing wise advice rather than playing music to win the heart of Hades, but his appearance hints towards that vision of the Argo Jason saw back in episode one.
Last season of Atlantis pretty much exclusively stuck to the “monster of the week” formula. On the basis of these first four episodes, season two sees a change of direction with stories running together to form a coherent whole. And that definitely works in this episode’s favour. Taken by itself, it’s a bit of a mishmash, jumping around from a conspiracy to murder Ariadne to a long trek through the desert. Putting it in the context of a larger storyline makes perfect sense. That's also helped by Jason meeting another one of his Argonauts in the form of Orpheus. Here he's dispensing wise advice rather than playing music to win the heart of Hades, but his appearance hints towards that vision of the Argo Jason saw back in episode one.
BBC We don’t need to see what happens to Telemon after Pasiphae stabs him because it’s a serialised story – and with the way Atlantis is going, they might not save his return for the finale like a show normally might. The deaths of Sarpedon (in episode one) and Dion (in this episode) prove that. Atlantis is getting to the point where important plot points could happen at any point during the season, which means that no-one, and nothing, is safe. With zombies literally coming out of the walls next week, there could be more deaths on the horizon.
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