BBC
by Helen Langdon
There’s cruelty and then there’s what the BBC just did to its Atlantis viewers with “The Queen Must Die”. When its cancellation was announced a few months back, we knew that there were going to be a fair few loose ends left behind for Tumblr fangirls to resolve. But leaving it like that? Essentially trailing a season that is never going to hit our screens? That’s just taunting us. We’ll never get to see the hunt for the Golden Fleece, or find out if Orpheus rescues Eurydice from Hades, or discover who Jason chooses in his love triangle. Also, how the hell was a FLEECE (traditionally shorn from a woolly animal) woven?
There’s cruelty and then there’s what the BBC just did to its Atlantis viewers with “The Queen Must Die”. When its cancellation was announced a few months back, we knew that there were going to be a fair few loose ends left behind for Tumblr fangirls to resolve. But leaving it like that? Essentially trailing a season that is never going to hit our screens? That’s just taunting us. We’ll never get to see the hunt for the Golden Fleece, or find out if Orpheus rescues Eurydice from Hades, or discover who Jason chooses in his love triangle. Also, how the hell was a FLEECE (traditionally shorn from a woolly animal) woven?
It's difficult to know what to make of "The Queen Must Die" given that a season finale and a series finale are completely different things, and while this episode was written as one, it sadly has to function as the other. This is a fairly good episode, featuring jailbreaks, kidnapping, execution, lots of fighting, rising from the dead, marriage, Icarus not flying into the sun and Pythagoras finally getting some action. It would be a good season finale (better if split into its two original halves), offering us the hope of closure and then snatching it away to tease at the next season's overarching plot, moving away from the city of Atlantis itself and out into the wider mythological world to hunt down the Golden Fleece.
BBC
But as a series finale? It's just sad, knowing that there are all of these dangling plotlines which are never going to be fully resolved. It's not as bad as some finales which were cancelled halfway through telling a story, but it’s just... niggling, is probably the best word. It’s difficult to be mad at the show itself for ending in such an open-ended fashion, given that the season was halfway through airing before the BBC announced that it wasn’t to be renewed.
Did Atlantis deserve more? Yes. This second season has moved on leaps and bounds from the first, featuring better acting, plotlines and characters who didn’t make stupid decisions based on what the plot required (although Hercules and Pythagoras did drop the ball when executing Pasiphae – this is a woman you know can do magic, and has in the past raised armies from the dead. Wouldn’t you make sure you buried her under a large rock after executing her, rather than leaving her out in the open for any convenient bird to steal her body and drop her back to her temple to get brought back to life?).
Did Atlantis deserve more? Yes. This second season has moved on leaps and bounds from the first, featuring better acting, plotlines and characters who didn’t make stupid decisions based on what the plot required (although Hercules and Pythagoras did drop the ball when executing Pasiphae – this is a woman you know can do magic, and has in the past raised armies from the dead. Wouldn’t you make sure you buried her under a large rock after executing her, rather than leaving her out in the open for any convenient bird to steal her body and drop her back to her temple to get brought back to life?).
BBC
True, it was one of the most expensive dramas the BBC makes, what with the CGI and filming on location, but it was so much better at representation than some of its equivalents (Merlin, Doctor Who and Robin Hood, I’m looking at you). The female characters tended to be great (Medusa’s sad demise and Cleopatra’s status as walking exposition aside), and Pythagoras had just become the first non-heterosexual main character in a BBC Saturday family drama since Captain Jack Harkness.
Yes, it’s a doomed romance – never get together with boys called Icarus who have their own set of wings, kids – but it was beautiful while it lasted, and made just a tad more sense than Jason and Medea becoming attached at the lips every time they met for no other reason than “I feel it too”.
In “The Queen Must Die”, Pasiphae said, “this night, it ends.” It’s sad, but apt, and now Atlantis will be added to that list of shows cancelled in their prime.
Yes, it’s a doomed romance – never get together with boys called Icarus who have their own set of wings, kids – but it was beautiful while it lasted, and made just a tad more sense than Jason and Medea becoming attached at the lips every time they met for no other reason than “I feel it too”.
In “The Queen Must Die”, Pasiphae said, “this night, it ends.” It’s sad, but apt, and now Atlantis will be added to that list of shows cancelled in their prime.
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