I don’t keep abreast of new television very well. I’ve drifted into a mental space wherein I’m dimly aware of new things. I hear about them on the radio or from friends or occasionally I see a notice on a website. But I’ve long since lost the habit of keeping track.
So when I started hearing about this new fantasy show, Legend of the Seeker, it seems that it was already airing and I’d heard nothing about it beforehand. I didn’t get much in the way detail from anyone, other than short recommendations (“Oh, you should see it, it’s good!”) or facial expressions that were difficult to interpret.
Normally, as I’ve said before, I can watch fantasy. Movies and television, whatever, I can sit for an hour or two and suspend my disbelief, and just go with it. I have a very difficult time reading fantasy. My idea of really good fantasy is basically material that, if it had a more rigorous grounding in the plausible, would be science fiction, but doesn’t make the cut. I liked the fantasy of The Twilight Zone (both the original series and the 80s remake). Ray Bradbury comes to mind as a fantasist I can read. Or Harlan Ellison. Occasionally Ursula LeGuin.
In terms of epic, sword & sorcery, thud and blunder stuff, I have no patience. I very much enjoyed Delany’s Neveryona books, but they were more anti-fantasy. As was, in its way, China Mieville’s excellent Perdido Street Station. I enjoyed Hal Duncan’s Vellum though I haven’t yet gone out of my way to read the sequel. I look at my book shelf and see very little in the way of that sort of fantasy. Mary Gentle’s terrific Ash saga, Avram Davidson’s Phoenix and the Mirror, Jack Vance’s Lyonesse…
It’s a short and elite list. I receive this sort of stuff in the mail now to review and I give them a few pages. You can see it pretty quickly, certain conventions of language and character, setting and conceit, that work their way between the cracks of the words to say “here there be no sense or reason, only action and portent.”
As I say, usually I can watch these sorts of things and just go with it.
I watched most of the premier episode of Legend of the Seeker last week online. (I can do that now that I have dsl! It’s cool!)
I say I watched most of the premier. Did not finish. Too much predictability. Too much of it based on stupidity.
Let me just take the opening sequence, which is a chase. We begin in media res with two women fleeing on horseback. They are not exactly dressed for this, the one wearing a screamingly white gown that billows around her. This gown is also a swoop neck affair that shows off her chest quite nicely. Bridget Regan, playing the part of Kahlin, is nothing if not fetching. More on that later. I can forgive the wardrobe malfunction under the assumption that they didn’t have time to change clothes—at least until later, when they tell the story of the fall of their order, and you get the distinct notion that there was time not only to change clothes, but to make a better escape, one less fraught with the possibility of imminent capture.
But back to the chase. Here are these two women—witches of sorts we learn later, but it is implied by their dress and demeanor—who weigh in at about 115 to 125 pounds, riding two fairly good-size horses. They are being chased by four men in full medieval-style armor. Assuming they are the best available, they’ll weigh in between 180 and 220. Add 30 lbs of armor, a bit more if you include the swords and knives. Their horses are no bigger.
But they’re catching up. There’s a sequence of a bowman shooting from horseback at the two women. Not a bad shot either, but at full gallop any accuracy would be pure luck. Nevertheless, he hits one square in the back.
The wounded one tries to continue, but ends up falling off her horse, rolling down a hill to a stream bed, there to die after the other one—her sister—abandons her horse to minister to her. The death scene takes a couple of minutes. A secret book must be gotten to somewhere else. Leave me, sister, I’m done for.
Meantime, the four soldiers, who weren’t that damn far behind—close enough, in fact, to hit one of these women with a bow shot—are nowhere to be seen. Finally they appear at the top of the hill. Pausing to watch.
Convinced to continue on, the surviving sister picks herself and runs. And the four men on horseback, who had been catching up, can’t catch her now.
At this point I’m thinking, “oh, this isn’t good.” Not about Kahlin’s plight, but about the story itself. This is idiot plotting.
But Kahlin’s an eyefull and worth watching.
There’s a barrier, a mystical field of energy, which Kahlin manages to open with some magic. She enters the rift and escapes her pursuers. Who then sit and argue about whether or not to pursue, and then decide to. Meanwhile this barrier has obligingly remained open, waiting for them to finish their ruminations, and as soon as they enter, it closes up.
How come it didn’t close up immediately after Kahlin entered?
Well, if that happened, then the rest of the show could not proceed along it’s absurd path.
We come now to the Seeker, who is a young fellow who doesn’t even know he’s special. He was brought as an infant into this country to be raised by a good man and his wife, who had no children then, if the tangled thread of his origin story is to be understood. They vowed to do their best.
They then had another son, who ends up being the guy in charge of the land. But while dad tells this son that his brother isn’t really his brother, he doesn’t tell him anything else.
Huh? Why tell the kid anything? That would guarantee, of course, that sibling in charge couldn’t be tricked into thinking his brother (not) is evil and to be hunted down in league with the men who had been chasing the witch. Who has come to find the adopted kid, of course, and the wizard who’d brought him here.
These people act like idiots in very specific and annoying ways. The action carries the story as long as you don’t think too hard about any of this, but since motivation all hinges on what all these people know or don’t know, it becomes difficult to understand why they did or do what they did or do. Simple things, like KEEP YOUR MOUTH SHUT ABOUT THE KID, HE’S IMPORTANT AND SOME BAD MEN WANT TO KILL HIM.
But furthermore, the faithful brother, who ostensibly grew up with this orphan as a brother, turns on him without too much deliberation on the word of a stranger who had come to this land from somewhere it should have been impossible to come from. Because of the barrier, you see. Familial feeling, presented as solid in the one instance, decays almost instantly. Now the circumstances would seem sufficient, but given all the other idiocies to this point…
I said I would come back to the scoopneck gown. Yes, yes. Bridget Regan…she’s the stuff of fantasies (sexual in this case, at least in my case), a real beauty, fiery eyes, graceful, fine skin…and a nice bosom. Would be a shame to hide that bosom.
Sp when everyone who is supposed to be hooked up for the quest finally is, it’s determined that she needs different clothes. That white gown would stick out like a bonfire under the right conditions. Better she wear something that would blend with the forest. We’re in Robin Hood territory now. So a friend takes them to his home and they get kitted out. The wife makes an outfit for Kahlin. She comes out to show it off. Very woodlandy, now, long sleeves, leather, green and brown—with a scoopneck front, depending from shoulder tip to shoulder tip.
Everyone else, mail or female, is pretty much covered up to the chin. Not Kahlin. Can’t hide that cleavage, now, can we?
At this point I turned it off. I was turned off. The Seeker acts like a dunce—he’s been told nothing, but that doesn’t forgive his lack of any common sense. The wizard doesn’t really want to be bothered with all this and thought he’d ducked it by coming to this land on this side of the barrier. Silly wizard, he knew all about Destiny, which is what the Seeker is caught up in, and should know better. Things catch up. And they do.
There are any number of minor quibbles up to this point, but the major one I have is the rather unsubtle co-option of the religious subtext into a second-rate fantasy plotline.
The Seeker is Richard Cypher. How clever. A cypher, a code, as if we didn’t realize that this was pure allegory. The code here, of course, is that poor Dick is Jesus. Look at the plotline. The evil lord Darken-Rahl took over the land where Cypher was born and, because of the prophecy that the Seeker would find him and kill him, he orders every firstborn male child slaughtered. Jesus/Moses/Richard escapes, grows to manhood, and has to come back to fulfill the prophecy. He’s the chosen one, the one who can read the cryptic language in the Book of Lost Shadows (cryptic = code = cypher) and can weild the sword of power (of course you knew there’s be a special sword). Swords are always good stand-ins for the Cross, of course.
Richard’s brother is Michael. I predict at some point in the series Michael will become Richard’s lieutenant—the archangel, avenger, etc.
Kahlin…intriguing spelling for a name whose roots are apparently from Catherine, which means “pure.” Hence the white gown? Her title is Confessor. Well. And the men who confess to her fall in love with her. I’m seeing by circuitous paths a road to Mary here. Mary Magdalene or the Virgin? Does it matter? When she touches a man she is able to make him do her bidding. (I’m thinking, because of the nature of the effect of her Confessor role, she’s more Magdalene than Mom, but I doubt they’ll push it much past the platonic.)
It gets thicker, of course, but the bottom line is that whole Seeker saga is loosely based on Christian mythology. No surprise, a lot of fantasy is. But, as is also the case in much fantasy, it is Christian mythology through the lens of a Crusader, ala King Arthur, Percival, the knights, etc. This is Jesus with a sword set to actually supplant the king and free the country. Robust, aggressive Christian allegory, no wimpy sermons or anything like that, and Richard’s John the Baptist (the wizard Zed) kicks ass.
And of course, Darken Rahl is just plain evil, much the way Herod the Great was depicted. He’s easy to hate. (Darken Rahl…hmm…Darth Raul? Would they dare?)
Why am I picking on this little tv show? Because it is clear that a lot of money has been spent on it. The acting is pretty good, the sets are nice, the special effects are none too shabby, and some effort was made to establish a story arc that has a lot of symbolic meaning. Lots of money. For what is essentially substandard fare. We are to look at it and be awed. Kahlin’s marvelous chest is to be ever on display and will probably be ever out of reach, so a degree of ongoing sexual tension will be permanently in place. Likely as not, she’s a virgin, and probably at risk to lose her powers if she sleeps with a man. That’s a cheap prediction, but so much else is so derivative in this thing that I’d almost be willing to wager real money on it. So Richard and Kahlin will travel on, probably collecting a band of followers (merry men? disciples?) along the way, and never consumate the quite evident desire already between them.
As I said at the beginning, normally I can watch this sort of thing with nary a twitch. I can find all the flaws later, but when it comes to movies and television I’m a bit of a sucker. I always turn into a ten-year-old and am willing to be amazed and delighted and generally that happens. But sometimes it just doesn’t work. It just gets more irritating, beginning with the essential idiocy of the characters. It is a plot driven by people who seem incapable of simply asking a straight question. Information is withheld for no good reason and the consequences are always dire. Sure they are. If you don’t tell someone that there’s a hidden pit with spikes at the bottom in the field they want to walk across, well how hard is it to predict their surprise, shock and horror at betrayal when they step in it?
This could have been much better. They have a lot of talent, obviously, but alas no brains.
Oh, and that magic sword? Didn’t do Richard a lick of good the first time out. Is it possible that someone actually has to learn how to do something in this world? He picked it up and the scrollwork along the blade glowed with promise. But he lost his first fight, which also cost him the book he was supposed to keep out of Darken Rahl’s hands….
It may also do well. But I think largely because the audience will care not a whit for anything other than how it looks and the allegorical buttons it pushes. And after all, Richard has—wait for it!—A Destiny! There is no way he can (a) get killed or (b) fail. Really. He can’t fail. People in fantasies with destinies don’t. It’s in the contract. To agree to have a destiny commits the powers that grant such things to ensuring that, no matter how few brains the recipient of said destiny possesses or how little ability is demonstrated in using what brains exist, the recipient will, somehow, succeed.
A neat twist to this would be to discover that Richard is, in fact, Darken Rahl’s son. That would be interesting when it comes to the final showdown. Will junior axe dad? Or will he “save” him? Stay tuned. I can’t wait.
But I won’t watch. No, not even for Kahlin’s marvelous charms.