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"Really? We are trapped in a room with a machine that can cut off my head. Now that's a longshot."
--Connor MacLeod in Peter Bellwood's original Highlander II script
"Prophecy" sucks, "End of Innosence" is one of my top five episodes of the show (and Richie's best role in the show), and "Manhunt" is pretty good, too. Can't go wrong with Carl Robinson!
Cinedigm has made the episodes available on YouTube.
Episode 88: "Prophecy"
This episode is like an especially laughable piece of Mary Sue fan-fic, filled with high fantasy nonsense that does not belong in the more grounded universe of Highlander.
"Really? We are trapped in a room with a machine that can cut off my head. Now that's a longshot."
--Connor MacLeod in Peter Bellwood's original Highlander II script
*giggle* I understand completely. I still like Leslie's version where Ahriman is an insane, psychic immortal who burned out his powers fighting Duncan.
I think it's insulting to professional writers to compare their work to a Mary Sue (where a female character is the author's fantasy version of herself, usually having sex with the hero). The writer credited with this episode is David Tynan! I'll post thoughts later...
Then they should try writing something worthy of their profession instead of churning out this garbage (where almost-statutory-rapist Cassandra has sex with the hero, in case you've forgotten). As for the late David Tynan, he wrote some good episodes, but he also wrote some real dreck: Counterfeit, Archangel/Avatar, To Be/Not to Be... If he writes a bad episode, I'm going to call it a bad episode.
"Really? We are trapped in a room with a machine that can cut off my head. Now that's a longshot."
--Connor MacLeod in Peter Bellwood's original Highlander II script
Run For Your Life...again. Carl Robinson returns, and the writers hope that the audience has as sharp a memory as Duncan himself. This sequel is as satisfying as that season 2 story, but it also wanders back into the hokiness of season 2.
"Really? We are trapped in a room with a machine that can cut off my head. Now that's a longshot."
--Connor MacLeod in Peter Bellwood's original Highlander II script
It's my understanding (learned at a long-ago convention) that Stan Kirsch would have left the show, of his own volition, at the beginning of Season 5, if a pilot he'd been in had been picked up for a series. The HL producers had been prepared to adjust their filming schedule so he could be in "The End of Innocence"; then we never would have seen him again.
"Manhunt": Fans were told at some point that the producers had considered a spinoff series starring Eric McCormack as the character he played here. I don't think they ever mentioned it to him - they let him think his character's surname being "McCormick" (one letter different) was a funny coincidence. It wasn't!
Yikes! How different might his career have been? If he had signed on for a Highlander-franchise series, and it was a hit, he wouldn't have been free to do "Will and Grace." (I never looked at that - I avoid sitcoms in general - but I know it made him a "star.")
Bill Panzer said at some later date that they'd decided a series with another male-Immortal lead's being the only real difference from HL:TS would "diminish the legacy" of what they'd already done.
"Prophecy" sucks, "End of Innosence" is one of my top five episodes of the show (and Richie's best role in the show), and "Manhunt" is pretty good, too. Can't go wrong with Carl Robinson!
Agreed.
I don't know why Aleander thinks that Prophecy sucks, but for me it's simply the addition of actual magic. This taints much of Season 5 for me up to and including the Ahriman arc. There are so many silly episodes in Season 5 that could have been fine with a slight rewrite: just make Roland in Prophecy another powerful immortal without the magic. Don't associate the four horsemen with anything in the Book of Revelation, just make them generic Bronze Age raiders. Make the ghost stuff in Haunted far more ambiguous—don't have the ghost of Duncan's friend outright appear at the end. Finally, they could just have made Ahriman some kind of mystic immortal, similar to the psychic immortal from Season 3. In all these cases they could have had almost the exact same plots, except for "Avatar" and "Armageddon", but few people would complain about those pretentious and nonsensical episodes being trashed. Duncan could still have renounced his sword (which I liked and wished they had made more of) and focus on his mind (which I also liked), but at the end of the day he'd be trying to overcome a flesh and blood immortal. It wouldn't have been some cheesy, Omen-esque silliness that everyone is too embarrassed to reference in future episodes.
Actually I think that they crossed the line back in Season 2 with Pharoah's Daughter. That episode is so silly. But at least it gave us that cool Roman character. Wish he had become a frequent character.
There's also something weird in Prophecy. Cassandra tells Duncan as a kid that he's going to have to confront a great evil one day, and in the context of that episode it seems pretty clear that she's referring to Roland, but in Archangel they retroactively pretend that she was talking about Ahriman. It's very strange.
I think it's pretty much for the same reason they created Kell for Endgame. "He's not gonna fight you, Duncan... not until he's made you suffer... until he's destroyed everything you love in this world... until you don't know whether you want to live or die. That's your way, right, Slan?"
Writers: "Dudes, you know what? Slan was pretty feeb for wat Connor said. Hey, wouldn't it be awesome if he had the wrong guy?"
"Dudes, Kantos was a one-off, with all that prophecy-shit. What if Cassandra had the wrong guy?"
Okay, I complained earlier about Tootsie Bee's comparing "Prophecy" to a "laughably bad" Mary Sue-type fanfic. That's an insult to professional writers (the one shown as having been responsible for this episode being a man!); and it's not in that category at all. A Mary Sue is a fic in which a female character is the female author's fantasy version of herself, usually enjoying sex with the hero. And if that's what the author has in mind, one would expect it to be really central to the story.
Cassandra surely is a new character, and she does have sex with Mac. But I don't see that as being central to the story - the writers having started out by thinking of this new character.
I can only guess, of course. But...think back to "Homeland," which aired a year earlier. Whenever I look at that, I have the thought, "Why did Debra Campbell's father promise her in marriage to Robert rather than Duncan, when she loved Duncan, and the clan chieftain's son might have seemed like a better match?" Might numerous fans have been asking about that?
I can think of two plausible, very prosaic possibilities. (Robert's father asked first; or, because first cousin Robert was older than Duncan, he was actually more likely to be accepted as the next chieftain.) I'm sure the writers could think of prosaic answers, too. But maybe they decided to go with something more interesting. Establishing that something in Duncan's childhood had caused many people in Glenfinnan to suspect that there was something strange, dangerous, about him - even though he never realized it.
So the writers conceived the idea of a sinister stranger - Immortal, of course - coming to Glenfinnan in search of a boy who'd been born at the winter solstice. (If they hadn't already established that about Duncan, they did it then.) It almost had to involve "prophecies" about the child - the Immortal really believing the adult was destined to kill him. Everyone in Glenfinnan knew when Duncan had been born...and while the stranger was there, he was suspiciously absent, "lost in the woods."
Then they had to explain why he was "lost in the woods," destined to return safely...and one obvious possibility was a "good" Immortal, who knew what was going on and would protect him. That would have been the origin of Cassandra: a character created to fill a story need, with sex being only a minor part of it.
I agree there are problems with the story! Cassandra has real paranormal powers, while Kantos seems really to be just a master hypnotist. And if she'd once been his teacher, it seems strange that she seemingly didn't know him well enough to recognize what he was doing, and simply tell Duncan all he had to do was plug his ears. (A somewhat ridiculous situation!) Also, I know Adrian objected to their including so much fantasy.
But...it turned out to be worth it, because in Cassandra, they found a perfect "character to fill a need" in the "Horsemen" story! A character old enough to have been alive in the "Bronze Age," whom Mac already knew and trusted, who could convince him Methos really had been one of the Horsemen.
Ha ha! Nope, the duration of that coma will have to be left to any reader's imagination. Didn't want a too-saccharine ending, with all loose ends neatly tied up!
But you could have a whole story about how you get her out of the coma! And it should probably involve Methos, and someone not unlike what MacLeod became. Maybe even Nick… I just love your story.
Just finished going over the official domestic cut of these three episodes, kindly provided by the wonderful Gillian Horvath. I have converted them from their VHS tapes to mpg (m4v) format if anyone is interested in them. Also, the official 'Eurominutes' are now marked out on my transcript pages. [www.zzickle.com/tv/transcripts.html]
And now for the showdown: DVD/European cut vs Domestic cut - who wins?
5x01:Prophecy The first several cuts in the domestic version remove filler and tighten up scenes. But then we lose Cassandra reminding Duncan (presumably) about his Dark Quickening before he asks her to teach him Kantos’ whammy. And the last cut, at the beginning of Act Four ties up the dangling thread of what happens to the two cops Kantos whammied, which, considering what he did to the P.I.s in NYC, it’s a bit surprising that he lets them go. This final cut also loses us Kantos’ line about finding children’s innocence and honesty creepy. For the resolution of the whammied cops alone, I have to go with...
Winner: DVD/European cut!
5x02:The End of Innocence Two major scenes cut from the domestic version are: theflashback to Joe’s Bar after the end of “Something Wicked”, which fills in a little of the gap in the story left by the show’s transition to Paris, and the Bike Emporium scene, where Richie takes his bike back (and threatens to burn the place down, geez.) Although thatlast one would make a lot more sense if this episode followed the shooting script, where Clay breaks Richie’s sword, Richie presumably offscreen sells his bike for $1,800 (because he needs a new sword more than he needs transportation), Joe refuses to lend him the rest of the money he needs, he fails to steal a sword from the museum, Duncan gives him one instead, and THEN he goes to get his bike back because he no longer needs the money to buy a sword.Instead we are treated to the somewhat confusing order of Richie having sold his bike (offscreen) and then demanding it back (onscreen), BEFORE he even encounters Carter at Delila’s, completely removing his motive for selling it in the first place, much less for ‘buying’ it back again. In that setting, it makes sense to drop this confusingly out-of-order scene, so while I do like the scene itself, I really wish it was where it was meant to be in the episode. (The entire episode is out of order from the script – check out my transcript page for the changes.) Oh, and the domestic cut also losesAshe’s monologue about the wonders of immortality, which lends weight to him asking Clay to spare him, not because he is a coward, but because he doesn’t want to lose the gift of immortality that he’s been given.
Winner: DVD/European cut!
5x03: Manhunt Glenda. Well, Glenda and “Run For Your Life” flashbacks. But seriously. Glenda.
Harish Clay was a great villain who Duncan had run away from years before and when Ritchie takes the head of clay's friend Carter Wellan all hell breaks loose and sets up Duncan and Clay for the final match up!
JB
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