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6-1: Archangel, Avatar, Armageddon

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  • 6-1: Archangel, Avatar, Armageddon

    Discuss the finale of Season 5 and the premiere of Season 6:

    Archangel
    Avatar
    Armageddon
    __________________________________________________

    "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

  • #2
    Every episode is available for free courtesy of Cinedigm:



    Episode 106: "Archangel"

    Part 1 of the Ahriman story arc. It's hilarious in an Exorcist II kind of way....until the end. Killing off Richie is inexcusable. All of the good will built up by the last two seasons is undone by one bad episode, and Duncan is now unambiguously the embodiment of good--so much for that "gray ethics" theme of Season 5.
    __________________________________________________

    "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

    Comment


    • #3


      Episode 107: "Avatar"

      Really bad. Needed Orson Welles to whisper, "Roseblood." Not the worst of the Ahriman trilogy, but the dullest.
      __________________________________________________

      "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

      Comment


      • #4


        Episode 108: "Armageddon"

        Talk about your anticlimax. The most idiotic part of the arc, and that's saying something. And why drag Kronos and Darius into this mess?
        __________________________________________________

        "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

        Comment


        • #5
          Never seen these episodes before. Any good?

          Comment


          • #6
            I think everyone found the Ahriman Trilogy appalling. The only two sort-of positives are that it had some excellent acting, and that it inspired a lot of fan fiction. For a while there was an entire website of fan fiction for "Archangel Fixes"! It certainly kept us interested. I actually wrote another fic this year.

            IMHO, the worst of the three episodes was the second, "Avatar" - because the plot was so nonsensical. But the whole trilogy was a bad idea. Here's how I summarized it in a piece in the original Forum.

            ***

            The heart of its muddled theology: In a last-ditch attempt to rouse Mac to anger, Ahriman hisses at him, "I'm a part of you now!" He's not just saying he and Mac - two separate entities - share some characteristics. He's claiming he's actually "part of" Mac.

            And Mac replies mildly, "You always were." Meaning - as he later tells Joe - that Ahriman is "part of" every human.

            But if what "Ahriman" represents - a capacity for hatred, cruelty, unnecessary violence, self-serving treachery - is inextricably "part of" every human (in other words, part of human nature), it can't simultaneously be a supernatural Being capable of dominating the world for a thousand years if he defeats a single Champion! In a well-written story, you can't have it both ways.

            ***

            I'm sure the Trilogy was first conceived as the series finale, when they expected Season 5 to be the last. And I'm guessing that if that had been the case, they would have gone the "normal" route with this type of story: had everything set right in the end, all the "dead" restored to life - probably, no one but the hero remembering any of it. His reward for "winning"! But when the show was continuing, and they intended to drop Stan Kirsch, they made the unwise choice to leave Richie (and all the other victims) dead. Hey, it would have been so easy to explain a living Richie's departure! They were in Paris. They could have just had him say he was going back to the U.S., where he'd be able - for a few more years - to compete in motorcycle races using his real name.

            Since they were leaving Richie dead, they should have shown Mac still struggling with guilt feelings throughout Season 6, and his friends loyally trying to help him. But they couldn't even do that, because it had taken them so long to get funding for the season that the actors had other commitments.


            Comment


            • #7
              Something I mentioned in the section on Conventions, that I should say here, too...

              I recently found some notes I'd made at a long-ago Convention. Hard to believe I could have forgotten something like this, but I had - so other fans may have forgotten it too.

              Stan Kirsch actually would have left, of his own volition, at the beginning of Season 5, if a pilot he'd been in had been picked up as a series! The HL producers had been prepared to juggle their filming schedule so he could be in "The End of Innocence"; then we never would have seen him again.

              Stan certainly had the right to do that. Season 5 was expected to be the series' last, and they'd only been using him in a few episodes per season. But for me, at least, his having been prepared to leave at that time makes it a little easier to accept the producers' decision to drop him at the end of Season 5. It's not as if he'd been so fanatically loyal to HL:TS that he would have passed up other opportunities, and stayed wirh it till the bitter end!

              Comment


              • #8
                This arc could have been great. I thought Richie's death was an amazingly powerful moment that could have signified something major for Duncan that lead on to great things for the series. But here's where I think they went horribly wrong:

                - I hate the villain being Satan or even a demon of any kind. Adding these extra supernatural elements to Highlander never, ever works well. Ahriman could easily have been an immortal who had developed abilities not dissimilar to the psychic immortal from Season 3.

                - They really didn't understand the spiritual concepts that they were trying to work with. The spiritual concepts are cool, and I love the idea of Duncan having to explore his own inner world to overcome some evil force, but the writers clearly had a pop-culture level of understanding of these things and the result is that you have a lot of "weird" imagery and ideas that just don't form anything coherent. The ultimate point that Duncan has to accept that evil exists within him also doesn't make sense because he should have learned that during the Dark Quickening arc. If they'd understood the spiritual concepts they were working with they'd have had Duncan learn to become entirely unaffected by the exterior world and his own tormenting thoughts. In this way he'd have overcome his guilt of killing Richie and the mind-games of the antagonist. You don't have to have him renounce his sword—you just have to have him understand who he is and the Game itself on an entirely new level, and this could have paved the way for a really interesting Season 6.
                Formerly known as "Quickening"

                My latest video in which I visit an ancient broch and cairns: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kxY2hYR6GXw

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