Air Date: 3/5/09 Sun 6:30pm

The first episode of Merlin was aired last night so I thought I would write a quick review, particularly since it is the first Myth and Magic style fantasy TV series we have had for quite some time.  There will be two sections of the review, the first one describing a brief outline of the story and the second discussing my thoughts about it.

Outline

Merlin, the TV series, revolves around a young Merlin who has been sent to Camelot by his mother.  The opening scene is of Merlin approaching Camelot, wide eyed and excited to be at the centre of the Kingdom of Albion.

One of the first things Merlin sees as he enters Camelot is the beheading of a man accused of using Enchantments and Magic. The beheading is presided over by the King, Uther Pendragon, whom we know from Arthurian legend is Arthur’s father.  The mother of the man that is beheaded then appears and makes the threat to Uther that he too will know what it is like to loose a son.  Uther commands the guards to seize the old lady but she whispers a spell to a pendent she is wearing and she disappears in a very interesting special effect as she teleports away. We find out from this exchange that all magic has been banned in the Kingdom of Albion and the practice of it is punishable by death.

Merlin continues on his way to seek out the court Physician, Gaius, to whom he has been sent by his mother with a letter of introduction.  Through this letter we find out that Merlin is from a small village where he is at odds with everyone and his mother sent him to Camelot as she feared what he would become if he stayed in his village.

There seems to be a familiarity between Gaius and Merlin’s mother, as in the two appear to know each other, but how they are connected was not explored.  We quickly learn that Merlin was born with the ability to move things with his mind and does not need to incant any spells to do it, which is established as unusual in the practice of magic as it is portrayed in this story.

On errands for Gaius Merlin almost immediately gets into a fight with Arthur and is thrown into the dungeons.  Gaius gets him released for the much lighter punishment of public humiliation (getting rotten fruit and vegetables thrown at him by the village kids while he is in stocks).

Elsewhere in the Kingdom we see the witch who threatened Uther take the form of a beautiful singer who is on her way to sing at the celebrations Uther is holding to commemorate 20 years of peace without magic.

Merlin meanwhile gets a firm speaking to by Gaius for using his magic on Arthur in order to win a fight.  Merlin whines about how there has to be a reason for his gifts and makes the wildly petulant statement that if he can’t use his magic then he may as well be dead.

Merlin then conveniently makes his way down to the deep dungeons of the castle where he finds the great dragon, the last of the dragons that Uther keeps locked up to prevent the return of magic to the Kingdom.  The great Dragon then suggests that it is Merlin’s destiny that he act as protector to Arthur who will otherwise be unable to create the great Kingdom of Albion that it will one day be.

Later, the witch, disguised as the beautiful singer is at the celebration banquet and begins to sing.  Her song sends everyone to sleep and for some reason covers everyone in cobwebs.  The song actually has a really nice melody and who ever is singing it has a very good voice.  At the peak of the song, the witch draws out a dagger to throw at Arthur who is also asleep but so intent is she on her spell she fails to realise that Merlin who is not more than 3 meters away from Arthur is not asleep.  Merlin uses his power to make a chandelier fall on her.  When she is knocked out everyone wakes up, wiping the cobwebs off themselves to find the old witch revealed on the floor.  The witch makes one last attempt and throws her dagger.  Merlin being close by pulls Arthur out of the way.

For saving his son Uther rewards Merlin by making him Arthur’s man servant, a dubious honour which neither of them seem that pleased with as both of their only two meetings have ended in a fight.

Discussion

First of all let me say I love the myth and magic fantasy genre and wish there was more of it, so I am always going to have good words to say about any attempt at a movie or TV show set in such a world.  Despite the genre having a good following of devoted fans, some of the greatest failures of movies have been fantasies, eg Dungeons and Dragons (http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0190374/).

I would like to see Merlin do well and hope that the writers and producers avoid the seemingly irresistible traps that this genre appears prone too.  The first is the writers have to be VERY careful not to speed along story line at the expense of character development.  Sure the next big special effect or the next juicy revelation by the dragon will be exciting but don’t ignore the characters.  We have to get to know them in order to connect with them otherwise they become bland and two dimensional and we don’t really care what their destinies are.  Movies adapted from particularly thick books suffer from this the most since they have to take out as much character development as possible to fit the story line into the attention span of their audience, typically not more than 2.5 hours.  The latest Harry Potter Movies and the Golden Compass suffer from this the most where the main characters just bolt from action to action to action with out any real motivation for doing so being portrayed.

Unfortunately in the first episode, Merlin was a bit like this.  The opening was good, but the relationship between Merlin and Gaius seemed to develop far too fast.  No sooner had they met than they were like father and sun, despite never having met before.  Apart from being sent there by his mother we don’t really know why Merlin is there.  He doesn’t seem to be out to learn anything from Gaius, and fails to perform the one task associated with the deliveries that Gaius gives to him ie to stop the blind man drinking the potion all at once.

Another example is when Merlin conveniently just happens to down to the deep dungeon to find the great dragon.  It is not unreasonable to expect that his “destiny” and the call of the dragon (which gives the episode its name), played a part in how easy it was for him to both find the dragon and to distract the two inattentive guards in order to get to him.  But it was all very fast and very easy considering the importance of the Dragon to Uther.

The other main problem with the way the characters are written is that there are the characters that the writers want to show, eg the sweet and charming Merlin with the pig headed stubborn streak that the audience will follow.  But there is also the background of the characters which we find out as we watch the story.

Merlin is in his late teens and as we find out from the letter his mother sent is from a small village.  His mother was worried enough about his gifts and how he was picked on by the village that she would send him away to Camelot.  It is not clear whether Merlin’s village is in the kingdom of Albion but if it is, it is strange that his mother would send him away to keep him safe because of his “gifts” if the place she sent him too was one where he would be put to death by the king himself if he were to ever use them.  Also a kid who is picked on mercilessly by everyone for their entire lives is generally a quiet, introversive, suspicious character.  There is nothing about Merlin in how he acts that shows any of this.  He is helpful, willing, sweet and charming.  As such it looks like this background story, and the argumentativeness he is prone to when it comes to Arthur is only a plot device and not a feature that was ever incorporated into his character.

The writers should aim to flesh out the characters in a little more detail with complex back stories for the actors to work on so that the characters would behave appropriately to the events that have occured in their lives story, and not just because the script tells them too.

The special effects were good, but again the writers and director should avoid excessive and inexplicable flamboyancy.  While a powerful sorcerer would not be averse to flashy displays of power, the spells themselves would be crafted to achieve a certain purpose.  Pointless effects would never be a part of any spell as it would be a waste of energy and could get you killed since it would take an unnecessary amount of time to add the extra bits in that don’t do anything.  Therefore wizards that included them would never become powerful wizards.  An example of this was the sleeping spell that the Witch cast while she was singing at the banquet.  Sure it put everyone to sleep, but why did cobwebs appear over everyone?  The cobwebs themselves didn’t appear to do anything.   They only appeared after the people fell asleep, then when the witch was killed the people simply brushed them aside when they woke up.  Magical systems in fantasy stories need to be internally consistent.  Spells are a means of turning energy from one sort into another.  As a general rule a particular spell will be of a particular sort, ie a spell can only do one thing at a time or be of one sort at a time.  A spell that puts people to sleep for instance wouldn’t also create matter from nothing. This would be a separate and quite difficult achievement in its self.  So to craft a spell that both puts someone asleep then creates a web from nothing would never be done if that web didn’t do anything.  It wasn’t for show since the people were already asleep when the web appeared so they wouldn’t see it.  It didn’t help in the sleep spell since the people were asleep before it appeared and as soon as the song stopped all the people woke up even though the web was still there.  So it was an excessive and unnecessary part of the spell than no powerful witch would have ever included in her spell, making it look like clumsy TV magic rather than anything the characters would have put any thought into.

Apart from that the story was good and the characters were interesting enough that we look forward to seeing what will happen to them, and more importantly to want to know a bit more about them.  For example I am sure Gaius and Merlin’s mother have a history of some sort, why did she send Merlin to Gaius for instance?  Could it be that she knew he had a knowledge of magic?  How did she know this?  If she didn’t know this she took a big risk with her son’s life. The acting was good and I thought the music set a good mood too.

What did everyone else think?