It's time for yet another edition of the Sanctuary Review. This week marks both the first hour-length episode and the last to be converted from the web series (and thus I'll no longer be making comparisons from this point unless they insert cut scenes). Yet again the script was altered (since the premier was, how could they not? ) and once again most of it was not to my liking. This is just my opinion, of course; as always I invite any and all fellow Sanctuarians to leave reviews.
Unlike the premier, a lot of scenes in this episode were clips taken from the original weps. The major differences were a massive change in lighting (the original was heavy on darkness, this one was far more bright), cuts where cuts weren't before, new scenes and some changes in dialogue. In the opening sequence, when Helen was making hand signs to Ashley and she made the unrecognizable one, it didn't mean "Stay together or we all die" in the original. She said it meant "I'm cutting off your allowance." Personally, I liked that old one better.
More minor changes came as the show progressed. Bigfoot's original attitude toward the three women was one of caution, not attraction. The rings were on the fingers of the keepers, not the women. The group tracking them down wasn't a pseudo-military cabal, but an ancient cabal populated by the keeper creatures. I'll elaborate in a moment; I've got a heck of a long story to retell.
In the original version of this episode, the Morrigan were brainwashed, but not by regular people. They were the weapons of Morgan Le Fay, the enemy sorceress of King Arthur in the legend. Morgan used them as a three-pronged tool to end the war that Arthur's forces started to take over England, but another legend, Merlin, captured the Morrigan and turned them to Arthur's side by changing their directive to the destruction of men (thus wiping out the Saxons and so on). When there was no further use for them, Merlin charged his creations, the keepers, with holding the witches in cold storage. When they got their memories back they did, in fact, try to kill Will when they were spinning around in the lab simply because he was male (they also attacked Bigfoot). They were then placed in smaller cells than shown in the TV version.
Also, the aftermath of the lab destruction was a wee bit different (in the original, this was the episode in which Henry Foss was introduced). I was actually upset that they cut out the great dialogue between Helen and Will about eternal life being a gift and a curse. Eventually, with a few more reviews of the original version, which is on my hard drive and not YouTube, I'll be able to create a transcript of it for consideration.
Of course, there were some bits I enjoyed as additions. I loved the encounter in the elevator with the two-faced man (as played by Chuck Campbell of Stargate Atlantis). I loved it to bits. His character got about ten seconds of screen time in the original. I also liked the dialogue between Will and Danu at the window. In the original version, the progression of the Morrigan's memory recovery was unnaturally fast. Here the timing was much nicer.
Back to the original rant mindset, A lot was missing from this episode that I liked a lot in the original. Since the premier online had given Ashley the knowledge of her parentage, she was still exceedingly worked up in webisodes 5-8. The reason she went after Chamelion Boy and (another big cut) a particularly nasty vampire lawyer (played by Dan Payne of SGA) was to relieve her anger (in the end she got her rear end handed to her by the vampire). There was also a reference back to the premier where one of the keepers grabs Ashley in the same locking hold that John did in the web premier (watch my links) and she freezes at the memory. There was also a scene cut between Will and Ashley that, in all honesty, creeped me out in the original, but if it had been up to me I'd have kept it in for plot complication.
Also on the list of disappointing cuts were the Abnormals Wexford and Spiky Steve (sorry to say, two-face and squid man didn't make up for it). Steve's name is mentioned in the TV version, but the green screening was altered between web and television, so you couldn't see him. I was fascinated by Steve in the original because he was a fully-CG character with lines. He stood upright, had armor spikes on about every inch of his body and screeched like a banshee. In terms of character he was funny; in his intro scene he was playing the part of the voluntary target in a weapon test by Ashley and Henry. A lot of the lines he had made me either smile or laugh and it was sad to see him excluded. Wexford, on the other hand, was yet another actor. Paul McGillion, to be exact; another SGA major great. Wexford was a Southern gentleman-type Abnormal who happened to be amphibious. He kept a greenhouse in his apartment so he could live in a moist environment, but he was also a lover of art, especially very old art (it was him who originally identified the rings' symbol for Helen). The best line of his I can recall was also his last in the series, in response to Helen calling the Morrigan witches: "No, love. They were the witches."
Now the biggest part: The ending. The original webisode 8, the final one to be released, left Bigfoot, Helen and Ashley all bloodied up, Will and the Morrigan missing and Henry sprawled out on the lab floor, but apparently uninjured. In short, an immense cliffhanger. When it was released at around this same time last year, the creators of the show proposed a challenge to the writers amongst the fans: Write us an ending to this webisode arc. Many participated and nine were chosen for further workshopping. Thus, when I got settled to watch this episode on TV, I was almost literally praying that they wouldn't use my ending (I was the second name listed of the nine). Thankfully they didn't, but I couldn't help but pick out elements of material from my own rudimentary script. In my version of the ending, Will did lead the Morrigan away so the keepers wouldn't find them. Also, it was the power of the Morrigan that ended the arc in my script (though not in exactly the same way). I have to wonder whether or not some of what the world saw on TV was influenced by the scripts of the fans (no, not just mine). The original plan for them was to convert them into animated shorts, but the workshop was dropped brutally when the production team got the green light for television. Nothing anyone can say is going to stop me from wondering about this. Nothing.
And now for the collective. What say you about episode 2?
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