kerravonsen | Highlanderific

Yay! My Highlander Season 3 DVD box set arrived today! Now we have the really interesting character... okay, yes it was a real glum to lose Fitz, but Methos more than makes up for it. Mind you, I think the worst loss was Darius, but that didn't hit me as bad as losing Fitz, because I'd gotten spoiled about Darius's death, so it didn't take me by surprise like Fitz's did. With Fitz, I was saying "This can't be happening, this can't be happening, this can't be happening" to myself.

And as for Ritchie... if people read my HL fic, they'll assume I'm in Clan Denial, because I've written things that were set in the far future that had Ritchie alive in them, but actually they were written before Archangel aired, so they're only Denial after-the-fact. I actually don't feel strongly about it either way. Yes, Season 6 wasn't that great, but it did give us fun things like "Indiscretions", so it isn't all bad.

On the other hand, the whole Archangel arc just didn't fit with the Highlander mythos, IMHO. It sort of burst the bounds, if you see what I mean. I'm not sure how to put it. When you're writing Speculative Fiction, your leaping-off point, your "what-if" can be as wild and fantastic as you want. But after you've started, you have to take that as the rules, as the framework, and be disciplined enough to stay within that framework. At least you will if you're any good.
So here we have Highlander, whose what-if is "What if there are these secret Immortals living among us, who become immortal on their first death, fight each other with sharp implements in order to become The One, who can only be killed by beheading, and whose life-force, the Quickening, goes to the nearest Immortal on death?" That, there, is the "fantastic" element in the series, the framework. Yes, further stories can fill in other details without stepping over that (for example, the all-immortals-are-foundlings thing) and one can also add in non-fantastic things like the Watchers, which did put a twist into the universe, but a secret society isn't something that's actually fantastical.

Generally, the Highlander universe has taken the stance that Immortals are the most fantastical thing around, with just a touch of extra way-out-ness with the examples of Cassandra and her nemesis, both of whom had a "voice of command", as well as Cassandra being a "witch" with presumably other powers as well (and a strong implication that she's the same Cassandra of Greek myth who was doomed to have her prophecies ignored). Then you have the example of the mad immortal in "Shadows" who appeared to have the second sight, as well as the ability to send telepathic illusions to a person at will. But as a contrast with that we have the episode The Vampire, where there wasn't an actual vampire, but someone faking a vampire attack. You have the story about the Kali fanatic, who was acting on his own bat, not being guided by gods or demons. You have Little Tin God, where an immortal is pulling a con-job on new immortals in the name of religion. There was also that early episode where that new immortal went crazy, thinking he was the Angel of Death. So one gets the impression that the level of fantasticness, as I said, is that the really most fantastic things around are Immortals, and no other mythical or supernatural beings or creatures are around in this universe. Even with something as resonantly mythic as the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse, they're just Immortals after all.
Then we suddenly have Archangel, and this "demon" pops up out of nowhere, violating what had already been established about the universe. No, I don't accept that "well it's okay because it only turns up once every thousand years"; sorry, buster, if you've got one demon, you've got more than one. Oh, I don't deny that a lot of the archangel arc was very effective -- creepy, angsty, disturbing. It's just that it didn't belong on Highlander.

Of course, now you'll start wondering if that means that I dissapprove of Highlander/Forever Knight or Highlander/Buffy crossovers because they "don't fit". Not at all -- if the crossover can provide some sort of explanation as to why vampires are not generally known about in the Highlander-Immortal sphere. In one sense that's easier with the Buffyverse, because it already has an internal explanation as to why the things-that-go-bump-in-the-night are generally ignored by the world at large. And with Buffy crossovers, it's fun to consider the possibility that the Watchers organization in each universe is really the same organization, just with different branches.

Oh, I'm tired. And hot. We had a hot day today, very unexpected.