So I just read, on another blog post, that Howard Overman has written a new series that will be the next Robin Hood/Merlin (aka, the saturday night fantasty show for the BBC). It's called Atlantis and seems to be based on Greek myths, but I will not say anything else about the show itself, as I don't want this to be a duplicate blog post.
My thoughts are on Howard Overman's writing itself.
I really loved The Beginning of the End, in season one of Merlin, as well as Queen of Hearts in series three. If you think about it, those episode were BIG deals for the series, as a whole; Queen of Hearts expanded on the Arthur/Gwen romance, showed a future that more or less came to pass an entire season later, AND was the very first apperance of Old Merlin, and The Beginning of the End was the first time we meet Mordred AND the first time Merlin is called Emrys.
I also liked Sins of the Father (we got to see Ygraine -sort of as a ghost, but not REALLY, since we never know for sure if it was really her or just Morgause using a spell...).
I'll even admit (looks shyly at the other fans, knowing they mostly disliked it with a passion) I really enjoyed The Wicked Day...
Goblin's Gold, I liked, and found very funny, but I find it annoying that we had a scene where Merlin was arrested by the guards for being accused of using magic, so dramatically, in a COMEDY episode -it sort of ruined the tension, since we knew it was a pure comedy and nothing even remotely dramatic was going to come of that.
But I hated A Herald of the New Age and The Death Song of Uther Pendragon.
I don't know what HAPPENED with Howard! His stories used to be so GOOD, and then all of a sudden it's like they started letting the man watch the sixth sense and are you afraid of the dark re-runs (the ghosty ones, not the good sci-fi type ones...) before he did his writing for the show. It was all ghosts and possession and a whole lot of rubbish that had nothing what-so-ever to do with Merlin myths OR Arthurian legend in general.
Elyan's character was almost ruined in Herald, Druid ghost possession being a pretty crappy cop-out (honestly, an episode where he really WAS upset with Arthur for putting Gwen in exile would have been more interesting to me), and come on, Uther was AWFUL in Death song...
So I guess my hope for his new show is that Howard will realize ghost stories are NOT his strong point and go back to what made his writing great in the older episodes of Merlin.
Anyone agree with me?
Also, I wonder what Julian Jones is up to. He was always my favorite Merlin writer, ever since Lady of the Lake. And I think he's amazing at what he does, even though a lot of fans are mad at him for the last episode of season five. Do you think Howard & co. would let him write an episode of Atlantis?