Thoughts on Dark Crystal: Age of Resistance

[bookishwench]

I just finished the tenth and final (especially with the recent announcement that no second season is forthcoming) episode, and in general, I was very pleased. The Dark Crystal itself is Henson's flawed masterpiece, artistically stunning, amazing music, twisted (and very much non-Muppet) plot. It also had some serious dialog problems, and it gave too much away in the exposition, both as the result of test audience suggestions. AoR has a few similar problems. The Skeksis are occasionally a little too played for humor. They're supposed to be evil incarnate, and sometimes the general, the emperor, the chamberlain, and the scientist (done wonderfully by Mark Hamill) were very much as terrifying as they were supposed to be. How this won the Emmy for best Children's Show (seriously, after the peeper beetle, how?), I have no idea. There were also few background sequences that looked too computer generated, like something out of a well-done video game, but not real. Thra in the original film always looked like a real place, and somehow the Crystal Chamber and the crystal itself felt smaller.

That stated, wow, did I love the characters in general in this. Rian is our major male here, but the females characters were brilliant. This is a matriarchal society ruled by maudras of each clan, and Brea, Deet, Seladon, Tavra, and the Al Maudra were all well developed, interesting, three dimensional characters. Throw in Aughra, who always rocked, and the Bechdel Test was passed six ways from Sunday. They even added female Skeksis, though those were a bit, well, annoying, particular the one I can't help mentally referring to as SkekSnot. Regardless of that, I was thrilled to see developed characters inhabiting this world, and even Heretic and his twin, the comic relief of sorts, were engaging (and yes, the puppet show in a puppet show was an eyeroller, but I still loved it). And Hup, who could have been a disaster of a character on the level of Scrappy Doo or Jar Jar, worked. I liked the Paladin of the Spoon and could have seen more of him. We even got to meet more Fizzgigs.

I have never seen so many red squiggles under correctly spelled words as in that previous paragraph.

The problem, of course, is that The Dark Crystal's future means almost all of those characters die horribly at the claws of the Garthim. One of the darkest bits of Henson's plot is that it's largely based on an attempted and fairly complete genocide. Literally none of the Gelfling should survive if that plot is intact, and it seems to be. The one place this fell rather flat for me was the Skeksis and Gelfling battle, which killed a couple fairly large characters, but it felt fairly light. A second season, had it occurred, would have to have been significantly more depressing, so maybe it's not such a bad thing I didn't have to watch Deet get murdered in the end, since I liked her a lot.

Still not quite sure how Aughra pulled off the reincarnation out of Hunter, though.

And finally, a few nods to various allusions in this:
Rian using the chandelier was straight from the Wizard of Oz
The Ascedency = the Borg, right down to the facial gizmo
Seladon had some similarities to the prodigal son
Mira, killed off in the first episode, appears to be a namesake of sorts to Kira
Gurgin's entire attitude was actually quite Buffy
Was Hunter's falling off the cliff and disolving reminiscent of the first vampire kill over on Angel, or was that just me? The guy who went out a window and burned up on the way down?
The Sanctuary Tree seemed similar to Avatar's Tree of Souls

Also, originally I thought SkekTek actually cared about the little green bird thing in a cage in his laboratory, but then when I found out that's where he was hiding essence, I wondered if I'd gotten that bit wrong.

Regardless, still beautifully done.