HIGHLA-L Digest - 31 Aug 2004 to 1 Sep 2004 (#2004-166)
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Wed, 1 Sep 2004 22:00:07 -0400
There are 6 messages totalling 220 lines in this issue.
Topics of the day:
1. Season Five dvd Commentary: Prophecy (5)
2. Season Five dvd Commentary: =?ISO-8859-1?B?oFByb3BoZWN5?=
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Date: Wed, 1 Sep 2004 09:13:50 EDT
From: Bizarro7@aol.com
Subject: Re: Season Five dvd Commentary: Prophecy
In a message dated 8/31/2004 2:17:06 PM Eastern Standard Time,
immortals_incorporated@cox.net writes:
Wendy(Cassandra was really the most helpless 3000 year old woman.)
Nah. She was obviously leading Kalas to Duncan as a training aid in
preparation for the ordeals to come, where she reappears. Same technique as a mom cat
who brings home a live mouse, so the kitten can learn to hunt and kill. Gillian
and Donna have said that they deliberately set up Season 5 and her
appearances in it to be a build-up to the ultimate confrontation between Duncan and
Evil...with Ahriman. So it escalates in difficulty between her 3 appearances; the
challenge of Kalas; the challenge of the 4 Horsemen; the challenge of Ahriman
(the real Prophecy). Cassandra's role was teacher, with one of the few things
Duncan could not resist...damsel in distress...as his motivation.
Leah
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Date: Wed, 1 Sep 2004 09:39:59 -0400
From: kageorge <kageorge@erols.com>
Subject: Re: Season Five dvd Commentary: Prophecy
Bizarro7@aol.com wrote:
>In a message dated 8/31/2004 2:17:06 PM Eastern Standard Time,
>immortals_incorporated@cox.net writes:
>Wendy(Cassandra was really the most helpless 3000 year old woman.)
>Nah. She was obviously leading Kalas to Duncan as a training aid in
>preparation for the ordeals to come, where she reappears. Same technique as a mom cat
>who brings home a live mouse, so the kitten can learn to hunt and kill. Gillian
>and Donna have said that they deliberately set up Season 5 and her
>appearances in it to be a build-up to the ultimate confrontation between Duncan and
>Evil...with Ahriman. So it escalates in difficulty between her 3 appearances; the
>challenge of Kalas; the challenge of the 4 Horsemen; the challenge of Ahriman
>(the real Prophecy). Cassandra's role was teacher, with one of the few things
>Duncan could not resist...damsel in distress...as his motivation.
>
>
So it was planned all along that Kantos wasn't the "real" object of the
prophecy? Kewl! I haven't viewed the later Season 5 dvd commentaries
yet, and hadn't heard Gillian and Donna make that comment. I had
blithely assumed the writers were making it up as they went along,
without all that much advance planning.
MacG
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Date: Wed, 1 Sep 2004 13:46:47 -0400
From: Wendy Tillis <immortals_incorporated@cox.net>
Subject: Re: Season Five dvd Commentary: Prophecy
I said:
>(Cassandra was really the most helpless 3000 year old woman.)
Leah defends:
>Nah. She was obviously leading Kalas to Duncan as a training aid in
>preparation for the ordeals to come, where she reappears. Same technique
>as a mom cat who brings home a live mouse, so the kitten can learn to hunt and kill.
Nice try. If she was really being a mom cat, she would have brought Kantos (not Kalas<g>) home and then killed him in front of Duncan and *then* she would have brought home someone else for Duncan to play with. And why tell Duncan that Kantos was the Evil of the prophesy if he wasn't? Once Kantos is dead, Duncan thinks the prophecy is "fulfilled" ..which would, I should think, make him less willing to believe that Ahriman is really the Evil prophesied. Instead of showing him that prophecies are "real" (he was destined to kill Kantos and he did) she was telling him that prophecies are totally unreliable ( I thought it was Kantos but really it is Ahriman) Further, the "lesson" he learned from Kantos -ignore the crazy shit and simply cut his head off - really wasn't appropriate for Ahriman where the solution was ignore the crazy shit and ....well...that's it... ignore the crazy shit. If anything was preparation for facing Ahriman, it was the Holy Hot Tub ..and that was *M!
ethos* not Cassandra's doing.
>Gillian and Donna have said that they deliberately set up Season 5 and her
>appearances in it to be a build-up to the ultimate confrontation between
>Duncan and Evil...with Ahriman.
Gillian and (especially) Donna have been known to indulge in a small bit of revisionist history.
>So it escalates in difficulty between her 3
>appearances; the challenge of Kalas; the challenge of the 4 Horsemen; the challenge of
>Ahriman (the real Prophecy). Cassandra's role was teacher, with one of the few
>things Duncan could not resist...damsel in distress...as his motivation.
But Cassandra doesn't figure into the episodes with Ahriman - she isn't in them. Yes, Duncan finds himself the subject of another prophecy but it isn't delivered by Cassandra. And the prophecy from "Prophecy" must be stretched - or rather edited- to fit the new situation.
As for her role in the 4 Horsemen ... what exactly is she teaching him and how is it useful or related to his eventual struggle with Ahriman??
Cassandra struck me as moderately useless in "Prophecy and almost completely useless in CaH/Rev. I don't think she was "playing" at being the damsel in distress, I think she *was* the damsel in distress.
Wendy(Why didn't she just shoot Kantos and take his head?)(Save everyone some trouble)(Oh yeah, the prophecy said *Duncan* had to kill him.)(Belief in prophecy can make you stupid.)
Immortals Inc.
immortals_incorporated@cox.net
"Weasels for Eternity"
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Date: Wed, 1 Sep 2004 14:42:11 -0400
From: kageorge <kageorge@erols.com>
Subject: Re: Season Five dvd Commentary: Prophecy
Wendy Tillis wrote:
(snippage of commentary about Cassandra with which I pretty much agree)
>Wendy(Why didn't she just shoot Kantos and take his head?)(Save everyone some trouble)(Oh yeah, the prophecy said *Duncan* had to kill him.)(Belief in prophecy can make you stupid.)
>
>
I only had one comment about your last statement. It is my
understanding that prophecy (assuming that it was real and not the
residual result of some bad meal back in the bad 'ol days) is the
foresight of some inevitable circumstance or outcome. That they are
virtually always stated in ambiguous terms leaves some (but not much)
room for free will. If you accept that reality, then trying to stop the
prophecy from reaching its inevitable conclusion leads to really bad
shit (take the whole Oedipus Rex story, for instance), so Cassandra's
belief that she either shouldn't or couldn't act to kill Kantos outside
the context of the prophecy is understandable.
MacG
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Date: Wed, 1 Sep 2004 15:42:14 -0400
From: Bizarro7@aol.com
Subject: Re: Season Five dvd Commentary: =?ISO-8859-1?B?oFByb3BoZWN5?=
>>Nice try. If she was really being a mom cat, she would have brought Kantos home and then killed him in front of Duncan<<
They are sentient Immortals. What would that have taught Duncan? It would have accomplished nothing, other than to make him wonder if she was some kind of show-off.
>>And why tell Duncan that Kantos was the Evil of the prophesy if he wasn't? Once Kantos is dead, Duncan thinks the prophecy is "fulfilled" ..which would, I should think, make him less willing to believe that Ahriman is really the Evil prophesied.<<
Ah, but it's canonical that he *did* (he even 'saw' and heard Cassandra's warning in the episode), so it worked.
>>Further, the "lesson" he learned from Kantos -ignore the crazy shit and simply cut his head off - really wasn't appropriate for Ahriman where the solution was ignore the crazy shit and ....well...that's it... ignore the crazy shit.<<
I disagree with your interpretation of what Duncan's 'lesson' was, from defeating Kantos. He didn't learn "ignore the crazy shit and simply cut his head off." He learned to think beyond the box of Immortal combat and Rules of the Game, *in order to do battle with adversaries that use illusion and mental attack.* This fits the bill with Ahriman, perfectly.
>>If anything was preparation for facing Ahriman, it was the Holy Hot Tub ..and that was *Methos* not Cassandra's doing.<<
No relation. The 'Holy Hot Tub' was a quick fix that Methos had found at some point in his distant past, for healing an Immortal with the specific problem of a Dark Quickening.
>>Gillian and (especially) Donna have been known to indulge in a small bit of revisionist history.<<
*Shrug* If it comes down to whether or not you choose believe what the writers have actually said, that's your option.
>>But Cassandra doesn't figure into the episodes with Ahriman - she isn't in them. Yes, Duncan finds himself the subject of another prophecy but it isn't delivered by Cassandra. And the prophecy from "Prophecy" must be stretched - or rather edited- to fit the new situation.<<
Go back and watch the episode. Duncan actually *hears* Cassandra deliver the Prophecy in the soundtrack, at one point, in Tracy's voice.
>>Cassandra struck me as moderately useless in "Prophecy and almost completely useless in CaH/Rev. I don't think she was "playing" at being the damsel in distress, I think she *was* the damsel in distress. Wendy(Why didn't she just shoot Kantos and take his head?)<<
Why,indeed? Because it would serve no purpose. She needed Duncan to learn by the experience. And killing him somewhere off the episode would teach him nothing. You are also forgetting that Kantos believed in the Prophecy as much as Cassandra did, and was hunting and searching for her not to kill her, but with the express aim of killing DUNCAN.
So--why, after hundreds of years of hiding his whereabouts and identity and protecting him from Kantos, would she suddenly break cover and lead him straight to Duncan?
>>Belief in prophecy can make you stupid.)<<
In this case, not believing would have made Duncan dead.
Leah
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Date: Wed, 1 Sep 2004 21:19:30 -0400
From: Wendy Tillis <immortals_incorporated@cox.net>
Subject: Re: Season Five dvd Commentary: Prophecy
me:
>(Why didn't she just shoot Kantos and take his head?)(Save everyone
>some trouble)(Oh yeah, the prophecy said *Duncan* had to kill him.)(Belief
>in prophecy can make you stupid.)
MacG:
>I only had one comment about your last statement. It is my
>understanding that prophecy <snip> is the
>foresight of some inevitable circumstance or outcome.
If the conclusion is inevitable...then attempting to thwart it shouldn't matter, should it? In effect, the assumed "inevitability" acts as a deterrent. Cassandra believes that only Duncan can kill Kantos - so she doesn't even try.
OTOH, if Cassandra is such a believer, why is she so damned worried about Duncan? Either he *is* the one who will kill the Evil Voice, or he isn't. If he isn't, nothing she can do will help him....if he is, nothing she can do will hinder him.
>That they are
>virtually always stated in ambiguous terms leaves some (but not much)
>room for free will.
Mostly they are stated in ambiguous terms so the prophet can avoid being stoned to death when his prophecy fails to materialize as foretold.
>If you accept that reality, then trying to stop the
>prophecy from reaching its inevitable conclusion leads to really bad
>shit (take the whole Oedipus Rex story, for instance), so Cassandra's
>belief that she either shouldn't or couldn't act to kill Kantos outside
>the context of the prophecy is understandable.
*If* Cassandra truly believed in the truth and power of the Prophecy, then she didn't have to do anything. She didn't have to try to stop Kantos (which she didn't) and she didn't have to help Duncan (which she did). If Duncan was the one in the prophecy, he didn't even need to know about the prophecy...he would simply be in the right place at the right time and take the correct (pre-ordained) action to the bring about foretold outcome.
One of my biggest complaints about prophecies (besides the basic fact that I think they are hooey <eg>) is the fact that they are so vague and couched in metaphors and such that they can mean anything anyone wants them to. And...when things *don't* go according to the prophecy, believers can (and do ) always claim that we misunderstood and the events that we were just told (by the prophet) fit the prophecy really don't fit and we'll have to wait another 10 or 100 or 1000 years for the *real* events to occur. For example, if Duncan had died trying to kill Kantos, Cassandra would have said that "obviously" there was another Highland foundling somewhere that was the real object of the prophecy. When Duncan did kill Kantos and then Ahriman showed up, suddenly the prophecy really meant Ahriman and not Kantos. Kind of convenient in my book. If the prophecy can come up with a Highland foundling born on the winter solstice...why can't it come up with a name, for deity's sake?
Wendy(A dark power will arise in the East)(There will be death and destruction and much lamenting.)(A hero will arise in the West)(The armies of light will meet the armies of darkness.)(Goodness will triumph)(Its victory will be fleeting)(As with all great prophecies, it's timeless)(Use it over and over...you'll never be totally wrong.)
Immortals Inc.
immortals_incorporated@cox.net
"Weasels for Eternity"
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End of HIGHLA-L Digest - 31 Aug 2004 to 1 Sep 2004 (#2004-166)
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