| Episode Guide: Episode One First Aired: 18th September 2005 Written by: Lucy Watkins Directed by: Brian Grant Thelma Bates: Jemima Rooper Cassie Hughes: Christina Cole Azazeal: Michael Fassbender Jo Watkins: Anna Wilson-Jones David Tyrel: Colin Salmon Leon Taylor: Jamie Davis Roxanne: Amber Sainsbury Ella Dee: Laura Pyper Felix: Stephen Woget Doctor Surtees: Grant Parsons Tom: Samuel Collings Alex: Jemima Abey Well, Hex is back with a vengeance! Before I dive into the episode itself, a breif word about what you are about to read. When I started these episode guides with Strange, way back, I just sat at the computer and wrote whatever came out. Aside from Sea Of Souls, which was a bit of a flop, Hex was the first post-Strange show I tried to cover, and my summeries became more of a blow-by-blow account of exactly what hapenned each episode. Now there's nothing wrong with that, but with Doctor Who and Afterlife, I think I have settled into a better pattern of sumerising the plot, and generally chatting about the episode in a more or less structured manner, so from now on, that's what you can expect from Hex too! Hopefully! This episode, unlike some later in the series, feels very much like we're still bacvk in the first series. The recap music at the begginning is the same, everything looks just as it was, except for a few missing cast members. Thankfully Troy is gone, no real mention of where, other than the fact that Gemma has followed him...to wherever...so our two least interesting characters are now gone, no complaints from me! I'm hoping this will give Roxanne and Leon a chance to be more important to the plot, and get more screen time in general! As with the first episode of the first series, we start tonights tale in the past, London in 1849 in fact, where we are introduced tio our newest character, Ella...some sort of immortal slayer it would seem, but when she turns up at Medenham, still looking 17, what's going on? We're picking up the school year after the Christmas holidays...no sign of Peggy anywhere, but Cassie and Thelma are still going strong, and hunting for Cassie's stolen demon baby. Baby Malachi now lives with Azazeal in what is presumably a desserted church, but it looks far too nice to be desserted, so I suppose we're just not supposed to ask... That, for me, is the problem with this new series. Too much is not explained, and I don't mean in a mystery sense, I mean its just there, and we're supposed to accept it. It seems almost like Hex is becoming a self fullfilling prophecy...whereas last year I would have said calling it "British Buffy" was a little unfair, this year it seems to be trying to move more into the very high-concept, almost campyness...loosing some of its "Britishness"....but maybe I'm just being too critical! I was interested to note that Will Cohen and Neill Gorton, of Doctor Who fame, are on board as visuel effects and prosthetics supervisors...I would have thought Doctor Who was a full time job, but maybe there's nobody else in the country good enough! Back To: Hexed Up Home StrangeOnline Home |