PT Theology Etc.

[MagnusTrask]

Just watching PT, and reached the point where it (DS) springs to life and gets good again.  I only noticed it this time around.   I think the turnaround began with the actors returning from the first film.    I've decided I hate the Rebecca/Jeckyl-Hyde storylines, and when they're safely out of the way, PT can "begin"... just in time to end.     (Then the good stuff continues with 1995-1970-1840 though.)    I've decided I hate what's going on at Collinwood, but like what goes on in the Old House.   Frankly, looking at Barnabas's chained coffin was more interesting than the rest of those earlier episodes, to me. 

The real point where DS snaps back into place as an adult drama is the scene(s) where Ang is pressuring Will to betray Barnabas, and then spoiler spoiler spoiler.    Karlen is great, Lara is great, the writing and thought behind it is great.   Before this, I was considering giving up and stopping the tapes. 

Does someone have a cool timetable, for when this or that producer, writers, whoever, were around or not around... who was or wasn't in charge, making creative decisions, at what point in this or that storyline?    That would be very interesting.     I imagine that whoever hung around telling people what to do, while other people were off making the film, was telling people to do that supposed trademark DS acting, or over-acting.    I get an impression that things changed when the film was done, and talented people came back to the TV show.

Some didn't listen... D Selby always takes anything he does and makes it real.    Even J Frid seemed to be acting ridiculously "earnest" though.

PT Carolyn's drunken, cynical grieving was very well thought out and well acted.    I am just so relieved, for intelligent adult writing to be coming back.    Someone (writers) took a long hard look at the situation at that point in the storyline, and explored all the ramifications and looked at it from all the different points of view.

I liked PT Stokes this time.   I noticed that he does a very subtle drunk act throughout the story.    Every single time we see him, he slurs his speech, just slightly.     Subtlety; there's one thing we didn't get in early PT.   His lines have more depth and are more thought-out than any in earlier PT, too.    The acting implies a backstory.... you are compelled to wonder how he ended up this way.   You want to peer inside him, and you almost feel as if you are.   More to him than RT Stokes, actually.

I loved Stokes asking BC if he has a girl hidden away someplace!  And Carolyn putting her face right into Ang's and asking if there was anything that could shock her!

Perspective on characters and situations, that's what we suddenly started getting.    Carolyn remarks that she is the only person to know all the secrets.    Before this, no one stopped to think about what was happening and what it meant, except Cyrus's inner stuff, which wasn't compelling... maybe it was the acting, writing, not sure.

Opinions please:

Notice when Stokes tries to use black magic again to keep Ang alive after they lose Roxanne?    Black magic involves begging the Devil for things, doesn't it?   I noticed that Satan wasn't referred to in the incantation, but vague powers which exist outside of time and space.

Is it possible that they sat down and thought about what Stokes could be contacting in PT, triggering theological debate amongst the writers, over whether the same God and Devil exist in PT?    Could that line have been the result of their deciding that PT couldn't have a second PT Devil (since Judeo/Christian/Muslims can't accept multiple gods, therefore no multiple devils)?   Could they have decided, Stokes is appealing to THE Devil, who isn't in PT but RT, therefore that Devil is "outside of (their) time and space"?   Or perhaps that one God and one Devil exist outside of either Universe?

SPOILER






Another thing... Carolyn encounters Quentin, hiding in the Tower Room, and Q says no, Ang is dead, he took care of that personally.    He means of course that he burned the body.    She is amazed, and drunk, and seems to think Q is admitting to having murdered Ang, which is what everyone's coming to think at this point.

Later, she goes on about how she now knows who the murderer was... presumably Quentin.    Roger overhears, goes to take care of her, she recognizes Roger, and says it was only a matter of time, asks why he killed Ang.    Then he raises the knife, she screams and says "NO"... after she acted as if she'd resigned herself to her impending murder, but never mind.

It seems as if some writer slipped up and had Carolyn knowing it was Roger when she was supposed to be thinking it was Quentin.  Did I miss something?

Liz is exactly the same in PT.  They just had too many characters to deal with, maybe.    She's not there much, either.

[Gothick]

I thought that Stokes in PT was a Ceremonial Magcian who had studied Aleister Crowley's texts, the Golden Dawn MSS., and probably done his own "unique" hands on research in the occult realm.  The Powers he invoked in that incantation could have been Elemental or something like the Guardians in Traditional Witchcraft.  Many students regard the latter as related to the Archangels of old Judaic secret teaching, or a mix of the Archangels and "the Watchers" or Nephilim (some call Them the Cloud People) who are very complex Beings about Whom various orders of Lore exist.  There are also some very clunky redactions of this lore inspired, from what I can tell, by video games and such TV shows as the recent series Hex (I think Charmed and BtVS may have incorporated some of these concepts as well).

Of course to really orthodox Christians, if you invoke anyone outside the standard theological hierarchy given to you by Church teachings, you're automatically dealing with the Devil, so all of these distinctions may well be less than academic to you, Magnus.

I'm not sure what you mean by "the good people" and "the good writing" coming and going on DS.  The way I have experienced the show, each storyline and chronological period is a patchwork of gold and dross--fabulous moments and stuff so excruciating I really can't sit through it any longer.  Up until 1840, the overriding, overwhelming influence upon the story and the show was Dan Curtis.  Things did tend to improve when he left the show alone due to being out of the country or off working on other projects, but he did have a tendency to come in and twist the writers' arms to produce some curve ball that had nothing to do with the existing continuity.  In 1840, Lela took over as producer and she was the one who made some of the decisions about how the story went that turned out to be quite controversial or flat-out implausible in the eyes of some fans.

cheers, Gothick

[retzev]

Of course to really orthodox Christians, if you invoke anyone outside the standard theological hierarchy given to you by Church teachings, you're automatically dealing with the Devil, so all of these distinctions may well be less than academic to you, Magnus.

Not for nothin', but...

You're not referring to the Eastern Orthodox Church are you? The one often simply referred to as the "Orthodox" church. You didn't capitalize the O, so I assume that by the term "really orthodox Christians" you were referring to some of the other 30,000 some-odd denominations that are often called fundamentalist?

The Orthodox Church has made no dogmatic statements concerning non-Orthodox teachers/religions/denominations in it's 2000 year history. The basic idea the Orthodox Church teaches is "We know where the Church is, we can't be certain where it is not."

 

[MagnusTrask]

Gothick.... thanks very much for all that.    I may have to google some of it.    And I'm not religious.    I don't know about today, but most people were in 1970, so I wondered if the writers were thinking Judeo-Christian.

"Good writing" has to mean what I think is good, obviously.    For me, the quality jumped up at the point I talked about, and I wondered who/what accounted for it.   "Good people" would be anyone responsible for the material I liked.   It's subjective obviously.

retzev--- in context, I think "orthodox" just meant the adjective "orthodox" small "o".

The basic idea the Orthodox Church teaches is "We know where the Church is, we can't be certain where it is not."

I like this, if I understand correctly.

[Gerard]

It would've been interesting if they had explored more the background of the Stokes family.  What drove Timothy Stokes interest in the macabre?  What was his standing in Collinsport?  Did his daughters know of his "occupation?"  Well, Angelique obviously did (as did Auntie Hannah), but did Alexis?  Maybe she did and she didn't approve, which was why Angie and not Alexis was daddy's favorite girl.  What of Mrs. Stokes?  What happened to her?  Who was she?  (Flashbacks, maybe, with Barbara Blackburn playing the Mizzes would've been neat.)  What made a younger Angelique the bon vivant of Collinsport, the girl everyone wanted, whether as a wife or as the center of attention at all the parties?  Exactly why did Quention marry her?  Did his family pressure him because she was the apparent "catch" of Collinsport women?  How did Alexis get her social standing outside her family (she obviously had her own separate rich friends who flitted about Europe and had ocean-going yachts)?  Did they go to college?  What were their favorite PT television shows?  Leave it to Wally?  The Touchables?  Life Isn't Worth Living?  The Man From A.U.N.T.?  The Donald Duck Club?

Gerard

[Gothick]

Gerard, it was stated in one throwaway line of dialogue that Alexis and Angelique were the *adopted* daughters of Timothy Stokes, Mad Scientist and Occultist for Hire.  Much as I adore the whole PT 1970 storyline, the thing is a graveyard of unexamined backstory.  The true parentage of the Stokes girls, Maggie and her sister, Roxanne and Claude North and how or when they became involved with Stokes, just why Stokes was so terrified of Claude... there's more, such as the whole Damion Edwards/Bruno/Trask/Angelique kerfuffle, although with the latter they do drop enough hints to enable one to realistically connect the dots.

When I refer to the Eastern and Greek communions, I write Orthodox with a capital O.

G.