Hole in the World and Shells revisited
Jun. 6th, 2004 10:49 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
indriRewatching this double-parter, I find that it's less objectionable than I remembered it. The first time I watched, I felt it was too blatantly manipulative to make me feel anything but irritated (oh, bring out the stuffed toy, why don't you). I also hated seeing Fred as such a cypher of the damsel-in-distress, even if the writers did recognise and comment on this themselves (via Fred). And HitW in particular has such clunky dialogue in places ("Not this day! Not this girl!") that I wanted to cringe behind the sofa. Bear in mind that I still cry every time I watch "Becoming Part II", "The Body" and even "Chosen" so I'm not made out of stone. But I may have a strong antipathy to watching someone die a drawn-out death of disease on television. It takes me out of the fantasy, I think, even when the disease is Illyria.
Athena Smurf (or is she Ares Smurf?) is the reason I'm rewatching these episodes. Revisiting them has been much more interesting for me than their first viewing.
One of the things I find most curious about these episodes are the hints provided about the Old Ones and, for want of a better term, the Old Days. Illyria's escape plan was set into motion "millions of years ago", but she recognises both humans, vampires and the "Wolf, Ram and Hart". Her sarcophagus manifests at the site of her former power (LA, curiously enough) but because the continents have moved, it turns up outside California and possibly outside the US, as it's held up by Customs.
Being a dreadful sciencey-type I want to reconcile this with geological history. (Foolish, I know.) It goes a long way to explain Illyria's contempt for humans.So what can be deduced?
Well, the origin and dating of the human branch of the great apes is clearly one of the most hotly contested in science, but I can glean the following from a casual reference check. Us lot, the optimistically-named homo sapiens, have been around for only 120,000 years, so Illyria didn't meet us. Nor did she meet the Neanderthals (230,000-30,000 years ago) . The fire-using homo erectus is also too new. If by "millions" what is meant is "two millions" then she could have met the first of our tool-using ancestors, homo habilis, who are also possibly the first lot to manage speech. If we go back three million years, Illyria's being dismissive of australopithecus africanus or afarensis whose main party-trick seems to have been walking upright. If we go much further back than this, we're looking at something a bit like a chimpanzee.
Here are some sample pics:
Sahelanthropus tchadensis (6-7 million years ago):
Homo africanus (3 million years ago):
Homo habilis (2 million years ago):
Illyria (date of origin unknown):
(Thanks to![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
wisteria_ for the original screencap.)
Frankly, we were an unprepossessing lot when Illyria last saw us. No wonder she's surprised to see us running the Earth, especially given the fact that Illyria herself had four arms and a writhing-snake body. I'm surprised she could tell we were humans and not gorillas. The caveman has become a spaceman while she was sleeping.
Humans could not have been much use to Wolfram and Hart at that stage and yet vampire "half-breeds" must already have been in existence. But spare a moment to imagine vampire homo habilis. They'd be theoretically immortal too: I wonder if there are any left?
As for the continental drift, what I can find is that North America is moving northwards at a rate of about 4cm/yr. If this has been fairly constant and if Illyria really did meet humans rather than earlier apes, then the earliest she could have been imprisoned is 7 million years ago. This makes the Californian continental drift of the order 280 km. That is, the sarcophagus either reappeared over the sea or in Baja California. Presumably it ran into trouble at Customs coming over the border from Mexico.
But how does this tie in to the origins of the Slayers? I don't know, except it must have been comparatively recent. Illyria will only know of Slayers by accessing the memories of Fred.
Athena Smurf (or is she Ares Smurf?) is the reason I'm rewatching these episodes. Revisiting them has been much more interesting for me than their first viewing.
One of the things I find most curious about these episodes are the hints provided about the Old Ones and, for want of a better term, the Old Days. Illyria's escape plan was set into motion "millions of years ago", but she recognises both humans, vampires and the "Wolf, Ram and Hart". Her sarcophagus manifests at the site of her former power (LA, curiously enough) but because the continents have moved, it turns up outside California and possibly outside the US, as it's held up by Customs.
Being a dreadful sciencey-type I want to reconcile this with geological history. (Foolish, I know.) It goes a long way to explain Illyria's contempt for humans.So what can be deduced?
Well, the origin and dating of the human branch of the great apes is clearly one of the most hotly contested in science, but I can glean the following from a casual reference check. Us lot, the optimistically-named homo sapiens, have been around for only 120,000 years, so Illyria didn't meet us. Nor did she meet the Neanderthals (230,000-30,000 years ago) . The fire-using homo erectus is also too new. If by "millions" what is meant is "two millions" then she could have met the first of our tool-using ancestors, homo habilis, who are also possibly the first lot to manage speech. If we go back three million years, Illyria's being dismissive of australopithecus africanus or afarensis whose main party-trick seems to have been walking upright. If we go much further back than this, we're looking at something a bit like a chimpanzee.
Here are some sample pics:
Sahelanthropus tchadensis (6-7 million years ago):
Homo africanus (3 million years ago):
Homo habilis (2 million years ago):
Illyria (date of origin unknown):
(Thanks to
wisteria_ for the original screencap.)Frankly, we were an unprepossessing lot when Illyria last saw us. No wonder she's surprised to see us running the Earth, especially given the fact that Illyria herself had four arms and a writhing-snake body. I'm surprised she could tell we were humans and not gorillas. The caveman has become a spaceman while she was sleeping.
Humans could not have been much use to Wolfram and Hart at that stage and yet vampire "half-breeds" must already have been in existence. But spare a moment to imagine vampire homo habilis. They'd be theoretically immortal too: I wonder if there are any left?
As for the continental drift, what I can find is that North America is moving northwards at a rate of about 4cm/yr. If this has been fairly constant and if Illyria really did meet humans rather than earlier apes, then the earliest she could have been imprisoned is 7 million years ago. This makes the Californian continental drift of the order 280 km. That is, the sarcophagus either reappeared over the sea or in Baja California. Presumably it ran into trouble at Customs coming over the border from Mexico.
But how does this tie in to the origins of the Slayers? I don't know, except it must have been comparatively recent. Illyria will only know of Slayers by accessing the memories of Fred.
no subject
Date: 2004-06-07 06:21 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2004-06-07 07:17 am (UTC)An ubervamp predates a lot of the metaphysical curses placed upon vampires, which, as they relate to an event that occurred ~2000 years ago (mirrors don't show vampires because silver was what they used to pay Judas, so since then, to make up for it, it's been purified by God and made useful to resist evil, and crosses, well, you know about them), which is why the holy water and cross didn't do anything special against them.
Waith. They did nothing with ubervamps and mirrors, did they.