Synopsis: A stranger offers to help Ariadne save her city.
Review: Atlantis goes gladiator in this episode and gives us a very average by the numbers story with a heavy handed dose of romance and obvious intrigue.
In order find a champion to help protect Atlantis Queen Ariadne holds a gladiatorial contest Jason being the best swordsman in Atlantis is entered but he has competition to deal with from the rather duplicitous Telemon who seeks romantic liaisons with Ariadne and proposes a merger of Kingdoms.
This episode for me was very by the numbers in terms of the fact that it didn’t really do that much to expand on the shows mythology and felt more like a first season episode the a second season one.
The acting performances from Mark Addy, Jack Donnelly and Robert Emms were fairly solid despite what amounted to a rather boring and predictable story.
Clive Standen puts in a moustache twirling turn as Telemon and provides an interesting rival for Jason in the episode and quite possibly future episodes.
The stunt work for the sword fights and duels was fantastic viewing and we even got to see a gladiator by the name of Leonidas – but we do not know if it is supposed to be the same Leondias who fought at Thermopylae. If indeed it was then I find it hard to fathom that he’d be so dishonorable to allow himself to be bribed to throw the fight like he does with Telemon in this story. It feels very inconsistent with what we know of the character.
After the strong opening two episodes. This one was a little dull.
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- Great Stunts and Some Good Acting
- A rather disapointing by the numbers story
- Story6
- Acting8.5
- Stunts9
- Incidental Music8
This Leondias is from Corinth, not Sparta, so I would say not.
I agree about the episode. It was set up for next week. Telamon is interesting. There is a Prince Telamon who was an Argonaut and friend of Hercules in the mythology, so it’ll be interesting to see how they riff on this.