Showing posts with label Terry Brooks. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Terry Brooks. Show all posts

Tuesday, September 13, 2016

Shannara Chronicles

This swords and sorcery fantasy TV show hit the airwaves (cable waves?) back last fall.  I caught a couple of episodes off the cable over the winter before they killed the show.  It made it onto Netflix recently and so I signed up for the total season (just 3 DVD's) to see what it looked like. 
   The name of the show comes from the Terry Brooks fantasy novels, the plot borrows heavily from Tolkien.  The unnamed world is threatened by an invasion of demons, ugly bad guys who look like Tolkien's orcs, but have magic powers too.  .  It stars three characters, Handsome Boyish Hero, Good Chick, and Bad Chick.  Good chick, is an Elvin (NOT Tolkien's spelling of the word) princess. who volunteers/is selected for a mission to save the world.  She starts off carrying a silver flower blossom (puts me in mind of the Ring of Power), with handsome boyish hero and Bad Chick for travel companions.   Destination of her mission is never made clear to me. Bad chick is daughter of a human bandit chieftain and starts out doing banditry.  As time goes on, she falls in love with handsome boyish hero, which does her good, and she stops doing bad, and starts doing good.  What makes the show hard to follow, is that Good Chick and Bad Chick look so much alike it's hard to keep them straight.  They are both brunettes, they wear their hair the same way, they both have very fair completions, they both have superb figures, they dress the same, they both do martial arts with the best of them, and they both are soon in love with Handsome Boyish Hero.  Somehow, after quite a few episodes,  they become friends with each other, rather than fighting it out for the attention of Handsome Boyish Hero.  The only things distinguishing one from the other is that Good Chick is taller than Bad Chick, but Bad Chick is cuter. 
   Anyhow, it was good enough for me to watch all three discs and stay awake til the end of each episode.  If you like fantasy this one is fairly OK.