Review: Sanctuary, Tempus:

Warning: the following review contains vague spoilers.Watching Sanctuary is a bit like being friends with Doctor Jekyll (no pun intended considering most recent episodes have focused on that character). You never know what you’re getting: the good, the bad, or the ugly.

This episode, I’m pleased to report, falls under the “good” category.

The episode picks up immediately from where the last one left off, with Adam Worth (Dr. Jekyll) traveling back to the 19th century to attempt to cure his terminally daughter, and the series’ protagonist, the immortal Helen Magnus, following him to prevent corruption of the timeline.

“Tempus” has Magnus simultaneously struggling to stop Adam, who plans world conquest once his daughter is cured, and to prevent herself from contaminating the timeline while interacting with fellow Five members John Druitt and Detective Watson and the past version of Adam Worth.

Things are complicated by the fact that they have arrived during the height of Jack the Ripper’s killing spree, which, as any Sanctuary fan knows, were committed by Druitt, who was Magnus’s fiance at the time. So while all the craziness with Adam is going on, we’re also treated to many interesting little moments between Druitt and Magnus (both her past and future selves), which give some very interesting revelations into their past relationship. Druitt is easily the most interesting character on the show, so this was a very welcome addition, in my view.

The entire episode takes place in the past, with no mention of the other difficulties taking place in the future (or present, depending on your perspective), which is frankly welcome. This show is always at its best when focusing on Helen and the Five at the expense of its far less interesting modern characters.

Ultimately, the struggle to preserve time is a very common one in sci-fi TV shows, but this episode managed to set itself away from the pack, at least a little bit. It felt a bit more edgy and dangerous (words I would generally never use to describe Sanctuary). Normally, these episodes end with all problems being solved and all time changes turning out to be what was supposed to happen anyway.

“Tempus” didn’t end nearly so neatly. While it’s true that Magnus achieved her goals, it ended up feeling like a Pyrrhic victory in my view, and I found the ending rather heartbreaking.

Furthermore, the events of the past did end up being changed significantly.  We’ll have to wait until future episodes to see if these changes have any lasting impact. Given this show’s spotty history, I find myself doubting the possibility, but there’s always hope. This show could really use an ongoing crisis to keep it interesting, and a world irreparably changed by time travel seems like just the thing.

If I have any complaint about this episode, it’s that I would have liked to see the Adam Worth arc drag out a bit longer. But at the same time, they couldn’t really have given it a better ending than this, and the door is left open for more appearances by the character.

Overall rating: 9.1/10 A good start to the season. Let’s hope they keep this level of quality consistent for once.

If you’d like to get caught up on Sanctuary, you can buy the DVDs on my Amazon Affiliate–now includes the third season.

Warning: the following review contains mild spoilers.

The third season of Sanctuary has drawn to a close. “Into the Black” goes back to the main arcs of the first half of the season and involves both Hollow Earth and mad 19th century scientist Adam Worth, AKA Jekyll and Hyde.

Worth is probably the best villain Sanctuary has yet produced, and this episode improves him a bit further. By the end of the midseason two-parter, he’d been reduced to a very bland “crazy guy trying to blow up the world for no reason.” “Into the Black” upgrades him to “crazy guy trying to blow up the world so he can go back in time and save his daughter’s life.” Which is still pretty cliche, but it’s at least a compelling cliche.

“Into the Black” also features the return of John “Jack the Ripper” Druitt, who is his usual “vulnerable yet frightening yet noble yet bat$&!# insane” self. I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again: this show would be improved immeasurably if John was a more regular cast member.

There’s a lot of epic, end of the world stuff going in this episode, but some of it feels a little glossed over and underdeveloped, and it doesn’t have quite the impact it should. Such is life for a Sanctuary fan, unfortunately.

“Into the Black” also brings an angle we haven’t seen much of in Sanctuary before now: the political angle. A good chunk of the episode has the Sanctuary team arguing with UN and military representatives on how to handle the current crisis, as well as how to keep such massive events hidden from the public, with Henry “the writers keep forgetting I’m a werewolf” Foss even going so far as to suggest removing the veil of secrecy from the Sanctuary network and going public with the knowledge of Abnormals. Although these are things we see a lot of in stories like this, I found these angles on the story quite interesting, and I hope they continue to pursue them next season.

In addition to Helen’s race against time (pun intended) to stop Adam Worth, this episode also features a group of particularly nasty refugees from Hollow Earth. The problem with this arc is that the refugees’ leader is none other than WWE wrestler Edge, and a poorer casting choice I can’t imagine. He’s basically playing the same damn character he plays when wrestling, and he’s not even that good at it. It’s distracting and just… bad.

Still, ridiculous stunt casting aside, this episode was pretty good. I have only one other complaint, and it’s the complaint I have about virtually every Sanctuary episode: needs more Tesla. Seriously, they gotta do a spin-off about this guy or something.

Overall rating: 8/10.

Pick up Sanctuary DVDs on my Amazon Affiliate.