Atlantis - A New Dawn, Part 1

Ladies and gents, the pride of Atlantis.

With Doctor Who out of the way until Christmas, we return to the famously landlocked city of Atlantis. King Minos is dead and the exiled Queen Pasiphae is intent on taking power from her stepdaughter Ariadne. Pasiphae has the numbers, but Ariadne has a city that has never fallen to siege and the not-so secret weapon of lovelorn crossworlds traveller Jason and his intermittent superpowers.

Part one of our series opener begins with Jason and his gang - self-made legend Hercules and surprisingly badass polymath Pythagoras rescuing one of Minos' old supporters, Lord Sarpedon, from Pasipahe's legions. Sarpedon, however, is apparently the Agravaine of Atlantis, bringing ninja-priestess Medea inside the walls in his luggage so that she can nick the city's luck, the Palladium, because Atlantis is now Troy as well as Knossos.

Jason demonstrates once more his patented look of baffled
incomprehension.

Series 1 of Atlantis was a slightly uncomfortable effort to recapture the glory of the recently completed Merlin, but in a different mythological milieu, which evolved over its run into a distinct beast with its own strong mix of action, mythological japes and muscular bromance. Series 2 opens in the vein of the later episodes, with Jason and co now apparently the Atlantean SAS and Pasiphae escalating from sinister plotter to full-on mad conqueror.

While Sarah Parish's Pasiphae is a study in hissable villainy, her departure from Atlantis proper leaves the city a bit of a sausage fest. Series 1 tempered this somewhat with Medusa, Hercules' doomed love interest, but now we're left with the drippy Ariadne as the only heroic female character. There may possibly be a recurring role for Jason's mytho-canonical soon-to-be-jilted love interest Medea (although I suspect that commitment to the Ariason romance will see her either killed off saving Jason's life and dying in his arms somewhere around the close of episode 12, or thrown over and killed while trying to murder him in Episode 10,) but she's currently in the Pasiphae camp anyway.

'A New Dawn, Part 1' is a decent opener, but the lack of strong female roles is felt, even in comparison to Clara Oswald and all her flaws. Come on, Atlantis; give us an Atalanta, or even a Hypatia (because why shouldn't Atlantis be Alexandria as well?)