The Librarians... and the Heart of Darkness

It doesn't look so bad...

Cassandra: You think you're death? I face death every day in the mirror!

In the wilds of Slovakia the Librarians encounter a scared, bloody girl fleeing from the house where someone - or something - took her friends. The bad news is that the house is at a convergence of fractured leylines. The worse news is that the house is The House, the source of all the really bad Haunted House stories.

...and the Heart of Darkness is... a bit weird at first sight. After several weeks of development, the team are all spiky and no-one trusts Cassandra or thinks her capable, despite her proving otherwise several times over. This is, it turns out, because the episodes are showing out of order. The preferred order is in fact:

1 & 2 - ...and the Crown of King Arthur/...and the Sword in the Stone
3 - ...and the Horns of a Dilemma
4 - ...and the Fables of Doom
5 - ...and the Heart of Darkness
6 - ...and Santa's Midnight Ride (clearly moved for Christmas)
7 - ...and the Apple of Discord
8 - ...and the City of Light
9 - ...and the Rule of Three
10 - ...and the Loom of Fate

So, this episode should actually have shown quite early on, while ...and the Apple of Discord should have been a later episode, such that the betrayals of the characters effected by the Apple would be more pronounced.

Anyway, moving past that to judge on its own merits, the episode manages the spooky haunted house vibe pretty well, especially given that the entirety of the action takes place in the day. The idea that all of the houses in the various urban myths are the same house - or one of six, anyway: The House of Refuge, The Ur-Adobe, The Dionaea House, The Shatterbox, The Final Rest, and The Soul Cage - is creepy as anything (if you don't believe me, just read the masterpiece of electronic horror writing that is The Dionaea House) and I loved the way that Jenkins' list of possibilities once more blended modern and traditional ideas.

This is very much Cassandra's episode, and suffers from the change in running order by addressing issues which were not in evidence in the past weeks. The haunted house stuff is effective, if conventional, but the episode hits a twist at the third act break which knocks it up a gear as well as giving Lindy Booth her moment to shine.

I'm a little sad that there are only two more episodes to go, but on the plus side maybe I'll go back over the episodes in the right order.