why i HATE "the 4th horseman/the time is now"....

[Guest]

.....ahhh,the unpopular viewpoint. i know i'm not the only one but it still feels a bit lonely up here having this opinion.         first off: I DO NOT HATE M&W IN THE LEAST. REALLY!!      ......in general i do not like the last 1/4 of MM-S2,with a few notable exceptions. for me,not only did it veer from what MM was originally all about but it also veered,if you really look at it,what M&W were delving into earlier in the season-(which i LOVED by the way). the mythology of the groups past,while out of left field,WAS very interesting and i could not help but be intrigued by it even though,for some reason,i felt a little uncomfortable by it. i can never give enough gratitude or praise to M&W for openning up frank blacks character/past. it was masterfull. i also feel that there many powerful emotional scenes in the 2-part season ender. how can anyone not be moved by the performances?

(i just wanted the above stated before i state my opinions)

......my reasons,for what they are worth,for just hating "the fourth horseman/"the time is now" are the following:

1) there was zero build-up to these 2-eps. no indications,no harbinger of things to come,no forewarning and certainly no subtelty. for me and my MM-viewing buddies it felt like being bashed over the head with a sledgehammer ???

2) "the concept" :    the whole concept is still the most ridiculous thing i have ever heard of. if i want sci-fi i'll watch the first 4-seasons of the x-files or star trek-tos/ng. more than once,and in total sarcasm, i've used words to the effect of "world dies from viral chickens!"  okay,trying as hard as i can NOT to be sarcastic,in 1998 as in 2002 the idea of a virus killing a person in seconds is ludicrous at best. -(one of the key components,in my view,of good film is the suspension of disbeleif. at NO time did i feel that during these 2-eps. not once. i'm only refering to the concept,NOT the performances.)

3)"inconsistency": in the world of 1013 that is the norm but i am just focusing on these 2-eps and no other season/mytharc.  A.-even going by the very unlogical logic of the concept of this virus killing in seconds it still fails in that regard;unless you can count hundreds of thousands of seconds. example: katherine: just by what was on screen,the latest she could have contracted,or been exposed to the marburg variant would have been from frank when they all packed up the cherokee to head into the mountains. either katherine had the immune system of 1,000 people or she was not human at all!!

        Even when she started showing symptoms in the middle of the night she still apparently had plenty of time to get up,walk out of the cabin,go in the woods-(with no flashlight!)-and walk a pretty good damn distance before she bit the dust. whereas the ckicken/egg farm in the openning of the fourth horseman had a guy who had been around chickens probably his whole damn life,as well as a variety other fowl and one morning strolls out to check on his livelihood,walks in,sees his chickens are dead,walks about 10 feet to reach for the phone and.........BAM.......DEAD.

B.-mother's day at some random household: father COOKS the chicken/some family members do not arrive till after he starts cooking it. as soon as they start eating it........BAM.....blood gysers from hell.........all DEAD. now even a lowly high school educated person like myself knows that a vius cannot survive extremes of heat,just like bacteria cannot. even man made viruses cannot. it's just not possible. look it up.-(i recomend richard preston's "the hot zone" and  very interesting,and scary,books on viruses and viral warefare).  

C.-(i'll end my examples with "C" as i don't want to beat the point into the ground here........if i haven't already :~) A virus spreading from county to county in a matter of hours is not now,nor ever will be-(i hope!)-even remotely possible. -(chemical warefare?....hell yes,but not a virus,man made or otherwise

.......now take all this into account and then watch an epsiode like "dead letters" or "522666" or "the thin white line and you will see a level of study and attention to detail that is astounding to behold. if these two eps were "realistic" in what M&W wanted to portray i still would not like them but at least i could respect the effort behind it in making it as realistic as possible. compared to 98% of S1 these 2-episodes execution of the concept(s) was just plain sloppy and unbeleivable to me and many other MM-MANIACS-(as we used to call ourselves)

4) "HISTORY"-for me,by the time "the time is now" ended "MILLENNIUM" was unrecognizable to me. M&W,and to some extant maher/reindl-(whom i do respect an aweful lot as writers)-had so changed,or deviated from the original premise of the show that,a short while after owls/roosters-(which against my better judgement i still LOVE!)-it was slowly,and painfully,turning into camp or,worse yet,melodrama. M&W had me hooked..."line and sinker" for near 3/4 of S2 and then.......i dunno they went nuts on me. when you have some of the best writers EVER just sitting around twiddling thier thumbs being under used,or not used at all,then something is amiss. for me anyway. another point i have made often is that M&W turning the millennium group into a cult was the absolute WORST idea possible and i place a large part of the blame,as does henriksen,on carter not being involved and for not puting a stop to it.-(though to johannessen's great credit he was able to put that unfortunate blunder to great dramatic use in S3). i find it impossible to beleive that,after "owls"/roosters" the subsequent ratings plunge was just a coincidence. nor do i accept the patronizing way some  respond to some fan's critical opinions about this as saying that "it was over the average viewers head". that's bullshit. i think the opposite is true. i think the average S1 fanatic knew all to well what was going on at the end of S2. it had utterly and completely lost what it's original vision was. and NO C.C. did NOT intend for the group to end up being a cult. that is a myth. various articles,and clear concise statements support this.

......so,i guess that's about it. there is a laundry list more that i,and others,made somtime in 1999-(too much time on our hands and all )-about the inconsistancies and our personal gripes about the 2-part season-2 closer. so i've finaly answered the question that so many have asked me privately but i've never had the time or the desire to potentially get involved in a pissing match with a customer;that,my friends would not have been wise.

       

      .....PLEASE do beleive that i am in no way belittling,or putting down other fan's fondness/love or downright obsession with the ending of S2 and S2 in general. hell,my fav season,by a VERY-VERY narrow margin over S1 is S3,and S3 is certainly chock full of inconsistencies,at least in the very beginning. it's very easy to take these thing almost personaly and i certainly do not mean them in that way at all. these are just my feelings and my views about this topic.  

....so to JACK,AISLINN(?),MARK,CYNTHIA,MARIE,KHAMALE-(spelling)-and others: i hope you join and are able to read this as i have no idea what your email addresses are anymore

                                   ~DAVE

[pibbsneaker]

I can see, perhaps, how these episodes left you feeling bashed over the head. But here are some brief counter-points.

1. Keeping with the Biblical atmosphere that Millennium has always had, isn't The End supposed to come "like a thief in the night?" I don't know too much about microbiology, but an airborn contagent like the Marburg variant might be able to spread quickly without too much warning. One person on two connecting flights can infect 200 hundred people. Don't forget, the writers assumed the show was being canceled. How could you leave a show about the end of the world without making it actually come true?

2. The concept of a plague being the end of mankind isn't that far off.

3. I don't think the virus was supposed to kill within a matter of minutes. I assumed that there was a significant incubation period of several hours, which would allow it to spread quickly. Also, birds might have been able to withstand the disease longer than humans. As for the farmer, there is no way to know when he had been exposed to the virus, since it is assumed he is around the chickens oftern. Infection could have happened the day before. The same goes for the family. Wasn't there a dead bird in their backyard. I think that the whole chicken dinner scene was supposed to be somewhat comical despite the horror of seeing your mother bleed to death.

4. Don't forget, Frank said that the Millennium group was a cult in a heated moment. Since he was only a candidate, he didn't know the entire history of the group. I have always interpreted them as being a secret religious society like the Templars or Hospitalers. They are called societies, not cults.

I had to offer these points, since I consider them to be great episodes. Although season 3 was great by regular tv standards, I sort of consider The Time is Now to be the real ending of the show. But, that is just me.

[pibbsneaker]

Sorry, but I forgot one point. Don't forget that the Black Death decimated the world's population by 1/3. Septacemic and pneumonic plague (i think that is how you spell them) were particularly nasty. Death often came in hours, with little warning. If it happened with the limited transportation of the 14th century, it could happen today.

[Guest]

........that's just it,the show was NOT originaly about the end of the world. it was about the ever increasing violence/hysteria with the approaching MM. see pilot epsisode. even in force majeure they never mentioned the end of the world. just "potentially" catastrophic earth changes due to solar alighment. and it is mentioned more than once that the virus kills in seconds. frank even said it. and if remeber right,the medical examiner said the incubation period was "minutes". AAARRRRRRGH       ~i do repsect your differing opinions of course;it's another reason why MM is so great. it polaraizes people and brings out good old passion! if MM had ended with those 2-parts i would have been crushed and majorly pissed off at carter for allowing this to happen. thanks god for S3.

           BTW: that bubonic plague sh*t is very scary......there was a case of bubonic plauge identified in a person in NYC this past weekend. it was on the news last night. scared the crap out of me to be honest. IT IS A SCARY WORLD OUT THERE THESE DAYS

 

                            ~loved reading your response and i hope others respond as well. i also hope that,if you might have the time,that you would do me the honor of posting a testimonial/memorial in my "MILLENNIUM LIVING MEMORIAL".

     THAT GOES FOR YOU TO "GRAHAM"  OR I'LL SIC MY NEW CAT "BLETCHER" ON YOUR BRITISH ASS

                                    ~PEACE,

                                              DAVE

[The Old Man]

Here's my thing...

1. I never knew Millennium was due to be cancelled after S2. I recall reading somewhere (the FAQ?) that the S3 writers had to play down some of the issues in "The Time Is Now" to make the 3rd Season viable.

One person on two connecting flights can infect 200 hundred people.

That's a valid point. We (the UK) had an interesting show in the 70's called Survivors where a defecting Russian scientist became infected and landed in London Heathrow. Everyone on the plane and those he met at the airport became contaminated and spread the disease. Actually it was a good show, it depicted after most of the earth population had deceased how little pockets formed into communities and sought people like engineers to get the power plants and hydro electric dams working again etc. The winters very very hard... Imagine having to redesign everything we take for granted from scratch with little or no knowldge or materials...

I can't remember how long the contagion took to spread but it effected the whole world very quickly. I'm digressing here...

2. The concept of a plague being the end of mankind isn't that far off.

You may be right, with loons like Saddam Hussein and Bin Laden around...

I see of lot of evil in my job in varying degrees from the mundane to the sick and twisted, I can't help but feel we are definitely heading towards a breakdown of society, perhaps in less than 100 years...

3. I didn't interperet the events in The Time Is Now the same way as Se7enand1. Personally I've always liked the episode on the whole... i can't remember off the top of my head too much about it but I too recall the dead bird in the back yard and then the death of the family.... I don't think they inherited the desease from the chicken/turkey thing. I think it was a coincidence that the other death was the chicken rancher...  I'm sure it spread from the dead bird or was airbourne in their vicinity.

4. It's always hard for me to choose between S1 and S2 as my favourite. We only recently got hold of S3 in the UK. I wanted to draw my own conclusion about S3 but anyone defending quickly got flamed on the MLM newsgroup. It wasn't as bad as people make out, there were some incredible stories... it just wasn't Millennium without the family living in the yellow house for me... sometimes I found it too painful to bear... Peter and Frank falling out was a bad choice... i think we need a S3 thread sometime...

I think it was fascinating to learn more about the Group's history in S2. To know that it was around a 1000 years before was exhilerating... To think about all it had seen and recorded, the scientific discoveries that had been withheld only for the Groups knowldege and why... brilliant stuff...

I hate the term Cult when it comes to the Group, they were indeed a society I suppose...

AD Skinners remarks and summary of the Millennium Group in the X-Files crossover offended me beyond belief...

Hey that MLM Memorial will happen...!

Gra.

[Guest]

........ahhhhhh,but S3 popularilty is MUCH MUCH more than some may think!   i,and about a dozen others,both online and in real life,thought we were just about the only ones who truly appreciated the complexities of S3. ....in a way i am glad katherine was not in S3 as it let the writters more fully explore the father/daughter relationship as well as jordan's higly accelerating "gift".  it was that edge of constant desperation in frank after losing katherine and knowing the truth about the group.  frank's desperation and anger and outright fear made for "the" singular performance,in any medium,of the 90's. and that FANTASTIC idea of johannnessen/thomas j.wright to ever so gradually use less and less makeup,and make his hair more and more grayer was sheer genius as it also visually told the viewer what he was going through just by looking at him. henriksen was initialy not in favor of the hair thing but as time wore on his opinion chnged and did a 360. EX.: "the sound of snow"..go to the passage where frank first wakes up after his fall only to find himself in katherin's arms. really take a look at the expression(s) on his face. look at his features. f***ING BRILLIANT,IT MADE ME WEEP   ;THE TOLL THE BATTEL HAS TAKEN,THE SACRIFICIES OF CHOOSING THE PATHS HE CHOSE,THE SHEER EXHAUSTION OF A LIFE SPENT IN AND AROUND EVIL.......................got a little carried away from the point of this email       the main reason S3 is my favorite has a lot todo with those themes of paying the piper,living with the choices you have made,not giving up,not giving in. that and henriksen's performance.

       .....i've also said this a hundred times so please forgive my repitiion: but the fact that i am able to apreciate the differing themes of each season makes me much more able to see what is common in all 3-seasons.    each season was absolutely it's own seperate journey with varying themes/tones/content.  i know it was not intended to be that way but in the end i'm kind of glad it did come out that way. each season had a turkey or 2,it just turns out that my turkeys of S2 were the last to 2-eps and "anamnesis".       ..........at any rate with all the peole i am privelidged to speak with because of our dubbing project i have been stunned to discover that there is a very large fanbase for S3 but most of them never mention it publicly because some of the elitist-dickheads would pounce on anyone who said anything positive about S3.   sort of like when S2 first aired and all those people who bitched about how S2 was not like S1........blah,blah,blah.  it was a case of the old "HOW DARE YOU CHANGE 'MY' SHOW!!!"   ALL I KNOW IS THAT mm 3-SEASONS HAS CHANGED MY LIFE FOR THE BETTER IN NUMEROUS WAYS AND I WOULDN'T WANT IT ANY OTHER WAY

             

                                     ~rambling DAVE

[Guest]

pibbsneaker:

4." Don't forget, Frank said that the Millennium group was a cult in a heated moment. Since he was only a candidate, he didn't know the entire history of the group. I have always interpreted them as being a secret religious society like the Templars or Hospitalers. They are called societies, not cults."

just one more point to add if i may?  i would agree with you on this if only there were not the scenes of blood-letting in a river-bed whilst speaking in latin.-(not that speaking latin is indicitive of a cult:~),and various other forms of indoctrination.    isloating a potential member from family,friends is also evidence of a cult. EXAMPLE: the group not telling frank about the identitiy of the poloroid stalker.

        i realize this "could" apply to many different groups that are not cults but i think the writing was on the wall. i had more or less gotten the "hint" that the group was,or "became" a cult with owls/roosters. i LOVE owls/roosters but i'm surprised no one ever has spoken that that whole 2-parter,intentional or not,was all about cults and cultism. ORIGINALY: "THE MILLENNIUM GROUP",THEN "OWLS",THEN "ROOSTERS",THEN NAZISM-(which was perhaps the biggest mass-cult in the history of mankind). that 2-parter was steeped in cultism. i,of course did not realize this,or come to all these conclusions as i was watching it the first time. but it seems to me now that M&W were indeed purposefully heading in this direction,fully,with owls/roosters.  again,just my opinion

:) .......and lord knows the world is full of em                

                                          ~DAVE

[Guest LauraKrycek]

Okay, I have a few things to say:

pibb - "I think that the whole chicken dinner scene was supposed to be somewhat comical despite the horror of seeing your mother bleed to death."  This cracked me up!  I realize it probably wasn't meant for that... but anyway, I just had to put it in my AIM profile.

se7en - You didn't like "Anamnesis"?  That remains, to this day, one of my absolute favorite episodes.  I only have about five episodes max on tape, unfortunately, and that isn't one of them.  FX decided to stop showing them before I had a chance to tape any more than a few, and I've been lucky enough to find 2 secondhand copies of the "Pilot"\"Gehenna" tape at bookstores.  But that episode really got me, I don't know why.  Something about the girl who played Clare bugged me, though.

Old Man - the ENTIRE XF ep "Millennium" seriously offended me.  After watching the MM marathon all day before that (and seeing a few episodes that I hadn't seen before that -- let's just say I turned to Fox that evening with a tear-stained face and set for something good), I was sorely disappointed in the entire thing.  Just a few of the things I didn't like were

1) the knowledge that it was a recycled plot (they had thought of using the zombies for another episode, but when they decided not to, they basically said "Hey!  Why don't we use that for the MM one?");

2) Everyone's attitudes towards Frank (I always talked to the TV a lot while watching my 1013's, but it was the first time I found myself yelling angrily at Mulder and Scully to shut up)

and 3) The scant use of Brittany Tiplady!  Granted, I realize the separation of the two as a plot point, but she's a fantastic little actress and as MM basically ended with Frank and Jordan going off together to fight the evil, they kind of jumped backwards with it.

The whole thing was much less a MM crossover and more an XF ep with Frank stuck in there.  As a MM fan, it wasn't any good; as an XF fan, if I hadn't watched MM, I wouldn't've gotten a lot of it and certainly wouldn't've found it interesting in the least.

But, I digress... this isn't telling why we hate that episode.  

[The Old Man]

Hi Laura,

Welcome to TIWWA...

I agree whole heartedly with what you say about the X-Files Millennium episode... I'll never understand what on earth posessed the creator to offend so many Millennium fans the way they surely did... I understand the episode was created primarily to add closure to Millennium (sad that this was necessary for so many reasons) yet they chose to produce such rot...

Pibbsneaker described that scene in "The Time is Now" so well, it was exactly the way I understood the chicken/turkey scene too... the comic horror... I felt the producers wanted it to come over this way, for some reason it was a very clear message...

Se7en,

You got me with the blood letting scene by the river... I didn't know what to make of it when I first realised what was going on... this wasn't the Group for me... not at all...

I can't believe the character of Peter Watts, particulary in his role as Patriot to Frank would have ever believed that Frank Black would take part in such a ritulistic ceremony...

especially with him having worked on such crimes in the Beureau ...

Regards to all,

Graham.

[pibbsneaker]

About the blood letting thing, I suppose it is to be her formal oath that gains her entrance into the group. I can't think of anything specific, but I sort of assumed that the concept of a blood oath was something that was common to many cultures (especially medieval european) throughout history. In "The Hand of Saint Sebastian," Watts admits to taking a blood oath during his Millennium group induction. Also, (sorry seven) I totally don't see the group as a cult. My OPINION is that they are a secret society associated in with the Church. Although they may have fallen out with the Church from time to time (the reign of Otto III,) I think that the two are closely connected since the group dates back to the beginning of Christianity, 34-35 A.D.? It seems, that the group has not been composed of "cult" members throughout history, but made up of individuals who play an extremely important part in the fight against evil. Members were not isolated from their families (Watt's had a large family), but those individuals who join sacrifice EVERYTHING for the fight. They understand that the struggle between Good and Evil is everything. As for the split between Owls and Roosters, I always thought that the Owls were sort of a minority within the group. They both believe in the mission and purpose of the group, but one is secular and one is religious/spiritual. Given the Millennium group was originally a religious society, it is understandable that such a split would occur. There have been many divisions in Christianity, such as the Arians, Donatists, and Cathars. Just because there are two divisions within the same society doesn't doesn't mean that they are a cult.

I just would like to pose this question to make a point and see what kind of response it gets.

If you were a candidate for a secret religious society that was actively fighting Evil for two thousand years, would you have a problem making a solemn promise in the form of a blood oath? I don't think I would.