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Beware Of The Dog

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Guest chrisnu

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I am so glad I found this amongst the tatters and remains of things past as it was recently lamented by a member that he wished to talk about this very episode but didn't get the giddy response he had expected.

I go back to the garbage I have written before and recycle my opinion that 'Millennium' is a 'Rorschach Test', it is the psychological ink-blot that unveils our desires, interests and evocations. I am a firm supporter of those who see no measure in this particular story but it does reach out to those of us immersed in the 'wonderful' and, again, I can wholly appreciate the whole frown-and-groan response that this episode garners as it pitches it's tent in an oddly spiritual campsite. It isn't a coffee to dip your cookies in easily, it is a warm drink more desirous of communion wafers but prattle aside this episode takes a basic, supported, truth and makes it decorative and takes a Carpenters song and makes it the icing to cover the visceral marzipan.

My whole love of what 1013 did was this imaginative marriage of twee and terrible, they took your favorite last-dance, the daft song on the radio and made it the soundtrack of the grotesque and the horrific.

Back to basics, this episode takes a truth, that animals perceive and act upon sensitivities we cannot penetrate, and uses it to introduce us to one of the finest characters in the 'Millennium' roll-call. I truly believe, after much viewing, that the 'Old Man' was more than a symbolic monarch of the group but a spiritual harmoniser who balanced the yin and yang and tempered the subtle relationship between chaos and order. He affirmed that the dogs were not his own and yet had some command, some placating ability with regards to this affect and I have maintained for some time that his was his deletion form the Group that signaled the final descent into the visceral horrors, and necromancy, of Season Three and beyond. Of course all of this may be nosegays but Frank undergoes a transformation, as does Lara, simply by enjoying the resonance of the Old Man's presence, if you recall Lara asserts that their abilities have gained strength simply by their proximity to the Old Man which allows me a comforting excuse to conclude that the dogs also shared this locus of exposure.

In 'Beware Of The Dog' it is alluded to that the dogs are being influenced by a developing 'evil', a phalanx of negativity that has begun to effect the sensitive balance of animal perception. Despite the fact that this imbalance is made manifest by the animals bloodlust the Old Man appears, grossly, to achieve some degree immunity from their bestial attacks. On a more speculative level I would argue that this is about him possessing an ability to temper evil that has a specific locus of operation, namely that those in his vicinity are affected by whatever power he possesses. One of the more startling assertions made by Lara Means is that both she and Frank have developed the ability to sense 'evil' through direct exposure to the Old Man, a conclusion that Frank does not condemn, it is suggested that their abilities have become heightened, their senses honed simply by entering his presence in much the same way the dogs were effected. Whatever you conclude from such vagaries it is worth considering from observation that not only does he possess a working knowledge of rune-lore, astrology, hermeticism and occult fraternities but he frequently discusses the initiation undergone by Millennium candidates as affording them enlightenment and allowing them to perceive in a new and more expansive way. In a throw away line in 'Roosters' he confirms, despite his lamentation at the formation of the factions, that he is in fact a Rooster and subscribes to the notion of Christian Eschatology, he also confirms to Lara that he has the ability to perceive the dead and latter events confirm his ability to perceive angelic beings.

Whether it be cherry-pie, odd locals, rampaging mutts or monolithic remnants of deceased members this episode was the Olympic-torch that signified a thorough descent into the cerebral and the considered. I do not detract what came before or after and love each season, and story, as passionately as this but it was an adrenaline-injection of-spirit that made me realise that Millennium was entering something of a deeply challenging era.

Holy Sh*t, eth! Have you considered writing reviews for Graham's website???

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Guest SouthernCelt
Holy Sh*t, eth! Have you considered writing reviews for Graham's website???

I've had the same thought...but w/o the asterisk.

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Guest Jim McLean
I've had the same thought...but w/o the asterisk.

I've thought exactly the same thing, minus the forward slash and the addition of two sets of consecutive letters - 'ith' and 'ut' - placed after the w and o respectively. If you see what I mean.

Edited by Jim McLean
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Here's my thing.

Holy s*** not only am I am chuffed but I have a new Rebus for you all.

L*redo ple*se lend your talen&s to Raven$wolfs proposal of a Millennium fan b%%k. A man of your literary and artistic excellence would b& a fabulous asset to h^r propsed pro)ject.

Please?

I'm actually shocked that anyone read what I thought on this topic.

'Beware Of The Dog' has been bashed more than old Mike Tyson but it exists to, almost hypnotically, ask you to pay more attention to the negative space of the story than the structural components of it. It signals the urgent shift from reality to the concealed, it gingerly offends our palette with muzak, downgrades Frank to the stumbling neophyte and presents 'The Millennium Group' as an immeasurable concept stripped of the investigative-comfort-blanket Frank assumed he had been given. The moment when the fearful Frank faces the 'test of the dogs' negates his visionary infallibility and asserts one simple fact - You Ain't Seen Nothing Yet.

It was no bad thing, in my book, to have Frank climb down the ladder a few pegs, chums of mine who munched into tacos and watched 'Millennium' in an ethsnafu-forced-scenario sniggered at what they perceived to be a simple cop-out. His bleached and rambling visions seemed to them an almost spectacular reason to inch the plot forward without any need to proffer any evidence or narrative, having Frank bumbling through a theocratic-quagmire, stumbling through countless assays inspired by centuries old grimoires and Gnostic principles gives us a soul that for all his assurance and skills has yet to penetrate the secrets of the Most Holy. Whilst numerous stories afforded their resolution to his magical insight this ill-defined ability lacked his former superman status in a series of stories that pitched their game even into heaven.

I'm hoping that someone will kick my doors in on this, I don't profess it to be the greatest painting ever painted but I feel sure it was a superb way to doodle a new a picture, one in which Frank was stripped of his certainty and plunged into his spirit.

Edited by ethsnafu
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  • 4 weeks later...
Guest Heath328

I was wondering if someone could answer a question for me about this episode.

What particular breed were the canines used in "Beware of the Dog"?

Also, I loved the idea that the number of dogs didn't change, even if one died. That fits in so well with the speech the Old Man gave Frank about the balance in the world between good and evil. Classic storytelling -- a little exposition, a lot of "showing."

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"So everyone, by the highest right of Nature, judges what is good and what is evil, considers his own advantage according to his own temperament... ."

You are so right Heath, the eternal replenishing of the 'dogs' is a stark and considered motif, one that accepts a Zoroastrian exegisis on the nature of balance.

To have the cosmic argument of 'good and evil' delivered through canines is superb, to render the argument devoid of human attachment, theological influences and drag it down to a base-perceptual level where evil exists as a concept rather than something anthropomorphic is intelligent and jettisons the bogus. All this is reminiscent of a recent chew regarding Lucy, evil depicted in some instances as soft and incognito and in others as a prosthetic laden grotesque spouting great horns and firery breath and whilst the authors of the 'Malleus Maleficarum' would applaud such Punchinello-esque rendering the sensible shy from the Buffy-syndrome and wish to see evil depicted in a way more befitting of Crowley.

Canines strip the depiction of evil in this episode of narrative, they force it to forgo the gurning and the exorcist-like-voices and deny any opportunity to depict it with horns and wings and force the authors to consider it as a force and a profundity as valid and ever present as good. And if one should be allowed such speculation it presents evil as a positive force, one which occurs as a neon-sign that the subtle balance of yin and yang has been assaulted by the erection of a home on burial site.

There is so much here that is generally ignored by those who are put-off by the seeming silliness of it all but rather than view it it demands that you consider it and after doing much of that is still ranks as my favourite way to spend an evening.

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Guest Heath328

Thanks so much for the info on the breed, Raven Wolf!

I'm a "dog person" from a whole family of dog people, and I thought the canines in this episode were beautiful (even if they were meant to be physical embodiments of evil here!).

No little dogs for me. The bigger, the better!

Also, another great post, Ethsnafu. You really give all of us food for thought!

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