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Posted

Eth, I think many of your questions are answered in the commentaries and the docs on the DVD's. The main problem with Millennium was inconsistancy in what the Millennium Group actually was. In the first season, under Carter, it was a version of the Academy Group of ex law enforcment consultants, a SEVEN or SILENCE OF THE LAMBS on a weekly basis. Carter wanted to explore the nature of evil, with a Millennial slant, and how one man tries to stay true in the face of it all.

Because Carter went off to do the X Files movie, Morgan and Wong were brought in to oversee the show in Season 2. They wanted to explore the Groups history and ramp up the cult/religious side. Unfortunately they went too far to fast. While half the production did season one type shows, M&W concentrated on theirs. The Group suddenly went from people wanting to right wrongs, to a christian cult that has existed in one form or another since the time of Christ himself. They suddenly became consumed with prophecy, with gaining powerful artfacts to fight in the coming apocalypse. We saw the group fractured between secular and theology. It seems the Roosters had the upper hand and dominated the Groups actions, a group that supposedly could predict earthquakes to the magnitude, to the minute, that held cures for multiple plagues, with moonlit blood initiations on the banks of the river. But I have to assume that those we saw were not indictive of all the Group, only those who gave into the cult propaganda. The Group sought out people in their weakest moment, giving them something to believe in, a raeson to keep going, in exchange for alliegance. For Lara Means it cost her her sanity.

I don't think this is what Carter had in mind at all. Lance himself called it 'bullsh*t' that the Group would suddenly turn evil. But the damage was already done. The marburg virus was out, Catherine was dead, Watts and Frank were no longer trusted friends, and the world was ending. All Carter could do with season three is pick up the pieces and try and get Frank back to investigating cases. On an individual basis episodes were written well, but the vision for show was too corrupted to make the whole coherent.

If the Groups decline into a cult would have been paced better over the five years, showing how individuals within the group, no matter how good intentioned, can succumb to the same paranoia that they were trying to fight, how evil can effect anyone, that Frank and Peter had to save the group from itself, then that would have been truer to the original premise, and might have stayed on the air. With season four, we might have seen the cult faction of the group ousted, and the remainder trying to put everything back together again. The Trust were obviously introduced to get Frank back into that environment and into that support structure, but never had a chance to go further.

Everyone involved seems to agree that the X Files crossover episode was a mistake. I wouldn't even consider it canon. If we did, I would say it was that minority of the group succumbing to cult propaganda who were brought down and excorcised from the main group. Frank had decided for the sake of Jordan and his own sanity not to be involved anymore. But we know that Frank can't ignore his gifts, and he won't be able to sit back and wait for a happy ending for long.

Lance also mentions on the commentary to The Innocents that for him, it wasn't about the turning of the clock to midnight january 1st 2000, it was about the whole millennium itself, the coming of the next 1000 years. In a way the old world ended on sept 11, just like in 1914, in 1939, only to be reborn moments later into what we are experiencing now, of religious fanaticism, paranoia and social collapse. That would be the world he would be experiencing, that the group (and its alies and enemies) would operate in. If anything, Franks talents would be needed now more than ever.

Posted

Let me articulate for the record that the above post is exquisite. As much as there were two sub factions within the group, there are two themes that can be explored with regard to Millennium as a television series. The first is the journey of Frank Black a man with a special gift to see evil and to combat evil, and the struggles that this gift brings to him and his family; in particular Jordan, who is clearly depicted as sharing this gift in a rather immature form as her character was growing throughout the series. The other theme is that, basically of M&W which brought the 'group' to the forefront, while relegating Frank to secondary element, no matter how you parse it. While M&W did add elemental features to understanding the psyche of Frank Black, they as aforementioned, were concerned with the Group and developing the identity and history of it. This dualism in themes gave way, necessarily, to the shilly shally episodes of SIII which considered collectively can be confusing as noted, but considered individually can be shown to be brilliant pieces, particularly those that focused on the first theme outlined above. It is my contention that Darwin's Eye is one such episode and as noted, I will be providing a monograph on this shortly.

I think Carter's original vision was to elaborate the ubiquitous struggles associated with a gift such as Frank's in the format of understanding evil. Here we have an underlying, tacit implication that simply 'understanding thyself' was a key elemental feature of Carter's vision. The brilliance here is that he used 'facets' (facets here can be thought of as sources of variation in a quantitative sense) of life that are by definition, in the end, oftentimes NOT understandable (e.g., the vagaries of life). For all we can break down evil, it is often nonlinear, much as Darwin's eye points out. However, nonlinear does not imply lack or order nor does it imply an absence of causation. Yet faith through the ages has been used to understand the seeming chaos around us. Yet again, a reminder that chaos does NOT mean the absence of lawful order. What drove the series for me, during all three seasons, notwithstanding the caveats above, was the desire to want to understand Frank, to understand sources of evil, to understand the intersection of Frank's gift with his relationships with both his daughters and wife. Further, to excavate Frank's own personality from the backdrop of his childhood.

That is not to say that those here that are more enraptured by M&W's vision are any different from those that are sequestered into thought by Carter's. What it does imply however, is that there will be two rather distinct visions of how to analyze and discuss relevant episodes. While some want to understand group beginnings, group mythology, and their trajectories, others are more concerned with Frank's own journey, his gift, and the universal struggles of human life which the series depicts in fecund detail, particularly in the first two seasons, and most specifically during Frank's separation from Catherine. This resumed ostensibly in the later portion of SIII. While M & W's vision is notable for its incessant polysemous quality, I think Carter's vision, while frequently of the same ilk, was much more raw, real, and indicative of the human condition. To explore the dark side, you journey into the abyss. And one famous profiler has stated that one must be cautious not to succumb to the abyss or 'fall-in.' This "falling-in" to the abyss is polysemous in and of itself, but it is also realistically polysemous as opposed to demonstrating that Marquezian "magical realism" element that M&W were notable for.

That said; let this refulgent discussion continue per omina secula seculorum.

Posted

Gosh, what stunning posts, really stunning posts, though I think I my topic may have been too amorphous and could suffer no ill from a little clarity. My beef is not with why those in the hot-seat changed the anatomy of the group from time time nor am I concerned with the political issues of Morgan and Wong's vision versus Chris Carter's but my interest lies only in how we as viewers reconcile these changes in accordance with our understanding of the group. Too much time is given, to my mind, to concerns regarding the politics of the preduction crew and despite all that has been written in view of this I am only ever truly concerned with the story not with the schemes. I am aware that the emphasis was to shift from character to ensemble and back again but my love has always been in charting the potted history of the Millennium Group and setting down its lore either through direct evidence or elaborate supposition. As we are faced with such rapid changes to the group organsim how do we understand and make comprehensible these changes within the framework of established Millennium fact, what scene or line is there hidden to garnish our understanding of the changes we see. I cannot accept that we as viewers are content simply to accept these changes and have not taken time to reach an understanding or consensus as to why they occur. Of course the real and true reasons for these changes were behind the scenes but I am fascinated not by this but by how these changes are explained and justified onscreen. We are faced with a multifaceted Millennium Group that emerges redifined from season to season and of course we are aware as to the hows and whys of these changes but please garnish me with your thoughts as to what was occuring in the Millennium Group itself not in the production offices. I am not more enamoured with M+W's vision of the group any more than I am Chris Carter's it is a simple fact that since they gave a full-bodied commentary on the group that when I search for understanding it is to their season that I turn for most of my thinking. What I am curious to know is why the group became evil, not why Chris Carter wrote them as evil but what happened inside, deep inside, the group that changed it's face so irrevocably.

Please, please, please more posts of this standard and gravitas. Best mornings reading from some time.

Eth

Posted

I want to offer a hypothesis in light of the recent conversation on the matter of the group, and in particular to the delineation of the two themes outlined in earlier commentary and rejoinders. The hypothesis, stated parsimonsiously, is that the fractionated, often incoherent, and frequently unsupported (from a linear perspective) nature of the groups origins, its ideology, and, in particular the dynamics of the group behavior itself, are a product of the Jekyl-Hyde dualism of the producers during the cascade of seasons. What this then means, is that "Group" mysteries will never be uncovered, secrets told, and concepts ascertained. They can, however, be created. In particular, in previous commentary I have discussed my intrigue at the concept of a third faction (cf. the 'foxes'). This was only inasmuch as it applied to dynamical notions of the coconstruction of personality formation and group psychology from a symbolic perspective (i.e., the foxes being awake during a transition period of 'dawn' which might be successfully argued to be the space between attractor states in a dynamical system). What is also tacitly stated in my proposition is that the Group itself was never intended to be the protagonist or fulcrum of the series. Rather, ab ovo, Franks own psychological journey was. In the context of his family, the [Academy=Millennium] group, and his own personal struggle to understand faith through an excavation and explication of evil, of suffering, and of pain. The permutations of possible 'true' group origins, allegiances, transmutations, and ideologies is endless. As mentioned at the top, it is my view that this is a simple by-product of different production idealogies.

It has been noted that there is a desire to understand the Group and reconcile 'true variation' to 'observed variation' across seasons (here, I am employing a psychometric metaphor). True variation itself is a latent variable that is a function of the group's members. We simply have not enough personality development amongst the group's members, eschewing Frank and possible Peter for the moment, to arrive at a systematic and reliable source of understanding the variation across seasons (e.g., Matryoshka with SII's presentation of group origins). For the moment, the assumptions we are collectively making regarding the sources of this variation are basically tautologies. In other words, they are true by definition and cannot be tested by comparing these sources to some real 'observed' variation (for example, if outlined in further episodes et al.).

With this in mind, let me not interfere with the creativity that is and has been burgeoning at the helm of this great ship. The above are not quibbles by any stretch of the imagination, rather they are biased guideposts to illuminate further considerations about possible reasons for sources of large variation in the "Season" facet (here again using a psychometric metaphor) with regard to the group. Large variation undergirds inconsistency, and as a result, instantation of 'creative' corrective measures will be necessary to arrive at a simulated or 'Monte Carlo' type understanding of our best estimate about the true nature of the group as it was coconstructed over three seasons of exceptional, even if nonlinear and highly varied, television.

Posted

This is a fascinating discussion, and I just want to thank Vain for the kind words on my initial post.

Although the production/writing problems on Millennium heavily impacted the consistency of the show, it is unfortunately that same inconsistency that prevents us from having true understanding of where and how the Group slided into being evil. If anything, it was more of a hop, skip and jump into evil. There is no gradation of development, not in dialogue, not in character actions or motivations. It could be argued that the millennium group started to become evil straight from episode 1 of season two.

They knew the identity of Polaroid Man, were following him, yet did nothing, nor inform Frank:

PETER: Frank, you're a good man, and you're an exceptional candidate, but the Millennium Group is involved in an unprecedented arena and we're gonna make mistakes for which we will not apologize. However, the Group feels you should know that his interest in you is because of our interest in you. That's all I can tell you right now. But we'll be out there pulling out the stops to find him. You have this information now. Set aside your anger, forget your helplessness and point us in the right direction by getting deeper than you ever have before into a man's head. (pause) But not his soul. (pause) For your sake, not his soul.

Polaroid Man has obviously been a candidate for the Group. Possibly an initiate. He tells catherine that the events foretold in the Bible are all true.

POLAROID MAN: If I told you, Cathy, that all that jazz you've been hearing so much about -- the

throne of God, a sea of glass, the seven veils, the seven seals, the seven plagues, the slain lamb with seven eyes and seven thorns. Fear God and give glory to him for the hour of his kingdom has come.(EDIT)... If I told you, Cathy, that I know that Frank will know, it is all true, would you die, be beheaded, for your witness to the word of -- [He throws the knife to the floor.] -- God? (EDIT)... Because I won't. No, they asked me to but I won't. [Catherine is crying.] They're gonna ask Frank and if he's willing to give his life for you, I know he's willing to give his life for God.

This is reinforced by the episode Anamnesis:

CLARE: I used to be a chronicler like you. Only I believed. Then I got tested... like you. And I didn't believe.

CATHERINE: Tested?

CLARE: By the man who took all the pictures of you -- the one who told you the truth.

In much the same way that Lara Means was told of that the time was near, was told the answers to her questions that she needed to hear (as was Watts and Frank before her), and somehow given proof that pushed her over the edge, so it would appear Polaroid Man was too. He admits theres nothing in his history to suggest his current deviant behaviour, which will frustrate Frank. But he realises he is being used by the Group, putting Frank in a vulnerable position, forcing Frank to use his abilities more and more. If he is willing to sacrifice his life for God, the cause, the prevention of the apocalypse, then Frank would be Initiated the same way Lara was. Regardless of the Groups 'honorable' intentions, this is simply cult brainwashing. Any organisation that manipulates people this way and put Catherine in danger, cannot be pure of heart.

The cases Frank is given to investigate (along with Lara) are tests (Monster). The ones he chooses to investigate himself he does so against the Groups wishes (Luminary).

Peter's interest in obtaining the Hand of St Sebastian, again against the wishes of some of the Group (Owls?), indicates his doubt in the cause and the Groups origins. He wants to know 'Who we are', needs physical scientific proof that will reinforce the faith in the Biblical focus of the Group. It seems someone wants to discredit the Group with the search, yet Frank and Peter somewhat conveniently find the Hand after centuries of it being lost, within about ten minutes of being in the bog. This would suggest to me that it was placed there for Peter to find, or there was some divine intervention. Just why did Andrews want to stop the search, or kill both of them? Would the discovery reinforce the Roosters position?

From The Fourth Horseman Episode Guide notes: 'Wong's research into the subject of secret societies presented him with a realistic and logical means of depicting a Millennium Group struggle. "I thought, 'What's a great way to divide the Group?' I thought about doing a spy kind of show. I was doing research on the Knights Templar and the Masons, and it seems like all those groups had other groups who were against them and betrayed them. There was so much intrigue. I realized that this is how groups act, and I thought, why shouldn't the Millennium Group have the same thing?"'

The discovery of another religious artifact, a portion of the Cross of the Crucifix in 'Owls', forces the schizm between the different factions into the open, and the attention of other societies and organisations like Odessa to take advantage of the confusion.

FRANK: This Group... Millennium... convinced me to return to a realm I never wanted to experience again for the safety of my family... my own sanity. And yet, for those very same reasons, I agree to work with this group I believed was a criminal investigative consulting firm. I became devoted to this. I respected Millennium. I respected you. And even... came to respect myself. But then, there's hints and intimations. Passwords and candidacies. Centuries old origins; end of the world prophecies. Secrets and lies...

PETER: I've never lied to you.

FRANK: Millennium knew the identity of the man who had stalked my wife. You knew that for years and never told me. THAT... is lie! You knew I would kill him! You knew it would take me from my family. The VERY REASON I joined you.

By the time of The Fourth Horseman, there can be no doubt that the Group has fallen from grace. Peter claims if he starts investigating the Group after they have both been vaccinated, they would kill him. Here again, a organisation that can predict earthquakes to the minute, yet doing nothing with the information to save lives; who would kill its own members rather than have their secrets revealed? The Groups disregard for individual life is again reiterated by Mr Lott in The Time is Now.

By the time of The Innocents in Season 3, in an attempt to limit the damage done by the final episode, indicate the Group somehow purposely (and incredibly illogically) released the Marburg virus to kill the family of blonde remote seers, casting them (and Peter Watts) as villains for the remainder of the series.

As I mentioned in my first post, I saw the series exploring how evil could effect those with the best intentions of the Group, as well as Franks own journey. Group members, being only human, succumbed to the same paranoia and hysteria they were trying to overcome, by searching for weapons and insights that would give them the edge. Morgan and Wong did some stunning work in season 2, though it all happened too fast to really give the characters and the viewers time to make sense of it. Therefore the resulting gaps in logic and narrative can only be bridged by informed fan speculation.

A friend of mine once observed that fans are forgiving of a shows flaws, because they are so in tune with it, even if the writers don't say the right words, we know what they really meant to say. And we listen.

Guest A Stranger
Posted

I don't think in S3 they were trying to show how the Group became bad, but that they always were. It didn't happen between years two and three. The Group launched the Marburg Varient in Dessert Strom, which pre-dates the series and the people killed in "Skull and Bones" go back years. They were trying to show how the other side of the Group they didn't want Frank to see. Not just that but there is an underlying theme running through season three that what the Group is, is fundamentally wrong. "Bardo Thodol" makes this very clear as is the first episodes where Frank can clearly see them for what they are, no longer driven to show their faults. He calls off Emma's dogs in "Forcing the End." Catherine believes Frank to be right for rejecting the Group and all "their mystery." That mystery is what the red bowels represent in "Bardo Thodol." Frank rejects the bait they put out, where Emma does not. Frank makes a statemetn in "The Time is Now" about the Group beign slight of hand with crufiixtion crosses and centries old prophecies, distracting and controling their members with these mysteries.

Posted

"He named his invention after the Greek words, kalos or beautiful, eidos or form, and scopos or watcher. So kaleidoscope means the beautiful form watcher."

I have been giving this some due and undue consideration and consider, as A Stranger points out, that Season Two may have been the genesis of the evil group incarnation we are faced with in Season Three. Yet my interest has always been in the speculative essays and realise that although this may never answer questions fully it certainly can make for a fine few minutes of reading. Can I add my thunderous applause for Vains earlier post which I printed off and digested on the bus to work yesterday - stunning, stunning stuff.

I have concluded that The Old Man is the key to the mystery, I have noted that he is imbued with some level of psychic ability and certainly possesses a degree of tacit influence over those within the locus of his control. He is able to temper evil (Beware Of The Dog) and to stimulate the psychic horizon's of others (Monster) and Roosters may either indicate an angelic ability of his own or, more complexly, a degree of divinatory insight affording him some clue to the nature of his demise but either way his demise is portrayed as a pivotal moment in group evolution with themes of change, rebirth and the cycle of life and death running concurrently with images of his entombment - "...till the last change be done..." - indeed.

The Old Man appears, to me, to be symbolic of the synthesis of dualism. There is total submergence of the parts in him and a new "whole" emerges in the form of the Millennium Group and I assert that he is the factor by which all their theories are unified. The Group is clearly an organism absorbing new eschatology as progressive sciences and theologies affect the established doom-scapes and through him these divergent theories remain harmonised. When he is removed the Group is to undergo a traditionary phase, a rapid and radical degeneration into chaos with factious disharmony allowing new, and taboo, concepts and practices to reverberate through group consciousness like the motion of a perpetual kaleidoscope. As the group begins its terminal degeneration, lacking direction, unity and harmony, it was to grasp wildly at passing concepts, ways and thinkings in order to satiate it's moribund symptomology and unify its inherent fractal nature. If a third faction was to exist then this state of chaotic flux would represent the perfect time to rise to prominence with promises of healing the symbiotic relationship of the Group once more. There is an overwhelming feeling of hope, even eccentricity, to the Season Two stories which became a study of darkness beyond the death of the Old Man. It gives birth to a season of Millennium-Group-horrors from which the group would never recover. In the stories prior to the epic tale of two cities that was Owls and Roosters there is no indication that the group would ultimately become the architect of such profound sorrow, there does not seem to be so apparent an evil in either of the factions yet with the demise of the temperance factor the change is drastic and rapid and I do believe there is enough evidence to suggest that the accepted understanding of the mechanisms of the group belies something much darker behind the scenes.

The Polaroid Man is of course 'evidence ripe for the plucking', the first moment at which the Millennium Group appears to hold it's hand up to foul play though I assert that the enigma of the Polaroid Man is, to some degree, answered in Monster through the fate of Danielle Barbakow and through the numerous statements with regards to their intentions toward evil that pepper the whole of the second season. The black and white view of good-men and bad-men had sufficiently matured within a Group that was now prepared to study evil in an effort to garner their understanding. What we see in the groups treatment of the Polaroid Man is not an effort to offer haven to evil but to place it in the petri dish of the Millennium Group for dissection. Remember that Lara and Frank were charged with 'finding' evil in the case of Miss Barbakow and when they ultimately did she was taken by the group for purposes unknown - it was no longer a case of simply stopping evil but to understand the core and soul of it. It was actions and decisions such as these that, in my opinion, caused the final cancerous changes that were to metastasise upon the death of the Old Man.

It would appear that The Old Man is aware that the Group is, in actuality, nearing the end of its lifespan. He refers to himself, Frank and Lara as all that remains of the Millennium Group and it is without doubt that he has already retreated into seclusion and away from mainstream activity within a group he himself no longer recognises as a pure incarnation. As well as numerous ideological changes the atomic experiments conducted in Los Alamos and the dubious re-invention of the Group by J Edgar Hoover created a dark insurgence that found no opposition once the harmonising factor of the Old Man, be it metaphysical or otherwise, was removed. It is interesting to note that the 'true' Millennium Group members, namely Frank and Lara, were both incapacitated shortly after The Old Man's death with neither one able to exert any influence upon the changes that were to occur 'between the seasons' though Lara, and I chasten myself for my pickiness, was not driven mad by an truth or untruth as the violently apocalyptic experiences were stated to be common, recurrent and expected in many of those in 'volatile' stage of the post-initiatory period. The fact the Old Man was to observe within Frank and Lara some representation of true Millenniumism is largely understandable as they were the candidates within whom all theories were reconciled as they swore no allegiance to any faction or subdivision. Within them all data was compiled and respected giving them a unified group understanding that was to make them truly harmonised, their latter journey in Season Two witnessed them both furiously rebuff Peter - Frank doing so primarily because he witnessed his anarchistic, factious, war-mongering nature - both had finally understand what the Old Man had referred to in his "...only Millennium group left.....damn Owls and Roosters.." muse and what Peter could never achieve with his own references to the disharmony within himself.

What has troubled me the most is not why the group became evil but why it abandoned its new found scientific vantage point in favour of salt circles, sorcery and Romero-esque hoodoo and can only understand and reconcile this change in the events that occurred within Bardo Thodol. Bardo makes numerous references to Alchemy in its most modern of forms, as the energetic synthesis between the hermetic arts and modern science - again a principle in which polar opposites allow themselves to be harmonised. Takahashi is the neo-alchemist with his paper on 'Science as the New Alchemy'. The core of Bardo Thodol is transmutation, the forging of organic matter at the hand of man and its subtext is the schism between science and spirit harmonised in a mercurial figure, in our Millennial world represented by Frank, this chymical marriage of science and soul was the cornerstone of Alchemy and the mercurial archetype such a vast, significant emblem that books have been devoted to it alone. The Ouroborus is the alchemical symbol of the great work, in texts it was depicted bearing the words 'en to pan' - 'all is one'. This inscription was vibrant to the alchemists beyond its literal meaning as it was a formula as well as a motto. 'En to pan' consists of seven words of three letters: 7 + 3 = 10. 1 + 0 = 1. The numerology confirmed the meaning, the 'all' being the seven stages of alchemy leading ultimately to unification with the One. Seven and One - again numerous links to harmony, union and reconciliation, themes that ran throughout all Seasons. It is clear that the Group coveted Takahasi's research and it many ways it was for the reasons they were reliant on The Old Man's influence, as he was represented by the 'compass' the image of the four corners of the universe and a central point around which they revolve, they were seeking even in their death throes a mode by which their divergent nature could be harmonised. If they had abandoned their metaphysical soul in favour of science then Takahashi's modern exegesis on Alchemy was a way to reconcile again the wildly incongruent viewpoints that bubbled beneath the surface of the Millennium Group. It is clear his research enabled them to tinker with the neural connections of James Hollis' mindscape and in offering them the keys to life it is not unthinkable he offered them the keys to death. His legacy upon the group was to offer them unity once more but in doing so stimulating the return to the metaphysical practices as depicted in the X-file's swansong. Unfortunately the last change had already been done and the group was never to recover, whatever evolution occurred within the group the inherent disharmony within it meant it was always infinitely regressing.

I apologise for such wildly speculative rant - think no ill of me.....

Eth

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Posted

I agree with what you've said about The Old Man. There was so much potential there, and why they did not go into more depth with his caracter, I will never understand.

Posted

I wanted a perfect ending. Now I've learned, the hard way, that some poems don't rhyme, and some stories don't have a clear beginning, middle, and end. Life is about not knowing, having to change, taking the moment and making the best of it, without knowing what's going to happen next. Delicious Ambiguity.

I happen to think it right to kill him off dear Ravenwolf, essential even, as Morgan and Wong clearly intended to dissolve their Millennium re-invention by the end of the season. It was essential that he die as the precursor to the dramatic unravelling of the fabric of the Group and in the midst of this saw the end of many facets of and Morgan and Wong penned embellishments - that said - I remember him with intense fondness but thank them, in this instance, for not providing us with too much insight as the danger was omnipresent that the character could become too comic. I often wonder how he fits into the whole question of Millennial history contradicting, as he did, what most other season-two-infodumps seemed to imply. Much was made of the groups ancient heritage from its links to the scattered Gnostics of Christianity's birth pangs through the era of the proto-sciences and the revolutionary days of Templars, Crusades and Papal infallibility: in whatever ancient retelling the group was depicted as a cohesive force engrained in each epoch of spiritual and scientific revolution. The irksome, yet thoroughly brilliant, Matroyshka was to recast the die in its novel assertion that J Edgar Hoover formed the Millennium group in 1946 inspired by the formation of atomic-demons but even in Season Two there appear some doubts that the group was anything other than a modern phenomena. The Old Man was to contradict much of what Peter Watts et. al. espoused in Owls/Roosters as weight is given to the idea of an historical Millennium group with an already palpable division with the following lines from Mr. Dean and Peter Watts:

MR. DEAN: 'Only twice in two thousand years has the Millennium Group been so divided

PETER: 'We've been searching for the crucifixion cross for eight centuries. As have "others"'.

Modern? Ancient? Reformed or Formed? The first divisions or the deepening of old wounds? Either way The Old Man was to add confusion to my already addled mind when in blatantly contradictory manner he was to assert that...

THE OLD MAN: There's not a single member of the Group that didn't pass by my home. That I didn't teach what we were all about. Not you, Frank, or you, Lara. Watts. Every Patron. Every Elder.

Now I wonder if the two statements can be true if two contradictory theories can in someway be reconciled in manner befitting the very nature of the group itself. I can only assume that the Old Man refers to the 'Group' in the sense of the cohesive body he had hoped to create during his tenure as its figurehead. I wonder if, as in some vainglorious manner, he refers to the 'true group' as the harmonised body he believed he had tempered and pays no homage to the factious gaggle of groups that went before it. There are clear indications that he refused to acknowledge the factions as true Millennium Group, even stating that he, Frank and Lara were the only members that remained which would seem to me that he sees the Millennium Group as an entity quite distinct from the ancient theological groups the 'theological Rooster' Peter Watts holds dear. Ironically it could be that his greatest failing was in his reluctance to accept the disharmony and historical nostalgia that was ever present in the Group whether he liked it or not. His obstinate retreat into solace allowed those in opposition to his unified consensus theory to sow the seeds of his destruction. Upon receipt of the Sig Rune fax from Watts he was to imply that the Dark Of The Night, or Midnight Of The Century as Watts referred to it, was over and that the sleeping Fox had finally been identified in the form of Odessa but beyond his demise Lara Means assured rebuttal that Johnson was ever an Odessa member to begin with made it clear that the Fox was within and not without. His seclusion and single-mindedness denied him the contact he needed to see and hear the slither of the snake in the grass. Chaotic, contradictory and representative of all arts and sciences beneath the sun this was Millennium Group politics at its very best - fetch me a Herren Schokoladenrührkuchen and some German Ale - I feel an Owls and Roosters night coming on.

Auf Wiedersehen

Eth

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