KNIGHT OF SHADOWS sees the writing team given the opportunity to do a traditional ghost ship tale, complete with apprension and ghostly visions of captains giving dire warnings. The episode gives unusual predominance to Stephanie Beacham's character, giving her the chance to dress up glam and perhaps relive her old gothic horror days of the early 1970s.
2 Reviews
Incredibly Boring
justinboggan2 February 2017
Warning: Spoilers
Captain Bridger get attacked by a ghost in his quarters, with another telling him to go to certain coordinates.
Sunken ship, blah, blah, blah, ghosts, blah, blah, blah, love affair, blah, blah, blah. The whole thing is incredibly boring and filled with clichés and story elements that have been done to death.
After the series' opening credits music, as if what to come wasn't enough, we're treated to a second credits piece with a black screen, fake lightning effects, and the clichéd cat scream you hear in any other terrible horror special. In fact, three times we hear it. Had to get it out of the way I guess, since where this takes place, there are no cats.
When I say it's full of every boring story element you've seen in these things before, I mean it, from the "We have to do this but I don't know why, just have a feeling" plot idea, the angry ghost, the good ghost, spirit taking over somebody, blood running down something (in this case a door), go places without a real reason, people calling out if so-and-so is okay but so-and-so doesn't answer when there's no good reason for he or she to not answer, fog for ghosts, somebody faints, and others I can't recall offhand.
It could have been acceptable if the episode tried to do something interesting with all that old stuff or twist it in a new way, or make it work for their characters, but instead it's just the characters written around all this junk. And they appear to be struggling to pull it off. Because of the lack of attempt, what might have been a six-star episode, gets pushed down to five. The user rating for this episode is way, way over what it deserves.
Do yourself a favor and skip this. Or torture yourself with this insultingly bad episode with it's stupid brief ending scene in Bridger's quarters that un-did what happened in the climax.
The only saving grace is John Debney's professional orchestral score. Debney did no wrong during his work on the series.
Sunken ship, blah, blah, blah, ghosts, blah, blah, blah, love affair, blah, blah, blah. The whole thing is incredibly boring and filled with clichés and story elements that have been done to death.
After the series' opening credits music, as if what to come wasn't enough, we're treated to a second credits piece with a black screen, fake lightning effects, and the clichéd cat scream you hear in any other terrible horror special. In fact, three times we hear it. Had to get it out of the way I guess, since where this takes place, there are no cats.
When I say it's full of every boring story element you've seen in these things before, I mean it, from the "We have to do this but I don't know why, just have a feeling" plot idea, the angry ghost, the good ghost, spirit taking over somebody, blood running down something (in this case a door), go places without a real reason, people calling out if so-and-so is okay but so-and-so doesn't answer when there's no good reason for he or she to not answer, fog for ghosts, somebody faints, and others I can't recall offhand.
It could have been acceptable if the episode tried to do something interesting with all that old stuff or twist it in a new way, or make it work for their characters, but instead it's just the characters written around all this junk. And they appear to be struggling to pull it off. Because of the lack of attempt, what might have been a six-star episode, gets pushed down to five. The user rating for this episode is way, way over what it deserves.
Do yourself a favor and skip this. Or torture yourself with this insultingly bad episode with it's stupid brief ending scene in Bridger's quarters that un-did what happened in the climax.
The only saving grace is John Debney's professional orchestral score. Debney did no wrong during his work on the series.
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