{"id":324,"date":"2007-10-13T11:47:00","date_gmt":"2007-10-13T15:47:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.ukmelia.com\/ridiculousthoughts\/?p=324"},"modified":"2007-10-13T11:47:00","modified_gmt":"2007-10-13T15:47:00","slug":"battle-of-the-vampires","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.ukmelia.com\/ridiculousthoughts\/2007\/10\/13\/battle-of-the-vampires\/","title":{"rendered":"Battle of the Vampires"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>David Boreanaz played the title character, a broody vampire P.I. in Los Angeles who&#8217;s seeking redemption on &#8220;Angel.&#8221; Geraint Wyn Davies played Nick Knight, a hopeful but naive vampire detective in Toronto on &#8220;Forever Knight.&#8221; Alex O&#8217;Laughlin plays Mick St. John, a&#8230; well I haven&#8217;t got a bead on his disposition yet but I can tell you he&#8217;s a vampire P.I. in Los Angeles on CBS&#8217; new show &#8220;Moonlight.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>As a fan of both &#8220;Forever Knight&#8221; and &#8220;Angel&#8221; I was chagrined when I heard about &#8220;Moonlight.&#8221; My gut reaction was, &#8220;Didn&#8217;t they already do this with Angel?&#8221; And some part of me wondered why the creators of these shows feel compelled to make their heroes involved in some way with law enforcement. They&#8217;re either private investigators solving cases brought to them or they&#8217;re actually on the force.<\/p>\n<p>I suppose it&#8217;s a logical place for them to be. They want to help the helpless so it stands to reason they&#8217;d put themselves in a position to help, such as detective work or taking cases as an investigator. So I guess I can get past that roadblock. <\/p>\n<p>But after three episodes of Moonlight, even though I don&#8217;t mind it, I can&#8217;t help feeling like the creators are not really very creative. Let&#8217;s look at some more similarities between the three aforementioned shows:<\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight:bold;\">Tortured Vamp falls in love with feisty blonde: <\/span><br \/>&#8211; Angel never really got over his love for Buffy. <br \/>&#8211; Mick St. John seems to be falling for a spunky blonde internet reporter.<br \/>&#8211; Nick&#8217;s loves weren&#8217;t blonde but they were plenty feisty.<\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight:bold;\">Vamp feels overwhelming guilt for his past:<\/span> <br \/>&#8211; Angel was cursed with a soul that forced him to face hundreds of years of slaughter and mayhem. For most of the show&#8217;s run, Angel holds on to a slight hope from a prophecy that says if he redeems himself fully, he will be rewarded by becoming human. <br \/>&#8211; Nick Knight refuses to drink human blood as he searches for a cure that will make him human.<br \/>&#8211; Mick also won&#8217;t drink &#8216;from the tap&#8217; so to speak, preferring instead to drink bagged blood.<\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight:bold;\">Vamp has an even older vampire, or &#8216;sire&#8217; that either guides them or tries to get them back to their old ways:<\/span><br \/>&#8211; Angel&#8217;s sire, Darla, did her best to make Angel lose his soul and return to his wicked ways.<br \/>&#8211; Nick&#8217;s sire, LaCroix was always looking for ways to manipulate Nick in an attempt to get Nick back in the killing fold. <br \/>&#8211; Mick&#8217;s comes in the guise of friend who&#8217;s centuries older than himself. So far his purpose has been to make Mick ensure the fact that vampires are amongst the cattle stays a secret. I haven&#8217;t quite figured out what his game is but I&#8217;ve only watched three episodes.<\/p>\n<p>When &#8220;Moonlight&#8221; was announced there was a lot of rumbling from fans of &#8220;Angel&#8221; who felt the it was &#8216;ripping off&#8217; their beloved show. Looking at the similarities I&#8217;ve come across, I think a case could be made for that. But I also think I&#8217;d like to watch more of it before I pass judgement.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;Angel&#8221; was deeply steeped in a carefully woven tapestry of vampire and demon lore that began as far back as the first season of &#8220;Buffy the Vampire Slayer&#8221; It&#8217;s richly layered, well-written and had that as its base when &#8220;Angel&#8221; the spin-off began. I believe, despite the similarities seen in &#8220;Moonlight,&#8221; it will be very difficult to touch the brilliance of &#8220;Angel.&#8221; I don&#8217;t think &#8220;Moonlight&#8221; is even trying to do that.<\/p>\n<p>I think perhaps &#8220;Moonlight&#8221; will strive to be its own show despite borrowing some themes from other shows in this genre. It&#8217;s beautifully shot. The sets are dramatic and lovely. The use of flashbacks has slowly unraveled a bit of Mick St. John&#8217;s brief vampiric life and created interest in it. That&#8217;s one definite difference from the other shows: Mick St. John is a relative newbie to vampirism than his counterparts on &#8220;Angel&#8221; and &#8220;Forever Knight&#8221;. Angel was around 250 and Nick Knight was around 800.<\/p>\n<p>I&#8217;m going to give the show a chance. There are some things I rather like about it such as the fight sequences and well, the vamps just look cool when they vamp out \ud83d\ude42 And if you&#8217;re wondering why I&#8217;m writing about all this anyway, this will probably be turned into my TV column for the paper this week \ud83d\ude42<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>David Boreanaz played the title character, a broody vampire P.I. in Los Angeles who&#8217;s seeking redemption on &#8220;Angel.&#8221; Geraint Wyn Davies played Nick Knight, a hopeful but naive vampire detective&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.ukmelia.com\/ridiculousthoughts\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/324"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.ukmelia.com\/ridiculousthoughts\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.ukmelia.com\/ridiculousthoughts\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.ukmelia.com\/ridiculousthoughts\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.ukmelia.com\/ridiculousthoughts\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=324"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/www.ukmelia.com\/ridiculousthoughts\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/324\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.ukmelia.com\/ridiculousthoughts\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=324"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.ukmelia.com\/ridiculousthoughts\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=324"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.ukmelia.com\/ridiculousthoughts\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=324"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}