“Harmony” is like a live-action
rendition of an escort mission from a video game. For this mission, player characters Lt. Col.
John Sheppard and Dr. Rodney McKay are tasked with escorting an NPC, Princess
Harmony. She is the
heiress presumptive to the throne of her kingdom on her home planet, but in
order to prove herself worthy enough to become queen she must venture to an
ancient ruin hidden within the forest.
This episode has all the pluses
and minuses of your typical escort mission.
There are instances of quick bursts of action as Sheppard, Rodney, and
Harmony make their way to the ruins. At
the same time, there is a lot of downtime where not much happens (the pace
often gets pretty slow in these parts).
Much of the downtime is spent on banter between Sheppard, Rodney, and
Harmony. Thankfully, their dialogues are
quite sharply written and often very funny, which is amplified by how well Joe
Flanigan, David Hewlett, and Jodelle Ferland go off of each other.
Harmony is the living embodiment
of the usual NPC you’d have to escort in any escort mission you would ever play
(in other words, this character comes off as a real pain in the ass to the
player characters). She insists on
proving herself as a “big kid” but risks getting into trouble, won’t stop
talking about herself, comes off as sassy and spoiled, and she can be
manipulative at times. (I swear, she says, “I am the queen,” in this one
episode more often than Jon Snow ever said, “You are my queen,” in all of Game
of Thrones: Season 8.) That’s not to say she doesn’t have a softer side, though. For all her sassiness, Harmony is shown to
care about Sheppard and Rodney (well, depending on her mood) and always
expresses real concern for her country and her people.
Luckily, there is a
self-awareness that writer Martin Gero gives to Harmony where Sheppard and
Rodney know she is an annoying little brat but have to just deal with her. Jodelle Ferland successfully hams up the role
in such a way that the audience feel the same way either Sheppard or Rodney
feel (or, better yet, like they’re playing the escort mission and this
is what they have to put up with). In
other words, her personality is played up as so unlikeable (though not without
her redeeming qualities) she ends up being surprisingly likeable.
With the self-awareness that
Martin Gero brings to the script, John Sheppard and Rodney McKay, as
characters, are perfect expies for player characters. I commend Sheppard being patient with Harmony
and giving her a chance, because Rodney is the exact kind of guy who
would get driven crazy by Harmony’s attitude.
To Rodney’s credit, he’s not so much being a jerk as he is expressing
the frustration every gamer has ever had escorting an NPC in a game, which
makes him rather empathetic in this regard.
What works so well about Sheppard and Rodney is that while this kid may
get on their nerves, they’re still escorting, well, a kid—and as such,
protecting her at all costs is the right thing to do.
As for the villains who are
pursuing Harmony, they’re the weakest link of this episode. The Genii hitmen just serve as expendable AI
enemies who don’t post much of a real threat to Sheppard and McKay, who seem to
be playing on Normal difficulty. Their
boss, Harmony’s older sister Mardola, is pretty weak for a main villain. Her motive is reasonable (I mean, I’d be
worried about selecting a child in power), but this all easily could have been
resolved if she had just offered to be Harmony’s regent. There has to be some mechanism for
this kind of situation, right?
Meanwhile, “Harmony” is also able
to implement the established mythology of the franchise really well. The Ancients are implemented into the
mythology of the kingdom, feeding into the kingdom’s female-preference primogeniture
quite naturally. This is especially
impressive, given that “Harmony” is kind of a bottle episode. It features only Sheppard and Rodney doing
their thing, and there’s not a single scene in Atlantis or of anyone going
through the Stargate—it’s mostly filmed in the outdoors of British Columbia.
“Harmony” is a very enjoyable
standalone episode of Atlantis.
In terms of its written story, it’s a bit flawed and often slow at
times, but it makes for a fun buddy comedy mixed in with some space fantasy elements. Plus, it helps to view this as a video game
escort mission brought to life. Trust
me—it makes this episode so much more relatable.
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