Monday February 6, 1995
76609
A power struggle threatened to send the peaceful kingdom of Meliad into war. Fearing the worst, Queen Camilla summoned Hercules to the annual Festival of Dionysus. If Dionysus, the god of wine, did not find King Iphicles worthy to rule another year, ten lovely virgins would become drunk and slaughter the King in a terrible frenzy. Good king or not, someone wanted him dead.
Write a Recap »The beginning of a new enemy for Hercules ... Ares hide show
I completely forgot that initially Ares took a feather out of mama Hera's cap as a "face in the sky". As he comes in the form of a skull in the sky in the "The Festival of Dionysus". The funny thing about this episode is they completely ignore the fact that much like many other Gods (Venus/Aprodite, Ares/Mars, Eros/Cupid) that Dionysus IS Bacchus. And Bacchus (as seen in Young Hercules and Xena) is anything but a peaceful and happy guy that Hercules would like. This has a lot to do with the changing concept of Gods in the coming evolution of the series though. While they are played as super powerful forces in the early Hercules concepts and very rarely seen, they come to be seen a lot and have little more than the ability to teleport and a little zap to bother people in the later end of the series. Giving them human form reduced them to either beast (like Bacchus) or comedy (as Ares became in the end, especially on Xena). It's hard to imagine this creepy laughing "force of evil" as the guy seen in the Xena ep "Old Ares had a Farm" or any episode of "Young Hercules" for that matter (not that he was never powerful there or on Xena).
But anyway, this episode is all about a Queen having a "dream" or "Premonition" about her husband's death. He doesn't worry about it as he believes that if their patron God (Dionysus) wants his life then it's his time. The Queen doesn't buy into his faith and sends her youngest boy to find Hercules. Of course he finds them and comes to the kingdom only to discover the Queen's older son has a faith different from the father's. He's a devote of Ares and is planning to kill his father. Much like Hera has done before, Ares eventually possesses the body of a mortal in order to have his first fight with Hercules.
There's a whole thing with young lovers and jealousy. There's the return of the sidekick Tiresias (the old man/blind seer) from the previous episode and really it's all kind of whatever for the episode. The big deal for me was Ares being the villain. As an Ares fan (mostly because of Kevin Smith) I was disappointed to find out this was Ares' beginning (as I wanted Kevin Smith to pop out somewhere), but liked that Hercules finally had to fight someone that wasn't Hera for once. Besides, I think even without Xena as a reason to do so, Ares sooner or later required an active body. As I think every ep with him that follows he posses someone to fight with Hercules. All in all, the episode was a bit of a dud, but it gets extra points for introducing Ares into Hercules' life.
Hercules is summoned by a Queen who has had dreams of her husband being murdered during the Festival of Dionysus, and must try and stop the visions from becoming reality, in this slow and uninteresting instalment... hide show
After two good episodes ('The Wrong Path' and 'Eye of the Beholder') and one fair-to-good episode ('The Road to Calydon'), things come down to Earth with a bump with this rather dud episode.
The episode's best moments come near the beginning, where Hercules is tricked into a drinking contest against a thug - which is actually two twin brothers posing as one (who were also one of the many identical guards in 'Hercules and the Lost Kingdom').
The plot of this episode takes an age to really get going. I was going to say mid-episode it gets a bit confusing, but I'm lying – actually I found it all a bit boring and my attention wandered a bit.
Tiresias the seer, from the previous episode 'The Road to Calydon', makes a return appearance here, making it seem even more that the writers were trying him (along with both Iolaus and Salmoneous) out as potential recurring companions. This would turn out to be Tiresias's last appearance in the series. Although I quite like him, and Norman Forsey plays the part very well, I think he was a bit too gruff and dark to work as a recurring companion, especially so early in the series when things were more light-hearted.
One question though – whatever happened to Tiresias' dog, whom latched on to him at the end of 'The Road to Calydon'? I thought it made a nice pairing, and was niggled that the dog had suddenly vanished.
Although 'The Road to Calydon' was partly studio filmed, this episode is also the first instance of being predominantly stupid based; all three of three previous episodes had extensive location work. Locations always bought stories to life for me, the heavily studio-based ones usually seemed a bit static in comparison.
The episode has several fight scenes, but they are all rather generic compared to some other episodes. The only possible moment of excitement is when Hercules and Nestor are trapped in a pit with a giant eel-type-monster, but it is over all too quick.
This episode is generally less 'monster' based than the previous three episodes, and notably is not Hera-heavy, which is good because already, shoe-horning Hera in to every single story is being slightly tiresome. Instead, we meet the God of War, Ares. But this is not the Ares as played by Kevin Smith that we would become used to – instead, as with nearly all of the Gods early on, is represented in a more abstract way; Ares is represented by a laughing skull over the moon, giving him an almost alien-like feel. Although I came to like Kevin Smith et al and the life that they breathed into Gods (although I felt there was one-too-many 'comedy God's later on), in a way I quite like these faceless Gods that we see here and in other early episodes; It makes them feel somehow more powerful and indestructible.
Of course, regarding Ares' different appearance in these first season episodes, there is nothing that can't be explained away, as it seems the Gods (including Zeus) can change appearance at will.
This episode, other than the different appearance of Ares, almost feels like an episode from the second season onwards, especially in that you'd get a few good episodes and then a really dud one mixed in.
When I originally saw this episode, I was frankly quite bored by it, and never really bothered re-watching my recording of it. When I caught a re-run of it a few years ago, I was still very disappointed in it. When I came to re-watch it to review recently… I tried hard to give it another go, but I'm afraid it just doesn't do it for me. I would point to this as the weakest episode of the mostly strong first season. Maybe I would like it a bit more if Tiresias still had his dog!!!
Finally an episode that uses the potential it has, well some anyway.
The casting and special effects were so much better. Also the acting and writing improved quite a bit.
This episode is the first time they mentioned the great Ares.
The episode is about a king being killed in his wife’s dream. She is afraid and calls Hercules who meets an old friend again, that old guy. What happened to the dog he ended with the previous episode?
But anyway, the older Son wants to become king and the only way to that is by killing his father. He’s planning on making the virgins drink a wine that will make Ares posses them and then kill the king and queen. One of those virgins is the girlfriend of the younger brother.
Anyway, Hercules arrives and a guy who works for the older prince noticed him and they try to kill him by throwing him in the dungeon but Hercules frees himself and then stops the ritual and Ares, the prince tries to kill Hercules by drinking the wine but Hercules still wins and the king and queen lived happily ever after.
The episode worked pretty well, the storyline was darker and the dialog was pretty funny. This is how Hercules should have been more often only a bit better.
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