2x15 Owls
Millennium (1996)
2x15 Owls, written by Glen Morgan, James Wong and Michael R. Perry, directed by Thomas J. Wright.
First of a mid-season two-parter.
We open with a stealthy night-time commando assault on a mosque in Damascus. These are French-speaking Millennium Group members. Using ground scanning gear they chisel through the stone an extract a piece of the crucifixion Cross.
Another faction appears and there is gunfire. Yet another faction (?) at the airport detonates a bomb and steals the Cross fragment.
This is another example of having so much Millennium world now that we assemble a bunch of the pieces into new story. I found it hard to follow at times: who are these people?
We learn more about ancient factions within the Group. Peter is with the "Roosters" who expect a theological event at the end of the Millennium.
They are opposed by the "Owls" who forecast a "secular event" (?) further in the future.
These are dark times with the Group about to collapse into civil war. It is hinted they both trust one person, presumably the "Old Man" we met once before.
Is there an outside force trying to confound both Group factions? We start getting hints of nazis and Hitler specifically, a mysterious figure in Paraguay. (My comment: nazis again? Please don't tell me that's Adolph down there).
Frank's rupture with the Group is complete. Peter expels Lara Means.
Catherine talks about being a family again.
She has part time work counseling for a corporation. Frank immediately distrusts her boss, who has the same watercolor painting on her wall as the man in Paraguay.
We keep seeing two parallel lines as a logo. Peter faxes this to the Old Man who joins them into an "S", from the nazi SS emblem.
This is good stuff but I have problems: nazis were worn out long ago. And Peter describes the Cross like Marcus Brody on the Ark of the Covenant: as a tool or weapon.
Peter's history of the Cross:
quote
Early in the fourth century, the Emperor Constantine allowed his mother Helena to travel to Jerusalem in search of the cross.
Beneath what is now the Church of the Holy Sepulcher, she found three crosses, two marked "thief" and one "INRI" – "one to be mocked or humiliated."
She cut this cross into three pieces, sending one to Constantinople, one to Rome and leaving one in Jerusalem. The first two pieces were lost. But the third was captured by the Muslims in the Crusades.
Now, the Muslims were prepared to return the cross until Richard Lionheart slaughtered his Arab prisoners. Legend indicated that Saladin then had the cross buried beneath the steps of a mosque in Damascus as a means of humiliating the Christians.
Iesus Nazarenus, Rex Iudaeorum (INRI) = "Jesus the Nazarene, King of the Jews".
Catherine's nazi boss is played by Ashlyn Gere, who was in Space: Above and Beyond and The X-Files and who had been a porn star.
R. G. Armstrong returns as the Old Man. "The time is now".
Notes:
The "driving to your death" music is "A Horse With No Name". For such a Group bigwig that guy had poor survival skills.
Lara Means wears woolly socks at home. She sees her angel again.
