Sanctuary: Awakening
Helen and Nikola discover a frozen vampire queen.
I’ve no idea where Tesla has been since Helen and the team made their way into Hollow Earth but he’s back now and he brings with him a great episode of “Sanctuary”.
While searching caverns shown on the map, Helen and Tesla encounter a chamber which was used by vampires during their prime. Unfortunately Tesla’s device covers up the vampire DNA they possess and Nikola is unable to remove it before the safety systems attack him. He is mortally wounded and his only option for survival is the vampire woman they find frozen in a block of stone. Helen manages to break into the rock to remove some of her blood and inject it into Tesla who regains his vampire abilities. The stone holding the vampire woman continues to disintegrate, awakening her. She leads Tesla to believe that they could together rule the world before dropping him in a trap and taking Helen as her personal blood supply. Nikola manages to escape and he and Helen convince Afina to let them go by giving her the map of Hollow Earth. They run from the cavern before the map can discover that she is a vampire and destroy itself. Meanwhile Kate gets a message from an old colleague and stages an op to stop him from selling abnormals.
With the vampires all long dead it seemed as though “Sanctuary” had limited their ability to tell stories involving them. Up until this point any vampires that have been around have either been Tesla or his creations. “Awakening” gives us the chance to see vampires as they were in their prime and how they would view someone like Tesla. Afina sees Tesla as completely inferior to herself but uses him for as long as is necessary. Once she feels she can manage things on her own she drops into a hole and tries to leave him behind. With all the time Tesla has spent idolizing his predecessor vampires, this must be quite the eye opener. He may still believe that he is entitled to rule the world but I think he’ll be more hesitant to interact with other vampires, should he meet any. After all, creating his own didn’t work well and neither did waking up originals.
Helen and Nikola have always had a somewhat complicated relationship. It’s clear they care about each other, even if they are sometimes on different sides of a battle. Nikola typically is in it for himself no matter what the stakes where Helen is more selfless. Even with that, Helen is willing to do anything she can to save Tesla when he finds himself at death’s door in this episode, even if that means waking up a vampire. In the end, Tesla too comes back for Helen. He could have tried to escape on his own after getting out of the hole but he goes back for Helen nonetheless. It’s unusual for any show to have two characters whose history goes back centuries making the relationship these two have unique in many ways.
The B-plot of the episode dredges up Kate’s past but left me feeling short changed. Kate’s had almost nothing to do during this second half of the third season. There have even been episodes where she hasn’t appeared at all. In that respect it’s good to see a story about her but this one is underwhelming. We know Kate’s past already; that she used to sell abnormals on the black market. It makes sense that she would know people who are still in that business but it seems odd that her old friends would still be contacting her about transactions when she clearly hasn’t participated in any in almost two years. You’d think they’d have realized by now that she’s out of the business even if they don’t realize she’s working with the sanctuary. Besides that, the story almost seems to have been added as an afterthought. Stopping the abnormal sale seems to be no problem for the team and even Kate’s confrontation with her old friend at the end goes all too smoothly.
The main plot of this episode makes it one of the best of the season. Unfortunately for the show, the ratings haven’t been strong since the move to Monday nights so I wonder just how many people are seeing the show at all. At least it’s already been renewed for a fourth season.
Andrea
