Sanctuary sees Amanda Tapping of Stargate SG-1 & Stargate: Atlantis, Robin Dunne of Dawson's Creek, and Emilie Ullerup of Battlestar Galactica battle monsters.
The fourth webisode of Damien (Stargate SG-1 & Stargate:Atlantis) Kindler’s new web-based drama Sanctuary sees Asley (Emilie Ullerup of Battlestar Galactica) Magnus held prisoner by her father John Druitt in a derelict subway station.
Druitt tells Ashley that he has been looking for her for decades, and is outraged that Helen (Amanda Tapping) Magnus has brought up her daughter to believe that Ashley’s father is dead. Helen had genuinely thought so, having decanted the embryo that became Ashley and keeping it for a century before loneliness grew too much to bear.
While Helen walks onto the scene to confront Druitt, Will (Robin Dunne of Dawson's Creek) Zimmerman has crawled around in the tunnels until he can gaze down through a grill to see Druitt taunting Helen to choose between their daughter and the creatures she so tirelessly nursemaids.
Will drops through the vent as Helen shoots, but Druitt teleports to stand in front of her. Every time he teleports, it destroys another part of his brain, and makes him a little more deranged. Before she can react, he has a knife to her throat. “What now, John?” She says. “Will you kill me like one of your whores?” Referring to the fact that Druitt was the real killer behind the Jack the Ripper myth.
“What other choice do I have?” he asks.
Meanwhile Will has knocked Ashley to safety and stands between her and the advancing Alexei, whose fear-consuming symbiote threatens to devour her. “You are afraid of me,” Alexei says.
“No,” Will replies.
“Why not?”
Will pauses before replying, “Because…there are no such things as…monsters.”
For a man who awoke in the first two episodes screaming to escape monster-fraught nightmares, this is nothing short of an epiphany.
Helen stabs Druitt but even though he is hurt, he manages to escape after seriously injuring Helen’s butler, who lies in a coma for days afterward. When he recovers, he confesses to Will that he was the monster of Will’s childhood nightmares. “I was always angry,” he says. “I wanted to scare people. I knew that film was playing that night. I’m sorry.”
Will is initially going to walk away, particularly after he sees his future in the shape of Barney, his predecessor, recruited in 1932 (played again by Dunne) by decides to stay.
The first four websodes are effectively one full length TV episode, a little longer in fact, but with the amount of recapitulation required to summarize the previous episodes, the net effect is the same.
Apart from requiring much broader based acting (subtlety is impossible to convey in 13 minutes) the other drawback is the extreme darkness of the setting. The producers of Sanctuary really need to work on this aspect.
