Once Upon A Time

On the recommendation from my sister, we decided to watch the TV series Once Upon a Time by borrowing DVDs from the local library. I’ve now finished Season 3 so I will have to wait a while until the Season 4 DVD set is released. We don’t own a TV, and frankly I think watching the DVDs is much more efficient. Normally I don’t start watching a TV series until after the series is completed, but I have made a few examples, for example, BBC’s Sherlock (mentioned in my most recent post). The only two series I’ve watched all the way to the end so far are the new(er) Battlestar Galactica and Breaking Bad; the latter was discussed in a previous post.

The premise of the first season of Once Upon a Time is that the main protagonist, Emma Swan (played by Jennifer Morrison), travels to a town named Storybrooke. The denizens of the town are “fairy tale” characters trapped there by an evil curse, which has also taken away their memories. They cannot leave the town, nor can outsiders come in (they won’t see it there) with some rare exceptions. Emma is one of the rare exceptions and the story unfolds around why she is here and how her coming heralds the breaking of the evil curse.

The best part about this series is the back-stories of the characters. The writers have done a great job overall in coming up with creative stories that combine aspects of the fairy tale that we know with unexpected twists and turns. Some characters transcend multiple roles across different fairy tales. And seeing how characters from one tale might interact with those from another tale opens up all sorts of story-telling possibilities. As the series progresses, the histories of the characters are pushed further back and intertwined to keep things interesting. The overall series is good, i.e., I will probably watch Season 4, but it suffers from some unevenness after the first season. The reuse of certain large-scale plot devices feels a little forced (as it does in other TV series and fiction books). The Hunger Games trilogy is probably the best example of this given its current popularity. It makes me think that the authors or writers lack the ideas or creativity to bring a story to its appropriate conclusion. Sometimes there’s a good stopping point, and one should just stop. (It’s hard to stop when something is popular and making money.)

As the series progresses, we are introduced to more Once Upon a Time characters and the interesting idea of multiple worlds. The people of Storybrooke come from a world called The Enchanted Forest. But there are other worlds with characters from different tales. Some characters can travel between worlds if they have an appropriate magical method, device or object. Some worlds, such as The Enchanted Forest, are magical worlds where some of the characters wield magic. Others, like our own, are categorized as non-magical worlds. Not surprisingly, the curse that transports folks to Storybrooke into our world, also bring magic into our world. This world is hidden to outsiders though, in the same way that the Ministry of Magic in the Harry Potter world takes great pains to enact laws against revealing the existence of the magical world to Muggles, the casting of Muggle-repelling charms in key locations where magical folks congregate, and to cast Obliviate spells to erase/modify the memory of a Muggle who may have inadvertently witnessed magic being performed.

Not everyone in a world with magic is capable of wielding it. In fact the vast majority of folks are not. Magic is power, and in fact the magical folks are typically the de facto rulers of their respective realms. Interestingly, most magic wielders in Once Upon a Time are women. There also seems to be some genetics and some training involved in becoming a magic user. Like in the world of Harry Potter, non-magic users can give birth to magic users in The Enchanted Forest, although it’s unclear when, how or why. Certainly training is important to learn how to use or channel the magic. Magic can also be imbibed through magical objects. There is Dark Magic, to be differentiated from Light/Good/Regular Magic.

Is there a gene for magic? Harry Potter, given his parentage, is born with great magical abilities as expected. Hermione, on the other hand, had Muggle parents but turned out to be a most astute and capable student of magic. Two very capable wizards, Voldemort and Snape, both had mothers who were witches but fathers who were Muggles, so-called “half-bloods”. Does magic then run in the blood? Or is it just a figure of speech?

Now magic seems to be akin to the Force in the Star Wars Universe. The following is found in Wikipedia: “According to the Jedi master Qui-Gon Jinn, midichlorians were described as ‘microscopic life-forms that reside within the cells of all living things and communicate with the Force.’ Midichlorians existed in the blood system of individuals in the Star Wars universe and acted as an energy ‘conductor’ of the Force.” So perhaps the reason why some folks are magic users and others are not has to do with a microbial symbiont. This could explain why the women in Once Upon A Time are the predominant magic users, and that the main transmission may come from the mother. It also helps with explaining Voldemort and Snape’s magical abilities, although it doesn’t help with the Skywalker family. Given that I’ve been recently thinking about the history of microbes, this could be an interesting topic for further exploration.

Clearly much training is needed to wield magic. This is the case in Once Upon A Time and in the Harry Potter books. It’s also true for Jedi. So while you might possess the symbiont, you still need to learn how to channel the necessary abilities to manipulate nature. Education turns out to be just as important in the magical world. That’s why there’s Hogwarts! Keeps professors in business.