Ridiculous or Ridiculously Awesome moments from Mahabharat: The Road to Kurukshetra

The lesson of Mahabharat is that we took our first steps on the road to Kurukshetra the moment the very first episode began. But now that the Pandavas have completed their years of exile and still cannot come to a peaceable arrangement with their cousin Duryodhan, war between them is inevitable.

1. Duryodhan and Arjun both ask for Krishna's help, and both receive it [Episode 63]

Krishna is the incarnation of Vishnu, who is right at the top of their pantheon of gods. As a prince of the Yadavas he also has a "divine army" of a million soldiers under his command. Duryodhan and Arjun, as representatives of their opposing factions, arrive to ask Krishna to side with them. They arrive on the same day, and find Krishna having sleeps. When he wakes up, he says he will have to help both of them, and proposes that one can take his million soldiers, and the other will get

"I, alone. Unarmed. And I won't take up arms in the battlefield."

He gives Arjun the choice, because Arjun is the younger of the two.

Arjun rejects the army and chooses Krishna, which pleases Duryodhan because it means he gets the million mannys. He can't believe his luck that Arjun didn't choose it and leaves, smiling smugly. Both sides think they have gotten the best out of the arrangement, at least until Duryodhan tells evil uncle Shakuni the outcome - he is quick to tell Duryodhan how bad this is for them.

Arjun knows that, even unarmed, Krishna can still take part in a battle as a charioteer, and he wants him to be his charioteer.

2. Duryodhan tries to arrest god [Episode 65]

Evil Duryodhan's next foolish action occurs when Krishna comes to the court of Hastinapur as a peace envoy, in one last, desperate attempt to avoid war between the Pandavas and the Kauravas. Krishna speaks to the assembled princes and elders, and in making the case for peace over war he makes the sort of speech that Captain Kirk would be proud of.

Duryodhan not only rejects Krishna's proposal, he also insults Krishna and then calls for his guards to arrest him.

Even surrounded by soldiers, Krishna doesn't stop smiling. He manifests his divine weapon (as previously used to cut off the head of Shishupal) which is enough to frighten the guards, and then becomes giant and glows with divine light. Duryodhan has again forgotten that Krishna is the avatar of the god Vishnu, and cannot be arrested as easily as all that. We don't even need to see what happens next, the story cuts straight to the next bit...

3. Karna gives away his divine protection [Episode 65]

Karna is another character who has sworn an oath that would later come back to harm him. His oath is that if, after he finishes his daily religious worship of the sun god (who is actually his divine father), anyone asks him for a favour, he will always grant it. The god Indra knows that the sun god gave his son divine protection that makes him proof against any weapons, even divine weapons such those possessed by Indra's own son, Arjun. So Indra disguises himself as a mortal manny and visits Karna at the right time of day to ask him for a favour and have Karna be oathbound to grant it.

When asked to give up his divine shield, which takes the form of a golden shield vest and earrings that are supposed to actually be part of his body, Karna recognises Indra. He was forewarned by the sun god that this would happen. Even so, he still grants the god's request, saying

"I am proud to be the only man from whom Lord Indra himself is asking for something."

and then takes a knife and cuts away his vest and earrings.

Indra is so impressed with Karna's actions that he offers him a boon. Karna asks for the "Shakti" weapon to use against his enemy, and Indra is now compelled to grant this - so he has saved Arjun from one power of Karna, only to then arm him with another.

4. "Karna, I am your mother" [Episode 67]

Kunti reveals to Karna that she is his birth mother, and that he is therefore half-brother to the five Pandavas. Since the Pandavas are his sworn enemies, this revelation goes down about as well as you'd expect.

At first Karna suspects a trick designed to make it impossible for him to fight and even kill those he thinks to be his own family members, but Kunti's tears convince him that it is true. Since he has already sworn to kill Arjun or else die in the attempt, he cannot now promise Kunti that he will not do this, but he does promise her that he will not kill any of the other Pandavas so that, whatever the outcome of his duel to the death with Arjun, Kunti will still have five living sons at the end of the war.

5. Sage Vyasa blesses the king's charioteer [Episode 68]

Sage Vyasa visits the blind King Dhritarashtra on the eve of the war to offer him a unique blessing - "divine sight" with which he would be able to see all that occurs in the forthcoming battle from the safety and comfort of his palace. Given that Dhritarashtra knows that many of his relatives, inclusing his own sons, are likely to die in this war, he considers that this would be more of a curse than a blesssing. And given that Vyasa holds Dhritarashtra responsible for failing to stop the war, perhaps he even intended it as such.

With Dhritarashtra declining the offer, Vyasa instead gives the divine sight to Dhritarashtra's loyal charioteer, Sanjay, so that Sanjay might narrate what unfolds to Dhritarashtra.

Since Vyasa is not just a character in Mahabharat but is also the great author of the Mahabharata, this is an extremely meta power for him to be able to bestow: Vyasa enabling Sanjay to tell a tale within the tale told by Vyasa.

6. The armies assemble on the battlefield [Episodes 69-75]

Episode 69 begins with the two opposing armies travelling to the battlefield, to the tune of a ten minute musical number which lists all of the named characters who will be fighting on both sides - that there are so many characters might explain why the song needs to be so long!

You could be forgiven for expecting that this means that the great battle is about to begin, but it will be another six episodes before any fighting actually starts. There's still a lot of character development to come, plus the backstory of Prince Shikhandin (the reincarnation of Princess Amba, calling back all the way to episode 5) and the framing of the rules of war by Bhishma. Not to mention the single most significant event in the whole story...

7. Arjun and Krishna, at Kurukshetra [Episodes 72-74]

With the armies facing each other and battle about to commence, Arjun suddenly despairs at the prospect of having to fight and kill his elders, his teachers, and members of his own family. He refuses to fight until Krishna makes a long speech to convince him of his duty, and then the two of them debate philosophy until Arjun is persuaded to take up his bow again.

Occupying almost three full episodes, this dialogue is known as the Bhagavad Gita and is considered sacred by Hindus. It would not be right for me to make fun of these deeply held beliefs of millions of mannys (even though I do not subscribe to them myself, being a cat made from socks) so I will confine myself to discussing the way this vital portion of the Mahabharata is presented in this TV series, which I think could subjectively be described as being either "ridiculous or ridiculously awesome" depending upon the tastes of the viewer.

Occupying such a long, continuous stretch of the story, the viewers' attention needs to mostly be held by what Krishna and Arjun are saying, but there are some attempts to make things more visually interesting by occasionally cutting away either to Time, the all-seeing Ceiling Cat-like narrator of the series, or to Dhritarashtra and Sanjay who, thanks to the divine sight bestowed upon Sanjay, are the only other characters able to witness and comment upon what Krishna is saying to Arjun. This is used to strongly contrast Dhritarashtra against Krishna since the king hopes that Arjun will not fight, because then the victory of his son's army would be assured.

The importance of this section to the overall story can be seen from its prominent inclusion in the title sequence of every episode. The credits are shown over a series of paintings depicting events from the story, and the majority of these are of Arjun and Krishna, with emphasis on the moment when Krishna reveals his cosmic manifestation to Arjun.

When the time comes to show this event in the series, they pull out all the stops to do it justice, and attempt something much more ambitious than when Krishna last revealed his divine power back in episode 65 by becoming giant and glowing.

Judge for yourself whether their reach exceeded their grasp with this bit of SFX, but either way it certainly makes for an unforgettable moment:

Robin of Sherwood, season two

The Prophecy

The series returns for its second season with an episode so full of incident that I wonder if this was originally intended as a two-parter that got cut down to fit into a single part's duration. We've got Prince John turning up, played by Phil Davis as a dangerously unstable megalomaniac, and John "Bergerac" Nettles as his chief henchmanny Peter de Leon. Nettles doesn't have much to do, but we do get from him the sense that he's a lot more afraid of the prince than of Robin Hood.

Then we've got the return of Marion's supposedly ded dad, played by George "Tiberius" Baker, who the Merry Mannys have to rescue from Prince John. And on top of that we've got Sir Guy's plan to put a ringer among the Merry Mannys to betray them from the inside - another one of those dreadfully clichéd plots so beloved of this kind of series, so we should be grateful that it's only a subplot here since it could have been very, very wearisome if they had tried to make the main plank of the story out of it.

I'm guessing they must have known they weren't going to be getting John Rhys-Davies back as, even though he was only in the previous episode, King Richard is killed off off screen and Prince John becomes King John during the course of the episode. This was a good decision to have the news of Richard's death arrive while John was in Nottingham, since then we can see him being proclaimed king (by Sir Guy) rather than simply hearing about the event happening elsewhere, which would have been much less dramatic.

The Sheriff of Nottingham is missing in this episode, which allows room for more screentime for Sir Guy and Abbot Hugo taking his place in the narrative. It also keeps Nickolas Grace and Phil Davis apart, thus preventing a massive ham-off from taking place. I know King John will be back in the third season, so there's still time.

The Children of Israel

The Sheriff owes Jewish moneylender Joshua de Talmont (played by David de Keyser, who played the Israeli Ambassador in Yes Prime Minister around the same time as this was made... not that he was typecast or anything) a lot of moneys, and in the time-honoured tradition of the middle ages, decides that instead of paying it back he will whip up an antisemitic riot in order to kill Joshua and his entire family.

They are saved from this not by Robin and the Merry Mannys (who spend the first half of the episode in a completely separate subplot that sees Will Scarlet leaving the band because he can't be in charge - hmm, remind you of anyone?) but by Gisburne. This is because Sir Guy has designs on Joshua's eldest daughter Sarah, and once the family are fleeing Nottingham he kidnaps her and even gets a bit rapey... though in a family-drama-friendly way, claiming he's going to marry her against her will and otherwise threatening her in ways that the adult audience would understand but which would be over the heads of the kittens watching.

The Merry Mannys finally get involved with the main plot when they come to Sarah's rescue. But having saved Joshua's family from Sir Guy, most of them are then captured along with the family by the Sheriff, who was hunting for the rebellious Gisburne.

The episode is most memorable for the climactic scene that follows, which sees our heroes saved when the Sheriff cannot resist his curiosity over the precious treasure that the family took with them when they fled. It is a book, which drives the Sheriff mad (termporarily, up until Robin slaps him out of it) when he looks upon its pages. This is notable for two reasons - first there is the clear influence of the climax to Raiders of the Lost Ark, released only three or four years before this was made, where the Nazis are defeated when they open a "Jewish" artifact. And second there is the magnificent overacting of Nickolas Grace as he finally goes completely over the top to depict the Sheriff's insanity.

Lord of the Trees

This is a bit of a weird one, continuity-wise, since the Sheriff is away and has left Sir Guy in charge, which was the same situation as in The Prophecy before he then returned in The Children of Israel, so either this was supposed to come between those two episodes and they got shown in the wrong order for some reason, or else the Sheriff went away, then returned, then went mad for a bit, and then promptly buggered off again.

Another story heavy on the mysticism, Sir Guy recruits some mercenaries to help him kill Robin Hood during a period called "the Blessing," a pagan ceremony that lasts several days and during which the followers of Herne are not supposed to shed any blood. But even Abbot Hugo (who you'd think ought to have more faith in the power of Christianity) warns Sir Guy not to mess with Herne.

Sir Guy attacks a tree that is sacred to Herne, and is promptly cursed with temporary insanity. This would have been more impressive had we not seen the Sheriff similarly afflicted in the episode right before this (I'd suggest this as more evidence that this one should have come before it, but then having seen this first might have detracted from the spectacle of the Sheriff's madness). Trying again, he and his mannys interrupt the climax of the pagan ceremony and try to assassinate Herne, but only manage to wound him. This has the result that Sir Guy goes mad for the second time in the same episode.

Appearing for the first time in the series is Jeremy "Boba Fett" Bulloch as Edward of Wickham, here acting as some kind of priest of Herne but who would go on to become a semi-regular as the head villager of Wickham.

It's not a great episode, and may even be the weakest one since The Witch of Elsdon. There's not really enough plot to fill the run time so it is heavily padded, mostly with either repetitive scenes of the Merry Mannys enjoying themselves in their pagan way, harmlessly having fun with the locals, or else with repetitive scenes of the mercenaries enjoying themselves in their pagan way, harmfully brutalising the peasants. Oh look, in that sentence I have managed to show the thematic contrast between the goodies and the baddies far more succinctly and successfully than the episode achieves.

The Enchantment

This is an incredible episode. While slight in terms of plot, it more than makes up for that in having phenomenal atmosphere.

A direct sequel to the two-part series opener Robin Hood and the Sorcerer, this sees a witch and former acolyte of the satanistic sorcerer Baron de Belleme put an enchantment (hence the title) on Robin so that he will steal the magic silver arrow from Herne to use in a ritual that brings the evil Baron back from the dead.

At the same time there's a secondary plot in which Sir Guy is competing with the Sheriff's new henchmanny-of-the-week to be the one to find and retrieve the Baron's hidden cache of jewels. Sir Guy is therefore present in Castle Belleme when the Baron is resurrected. This leads on to the Sheriff's mannys and the Merry Mannys arriving at the castle at the same time, where they have a great big fight. We are treated to no fewer than two of Terry Walsh's trademark falling-of-a-wall stunts during this impressive sequence.

Having been slowly ramping up the supernatural for the past couple of episodes, this one goes all-out. The witch, named Lilith (played by Gemma Craven), uses voodoo dolls to hypno-eyes Robin, and when we see the world through his enchanted eyes she looks done up like Helen Mirren's Morgana in Excalibur. The Superb Anthony Valentine comes back to play the Baron, and then uses his magic to terrify the Sheriff and his mannys into fleeing (Nickolas Grace getting another chance to overact tremendously upon seeing that the Baron really is alive again, and this wasn't just Sir Guy bullshitting him to excuse his failure), and to separate Robin from the rest of the Merry Mannys.

He's about to kill Robin with the silver arrow when we finally get some magic done by the good guys - a cornus ex machina as Herne appears and saves Robin at the last second. They were obviously leaving things open for a later rematch with the Baron, since he's still alive at the end credits (though this was the last time we saw The Superb Anthony Valentine in the series). That puts the score at a 1-1 draw between Paganism and Satanism, with Christianity barely getting a look in.

This is the series really hitting its stride.

The Swords of Wayland (Part 1)

This opens with a superbly atmospheric pre-titles sequence in which we first see the supposedly demonic horsemannys "the Hounds of Lucifer." Silhouetted against a red-filtered sky they look like nothing less than live-action Black Riders.

While we know there is plenty of supernatural stuff in the world of Robin of Sherwood, the fact that these riders are just mannys in scary costumes, wholly mundane in explanation, is a sort of reverse twist. But it doesn't explain why Robin and the Merry Mannys are so quick to be skeptical of the villagers' beliefs when only in the previous story did they witness a dead Satanist come back to life, never mind all the stuff they saw in even earlier episodes.

The audience are put ahead of our heroes when we get to see that the local Ravenscar Abbey is the base for the coven, with the abbess herself (Rula "Lintilla" Lenska) as its head. This is a bit of doubly subversive writing from Richard Carpenter - not only do the devil-worshippers have real power, but they have taken over what should be a centre for Christianity.

A local miller called Adam, played by Norman Bowler (best known to us cats and doggys for being one of the core cast in Softly Softly and Softly Softly: Task Force) is their agent who leads the riders against the Merry Mannys, who proceed to turn the tables on them. There's then a well staged, tense fight between Robin and Adam in the mill. The well-worn trope where fanatics are less afraid of death than of betraying their master is given a bit of life by Bowler's convincing display of terror. He and the other cultist that get captured both choose to kill themselves - this is strong stuff for an adventure series that was broadcast at tea-time.

The Swords of Wayland (Part 2)

While part 1 had some issues with padding and its pacing, part 2 is a tour de force with set piece after set piece all the way through. It is clear that there's no way this could have been a single-parter, not without being considerably rushed and therefore significantly worsened.

It starts with Marion on her own going to rescue Robin from the Earl of Godwin, with the strong suggestion that they're allowed to escape when the earl realises Robin was telling the truth about the abbess being a baddy. Meanwhile the rest of the Merry Mannys are off getting hypno-eyesed by the abbess, in a reversal of the situation from The Enchantment when it was Robin's turn to be the hypno-eyesed victim.

The next section sees Robin and Marion versus the Merry Mannys, which ends in Robin and Marion again getting captured. That the episode has been something of a capture-escape-capture runaround up until now scarcely matters when the presentation of the runaround feels so original. Robin is then freed thanks to the help of a random madmanny they encounter, but who we viewers alone are later privileged with the information that he was sent by Herne, whom we (but not Robin) can glimpse in the background.

This leads on to the climax of the story at Ravenscar Abbey. With the hypno-eyes having worn off, the Merry Mannys are placed in a big cage along with Marion, and the abbess intends to sacrifice them in a big fiery pit as part of a ritual to summon Lucifer. This story was originally broadcast over Easter weekend in 1985, and so it's quite a lot of devil worship for ITV to show in an early evening Saturday slot at any time of year, never mind in the middle of the holiest Christian festival.

The ritual itself is the scene de resistance, with the slow manifesting of Lucifer being a shockingly effective bit of SFX. Being unable to show anything too violent or horiffic in its pre-watershed slot, the show goes out of its way to suggest as much as possible without the need to depict anything graphic, and of course it ends up so much more powerful than if we had seen it all.

Naturally Robin saves the day at the last minute, and then there's the traditional big fight between our heroes and the cultists. But the true ending is the slow-motion coda in which the Hounds of Lucifer turn upon the abbess as she tries to run away. I suppose their organisation does not tolerate failure.

The Greatest Enemy

Robin of Sherwood owes a lot to Blakes 7, just as Blakes 7 owes a lot to the old stories of Robin Hood, but the resemblance was never so close as in this episode. Blakes 7 showed that you could lose the lead halfway through the series provied the rest of your cast was strong enough, and now it is time for Robin of Sherwood to do the same. Blakes 7 proved that you could end your series by killing your hero and title character in full view of your audience, and still leave them hungry for more.

There's even a fight between Nasir and a couple of Assassins in a wood that looks a lot like the one in which we first see Blake in Blake.

The Swords of Wayland was so good that I scarcely even noticed the absence of the Sheriff of Nottingham or Sir Guy of Gisburne, but they're both back with a vengeance this time. This is a season finale worth the name. That small subplot with Nasir and the Assassins aside, the majority of this episode consists of an extended action/chase/fight scene in which the Sheriff, having been given the ultimatum by King John to either kill Robin Hood or else lose his title, goes after the Merry Mannys in force, pursuing them through Sherwood and driving them from the places where they thought themselves safe.

Little John, Will Scarlet, Tuck and Nasir are captured one by one. Robin then sacrifices himself to allow Marion and Much to escape, with the scene of him holding off the Sheriff's small army single-pawedly being one of the series' greatest moments. Eventually Robin runs out of arrows, so he is surrounded and killed - though the camera cuts away so that we don't see him fall.

Killing off Robin parallels the earlier BBC series The Legend of Robin Hood, and in a similar way the legend lives on after him. A hooded manny rescues the captured Merry Mannys, and the Sheriff's mannys who see him are so terrified he is Robin that they don't even fight back against him. We viewers get to see a short scene of Herne summoning this mysterious figure, but even we are not privileged to see who he is, or even if he is a manny or a spirit, such as the spirit of Robin returned. Herne's mystic incantations, along with some judicious use of atmospheric music and slow-motion, give us the impression that it could be either.

Or it could just be Robin on his second life, mew.