Da Vinci's Demons Season 2 Finale: Nobody's Business But the Turks

Well, Da Vinci's Demons had a great surprise in store for the very last moment of its second season finale:  Da Vinci at least sees his long sought-after mother - on the lead Turkish ship that Da Vinici has set his cannon to fire upon, in his attempt to save Italy from the Turkish invasion.

It's a nice irony indeed, in a season full of ironies and strange reversals, fortunately for the most part of the political not the supernatural kind.  Last week we discovered that Cosmo's grandson was a bad guy. Earlier we learned that Lucrezia's truest allegiance was not to the Pope, but the Pope's imprisoned brother, who is her father.   But Da Vinci's beloved mother on the Turkish ship takes the cake, especially since Da Vinci's traveled halfway around the world in the opposite direction in his fruitless attempt to find her - in addition to his fruitless attempt to find that strategy-withering Book of Leaves.

Lucrezia and Da Vinci still love one another, and that was good to see.   Somewhere in the future of this series they'll be together, unless one of them gets killed, and that would have to be Lucrezia, if this series remains true to what we know historically of the real Da Vinci's life.

So the stage is set for a third season, with the fuse literally a split second from igniting the cannon, which will destroy Da Vinci's mother.   I don't see how Da Vinci can stop the ignition at this point, but he may have something up his nimble scientifically calculating sleave.

And there are good characters poised to come on strong.   Vanessa's now set to be in charge, as the mother of the only Medici now in the city of Florence.   And did I hear something about Nico being Machiavelli, long before he wrote The Prince?

The second season of Da Vinci's Demons was considerably better than the first, and I'm looking forward to the third.

See also Da Vinci's Demon's 2.1: Science Fiction v Fantasy ... Da Vinci's Demons 2.2: Renaissance Radio ... Da Vinci's Demons 2.3: Submarine ... Da Vinci's Demon's 2.4: Copernican Revelation ... Da Vinci's Demons 2.5: Corn ... Da Vinci's Demons 2.6: Meets Charles Dickens ... Da Vinci's Demons 2.7: Four Stories ... Da Vinci's Demons 2.8: The Talking Head ... Da Vinci's Demons 2.9: The Sword Fight

And see also Da Vinci's Demons:  History, Science, and Science Fiction ... Da Vinci's Demons 1.7: Leonardo Under Water with a Twist ... Da Vinci's Demons Season 1 Finale: History, Science Fiction, Time Travel 



700 years before and 700 years after Da Vinci:  The Silk Code

#SFWApro

Da Vinci's Demons 2.9: The Sword Fight

The best thing about Da Vinci's Demons 2.9 was the sword fight between Da Vinci and the brute, and it was good indeed.

The series is at its best, I always think, when it gives Da Vinci a chance to bring his brilliantly diverse mind to bear in life-and-death situations.   He's used his knowledge to good effect this season, saving himself and his colleagues repeatedly.   But 2.9 was the first time we see Da Vinci making complex calculation on the fly, as it were, as he computes in his brain what the one-eyed brute will see as he seeks to impale Da Vinci.  It was a finely staged scene, a ballet with real lives at stake, and was a pleasire to see.

As for the rest of the episode, I'm so far not a fan of these "enemies of man".   First of all, it's a little trite, and seems to be part of what's going in Penny Dreadful over on Showtime.  And I'm also not too happy about its membership.

Carlo de Medici was a great character as a good guy, bedding Lorenzo's wife and saving the day in the attacks on Florence.   Now I'll have to root against him.   And though Girolamo was a bad guy for most the series, it's a shame to see him now likely to become even more of a bad guy, especially after he and Leonardo had such an important alliance.

Still, as the season draws to a close - the finale is this Saturday - I have to say that I've found this season much more to my historically science fictional liking than last year's, which had much more ineffable spiritualism and magic.   Looking to Saturday's show.

See also Da Vinci's Demon's 2.1: Science Fiction v Fantasy ... Da Vinci's Demons 2.2: Renaissance Radio ... Da Vinci's Demons 2.3: Submarine ... Da Vinci's Demon's 2.4: Copernican Revelation ... Da Vinci's Demons 2.5: Corn ... Da Vinci's Demons 2.6: Meets Charles Dickens ... Da Vinci's Demons 2.7: Four Stories ... Da Vinci's Demons 2.8: The Talking Head

And see also Da Vinci's Demons:  History, Science, and Science Fiction ... Da Vinci's Demons 1.7: Leonardo Under Water with a Twist ... Da Vinci's Demons Season 1 Finale: History, Science Fiction, Time Travel 



700 years before and 700 years after Da Vinci:  The Silk Code

Da Vinci's Demons 2.8: The Talking Head

Another excellent Da Vinci's Demons last night - 2.8 - with not one but two scientific wonders.

One was a parachute, sketched but not actually constructed by the real Da Vinci.   But when it was eventually made and tested hundreds of years later - in the year 2000, by Adrian Nichols - it worked! And, as this Da Vinci page notes, "Despite skepticism from experts, da Vinci’s design worked as intended and Nichols even noted that it had a smoother ride than the modern parachute."  The man was a transcendent genius no doubt, in our reality as well in this fine television series, where Da Vinci's parachutes enable him and his party to escape their Inca-like captors via a jump off a sheer, very high cliff, aka the vault of heaven.

The second marvelous invention which plays a pivotal role in this episode was a talking head, of Da Vinci's mother.  Da Vinci neither in reality or in Da Vinci's Demons sketched or invented this device, but, as I point out in my Soft Edge: A Natural History and Future of the Information Revolution (1997), the phonograph in our reality was a mechanical invention (Edison was its inventor, in 1877), meaning it did not need electricity.  Therefore, it indeed could have been invented at any time in history, and there is even some speculation that potters in the ancient world may have captured sound waves as imprints on their pottery, analogous to the grooves on vinyl records.  (My novel, The Silk Code, explores this possibility.)

Significantly not discovered in this episode was the Book of Leaves, but Da Vinci is of course not discouraged but inspired to search further for it.   Da Vinci and company are thus left on the shore, waiting for Amerigo Vespucci to arrive, which he does.   This  could have been a good final episode of this season, but there are important matters coming to the boil back in Europe.

The evil Pope treats the Turkish envoy poorly (and did I hear the Pope call one of his cardinals "Rodrigo," as in Rodrigo Borgia?), Lorenzo has increased his strength, and Lucrezia is still in Istanbul. Lots of clashes to be resolved in the next two episodes - and with Da Vinci and Giralamo now allied, their return to Europe and their impact on these clashes should be fun to see indeed.

See also Da Vinci's Demon's 2.1: Science Fiction v Fantasy ... Da Vinci's Demons 2.2: Renaissance Radio ... Da Vinci's Demons 2.3: Submarine ... Da Vinci's Demon's 2.4: Copernican Revelation ... Da Vinci's Demons 2.5: Corn ... Da Vinci's Demons 2.6: Meets Charles Dickens ... Da Vinci's Demons 2.7: Four Stories

And see also Da Vinci's Demons:  History, Science, and Science Fiction ... Da Vinci's Demons 1.7: Leonardo Under Water with a Twist ... Da Vinci's Demons Season 1 Finale: History, Science Fiction, Time Travel 



a phonograph in ancient India in The Silk Code

Da Vinci's Demons 2.7: Four Stories

Da Vinci's Demons 2.7 chugged along with at least four separate stories: Da Vinci in South America, the Pope and his imprisoned brother in Rome, Medici's wife and Carlo in Florence, and Lucrezia in Constantinople/Istanbul.

I suppose the best story was Da Vinci in South America.  He did build a cool little automated device, and the narrative continued its Indiana Jones flavor.   But these chambers within chambers, leading to a sheer side of a cliff, are beginning to wear thin, as is the priestess's attitude and her threatening of Da Vinci and colleagues.

Back in Europe, the Pope story is moving at a glacially slow speed.   How much longer until there is an ultimate confrontation between the former Pope, imprisoned by the present Pope, and the present Pope?

Lucrezia's story certainly has potential - it's fun seeing someone propose to the Ottomans that they and Rome split the European world.  But, again, the denouement of this thread was disappointing: Lucrezia held captive.   On the bright side, it was good to see the priestess in America recognizing Da Vinci's true love for Lucrezia.   She apparently was able to intuit what was in his mind, and we saw on the screen last week, when Da Vinci was making love to her.

And it was good to see Lorenzo's wife well served by Carlo Medici - both in bed and in slaying their enemies.   Carlo's one of the best characters to be introduced this season.

All in all, then, a not bad seventh episode of the second season, but all the stories need to move along a little faster.

See also Da Vinci's Demon's 2.1: Science Fiction v Fantasy ... Da Vinci's Demons 2.2: Renaissance Radio ... Da Vinci's Demons 2.3: Submarine ... Da Vinci's Demon's 2.4: Copernican Revelation ... Da Vinci's Demons 2.5: Corn ... Da Vinci's Demons 2.6: Meets Charles Dickens

And see also Da Vinci's Demons:  History, Science, and Science Fiction ... Da Vinci's Demons 1.7: Leonardo Under Water with a Twist ... Da Vinci's Demons Season 1 Finale: History, Science Fiction, Time Travel 

 
an ancient voyage to the New World in The Plot to Save Socrates

#SFWApro

Da Vinci's Demons 2.6: Meets Charles Dickens

Well, Da Vinci's Demons finally veered off into the mystical last night, in episode 2.6, which I was hoping all season it wouldn't do.  For me, life after death, the living walking in the realm of the dead, just isn't as interesting as the straight-up scientific history and science fiction which has animated most of Da Vinci's Demons this excellent season.

Still, the episode had its moments.  Over in South America, it was fun to see our young Da Vinci converse with his older self, on his deathbed, even if the scene was reminiscent of Dickens' Christmas Carol and lots of time travel stories over the years.   And the battles that Girolamo fought on Da Vinci's behalf were fun enough to see, even if the outcome was foreordained, i.e., there's too much story left for Girolamo to let him to die, let alone Da Vinci.

Better was Lorenzo in Naples, triumphing over his cruel and deadly captors, thanks to prompts his own imagination in the form of his late brother gave him.  Though Da Vinci wasn't there, you could see his hand in the crucially careful sub rosa figuring Lorenzo did to land in arrow in the horse (which was masterful, even though I did feel a little bad for the horse).

And it was good to see Lucrezia, both in Da Vinci's vision as he was obliged to make love to the high priestess in America, in one of the hottest scenes this season, as well at the doorstep of Constantinople, which was already Istanbul, i.e., the Byzantine Empire had already fallen to the Turks.  In effect, the narrative of Leo has now branched out in two directions, to the New World to the West, and the new Ottoman Empire to the East.

Looking forward to seeing where this gets us, next week.

See also Da Vinci's Demon's 2.1: Science Fiction v Fantasy ... Da Vinci's Demons 2.2: Renaissance Radio ... Da Vinci's Demons 2.3: Submarine ... Da Vinci's Demon's 2.4: Copernican Revelation ... Da Vinci's Demons 2.5: Corn

And see also Da Vinci's Demons:  History, Science, and Science Fiction ... Da Vinci's Demons 1.7: Leonardo Under Water with a Twist ... Da Vinci's Demons Season 1 Finale: History, Science Fiction, Time Travel 

 
an ancient voyage to the New World in The Plot to Save Socrates

#SFWApro

Da Vinci's Demons 2.5: Corn

Well, Da Vinci's Demons 2.5 last night moved from the celestial mathematics of last week's episode to about as mundane as you can get for science as the solution to Da Vinci's life-and-death problems.  On the verge of being killed by his Maya-like captors in the New World, his life dependent upon his choice of the right instrument, Da Vinci's satisfies his captors with his selection of tools to sow corn.   Unknown in Europe at this time, corn would have been the last thing that any European in the New World would have thought of at this time - anyone, that is, other than Da Vinci, who took note of the corn fields as he was escorted to the ceremonial event.

It's not quite clear just where this happened, however.  The map we keep seeing at the beginning of the show is of South America, and Mayans didn't extend quite that far south, as far as we know.   But that sort of blurring of history and geography is ok in a narrative like this.

And, indeed, the story takes another nice jump away from the mystical into the plausible, much more satisfying as far as I am concerned.  The high priestess knows Da Vinci's name and face.  And she can speak his language.   How can this be?  The answer is that Da Vinci's mother sailed across the Atlantic and educated the priestess.  Nice touch.

In real history, there likely were numerous voyages across the Atlantic prior to Columbus.  Certainly the Vikings did it - their presence in North America around 1000 AD has been confirmed by carbon dating of artifacts.   (I'm hoping Vikings on the History Channel someday get around to this.)   And the Phoenicians had the sailing know-how to get across the Atlantic, too.   So it would not be shocking to learn that a few ships from Italy made the voyage before Columbus, and one included Da Vinci's mother.

Another nice touch was including Amerigo Vespucci on the Da Vinci ship.   In reality, he arrived in the New World just a few years after Columbus, had something to do with a Medici, and as we know had the whole New World named after him - the Americas.

Da Vinci's Demons continues to shape up as good alternate or secret history.

See also Da Vinci's Demon's 2.1: Science Fiction v Fantasy ... Da Vinci's Demons 2.2: Renaissance Radio ... Da Vinci's Demons 2.3: Submarine ... Da Vinci's Demon's 2.4: Copernican Revelation

And see also Da Vinci's Demons:  History, Science, and Science Fiction ... Da Vinci's Demons 1.7: Leonardo Under Water with a Twist ... Da Vinci's Demons Season 1 Finale: History, Science Fiction, Time Travel 

 
an ancient voyage to the New World in The Plot to Save Socrates

#SFWApro

Da Vinci's Demons 2.4: Copernican Revelation

Another outstanding episode of Da Vinci's Demons - 2.4 - last night, in which the resolution of a life-and-death conflict at sea hinges on Da Vinci's sudden insight that the planets revolve around the sun not the Earth, some fifty years before Copernicus published his On the Revolutions of the Celestial Spheres.

Of course, the ancient Greek astronomer Aristarchus of Samos (310-230 BCE) came up with a heliocentric theory of the solar system long before Copernicus or this fictional Da Vinci, and it would have been nice to see Da Vinci, who has been portrayed as very well versed in the classics, at least mention Aristarchus in this episode.   But the narrative was nonetheless well played.

Da Vinci already correctly sees that the Earth is round, not flat, as did many of the most knowledgeable thinkers of his day, including Columbus.   He tries to explain this to the uneducated people on the ship he commandeered for the voyage west, and pins his argument on what he thinks the planet Venus will look like in the sky.   But Venus does not look the way Da Vinci expects - because his expectation is based on Ptolemy's model of the planets revolving around the Earth, not Aristarchus's that the planets revolve around the sun - and this gets Da Vinci into hot water out on the sea.   His realization that the planets revolve not around the Earth but the Sun is too late to save most of his frightened shipmates, who kill themselves rather than risk falling off the edge of the Earth, but at least Da Vinci will have more accurate cosmic bearings from now on.

So we once again get a good lesson in the history of science tied into Da Vinci's adventure. Meanwhile, back in Italy, we have two good continuing stories.   In one, Lorenzo makes his way on the road to redeem his city of Florence.  In the other, we learn the truth about the evil Pope and his imprisoned brother, in an instructive series of flashbacks.

So far, I'm enjoying this second season of Da Vinci's Demons much more than the first, because of the second's grounding in science, and I'm now looking forward to Da Vinci's arrival in the New World.

See also Da Vinci's Demon's 2.1: Science Fiction v Fantasy ... Da Vinci's Demons 2.2: Renaissance Radio ... Da Vinci's Demons 2.3: Submarine

And see also Da Vinci's Demons:  History, Science, and Science Fiction ... Da Vinci's Demons 1.7: Leonardo Under Water with a Twist ... Da Vinci's Demons Season 1 Finale: History, Science Fiction, Time Travel 

 
what some other ancient Greeks were thinking in the time of Aristarchus

#SFWApro

Da Vinci's Demons 2.3: Submarine

The scientific wonder in Da Vinci's Demons 2.3 is a submarine, based, as were many of the real Da Vinci's sketched inventions, on his anecdotal study of the natural world, in this case, fish and other creatures of the sea.   Nature is indeed a wonderful and wondrous template for our technological endeavors, a theme which I explore in my doctoral dissertation "Human Replay: A Theory of the Evolution of Media" and many of my books, including The Soft Edge: A Natural History and Future of the Information Revolution.

In Da Vinci's Demons 2.3, Leo uses the submarine to commandeer a sailing vessel suitable for his forthcoming voyage to the New World, where much of the action will presumably shift.  But there were some exciting developments back in Italy, most especially the revelation that the seductive spy Lucrezia is actually a Pope's daughter.

Indeed, her father has been locked in the catacombs of the Vatican by the current Pope, one of the arch bad guys in this story.  I was happy to see this revelation, because it puts Lucrezia's treachery in a much better light.  Yes, she betrayed Lorenzo, and in doing that betrayed Leonardo, but she did that on behalf not of the current evil Pope but her imprisoned father.   This shows that Leonardo's love of her was not thoroughly misplaced.

But what will happen to that and all else brewing in the Italian city states when Da Vinci makes the voyage to the New World?  Since, in our real history, Leonardo never sailed to the New World (as far as we know), the narrative of this series has a wide open canvas in the New World.

So far this season, David Goyer has been doing a great job of setting this work of art in motion.

See also Da Vinci's Demon's 2.1: Science Fiction v Fantasy ... Da Vinci's Demons 2.2: Renaissance Rado

And see also Da Vinci's Demons:  History, Science, and Science Fiction ... Da Vinci's Demons 1.7: Leonardo Under Water with a Twist ... Da Vinci's Demons Season 1 Finale: History, Science Fiction, Time Travel ... Da Vinci's Demons 2.2: Renaissance Rado

 
Interested in a story with a passing reference to Leonardo?   Try The Plot to Save Socrates ...

Da Vinci's Demons 2.2: Renaissance Radio

Radio had enormous influence on the world politics of the 1930s and 1940s, when it first became a device in many households in America and Europe.   As I detail in The Soft Edge, a radio broadcast from Adolf Hitler after a bomb put him the hospital in 1944 confirmed his leadership and kept him in power for almost another year.   Radio was also used by FDR, Churchill, and Stalin to rally their publics against Hitler, and, in FDR's case, to establish a direct relationship with the American people during the Great Depression.

Radio, of course, did not exist in the time of Leonardo Da Vinci, not even in his sketches, many of which were prescient about the future.  But radio played a major role in last night's Da Vinci's Demons 2.2, and worked perfectly as an instance of the historical science fiction in which the series really excels.   Much like Hitler, Lorenzo Medici is badly wounded (Lorenzo actually worse than Hitler). Much like Hitler, Lorenzo's tenure as leader is in dire jeopardy, because the populace is not even sure he's alive.  In Hitler's case, his Minister of Propaganda and Popular Enlightenment, Joseph Goebbels, went to his hospital room with a microphone and a hook-up to Germany's radio system, via which Hitler was able to assure the German people that he was ok and still in charge.  In Lorenzo's case, the genius Leonardo creates a radio system on the fly, via his understanding of acoustics, and Lorenzo uses it to assure the people of Florence and ratify his power.

Just to be clear, Lorenzo in both history and in Da Vinci's Demons has nothing else in common with Adolf Hitler.  To the contrary, Lorenzo was a benevolent despot, a classical Renaissance prince who brought his city and people much prosperity.  He actually helped maintain a measure of peace among the contentious Italian city states, and his reign is considered the high point of the golden age of Florence.

If the series moves to New World as it's been promising to do, I'll miss Lorenzo and Florence.  On the other hand, in real history, the real Lorenzo died in April 1492, so there's not much more of his story for Da Vinci's Demons to tell, if it wants to remain true to history.   In any case, the first two episodes of the second season have been outstanding, and I'm looking forward to more.

See also Da Vinci's Demon's 2.1: Science Fiction v Fantasy

And see also Da Vinci's Demons:  History, Science, and Science Fiction ... Da Vinci's Demons 1.7: Leonardo Under Water with a Twist ... Da Vinci's Demons Season 1 Finale: History, Science Fiction, Time Travel

 
Interested in a story with a passing reference to Leonardo?   Try The Plot to Save Socrates ...

Black Sails 1.4: The Masts of Wall Street

If you think of most of the action dramas on cable television these days - whether taking place in the present, like Banshee and Strike Back, or in the past like Da Vinci's Demons and Vikings - the story moves along pretty quickly, sometimes at blinding speed (in the case of Strike Back), with every episode whipping the narrative forward around sharp and dangerous curves.   In contrast, Black Sails is dangerous, all right, but it's story almost seems to stand still at times.   And that's a change of pace for television that I very much like.

In episode 1.4, much of the action centers around a ship in the sand, and the pirates' attempt to make it more suitable to their needs.   The ship stands there, like a majestic skeleton to a nearly forgotten past, except in Black Sails it's very much happening.   The ship, of course, as would be any massive sailing ship, is an emblem and enabling technology to the life and pursuits of the pirates.   In a world before planes, the sailing ship was the only way to move across great distances.   But in Black Sails, this distance is as much political and economic as physical.

Richard Guthrie provides us with some important back story, including the way Flint and Miranda got together and its social context, but also his take and opposition to Flint's vision of a utopian pirate island untrodden by the monarchies of the day.  We already knew that Flint and Miranda are cultured people, and that money is the lubricant of this whole on-the-margin society, but in 1.4 we get a taste of the economic sophistication of many of the major players.   The pirate leaders and their colleagues, male and female, are in many ways more akin to The Wolf of Wall Street than any show now or ever on television, and that makes Black Sails worthy of note as well.  Or, looked at in other way, we could say that the pirates represent the 99% in the Occupy Wall Street of that day.   The ship in the sand stands at the fulcrum of those two forces.

Any way you look at it, Black Sails is as much a feast for the intellect as it is for the eyes, and a pleasure to see on television.

See also Black Sails: Literate and Raunchy Piracy ... Black Sails 1.3: John Milton and Marcus Aurelius

#SFWApro

Da Vinci's Demons Season 1 Finale: History, Science Fiction, and Time Travel

A classic cliffhanger ending to the season one finale of Da Vinci's Demons last night.   The Pope's soldiers and other enemies of the Medicis blast through a door, behind which is Lorenzo, badly wounded, in Leonardo's arms.   Now we know that Leonardo must have some other scientific trick up his sleeve, but he looks pretty desperate.  He'll have to survive, to keep our history straight, and the same is mostly true for Lorenzo, though this series can take more liberties with his life than Leonardo's.

Giulino de Medici's fate, alas, was sealed in history and in the finale.  He survives his encounter with Lucrezia's knife which left him floating and looking dead in the water last week, only to be assassinated by the knives of his multiple enemies in the same last scenes that featured Leonardo's last-minute rescue of Lorenzo from a similar fate, prior to the blast through the door.   So Guilino dies as history records, but he leaves behind an unborn son, which history also records will become Pope someday.

As I've indicated before, I think this series is at its best when it deals with the real scientific discoveries and inventions of Leonardo, and the dicey politics of this age in Italy.  I'm fine when the history is jugged a little, but I find the mythical, magical stuff a distraction, and I hope we'll see less of that next season.

Time travel, however, though likely not scientifically possible because of the paradoxes it engenders - see my Tricky Business of Time Travel - has been a welcome bulwark of science fiction since H. G. Wells.   In fact, it's my favorite kind of science fiction, as an author as well as a reader.   So I don't mind seeing it all in Da Vinci's Demons, even if it comes as part of the mystical rather than the scientific package.

Leonardo has at least once talked about meeting his older self, and the old guy whose face we finally saw in the Pope's prison last night - I don't know, I thought he called the Pope his brother, but I'm wondering if this somehow isn't an older version of Leonardo?  He sort of looks like him ...

We'll no doubt find out more about this in the second season, which I'm very much looking forward to.

See also Da Vinci's Demons:  History, Science, and Science Fiction ... Da Vinci's Demons 1.7: Leonardo Under Water with a Twist



#SFWApro

Da Vinci's Demons 1.7: Leonardo Under Water with a Twist

I've been enjoying Da Vinci's Demons on Starz, though the narrative has been a bit too fantastical for my more science fictional tastes.   All that was rectified tonight in 1.7, an episode that brought science front and foremost into the story, and had a great twist at the end for good measure.

The science was Da Vinci under water - in what we would today call a diving suit, of his own invention of course, pressed into service so Leonardo can get access to some of the secrets of the Vatican.  Since the Holy See if so well guarded, the only way Leonardo can get in is beneath via the water.

He sees some striking things there, including a page from the mystical Book of Leaves, whose written letters change before his eyes.   This, in other words - and here we move from Renaissance science to science fiction - is the what we would call an iPad or any computer screen today.   I like seeing the future in the past.

But there's also a palpable political twist that has nothing to do with science or science fiction, and packs a real wallop.  Lorenzo's brother Guilini has been a major player in the series, and one of my favorite characters.  He starts off the episode well enough, with a nice night spent with a comely wench, or whatever the translation of that is in Italian.   But at the end, we find him in battle with some Roman henchmen, bent on killing beautiful Lucrezia.   Guilini dispatches them handily - as we would expect him to - but when he realizes that Lucrezia is the trator, and he tries to apprehend her-

She stabs him, fatally, with her knife.  The only reason I'm not even more aggravated is Lucrezia is also one of my favorites, and in fact I like her even more than Guilini.

And it was an outstanding twist.  Good job.  I'm looking forward to the season finale next week, and what the second season will bear.

See also Da Vinci's Demons:  History, Science, and Science Fiction

Da Vinci's Demons: History, Science, and Science Fiction

I caught up on the first three episodes of Da Vinci's Demons on Starz last night - the latest offering from David Goyer (of Flashforward television fame) - and I found the series superb, a full-bodied, top-of-the-line player in the surge of outstanding historical dramas that are lighting up television these days.

In time and place, Da Vinci's Demons is closest to The Borgias - in fact, in the exact same places in Italy, and only two decades or so years earlier.  You'll find familiar family names - such as the De Medici's and the Sforza's - as young Da Vinci (25 years old) contends from Florence with the Pope and his nephew. The lovemaking and nudity is also in good supply - even a bit more with Da Vinci, as befits his Renaissance-man talents as a painter and anatomist - and the ambience is as lush and captivating.

But Da Vinci's Demons has far more than political and erotic intrigue.   Da Vinci was a scientist and inventor far ahead of his time - sketching helicopters and tanks that could well have been built right then and there had the needed collateral technology been at hand.  Like Heron of Alexandria 1400 years before him and Charles Babbage 400 years later, Da Vinci belonged to the very small group of visionaries who literally saw the future in their fundamental understanding of the world around them.  Indeed, Da Vinci is easily at the top of this class, and his scientific pursuits, which included not only anatomy but botany and geology, are amply portrayed in the series.   Da Vinci's Demons in its scientific story lines is akin to Vikings on the History Channel, and its excellent depiction of Norse advances in ship building - though the Viking science of ship building is one-dimensional in comparison to what Leonardo wrought.

Such extraordinary range and depth of real scientific knowledge logically spills over into science fiction and fantasy, or speculation about what deep wells of knowledge are feeding this world, and reside beyond.  The possibility that the ancients knew far more than we give them credit for has long been a theme in my own science fiction, and figures in such popular culture triumphs as The Da Vinci Code and Rimbaldi in Alias.   Da Vinci's Demons features an ancient (fictional) Book of Leaves, which contains knowledge of the universe that goes well beyond science.   As the young Leonardo begins to learn of this book and its secrets, he comes into conflict with the Vatican and its desire to contain it and keep it from the world.   As is the case with all good science fiction, there is a proximity to reality which gives it punch:  Leonardo comes across a map of a continent which no one recognizes but he somehow knows is true.  It's a map of South America, a few decades before Columbus, a time when other historically unrecorded voyagers could well have made the trip across the Atlantic, as the Vikings in fact had done some 500 years earlier.

Da Vinci's Demons thus has everything a devotee of historical fiction and science fiction could ask for.   In its fantasy elements, the series also has a kinship with Game of Thrones, but the situation of Da Vinci's Demons in our real world makes it more compelling in my book.