Star-Crossed episode 7 review: To Seek A Foe

Now that the kiss is finally out of the way, Caroline hopes Star-Crossed can concentrate on other things...

This review contains spoilers.

1.7 To Seek A Foe

Since it began, it’s felt as if Star-Crossed has been constantly battling with its own worst instincts, executing its interesting ideas with admirable levels of daring and thoughtfulness but always going back to the tired old love triangle crutch irrespective of what else is going on in a given scene or episode. This is probably the only huge problem with the show, but it’s a pretty significant one and, it was in this episode, To Seek a Foe, where the reliance on the teenage love story got really silly and distracting.

For the section of the audience who are tuning in purely for the Romeo And Juliet story, the episode will be remembered as the one where Emery and Roman finally gave into their feelings but, for everyone else, it’ll be remembered as the one that introduced Black Cyper as a significant threat to the human race, Castor’s ominous cupboard full of explosives and a plausible grudge for Grayson to have against Emery and her Atrian friends. All of this gets me excited for the future of the show, if not just because the uptick in action in this episode is something the show really needed, but the continual focus on Emery worries me slightly.

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And that’s mainly because the issues surrounding the stagnant war bubbling just under the surface are finally starting to feel more urgent, and the repurposing of Grayson as a potential antagonist for our main gang should push the show in this direction rather than make his turn to the ‘dark side’ more about seeing his kind-of girlfriend making out with an alien in her driveway. This is obviously an element of the show that has a time and a place – early Vampire Diaries demonstrated how to weave it into the larger narrative brilliantly – and, now that the big kiss is out of the way, I hope it’s shoved a little more into the background.

The introduction of Black Cyper, assuming that the destruction of the boathouse this week didn’t eliminate it, provides a nicely obscure weapon for the Trags to use against the Red Hawks when the time comes and, along with the sight of Castor’s bomb collection and the fact that Grayson’s parents are already in prison, there are definitely more wins notched up for the Atrians than the humans at this point. That does bring the grey area back, thankfully, with the assumed function of those explosives renewing the feeling that the extremists on both sides are willing to go the extra, violent mile to win power.

And as of this week, with Zoe’s attack on Lucas upsetting pretty much everyone, Roman, Sofia and Drake are all on the side of the humans. As much as I dislike the romance between Roman and Emery, I have to admit that the various dynamics developing between members of the supporting cast are proving far more compelling. Drake and Taylor, Eric and Julia and Sofia and Lucas are all nice, inoffensive pairings that, should Sofia’s assertion that all Atrians can love regardless of gender, could go anywhere. On a series like Star-Crossed, the minor characters are everything, and this particular cast are developing very nicely.

The cliffhanger taking us through to next week was Eva’s discovery of the real reason for Julia’s miraculous recovery, and we can also look forward to Roman and Emery celebrating Atrian holiday Dinaskyu inside of the sector, while Drake tries his best to get out of a new mission from the Trags. See you there!

Read Caroline’s review of the previous episode, Stabbed With A White Wench’s Black Eye, here.

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