Dracula 1.04 “From Darkness to Light”

“From Darkness to Light” kicks things off with a decent action sequence for the first time since the pilot episode. As I mentioned in my last review, with the seers dead Lady Jayne (Victoria Smurfit) predicted that London would be open to attack from other vampires. Well it is raining vampires as Lady Jayne dispatches two out of three vampires heading for London. The one to get away just happens to be Dracula’s (Jonathan Rhys Meyers) right hand man Josef, (Alec Newman) whom Dracula summoned to London.

Dracula begins a campaign in earning Jayne’s trust as opposed to just killing her or loving her, which seems much more important to Dracula. By doing this he decides to kill two birds with one stone, with a devious plot that involves his right hand…er former right hand man, Josef. As Renfield (Nonso Anozie) points out Josef could be volatile as he has no control over his emotions and urges.

It was kind of funny to think that with this episode Josef and Renfield were like the Devil and Angel respectively on the shoulders of Dracula; each telling him what he should be doing. Josef advocates killing Jayne and destroying The Order. Meanwhile Renfield does not trust Josef and fears that his staying with Dracula would be chaotic to Dracula’s plans. Dracula gives Josef the order to take care of Jayne in her home, which he attempts to do but he is confronted by Dracula and then killed by Jayne, which leads her to believe the vampire The Order is searching for is gone.

I’m glad to see Dracula doing whatever it takes to further his cause in getting rid of the Order, even if that means getting rid of his one-time best friend. This is the Dracula that we are all used to.

In other events, Mina Murray (Jessica De Gouw) and Jonathan Harker’s (Oliver Jackson-Cohen) engagement party is now in its planning stages, which the two are happy about. Although Mina is not so thrilled that Dracula will be the one hosting. I guess she has perhaps picked up on Dracula’s true feelings? I don’t fully understand her character and her intentions; she seemed to welcome Dracula’s advances at first but now she seems to be running away from him.

Both characters are very complex when it comes to their emotions; I had mentioned Dracula’s feelings previously and his tug of war with Mina leaving me confused, but now both characters seem to be doing the same thing. I guess this is love.

Van Helsing (Thomas Kretschmann) has finally completed the serum for Dracula allowing him to walk in daylight, however after testing it we learn that it only lasts for three seconds and only on the area where he receives the injection; so he will need to develop an agent that can make it run through his entire system and of course last longer.

In the precious episode, Lord Davenport’s (Robert Bathurst) son Daniel (Lewis Rainer) killed himself due to the death of his lover Laurent (Anthony Howell), in the process leaving a letter blaming Dracula for the ordeal. Well Davenport has now hired a mercenary to assassinate Dracula without The Order’s approval. However instead of going after Dracula, the hired hand instead kidnapped Dracula’s most trusted servant, Renfield.

Needless to say this episode really ended on a high note with Renfield’s kidnapping; something I had predicted early on but never expected to happen so soon; I’m glad that the show was able to take me by surprise. This has been the best episode since the premiere and hopefully Dracula continues to improve from here.