HIGH NOONE AND IMMORTALITY IN TOOBWORLD

‘THE LIBRARIANS’

“AND THE DARK SECRET”

‘The Librarians’ series is back for its fourth season, opening with two back-to-back episodes. 

With this first episode, the showrunners made a major shift by bringing back my favorite character from the original TV movie “The Librarian: The Quest For The Spear” – Library Guardian Nicole Noone.  However… we have a recastaway.

 Nicole was originally played by Sonia Walger, one of the bright shining lights of ‘Lost’ as Penny.  But now the role is being assayed by Rachel Nichols.  And there is no confusing the two….

As Team Toobworld should know, I don’t like recastaways.  Toobworld is a visual shared universe and so splainins must be found to cover up such discrepancies.  Standby splainins include the mundane plastic surgery, but also quantum leaping, magical transformations including shape-shifters, clones, replicant androids, and alien glamour devices.

Luckily ‘The Librarians’ wallows in magic, so finding a reason as to how Nicole’s appearance was altered is not only easier, but the wilder the better and still plausible.

Here’s a quick run-down of her return:

While trying to retrieve H.G. Wells’ time machine, Flynn had fixed it to explode should anyone tamper with it, until they were ready to return it to their own time and/or to the Library.  However, he didn’t expect Nicole to trigger the device and he thought she had died in the explosion.

But what happened was that she found herself hurled back in Time five hundred years to the 1500s. 

Ezekiel Jones:

Pardon me? 500 years?
How are you still alive?
Jenkins:
Immortality artifact, which she stole.
Along with countless others.

In order to survive so that she could live long enough to get back to the man she loved (although Jenkins was convinced that she did it to get revenge on those people in the future she blamed for abandoning her), Nicole raided the Library of that time for an immortality artifact. And that means we can rule out any non-Library reasons for her immortality.... unless it came from another TV show before the Library’s acquisition.  (But it definitely rules out seeking Endora or some other witch for a magic spell.  Then again, maybe she made a deal with Mr. Cadwallader or some other representative from “the other place”.)

Like I said, the immortality artifact could have come from some other TV show before becoming part of the Library’s collection.  So what could it have been?

Here are the most popular sources for immortality to be found in world mythology:

• Eating a Mermaid-like creature: Japanese Mythology.
• Cinnabar: Taoist Mythology. ...
• Ambrosia: Greek Mythology. ...
• Peaches of Immortality: Chinese Mythology. ...
• The Philosopher's Stone: Medieval Mythology.
• Amrit: Hindu Mythology. ...
• Buckthorn-like Plant: Sumerian Mythology. ...
• Holy Grail: Christian Mythology.

There was a tenth way of gaining immortality, but it involved taunting Jesus to his face.  As Nicole only went back in Time to the 1500s, that isn’t a viable option.  A shame, because the legend says that it happened during his ordeal of walking to the site for his crucifixion. And that has been depicted several times in television.  And of course, it’s hardly considered as an artifact.)

The Peaches, the Golden Apples. and Ambrosia have all seen their origin mythologies depicted on TV – ‘Journey To The West’, ‘Hercules: The Legendary Journeys’, and ‘Xena, Warrior Princess’ as major sources.  Perhaps a mixture of cinnabar and the buckthorn-like plant were all used in the elixir that was mixed for Walter Jameson by the mysterious alchemist.  I’m not sure if Taoist mythology figures in any TV series but the plant is from the legends of Gilgamesh and he showed up in an episode of ‘Hercules: The Legendary Journeys’.  As for amrit, mostly I found that listed as a feminine first name for both characters and actresses, but there was a documentary in 2012 called “Amrit, The Nectar Of Immortality”.  The go-to reference for the philosopher’s stone is the ‘Harry Potter’ mythos, but that as yet is not part of the TV Universe, save for Skitlandia which doesn’t suit our purposes here.  On the other hand, the Holy Grail was the Maguffin of “Indiana Jones And The Last Crusade” and even though it is part of the Cineverse, it has been absorbed into Earth Prime-Time thanks to ‘The Indiana Jones Chronicles’.

But most of those don’t address Nicole Noone’s physical transformation.

I watched that episode of ‘The Twilight Zone’ about Walter Jameson again.  He tells his potential father-in-law about the mysterious alchemist who conducted experiments on him over 2,000 years before, which resulted in him gaining immortality.  Who could have been on Earth Prime-Time during the 1500s who could have “experimented” on Nicole to not only grant her immortality but to alter her appearance as well?

There could have been a priestess from the Sisterhood of Karn on Earth at that time…..

From the TARDIS Data Core wiki:
The Sisterhood of Karn was a female society dedicated to protecting the Sacred Flame, which produced the Elixir of Life. They originally came from Gallifrey, but resided on the planet Karn.

Karn was once a colony planet of Gallifrey. It was later the home of the powerful Sisterhood of Karn and bolt-hole of the Time Lord criminal Morbius.

The Sacred Flame, or Flame of Life, was the heat source that created the life-prolonging Elixir of Life, guarded by the Sisterhood of Karn.

The Elixir of Life was a product of the Sacred Flame, used by the Sisterhood of Karn to give them extended life.

Here is the link to the TARDIS Data Core entry for the Sisterhood of Karn.  From there you will find hyperlinks to articles on Karn, the Sacred Flame, and the Elixir of Life.

That’s just my opinion, of course.  But it carries some weight among the members of the Toobworld Central Council – especially as I am the only member.

Jenkins did say that she stole an immortality artifact from the Library.  Perhaps that artifact was a sealed vial of the Elixir of Life, good for one use and it extended Nicole’s life for the next 500 years.  But it also might have caused something akin to the regeneration of the Time Lords so that her appearance and even her personality underwent a radical change.

Or maybe not.  I suppose the Golden Apples would be a better choice; it would certainly have made for a great fanfic story in which Idun – now working in the Library as its gardener – joined with Jenkins (at that time going by the alias he used before Jenkins, if not his actual name of Galahad still) to track down Nicole.  But it would be 400 years before she would be captured and by then she had finally eaten all of the apples she stole.

And as for the alteration to her appearance?  Maybe she did undergo a magical transformation thanks to a witch.  Maybe not Endora, certainly not Aunt Clara!  But perhaps a young witch by the name of Samantha who believed Nicole’s story and so gave her a means to escape detection from Galahad and Idun by giving her a new face.

Just sayin’, is all……