Sunday at 1PM, fans of The Musketeers gathered in the BritTrack room in the Sheraton to discuss the first season of the show. BritTrack director Caro Brown ran the discussion with moderator Abeeda Mahboob.

The group was nearly evenly split on which character was their favorites. Athos, Porthos, Aramis, and D’Artagnan each had their supporters for various reasons. There was also a lot of agreement with the opinion that this version of D’Artagnan is the first one that we don’t hate. The character is generally written as a bumbling, incompetent, slightly naïve young dweeb who thinks he is much more suave and cool than he actually is. It’s refreshing to see him written as headstrong and impulsive but still more than competent at what he does.

There was also a consensus that though the show is wildly different from Alexandre Dumas’s text, all of the core elements are there, including the characters of Constance Bonacieux and Captain Treville. Another thing that the group agreed on was how much we enjoyed Peter Capaldi as Cardinal Richelieu, who was dubbed “Doctor Richelieu” by Brown since Capaldi can currently be seen as the Twelfth Doctor on Doctor Who.

One of the few things that the audience disagreed about was our feelings for Milady de Winter and her motives for wanting to kill Athos. There was also some disagreement as to whether Richelieu was really evil enough. Capaldi plays him mostly as a politician rather than an evil mastermind.

Overall, the group agreed it is a well-written show that does a good job of depicting the time period with the weapons and costumes. The characters are complex and multi-dimensional. We are all looking forward to Season 2!