12 - The Michigan Daily - Tuesday, April 21, 1998 Magical effects save 'Merlin' By Michael Galloway Daily TV/New Media Editor When NBC released a "rough cut" of its new miniseries that premieres on Sunday, special effects were only partially fin- ished, painted background mattes of castles had not been added into shots, and a lot of music editing was yet to be done when this tape was recorded. Therefore, "Merlin" will have to be reviewed merely on the script and the acting. Actually, giving a plot synopsis of "Merlin" is also a prob- E t Merlin NBC Sunday and Monday from 9-11 p.m. lem. Too many events, people and themes have been crammed into this roughly three-hour (sans commercials) production. An aged Merlin (Sam Neill ), the world's last wizard, narrates the story of his long conflict with the cold- hearted Queen Mab (Miranda Richardson), ruler of elves, fairies and magic. Mab and her subjects face extinction because humans have stopped believing in them, so she decides to create "a leader for the peo- ple. A powerful wizard who'll save Britain and bring back the people to us and the Old Ways," magic, that it. Mab uses her sorcery to conceive Merlin in Gielgud as King Constant, Arthur's insane Christian grandfa- ther, and all of this happens in the first hour before Sam Neil appears as the grown-up Merlin, the story's central character. Prior to Neill's entrance, Richardson, Short and the special effects carry the production to the best of their abilities. But Queen Mab's beneficent motives and actions aren't dwelled upon long enough for her to seem anything but evil, and the hissing whisper she speaks in is often hard to understand. Frik becomes very interesting once his affair begins with Morgan Le Fay (Helena Bonham Carter), but until then, the character depends on his "employer," the one-dimensional Queen Mab. Luckily, the FX gurus at London's FrameStore and The Jim Henson Creature Shop provide enough eye candy to feast on until Sam Neill comes on board.,(OK, there were a lot of par- tially finished or complete special effects.) Fairies and elves zip about at inhuman speeds, thanks to computer graphics and time-lapse photography. The gnome Frik (Martin Short) and his "employer," fairy Queen Mab (Miranda Richardson) of the Old Ways make these incredible metamorphoses. Finally, the mountain king (James Earl Jones) rocks. Occasionally, the time lapse photography seems overdone, especially when Queen Mab is merely zipping about a room, but "Merlin" gen- erally doesn't disappoint on the special effects. Nor do the miniseries' actors and actresses. Short thank- fully abandons the silly slapstick humor he's been doing since "Innerspace" to give a wonderful performance as the sardonic Frik. Richardson's Queen Mabis is as convincing- ly evil as Hauer's Vortigern is convincingly tyrannical. Of Sam Neill stars as "Merlin" in a miniseries premiering on Sunday on NBC. %ama I a human mother. And there are fairies milking goats, an incredibly unrecog- nizable Martin Short as the shape-changing gnome, Frik and Rutger Hauer as King Vortigern taking England from Sir John