Because Ben Browder looks good in anything

Sitting Pugs commented on my recent post “Paging head Cylon: Caprica”:

Ben Browder is one of the few male actors who can be cute, handsome, or hot…depending on wardrobe, hair and makeup.

Agreed.  He looks good in anything.  I have to admit I didn’t think he was all that back in 1999 when I first started watching Farscape.  I only found him attractive when I saw him appear as Lieutenant Col. Cameron Mitchell in Seasons 9 and 10 of Stargate SG-1. The general populace is aware of him through his role as Sam Brody (Neve Campbell’s character’s boyfriend) in Party of Five.  Browder escaped the trappings of his good looks in choosing the penultimate platform for the pretty boy television actor who wants to be something more: science fiction.   He ended up writing two of some of the best Farscape episodes: “Green-Eyed Monster” (Season 3) and “John Quixote” (Season 4; this episode deserves a Proppian analysis) and a Stargate SG-1 episode: “Bad Guys.” One gets the feeling that he asserted much more creative control behind the scenes.  Rumor has it that he’s agreed to direct Farscape webisodes for Syfy but that the Jim Henson Company is still looking for funds to finance the project.

I may be teasing him, but I admire him as an actor.  He was perfect for Farscape – the tongue-in-cheek attitude, the pop-cultural references that just rolled off his tongue, the inclusion of elements of his Southern background including an accent that is mellifluous but not irritating, his execution of dark humor, fantastic sexual tension with women (and men), and his truly uncanny ability to act with puppets from the Jim Henson Creature Shop.  Browder also did a great job of providing continuity and strength to the final seasons of Stargate SG-1 with the permanent departure of Richard Dean Anderson.

In his late 30s when he started Farscape and now in his late 40s, he looks fantastic for his age. Oh, yes and he looks good in anything: ugly yellow jump suits, leather, plain t-shirts, austere Soviet-looking Peacekeeper attire, black suit and tie, pink vaguely Indian looking attire, military duds, you name it.  Well, maybe not the Easter bunny outfit.  That’s just kind of funny.

I think Jamie Bamber of Battlestar Galactica also fits Sitting Pugs’ bill.

Paging head Cylon: Caprica

In Farscape (2002) episode “I Shrink, Therefore I Am” (Season 4, Episode 8), John Crichton (Ben Browder) calls out “Paging head Cylon” to bio-mechanized bounty hunters with glowing red eyes who have hijacked his ship.  The then somewhat obscure pop-cultural reference to the original Battlestar Galactica (1978) now takes on new resonance with the pervasion of the Cylon into our consciousness following the re-imagining in the 2003 series and the birth of the Cybernetic Lifeform Node in the new series Caprica.

Don’t expect the intimacy, claustrophobia, and twisted film-noir emotions of the post-apocalypse in Caprica, a Battlestar Galactica spin-off prequel.  The “pilot” which aired January 22 on Syfy has been available on DVD and download online for several months.  It’s been expanded into a series this winter.

Fortunately, the viewer does not need to be familiar with its predecessor to follow the series.  My hope is that some of the burning questions I have from Battlestar Galactica will be answered in Caprica.  Such as, the details and causes of the First Cylon War, the actual origins of the Final Five, William Adama’s past, how Cylons gained artificial intelligence, and why they rebelled with monotheism in a polytheistic “Greek” society.

Lead characters looking life mafia gangsters

What’s refreshing is the planet of Caprica itself.  Caprica City appears to be half New York, half Los Angeles, with a smidgen of Singapore.  It’s part organized urban mise-en-scene and part water paradise.  In Galactica, we had a few scenes of terra firma, mainly featuring interactions between Gaius Baltar and Caprica 6, and later glimpses into people’s pasts,  and saw the planet post nuclear war when Starbuck returns to rescue David Anders and remaining survivors.  It piqued my curiosity as to what life was like on Caprica before the Cylons devastated it.

I appreciate the old-school attention to planetary world building and civilian (versus military) life.  In this respect, the series is unique in a landscape of television sci-fi that has been dominated by vampires (Angel, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Vampire Diaries, need I go on), supernatural conspiracy theories (X-Files), space opera (Firefly, Farscape), and military science fiction (Battlestar Galactica, Stargate SG-1, Stargate Atlantis, and now Stargate Universe).   This world is also quickly becoming a franchise much like Stargate, and I think it’s here to stay for a while.

Caprica, like Galactica, airs inconveniently at 9:00 pm on Friday nights.  I used to make excuses at dinner to leave early to come home and watch BSG, because I couldn’t wait for the encore presentation at midnight.  Let’s see if Caprica makes me want to do the same.

Tapping into a nation’s mythology: Bones investigates the JFK Assassination

Bones episode “The Proof in the Pudding” (aired January 21, 2010) taps into one of the United States’ most compelling mythologies: the assassination of John F. Kennedy.  The episode starts with the arrival of a “General Services Administration” unit to the Smithsonian Institute.  The Bones team is held in lockdown at the building (on a Friday evening, to boot) until they discover how a victim, whose bones the GSA has wheeled in, has died.  The team is strictly forbidden to identify the subject.

After Dr. Lance Sweets informs FBI special agent Seeley Booth (David Boreanaz) that “his people” are being held hostage, Booth spends much of the first half attempting a way back into the building.  The best scene is when he tries to pry open the locked double glass doors into the lab with his bare hands, and then knocks on them to get the attention of Dr. Temperance “Bones” Brennan (Emily Deschanel) and Dr. Camille Saroyan (Tamara Taylor).  Unsuccessful, he shoots the glass door, swaggers in with “Hiya Bones,” and is immediately tackled by (Secret Service) agents.  Dazed, he looks up from the floor saying “Bones?”

The JFK assassination might be one of our country’s most favorite and most controversial topics.  Decades after JFK’s death, burning questions, documentaries of greater and lesser merit, and conspiracy theories, remain and abound.  Was ex-Marine and looney-tune Lee Harvey Oswald the lone shooter?  Was then FBI lead J. Edgar Hoover responsible for JFK’s death and Martin Luther King’s?  Was Lyndon B. Johnson the mastermind behind the assassination?  This episode does little more than speculate on the possibility of a second shooter.  In fact, the episode isn’t so much about the JFK assassination as it is about the dynamics and inter-relationships between the Bones team itself, particularly the reactions of Booth and Brennan.  The implication is that the government was doing a possible dry-run to test the team.  It’s also implied that Dr. Brennan deliberately hid the truth from Seeley Booth in order that he, a former soldier and sniper, retain faith in his government.  Which brings us to an important question: Do you hide the truth to protect the one you love?

Our fascination with JFK is perpetual.  The indie film The House of Yes illustrates this quite well.  Several years ago, CNN anchor Anderson Cooper went off onto a hilarious tangent to end his show, after 60-year old Marianne Fahenstock, claimed to be “the Mimi,” the White House intern JFK slept with.

I am with, the Mimi. I know where you’ve been because I too have been there myself. Yes, that’s right. I too slept with JFK. I am the Anderson.

You might point out that I was born four years too late to have actually slept with JFK. Technically you would be correct. But why quibble over details? After all, isn’t it possible deep down, that you also slept with JFK? “Who, me,” you ask? “Oh, no, I couldn’t have,” you protest. “Not possibly.”

Believe whatever you have to. I, for one, am not willing to live that lie any longer. The truth about our Camelot obsessed society is that each of us in our own way has slept with the JFK. Only once we admit this to ourselves individually and as a nation can the true healing begin.

Similarly, perhaps each of our of us in our own way is somehow complicit in the assassination of JFK.  The actual truth, I fear, we’ll never know.

via FOX on Demand – Bones

Rapunzel Relived

Rapunzel Relived

She was in and out of lucidity,
head heavy and vision blurry,
as the scientists pulled her into the chamber,
removing the ruined shards of crystal from her palms.

She was raving about a dream long unrecalled,
immortality never to be achieved, and
the blood ran onto her dress.

“No, no, I will not,” she protested,
as they forced her to guide the melting and remolding
of the sand-form in an attempt to recover its meaning.

Through the quest, she had persevered
until the moment when the poisoned dart
kept her asleep in the tower for twelve months
before the prince returned with the other half.

When he arrived, she tried to kill him,
solely on account of his smug demeanor,
but they had made a temporary peace,
and he took her into town in his fancy car,
and left her there with the relic

for he had not obtained eternal life
and had no use for the artifact,
and certainly less use for her,
and she had lost ten years.
For the first time, she wondered
why it had taken him longer to find his piece.

Perhaps, he had just not stopped for directions.
She smiled manically, to herself,
as the scientists crowded around her
to arrange the solution.

She struck out against the vials.
In deepest disgust, for who would assume
the responsibility of the price she paid
to never be able to sleep, to never die?

The molten glass dripped into her hand,
as the energy from her body ebbed,
and grey surrounded her field of vision,
for the first and final time.

-K.N. 7.26.08

I still see blue people

Is it just me, or do the Na’vi from Avatar remind you uncannily of Zhaan (Virginia Hey) and her Delvian peoples from Farscape (1999)? Incidentally, I am currently re-watching Season 1.  To be honest, I had only made it through Season 2 before I lost track of it in college never finished watching it!  I have my chance now.

Zhaan, played by the ethereally beautiful Virginia Hey, with Mt. Everest cheekbones that could cut ice,  is a holy woman, a priestess, and best of all, a plant capable of photosynthesis.  That explains the blue.  While Na’vi are capable of communing with plants, it’s never quite clarified whether their skin contains chlorophyll and stomata or not, despite that enormous book Signourney Weaver’s character has written.  Anyways, you can see the similarities and differences for yourself.