I love good guys

[Crossposted from forkni-l. Backdated. In reply to a post speculating that there were more scenes on television than on the DVDs.]

When the first-season FK DVDs first came out, we all scrutinized them very hard, and determined that they are the full Canadian cuts.  If you have seen the German broadcast cuts, or in a few cases the "director's cuts" tapes that got into fan hands, then you may have seen a little more footage than is on the DVDs.  But if you saw only North American broadcasts, probably not.

The German first-season editions do not have many bits that would count as full extra "scenes," and they have almost no extra dialogue.  Instead, they have many longer establishing shots -- the camera sweeps longer down a hallway, higher up a building, Nick takes more steps toward a table, Schanke lingers longer at a door ... that kind of thing.  ( Read more... )

[Crossposted from forkni-l. Backdated.]

In reply to a question as to who brought Daniel across in the flashbacks of the episode "Father Figure:

The strong implication is that it was Lacroix -- and Nick believes it is Lacroix -- but it happened off-screen, so you can certainly create an interpretation in which Janette is Daniel's maker.  However, as with the Baroness in "If Looks Could Kill," that interpretation runs up against Nick's need to ask, in "I Will Repay," whether Janette has ever brought anyone across, and her clearly saying "no," that she is "too much the glutton" and they have always died before she could bring anyone across.  ( Read more... )

In reply to a question as to whether the actor who played Daniel grew up to be the actor who played Anakin Skywalker:

Confused, sorry!  It is the young actor who played Nick's nephew Andre in "Fallen Idol" who grew up to play Darth Vader.  I went into that movie as excited about seeing what Fleur's son would look like at that age as anything Mr. Lucas could share with us after the Jar-Jar fiasco.  ( Read more... )

[Crossposted from forkni-l. Backdated. In response to a post about Nick and religion.]

... The post brushes up against sacramentality and analogical imagination, a reference poised for analyzing Nick!  However, can we go there without further stirring the religion pot, which is always awkward and sometimes painful in public forums?  I'd love to, but it's a challenge.  I'm going to try...

It's long been a custom that showing respect to a symbol also shows respect to that which is symbolized.  In Nick's mortal life, that was so ordinary, deep and wide that it never needed to be explained (was it even possible to explain it, before a certain point in the cumulative progress of human thought?).  Anyway, I believe that is Nick's style of knowing. Before religion is doctrine, it is experience, symbol and story -- not holy writings alone, but holidays, games, food, art, community: an experiential bundle -- and that's how mortal Nick grew up, boy and man, in a mostly illiterate world, to absorb knowledge and reproduce it in his actions.  I think this is the way his imagination works; that is, I think that Nick's pre-conscious mind still uses the templates of popular (not necessarily scholarly) medieval Christianity, which, like modern Catholicism and some other denominations and religions, was above all sacramental -- by which I mean, it found the divine self-disclosed in the creation.

Nick has had hundreds of years to learn alternative styles of knowing, but from the episodes, I personally think he has not adopted many on that deep level, not even when he arguably should have.  ( Read more... )

[Crossposted from forkni-l. Backdated. In reply to a comment that Kristen Lehmen's character on Drive is not as interesting as her character Urs on FK.]

In my opinion, the second hour/episode of Drive is where Kristen Lehmen's new character becomes interesting.  (Though of course I'm more interested in Urs, because she is of FK.)

Stated carefully to avoid spoilers, I'm only up to the second Drive episode of the four that have aired, but it was in the second (with the development of KL's character) that I began to think that this new show might touch on one of the things I love best in FK: quest structure, long-term striving.  While so far none of the characters seem to be driven by Nick's very particular choice-gone-wrong and redemption paradigms, there is an element of second chance or last chance that resonates with me on a similar frequency to FK.  ( Read more... )

[Crossposted from forkni-l. Backdated. In reply to a post pondering the need for fiction explaining Nick's globetrotting from the "Faithful Followers" flashbacks in Sudan to the present.]

New fiction is always an excellent idea! :-)  And something I've always found interesting in Dorothy's illustrated, in-depth, costume-based timeline as well as my little script-based one (thanks for the mention, Cloud!), is the presence of gaps.  For example, the 1930s are canonically blank.  We have no canon on what Nick was doing between "Father's Day" and "Father Figure," as the whole world fell into war.  Another blank decade is c.1790-c.1805, from Nick approaching his worst in "Blood Money" to Nick approaching his best in "If Looks Could Kill."  And fifty years blank between "Francesca" and "Blood Money," and fifty between "Last Act and "Undue Process," and almost a century between "Sons of Belial" and "Dying to Know You," which is the pivotal period in which Nick first decided to kill "only the guilty" (per "Love You to Death").

Anyway, wonderful holes to fill with fanfiction!

I think there are three main reasons behind Nick's apparent wanderlust: 1) running away from Lacroix, as in the "Father's Day" flashbacks, 2) running toward a cure, as in the "1966" flashbacks, and 3) the exigencies of vampirism -- not getting caught, not over-hunting, "the Dorian Gray syndrome" -- as in the "Hunters" flashbacks.  ( Read more... )