I don't get the Chiller channel, so everything I've learned about their Labor Day FK marathon has been second-hand, mostly from abby82.  However, I've learned some very interesting things, and I've been longing to share!

First up, the promos.  One went: "Before Edward... before Angel... there was Nick.  The original vampire with a heart is back.  The cult hit that drew first blood and proves that you can't have twilight without the Knight."  This makes me laugh with amused delight.  Yes, okay, lots to quibble with, but it's just fun for the show to be acknowledged with some perspective.  (When they were promoting Moonlight at cons, CBS representatives said they had never heard of FK.)  abby82 uploaded all three commercials for those of us beyond the channel's reach.

Next, the sequel.  Chiller will air FK again in October!  Their schedule is a bit hard to read, with the dates crimped between lines on my screen, but it looks like they're planning 9:00 AM to 4:00 PM on Saturday 10/10 and Thursday 10/15.

Finally, and most excitingly, the version.  They aired the original CBS US cuts.  abby82 describes them in detail, and though I haven't seen them, I'm confident that's what they are.  In brief, all opened with the CBS surround-sound logo (like DK does on the DVDs), and they had the key scenes known to be characteristic of the original US airing.  This means that the CBS cuts survived!  If only they will release a nice new, DVD "slim set" with the differences packaged as extras, I can finally get rid of the last VHS tapes in the closet...  ( Read more... )

Natalie:	Six years ago, April 14.
Nick:	What's that?
Natalie:	Day they brought you in.
	-- "Last Knight"

When "Last Knight" first aired in May 1996, the exchange above was controversial for the date.  The night they wheeled Nick into the morgue in the flashbacks of "Only the Lonely" was Natalie's twenty-eighth birthday, of course, as the present was her thirtieth, and people like amilyn had worked long and hard to determine Natalie's birthday from the prop calendars on the morgue wall, the weather in the episode, the air date and, for some, astrology.  The date on which they had painstakingly settled was not April 14.  In the years since, we've mostly shrugged our shoulders and accepted the date Natalie said aloud in LK, presuming that she knows her own birthday.

Today, this same exchange presents a new controversy of sorts.  hearts_blood reminded me recently that people who discover the show after cancellation naturally have no memory of the hiatus.  They logically plunge straight from season one to season two to befuddlement when they finally reach this line buried in the finale at the end of season three.  What's the math?

FK was canceled after season one.  Filming ended, sets were stuck, "Love You to Death" aired in May 1993, GWD did a guest shot on Highlander, and many wonderful fans -- special wave to wiliqueen among you all -- wrote letters upon letters to convince TPTB to revive the series.  Honor and glory to those who wrote those letters, because TPTB relented and the series returned with "Killer Instinct" sixteen months after first season ended.  That's Natalie's "six years ago:" the year of the flashbacks of "Only the Lonely" (1990-1991), another year (1991-1992), season one (1992-1993), the hiatus (1993-1994), season two (1994-1995), season three (1995-1996).  ( Read more... )

Strangely, perhaps, it's my favorite time in FK: the year we shared, but didn't see.

Last week was the twentieth anniversary of the original broadcast airing of Nick Knight, the pilot starring Rick Springfield that did not get picked up, but provided the basis for "Dark Knight" and "Dark Knight, the Second Chapter" when Forever Knight got its turn a few years later.  Those of you who watched the made-for-TV-movie incarnation that very first time: care to share any memories?

My Nick Knight moments came later.  My favorite may always be a passage from FKFic-L War 8 ("Cinderella's War"), in which a N&NPacker hesitantly explains to a baffled time-and-reality-displaced Nick Knight Nick that: "In your world, we would be Nick&JackPackers..."  Still makes me laugh.  (Sorry that I can't remember who wrote it!)  Another memory is the first time I read a zine that mixed NK and FK stories; I didn't at first understand which were which.  They do look so alike on the page, until you bump into Jack or Natalie, or call for "Jean-Pierre" instead of "Nicholas."

abby82 made a fun anniversary vid to the song "Los Angeles" by Sugarcult.  Inspired by her, I got out my Nick Knight DVD and actually watched it all the way through for the first time (the last time I watched NK, it was on VHS, and on a smaller screen).  It's long been my opinion that NK's Alyce "Junk Food" Hunter is superior to FK's Alyce "Hold Me" Hunter, as NK's Janette and Lacroix cannot hold candles to FK's Janette and Lacroix, and that the NK Schanke is not just a younger incarnation, but actually a completely different character, from FK's Schanke, and those haven't changed.  But several elements caught my attention for new-to-me comparisons:  ( Read more... )

Recently, I decided to make myself a "thank you" userpic icon.  You see the result with this post -- Magda thanking Nick at the end of "For I Have Sinned" -- but I was surprised how few choices I could call to mind.  Is "I will repay you (by not killing you while you're impaled on a meat rack)," double-entendre and all, really so expressive of the series's overall approach?  I'm satisfied with my icon, but it got me thinking about gratitude as a story element and in character development in FK.

The most powerful and straightforward "thank you" scene that I could call to mind is the tag of "1966," when Lily expresses her undying gratitude for Nick's rescue of her family, mentioning so many of the lives that are better for Nick's intervention, and hinting at the ever-expanding waves of good from his action, such as her son.  (Unfortunately for icon-making, there's nothing visual there to grab.  It's Nick listening to his answering machine.  Either you know what you're seeing in the still, or you don't.  It doesn't suggest anything to a stranger.)

In second place, I think, is Magda thanking Nick, the scene I picked for my icon.  He's just saved her life, and her gesture of gratitude includes almost forcing on him the memento of her cross necklace.  She doesn't know what it means that he can hold it, but we do.  (For icon-making, her action and stance seem to me to be visually suggestive of their emotional content.)

But beyond those?  ( Read more... )

Last week, celli described a writing exercise designed to bolster skills with perspective and setting.  In a few swift steps, it took me from pondering the exercise, to picturing the loft, to: Why does Nick have a bottle of blood hidden in his chimney?  In "Feeding the Beast," that is, the scene in which the ghost/delusion of Lacroix taunts Nick from the balcony.

I don't mean to ask "why blood," of course; we're all clear that the character is a vampire.  And I don't mean to ask "why hidden" -- the core metaphor of that episode, and the fallback metaphor of most episodes, is vampirism as addiction, and so Nick behaves like an addict when that metaphor is in force.  But why the chimney?  Above the fireplace?  What would rising heat do to wine-cut blood?  Should it even still be liquid when he goes back for it?

Further, in "Dark Knight," Alyce finds the fireplace dusty, and wonders whether Nick has ever used it at all.  When Nick first hid that bottle, did he expect the fireplace to be a safe hiding place because he intended never to use the fireplace?  However, there was most certainly a fire in "Dark Knight," and then again at least for a moment in "For I Have Sinned."  So what would that mean for the time the bottle has been hidden there before being pulled out in FtB?  Would it necessarily have been planted since the last time the fire burned, or could it have been there since Nick first moved in?  And would the carved mantle (cf. "Baby, Baby") be involved in some way?

Last week, butterflykiki generously wrote FK comment-fic for me!  It's a bite-sized piece, slightly shorter than a traditional drabble, but it goes straight to a canon reference (baseball in Chicago) and potentially suggests a metaphor (escaping vampirism is like being a Cubs fan).  It made me happy.

From "Dark Knight":

NICK:	It was time to move on. ... Although if I knew they were going to install lights at Wrigley field -- oof.
JANETTE:	I hate baseball. Slow games make eternity seem so much longer.

For those of you not from baseball-playing nations, the Cubs are one of two professional baseball teams based in Chicago, a city Nick occupied repeatedly in the twentieth century (flashbacks of SD, AN, and BtL; plus Nick Knight's supposed birthplace in "Hunters").  Wrigley Field, which Nick mentions, is their home stadium.  And their century-long inability to win baseball's World Series -- yes, hardly "world" when it's just Canada and the US; never mind -- has become the stuff of legend.  It is the longest title drought of any North American sports team.

That Nick immediately raises the opportunity to watch professional baseball after sunset as a temptation to stay in Chicago even after, as he says, "it was time to move on," seems a likely indication that he is an active baseball fan.  If I remember correctly, however, baseball is never mentioned again after "Dark Knight" (not counting the softball game at the picnic in "Dead Issue").  So perhaps Nick is merely teasing Janette, knowing that she dislikes the game.  (And why does she really dislike the game? Story prompt!)  Or perhaps lacking interest in baseball is part of how he envisions Nick Knight, so it is only to Janette that he would mention an interest that belonged to another incarnation?

The idea of Nick as a Cubs fan pleases me because the experience of rooting for the Cubs can parallel Nick's struggles to escape his vampirism.  Their title drought began 18 years after he stopped drinking human blood, so that's not an exact match (unfortunately for storytelling symmetry).  But the team often almost makes it, only to fall short after a worthy effort, not unlike Nick's efforts.  And the fans get up and try again, believe again, hope again, every time, never giving up.  Like Nick.

Poll #1251783 Effects and Duration of Dr. Jurgen's Treatments in ILCK
Open to: All, detailed results viewable to: All, participants: 6

Ever since you first watched "If Looks Could Kill," years ago, how have you interpreted Doctor Sofia Jurgen's (the Baroness's) patients?

A month or so ago, pj1228 and I had a delightful little debate on this subject on forkni.  After much canonical examination, we were unable to sway each other, and determined that canon cannot disprove either interpretation (cool, huh?).  Before I import my side of that here, and reveal which angle I championed, I want to learn what you think!  What is the mainstream perception on this?

[Cross-posted from forkni-l.]

There have been a few posts lately asking for the names of middling-to-minor characters, like Amy Lambert from "I Will Repay" and Cynthia Lambert Luce from "Undue Process."  I thought I'd mention the FK Character Directory that I've been working on for a few years now.  It's alphabetical by first name, and includes every character ever named aloud, or in the credits after first season (if the credit can be confidently matched to a person on screen).  I believe it's easy to search, using a browser's "Find" function.  It's complete up to "Night in Question" so far.  I will finish it, but have not just yet for the typical reason that third season can be an emotional slog; still, I'm getting there.

In parallel to that list of people, I've been working on a list of the places and things unique to the FK universe.  It is also complete up to NiQ, so far, and it's my favorite.  These are tidbits that can really make a story pop.  I find them tremendously fun.

And of course there are the character FAQs that I originally made in '97.

They are all intended to be of use to people writing FK fanfiction.

[Cross-posted from forkni-l, where my previous post received a wink and a rhetorical inquiry into my feelings about Alexandra the Dingbat Barmaid.]

Yup. :-)  I don't much like the Alexandra character from "Fatal Mistake."  She earned her epithet.  But on the up side, I don't think we're supposed to like her!  I think she's supposed to be precisely what she is, and that's one of the glories of first season.

In my opinion, despite her shortcomings, Alexandra is a well-rounded character compared to some of her later-season equivalents, such as Amalia (CL) or Alyssa (DoN) or Liselle (TG).  At any rate, she gets more lines than they do.  We know some of Alexandra's past, her hopes, her motivations: that she had never been farther than the next county, that she longed to travel, that she found Nick attractive in part for being well-traveled, and of course that she, um, wasn't shy.  We know she was a tavern serving woman, and we know some of how she approached her customers.  We know she searched for Nick over time.  And in the present day, we discover that she resents and despises her vampirism, putting her into a select company with Nick, Serena, Sofia and perhaps Urs.  (Maybe even Feliks, but that's another analysis entirely.)

Of course, Alexandra is also an easily manipulated nitwit, by all appearances.  ( Read more... )

Surely Alexandra is meant to parallel the young hoodlum who attempts to take a misguided revenge on Stonetree in that episode.  Both Alexandra and the boy have committed against others the very crimes of which they accuse the person on whom they wish to take revenge.  Neither of them run on all cylinders -- the boy is apparently drug-addled -- and so her dim-bulb status serves a structural purpose in the episode; I respect that!

Have I gone and talked myself into liking Alexandra just a little bit better?  Maybe.  But that's a long, long ladder she's got to climb up to guest-star ground level.

[Crossposted from forkni-l.  In Saturday's digest, a long-time listmember reminisced about running dual VCRs to discover the differences between the Canadian and US cuts long ago, and pondered doing it again now to pin down what's missing from the DVDs, in response to what wiliqueen and I discovered missing from "I Will Repay" on the DVD.]

That would be a great favor to the fandom!  I would follow your progress eagerly.  But I'm afraid it might even take three TVs this time: US cut, Canadian cut and the DVDs.  Four if we can circulate the first-run German cut.  (Is it lucky or unlucky that only first season comes in quite so many flavors?)

When the first-season DVDs came out, I checked "Last Act" to reassure myself that no footage was missing, even though the run-times clearly indicated the first-run Canadian cuts.  I picked "Last Act" because it's peculiar in having some footage that aired only in the US as well as some that aired only in Canada (and, besides, it's so good! ~g~).  ( Read more... ) I should have checked more episodes, obviously. :-)  Why, why, why would anyone cut Nick and Lacroix's exchange about souls from the flashbacks of "False Witness"?  Madness!

Golly, but I love first season.  I rewatched "Fatal Mistake" recently, and kept thinking that while it was perhaps the least admired episode of first season, and surely suffers two painful script burbles as well as arguably one of the worst necks-of-the-week ever, it is nevertheless smart, well-constructed and satisfying.

[Cross-posted from fkfic-l, where one person referred to the vintage rumor of racier footage in the German cuts, and one of the German fans once again pointed out that there is no such footage, but in my opinion went a bit far by asserting that there is no extra footage at all.  This was my reply.]

I don't mean to disagree, and of course you are absolutely right about there being no no "flesh shots," but I have seen dubbed VHS copies of one German airing of FK's first season, and what I saw does have some brief footage that is additional to the Canadian airings.  In almost all cases, those shots are "atmosphere" extending the existing scenes -- the camera lingers longer on a set or prop, or a character walks a few more steps across a room or down a street.  I do not recall any of them including dialogue.  Nevertheless, those bits are additional to all the North American airings.

My favorite is Nick picking up and setting down a book on the credenza next to his answering machine.  Just a few seconds -- but what a prize! :-) Nick reading! In his home! Knightie-bookworm joy. ;-)

The one scene in all of first season in which I found a substantive content addition in the German episodes I saw was what I think of as Ilsa's flashback inside Nick's flashback in "Dead Issue."  ( Read more... )

I do know, from a recent conversation with wiliqueen, that the DVDs are missing footage I have on my VHS tapes.  We discovered missing dialogue in the flashbacks of "False Witness," darn it.  My copy of the DVD completely lacks Lacroix and Nick's exchange about souls ("Why do you think that is, Nicholas? Is it because they have souls?" / "And you do not." / "We do not."). Instead, it just stops early with Lacroix saying, "I should play again, but I'll never compare to them."  What a loss...

I recently rewatched "False Witness" with the closed captioning on, and was fascinated to note that the captioning has Lacroix say to Nick: "your students at the Conservatory" (rather than the "the students at the Conservatory" I had always heard aloud).  Now, the captioning is frequently wrong.  No question.  I'm grateful to have any captioning at all, but what we have misspells Janette's name all the time ("Jeanette" is traditional, but that's not the Raven's owner), forever mishears little things (for example, it writes "Miss Paris" instead of "Miss Priss" -- as in "prissy" -- as Anne Foley's stage name in "Dance by the Light of the Moon"), and those are just off the top of my head.  Pop in any episode and you'll find more.

But what about here?  What have you always heard Lacroix say?  Janette calls the musicians "common street players," but if they are Nick's students, she is being facetious in that remark, teasing him -- and it changes the complexion of her murder of the girl.  Perhaps the three of them came on purpose to hear the boy and girl perform, from Nick's perspective (though he didn't successfully communicate that to Janette).  Regardless, if indeed the word is "your," then we know Nick's occupation at that time!  And what a Nick-like occupation, combining teaching and music, both of which he loves.

(And how often we make him a music teacher in fanfiction!  Dorothy's "The Gift" leaps to mind, and even I did it once in flashbacks an age ago.)

Icons.  My FK activity this week was creating a small flock of NatPack icons for wiliqueen.  I hope at least one strikes her fancy; any that do not catch her eye, I will recycle for general "up for grabs" consumption for any other icon-deprived NatPackers.  (I'll mark them so, when the time comes.)  I hope I'm building my icon-making skills as I go; it's a new craft, and I have a lot to learn!  In and around the new icons for wiliqueen, I also created just a few more for myself, including this (Gratuitous Icon Post!) one with Natalie, Nick and the Caddie from "The Fix."

Fanfiction.  Writing "Starwort" (that long Fleur story) for the ficathon was a bit of a "high," and I'm experiencing a low in its wake.  A friend who did not have time to beta before the ficathon is taking a look at the story now, and will let me know what I can fix in her areas of expertise before taking the story home to fkfic-l.  Trying to figure out where to begin a completely different new story, and not succumb to the morass of not writing for fun (only work), I'm playing with hearts_blood's request for a NCIS/FK crossover for her birthday; we'll see.

Analysis.  The last forkni-l digest I read came on March 22.  That's not far behind, by my standards these days, but there was this one post that week to which I would really like to respond -- at length, citing a whole alphabet soup of episodes, in the good old way -- but I can't well do so until I catch up on all the digests since, to see if someone has beaten me to the punch.  Ah, well.  Key thought?  The thing the poster assumed is true, well, it appears only in Lacroix's dialogue, and only after first season.  This leaves the very strong interpretive possibility that, as Nick and Janette's dialogue in the first season explicitly contradicts Lacroix on this point, Lacroix is either mistaken or lying, and either way, most probably trying to manipulate Nick!  Ah, well. :-)

I'm going over my femme_fic ("We Love Female Characters") ficathon story draft one more time today, trying for as much polish as I can achieve before posting to the community this weekend.  As part of that, I've just transcribed the key dialogue from those episodes on which the story most draws, including every word ever spoken by my favorite neck-of-the-week, the most canonically pertinent guest character we ever received (such that I am joking by lumping her into that category, naturally).  The transcriptions below are exact; I did not omit even those lines that make me throw rolled-up socks at the screen, and you know these episodes have their share of those!  But I love them anyway, as shown by the 14,000-word draft continuing them that I'm scrubbing right now, and striving to make evoke these very lines.

If I've written the story well, no one will need to rewatch any episodes in order to understand it.  But reviewing FK canon is always a delight, right? ;-)  I will get these quotations properly sorted into my FK Concordance after the ficathon story is on its way.  (Gracious, but transcribing is so much easier with the DVDs than it was with tapes!)

Transcribed excerpts, in reverse chronological order:

( Crazy Love ) ( Fallen Idol ) ( Be My Valentine ) ( Near Death )

Did you know that all twenty-two first-season FK episodes are now available, individually, for download on Amazon unbox?  I found out this week, when I sent a season as a gift.  This should be very convenient for anyone who misplaces a DVD, or who wants to carry an episode handily on a player of some sort.

Speaking of of the FK DVDs, I've been thinking again of taking a thin-tip Sharpie and writing the episode titles on each disk.  Highlander, among many other series, managed to come out with the episode titles printed; I can't imagine why FK didn't -- though of course I'm still deliriously grateful for the DVDs, after so long supposing they'd never come.  (The first season DVDs didn't arrive until October 2003, you know, more than seven years after cancellation.)

I can puzzle through the numbered (not titled) DVDs from memory for most of first and third seasons, even now, as the order on the disks is the order in which the episodes aired, and with which we lived for all the years without professional recordings.  But oh! Second season!  For example, I know the production number for "Crazy Love" is "13" but, to me, it's the finale of season two, not something in the middle.  Season two originally aired in nothing like the production order we see on the DVDs, and this makes an interpretational difference I'm still trying to wrap my mind around.  A Raven friend once said that she didn't care whether season two ends on "Crazy Love" (aired order) or "Blood Money" (production order), because both end with Nick in Janette's arms.  However, I think it does matter.  In my imagination, it's still "Crazy Love" that moves Janette to leave, not "Blood Money."  I see the arguments for "Blood Money," as the milder of the two, better supporting the eventual explanation in "The Human Factor" flashbacks.  But Nick's failing to visit the Raven for months (cf. "Black Buddha, Part 1") has always seemed to me supported by the rawness and guilt of "Crazy Love."  I've been meaning to write a story about that for ages...

Ah, well.  The immortal DVDs trump mortal aired order, and here we are.  In need of episode titles handwritten across the DVD labels.

[Crossposted from forkni-l.  In reply to remarks on the second-season episode "Capitol Offense."]

Nick getting away with breaking lots of procedures and perhaps contributing negligently to homicide is just a "little bit"?

Well, yes, in "Capitol Offense," it is, because, as we know, the even bigger reality-defying problem in this episode is that Canada would never extradite someone who faces the death penalty.  It's against the law.  If "Capitol Offense" had happened in the real Toronto, the Laura Garfield character would probably be behind bars in a Canadian prison to this day, as I understand it.  They wouldn't ship her home until Texas gave up the death penalty -- which is to say, never.

But despite that infamous blunder nomination for the wall of shame, I really do love two things about "Capitol Offense."  ( Read more... )

The big project on Bright Knight over the past year has been developing the Character Directory (People of the FK Universe) and Stuff List (Places and Things of the FK Universe).

Both lists amuse me greatly, but if I have a pet of the two, it's the Stuff List.  The Character Directory shines a spotlight on cool tidbits, such as that "David" is the most common name in FK (seven uses), that Officer Lipinksi is a recurring character (three episodes), and that the anchorman who appears in "Spin Doctor" and "Only the Lonely" is named Steve Tate and so could easily be related to talk show host Jerry Tate (of "My Boyfriend is a Vampire").  But the Stuff Lists wraps me warmly in an FK so tangible, so vivid, that it's as if I've walked off screen and into a larger universe.  Surely the Kitten Club magazine in "Love You to Death" is related to the Kitten Channel that airs Foxy Boxing in "Hunters"?  The list of fictional companies reveals a story equipped with a yellow pages of canonical services.  And Azure is hardly the only restaurant in FK's fictional Toronto -- would you prefer to eat at Artie's with Schanke for the garlic special, perhaps, or Trattoria Roma with Don and Myra, Buckstar's with Tracy, Machelio's with the mob boss, or even Pizza Palace, where Natalie did not spend her twenty-eighth birthday?  What about the Cherry Street Restaurant diner or the Hog Heaven bar?  All completely canonical.  It's so neat!

Yes, I am easily amused.  :-)  I began both lists in August of 2006, taking notes one episode at a time from "Dark Knight" forward.  I slowed and temporarily stalled in third season, I'm afraid, but I'll pick up the pace again soon.  Once I've finished the series, I have a few episodes to go back and double-check (due to notes that I didn't always transcribe soon enough to remember the meaning of my own scribbled marginalia ~g~).

My script-based Forever Knight timeline was one of my first useful contributions to the fandom, I think.  Not that the justly popular and praised previous costume-derived timeline (originated by Valerie and completed by Dorothy; on which mine is based) is not wonderful -- it is! -- but you know how tangled FK can be.  I believe we discover interesting possibilities by setting the costume-derived timeline next to a script-dependent timeline, and playing with the canonical wiggle-room.  (For example, the flashback costumes of "Partners of the Month" and "Fatal Mistake" postdate the scripts' dialogue and stage directions by decades -- even centuries. Not to mention "Dead of Night" and "Last Act"!)  In cases of conflict, my timeline gives precedence to the script's text; Valerie and Dorothy's timeline gives precedence to costuming and props.  My timeline also attempts events mentioned but unseen (eg. in UTV, Lacroix suggests he saw Nick during the War of 1812).  FK canon is a jumble, and we love it that way. :-)

Years later, when I was writing "In the Light of Day," I put that flashback research into a Crusades/Canon Alignment timeline, matching early Forever Knight story elements (c.1193-1203, Nick is born) with history (1192, Richard II's peace treaty with Saladin).

It's probably time and past to update the layout and presentation of the original timeline.  It predates the ancient days in which I was still hand-coding the site (kudos to Frederic for the two years he archived it for me, before I learned HTML).

If you'd like to share feedback on any of the essays on the Bright Knight fansite, please leave a comment here.  (It seems curious to me that I have so few essays on the site, when intricate analysis on fkspoilr and forkni-l used to be my pride and joy.  Perhaps it's something I should get back to.)

[Crossposted from forkni-l. Backdated. In reply to discussion of how FK might fare in today's television market, especially given its low production costs.]

Cost always carries weight, and with cheaply-produced "non-scripted" shows as competition these days, perhaps the expense factor is even more pivotal than before.  This made me start thinking: what if FK were up for this season?  What if this were the year in which the same ideas had been pitched to the same major network with the same hole in its late-night schedule?  If we were looking at Crimetime after Primetime for the very first time, I think the question might be not whether it would be picked up -- after all, Moonlight -- but at what in FK's execution would be different in today's environment?

The biggest difference, I suspect, might be forensics.  ( Read more... )

[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 post in which someone observed that Lisa's "Fortress of Solitude" remark in the first-season episode "Father Figure" sounds scripted, and wondered whether it was a phrase she ran into in the comic books she reads.]

"Fortress of Solitude" is a famous phrase from Superman.

Lisa is comparing Nick's Toronto loft to Superman's arctic retreat, and thereby comparing lonely vampire hero Nick to lonely alien hero Superman, though of course she cannot know the breadth of applicability in her parallel.  Lisa could have picked up the phrase directly from the comics, or from the Christopher Reeve movies, which she would have seen on TV or VHS given her age, or any other Superman stories she had encountered, but she must surely know she's citing Superman canon, junior fangirl as she is.

Additionally, as the creators of Superman were Canadian, there may be a tongue-in-cheek element of national proprietariness on the part of the writers in employing that particular phrase in that way.

The "high-tech dungeon of doom," as Schanke calls Nick's loft, has the most attention paid to its "Fortress of Solitude" element in the first season, with the alarm system, camera, and shutters.  Later, this all seems more taken for granted.  The characters and the writers alike got used to it, perhaps.  Or does Lacroix's return affect the role of the loft in the story?

[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 post noticing that Nick was the "circles" and Schanke the "crosses" in the tic-tac-toe game in the first-season episode "Dying to Know You," and that perhaps the "circles" were more "harmless" for Nick.]

Oh, what a wonderful observation!  I'd never noticed that, and it is just so much fun!  Where I live, we usually say "X"s and "O"s in tic-tac-toe, not "crosses" and "circles," so perhaps that's why I've missed the association.  But Nick wouldn't miss it, would he?  Especially if Schanke were drawing his "X"s as "+"s.  ( Read more... )