Each month this blog will feature
a character from one of the SFF productions. This month I’m going to talk about everyone’s favorite ditz
– the adorable Peri from The Gift Bearer, played by the wonderfully talented
Brittany Ann Whalen.
Persephone Silverstone,
known as Peri, is the youngest of three sisters who go galavanting through time
using a golden ball and a magical egyptain statue. She’s the baby of the family and is used to getting her own
way a lot of the time. However,
she also lives in the shadows of her older sisters who are both stronger and
smarter than she is.
SPOILER WARNING: The Gift Bearer is a complicated show with a lot of twists and turns. If you ever intend to watch the show, than I wouldn’t read this – it would take out all the mystery and ruin the surprises.
History
Peri was the last child born to
Mary Silverstone and grows up with her two older sisters, Minerva and Atlanta.
Her mother died when Peri was six, so she didn’t really remember her. However, her sisters always made sure
to tell her how awesome their mother was – smart and strong and beautiful. Out of all the sisters, Peri looks the
most like her mother, but knowing her mother was so incredible makes Peri a
little resentful – it makes her feel that if she’s not as talented as her
sisters or as amazing as her mother then she’s letting everyone down.
She grew up taking cues from her
sisters as to what to say and who to say it too in order to protect the
illusion that they were being cared for by their Aunt Camilla who in fact had
disappeared shortly before their mother died. They don’t want to be split up and put into foster homes so
the sisters somehow managed to fake their guardian with the help of an actress
and a large trust fund set up by their mother and operated by her lawyer,
Arthur Crumby. The sisters were
raised in a huge mansion that was in the countryside and pretty isolated, so
Peri didn’t have much interaction with people growing up. She’s a very social person so when it
was time to go to high school she insisted that Atlanta let her go to the
school in town instead of continuing to be home-schooled. That radically
changed her life and she quickly adapted to “life on the outside” as she called
it. Both her sisters were pretty
anti-social so Peri finally found something she was better at than her sisters
which made her really happy.
And the rest of the History
section is REALLY long so I’ve moved it to the end of this post.
Appearance
Peri is beautiful.
She has long brown hair that is naturally curly, but she straightens it,
and has blue eyes (well, hazelnut eyes in the book). She’s medium height, about
5’4 and has a sexy, curvy figure.
Her favorite color is pink, although she also likes red, gold, and
black. She is a fashionista and
always wants to be wearing the latest clothing and accessories. Even though her skin has a natural
golden tone to it, she likes to get a tan.
She loves to wear make-up and jewelry, and is often seen in
tight or semi-revealing clothing.
There’s one outfit in particular that ended up becoming a
running joke – a pair of black pants and a black tube top. It totally looked like Peri’s breasts
had been censored so it became known as the censor bar shirt.
She likes to play dress up when they time travel, but some
of the fashion trends of the past mystify her, such as the Gibson girl sort of
style of the Edwardian era (1901-1912). When Minerva styles her hair like that
she makes a face and says, “it looks like a flying saucer landed on my
head!” She also has trouble
figuring out how to wear a corset, and is understandably shocked when Minerva
shows her by putting it on her and then tightening the laces. Later in the same episode Peri faints
from the corset being too tight.
Being a girly girl, Peri loves the historical accessories
and looks darling in pretty much any period be it Greco-Roman, Medieval, or
American Civil War. Though I think
my personal favorite is the Regency ensemble with a bonnet, shawl, and parasol.
Personality
The best word to describe her is probably ditzy. At one point Minerva describes her as
“a bubble-headed blonde who just happens to be a brunette.” She can be easily distracted by shiny
objects or just…anything really, which can also cause her to be forgetful
sometimes. Whenever Brittany (and
eventually anyone) did something on the set that seemed a little flaky, ditzy,
or saying something silly that didn’t make sense, it was referred to as “having
a Peri moment”.
“Being the youngest, Peri is pretty much the least
experienced of the three, and that can lead people to believe that she’s
ditzy,” said Brittany Ann Whalen.
“Peri can sometimes act a little ditzy, but deep down inside she has
intelligence…that she won’t let herself believe that she has.” Peri is a lot smarter than anyone gives
her credit for, but she doesn’t really know how to find it. Atlanta’s the athlete, Minerva’s the
scientist/artist, and Peri is…?
She doesn’t know. She
doesn’t feel like she’s special compared to her sisters, so she covers it up by
pretending to long down on them for the one way in which she is superior to
them – social skills.
“Despite the fact that she loves her sisters,” Brittany
added, “Peri can be a little self-involved. She does things for her own benefit without realizing the
outcome for other people - even though she means well.” She suffers from the typical youngest
child syndrome of being spoiled by everyone else. She doesn’t have to work hard or be smart because her
sisters will do it for her. She’s
used to having other people pick up the slack and that’s one thing that she
learns through her adventures in time-travelling – self-reliance. Peri’s pretty good at getting herself
into trouble, and her sisters won’t always be around to get her out of it.
Another thing that Peri adores is animals. The sisters have at least three cats –
two of which are seen with Peri – and she showers the statue with sweet
attention, calling it cute and adorable.
The statue, in return, develops a friendship with Peri and although
Berry prefers Minerva overall, it clearly makes Peri its second choice. When Minerva goes insane, Berry latches
on to Peri instead of her.
Overall though, Peri is sweet, kind, and compassionate. She is a romantic at heart, a dreamer,
and loves fairytales with happy endings.
She starts out being very naive, but is a lot smarter and stronger by
the end of the series, having learned to believe in herself. She goes from waiting for her Prince
Charming to sweep her off her feet and carry her to a castle to fighting beside
her ex to save her sister and destroy the evil company that is trying to kill
them all. It’s sort of like
Cinderella goes to the ball, ends up in Hell, and returns with a machine gun.
Abilities
Her best ability is her good social skills. She’s the life
of a party and the heart of the group.
She good at making friends and helping people when they’re in need. In return she is well-liked by most
people she meets and is adored by her siblings.
She also has the potential to be able to really kick some
ass, given how violent she can be when provoked. And she learns how to sneak up on someone and get the jump
on them as she proves in Episode 11 when she attacks Xavier.
Relationships -
Allies & Enemies
FAMILY
Atlanta Silverstone is the oldest of the three sisters and is
basically a combination of sister and mother to Peri. She is very over-protective of both her sisters, but
especially of Peri since she sees Peri as being more helpless than
Minerva. Peri doesn’t like the
fact that Atlanta is bossy and bitchy a lot, but she needs someone to make her
accountable for things in her life such as grades and the guys she chooses to
date (you fell down on that on Lani).
Because of the mothering aspect they have a complicated relationship. As
Peri gets older she needs less of the mother and more of the sister and Atlanta
doesn’t know how to be that with her.
She will always see Peri as the baby of the family and think of her as
being younger than she is.
How
Lani interacts with Peri is totally different from how she interacts with
Minerva, and shows that she thinks of Peri as a kid who needs to be protected,
rather than as a young woman who needs to be informed in order to make her own
decisions. Their relationship gets
a little strained for awhile after Peri accidentally shoots Atlanta in the
arm. It really was an accident,
and it’s a good thing that Peri’s a lousy shot because she was aiming for the
head.
Minerva Silverstone is the middle sister and she and Peri have
multiple levels to their relationship.
They often insult each other and get into arguments about whether it’s
better to be smart or social.
Minerva enjoys being weird and freaking Peri out with her odd behavior
because she tends to get a better reaction with Peri than with Atlanta. They don’t seem to have much in common
beyond being sisters, but they actually work very well together as a team when
they need to. Minerva tries not to
baby Peri, since she’s totally spoiled by Atlanta, and the result is that Minerva
doesn’t talk down to her and treats her more like an adult than anyone else
does.
As much as they may quibble and quarrel, they love each
other, and Peri brings out the motherly and protective side of Minerva as
well. When the sisters arrive back
from their mission to find Peri dozing on the couch in her evening gown,
Minerva’s the one who immediately realizes that Peri is drunk. She takes care of Peri when Peri throws
up, and tucks her into bed, promising not to tell Atlanta what really happened. Then Minerva sits in a chair, staying
in the room until Peri falls asleep.
The look on Minerva’s face as she turns off the light says it all – you hurt my sister and got her drunk. I don’t know what else happened yet,
but when I do I’ll find you, then rip out your spine and turn it into a
necklace.
Camilla is her aunt.
Her personality is a lot like Atlanta’s – a bitchy, bossy older sister
who will protect her own when she can.
We don’t know what kind of interaction she had with Peri when she was growing
up, but from things she says, about how sweet Peri is, it’s clear that she
adored her. Camilla convinces
Xavier to help the sisters escape when they meet them during the Salem Witch
Trials, telling him that they are her nieces and she’s not going to let them
die. Ironically, she’s the one who
ends up leading the Termination Unit when the Echelon wants them dead, and she
shoots Peri – accidentally while fighting with Xavier. She feels guilty about it, upset about
hurting her nieces – especially Peri.
When Camilla turns on them the first time and says she hated them, Peri
refuses to believe that. Peri is
able to understand how and why Camilla acts the way she does sometimes, because
she sees the similarities between Camilla and Atlanta.
Xavier is a guy they keep meeting as they travel through time
looking for their aunt, who works with him as a fellow agent. He meets them completely out of order
which makes his reactions to them, and relationships with them, a lot more
complicated. When they were tied
up in Salem, Peri told Atlanta to shut up then asked Xavier nicely to let them
go. He didn’t, but was clearly
amused. He saw her as a charming idiot, a naive girl who was sweet but in over
her head.
As they’re relationship grew he came to like and respect her
more. She became smarter and
stronger, able to attack like Atlanta while still being diplomatic when
necessary. He became
over-protective of her and was like a big-brother to her before either of them
knew they were actually related.
The scene that really brings it home is when he is comforting her after
she confronted Drake and found out the truth (or what he claimed was the
truth).
You can see the
brother-sister bond forming and it just gets stronger after that. When she attacks him in the parking
garage, thinking he’s some weirdo stalking her (well, he kind of is), he ends
up with a sprained ankle. She
takes him back to the dorm and bandages him up. When he ends up accidentally shooting Peri while fighting
with Camilla he is devastated. He
will do anything to save his sisters, especially Peri who is the kindest of the
sisters and who brings out his softer side more than anyone else.
Mary Silverstone is her mother. Since she died when Peri was young, Peri doesn’t really
remember her much. Her sisters
always tell her how amazing – smart, talented, athletic – she was, so when she
actually meets her mother at the Parthenon she doesn’t recognize her. Her mother, who calls herself Venitia,
is a total klutz, a little shy, and kind of ditzy. In short, she’s a lot like Peri.
When Atlanta sees Venitia with Camilla she immediately
realizes who Venitia really is and tells Peri. Peri is surprised, but delighted to have a chance to meet
her mother and to discover that her mother was a lot more like her then she
ever thought. However, she meets
her mother before her mother has children and Mary becomes incredibly awesome
because she knows that she can be.
For Peri it was like being told that Spiderman is your father, then
meeting Peter Parker before realizing that he and Spiderman are the same guy.
Arthur Crumby is her mother’s best friend and the family
lawyer. He helps take care of the
sisters after her mother’s death and is like a father to the girls. However, the first on screen interaction
between Peri and Crumby makes it seem like both of them are annoyed by each
other. This is because Crumby
didn’t become her father like she wanted.
He could have married their mother, or asked to have custody of the
sisters when they had trouble finding Camilla, but he didn’t.
Eventually the sisters learn that
Crumby is actually a fake name and the man they knew as Crumby is really Dr.
Derek Wilson who is a time-traveler working for the same organization their
aunt (and mother) works for. As
with everyone else in the family, Peri brings out the protector in Crumby and
she is like a daughter to him, although sometimes she does annoy him a little.
Lugi, the Italian Deli-man is revealed to be Peri’s
father. Her mother was supposed to
get it on with Andrew Carnegie but was seduced by Lugi instead. In the original Season Two, Lugi turns
out to be Apollo in disguise. Peri
has the unique claim in the family to be their mother’s only
bastard-love-child.
THE DRAKES
Victor Drake is a twisted puppy and he and Peri have a very
screwed up relationship. She met
him in a library where he introduced himself as Daniel, courted and romanced
her to gain her trust, then got her drunk so she would tell him everything he
needed to know about her family.
Then he supposedly had sex with a very drunk sixteen-year-old, drugged
her so she wouldn’t remember anything, and dropped her off at home before
disconnecting his phone and never talking to her again. He’s a total bastard. So they dated, he screwed over her in
multiple ways, then turns out to be another time-traveler from a rival group to
the one her aunt is with.
She
hates him, her stupidity irritates him, and they generally don’t get
along. When the tables turn and
Peri is shot, the family goes to him for help and Peri discovers he lied about
most of what happened and is only a jerk because he was really trying hard to
be a jerk. She forgives him, she
still annoys him but only because he’s not used to being forgiven for the kinds
of things he did to her, and in the end it looks like he’s going to be her
brother-in-law. Messed. Up.
Hela is one of Drake’s “associates” and is a bitchy bad ass who
can back it up, unlike Atlanta.
She and Peri don’t really have much interaction and once they are on the
same side they seem to get along okay, which is good because Hela becomes her
sister-in-law.
Tez is…um…well, Tez is Tez. He’s another of Drake’s “associates” and had a fling with
Minerva before the show starts. He
has a dry, sarcastic humor then uses to hide his darker side. I think he sort of viewed Peri as any
average guy views the younger sister of a girl he’s dating. A slightly condescending pat on the
head comes to mind. Once they’re
on the same side they get along just fine, and he becomes her brother-in-law
(damn, that’s three for three with her sibs and the Drakes).
Loki is another of Drake’s “associates”, is Hela’s younger
brother, and is totally flipping insane.
He was used by the Echelon as guinea pig and basically had his personality
inverted. He used to be a quiet,
shy boy who wouldn’t hurt a fly and now’s he a sugar-crazed maniac who likes to
kill people. Her first sort of
one-on-one encounter with Loki is when he and Morgana were chasing and shooting
at her through the halls of the student center. Once they’re on the same side they seem to be okay
though. Weird.
Morgana is the last of Drake’s “associates”. She was the older, adopted sister of
Genna, who was one of the Echelon’s experimental children. Peri and her family kidnapped her
sister, thinking that she was working for Drake and was trying to kill
Genna. They knock her out and
leave her in an alley where the Echelon arrive, see her, think the same thing
that the Silverstones did and take her back to their base. They interrogate Morgana, then take her
back to her own time to kill her with her parents and sister. Morgana escapes and after that joins
Drake. Once Peri and the others
realize what’s really happened they are so sorry, but it’s too late. Once they’re on the same side, Morgana
forgives them, since for her the incident was a long time ago and she understands. So after that she and Peri get along
okay.
OTHERS
General is with the Echelon. She is the second-in-command of the Termination Unit and
leads the charge against the Silverstones, determined to wipe them out. She sees them only as a failed experiment,
not as people. The experiment
itself disgusts her and she is only too happy to make sure it’s completely
terminated with no loose ends.
Taget is the lawyer who steps in to take over the Silverstones
case when Crumby disappears. He is
not a time-traveler but is technically an agent with the Echelon, he’s just an
agent from that time recruited to work for them in that time (if that makes
sense). He goes rogue to help the
Silverstones and join Drake. He
and Peri don’t really have much interaction but they seem to get along okay.
Princess Cathrina is the suicidal medieval princess that Peri
accidentally almost kills.
History…continued
The show starts when Peri is
sixteen. The day they get the statue starts off like any other day for
them. When Peri gets home they
open a box that had arrived mysteriously and was addressed to Aunt Camilla. Since Aunt Camilla was dead and gone,
or so they thought, she opened the box and found the Gift Bearer statue
inside. They don’t really know
what to do with it, but Peri points out that it could be used as a doorstop or
a jewelry holder and asks if she can have it. The others agree and Peri hurries to her room to change
clothes.
When she gets to her room she
sets the statue on the desk, then uses it as a holder for her watch, her car
keys, and a gold ring. She changes and leaves, then has tea with her sisters
where she is ordered back up to her room to study for a history test (she had
failed the last one). Returning to
her room, she attempts to study but fails, and then gets distracted by a
shimmering gold ball sitting on the statue’s tray. She is confused because all of her stuff is gone, but she
doesn’t really care since the items can be replaced and (as she says) “…besides
– this is shiny!”
She goes back to studying, and
plays with the ball while talking out loud to the cat about how stupid history
is. While holding the ball
she says it would be better to see history then to read about it and suddenly
there’s a flash of light, a dizzying tunnel of color and she arrives in a field
where a bunch of soldiers are firing guns. She somehow assumes it’s the crusades (which it’s clearly
not), thinks they’re shooting at her (which they’re clearly not) and clutches
the ball while wishing to go home.
There is a flash of light and she returns back to her bedroom. She accuses Minerva of playing a trick
on her and her sisters make fun of her, then fight over the ball, it “goes
off”, and they end up during the Salem Witch trials.
Peri is declared a demon for
wearing tight clothes and pants, arrested, tied up, and interrogate. A man named Shaw tries to find out the
secret magic of the ball and she gives him a crash course in curling and waffle
irons. Her sisters save her, but
they all end up being caught again by a man who interrogates them in a
different way. He demands to know
why they came and how they got there, revealing that he himself is a time-traveler.
The sisters are left tied up and
miserable, waiting to be tried and executed by being burned at the stake the
next day. They try to figure out
what happened and come to the conclusion that Peri unwittingly made a time
travel device by combining a watch, car keys, and a gold ring on the tray of
the statue – thereby discovering the statue is actually magic. Peri is the reason they have the gold
ball – none of their adventures would be possible without that, so kudos to
Peri for using a priceless antique as a jewelry holder!
During their trip to the past,
Atlanta and Minerva meet their Aunt Camilla. The sisters need to find their a substitute for their Aunt
Camilla because Crumby is starting to get suspicious about not having seen her
for a few years. The sisters
decide, upon returning home, that since Aunt Camilla is still alive and is a
time-traveler that they’ll keep travelling through time until they can find
her, kidnap her, and force her to come home and be their guardian until Atlanta
turns twenty-one.
They start researching the Gift
Bearer statue and send Peri to the library to check out as many books on Egyptian
history, art, and mythology as she can find. Why they send Peri to get books, no one knows. I guess since it involves talking to
actual people they figure she should do it. While at the library she literally bumps into a guy – Daniel
Davidson. He helps her pick up her
books, and they chat. He’s rich,
handsome, charming, and although he’s obviously older than she is, he’s
flirting up a storm with her and she flirts back. From then on she goes to the library as often as possible
(which should have been a red flag for Atlanta) to meet up with her “library
lover”, as Minerva calls him.
Daniel romances her and she falls
in love with him. By the time the
others are ready to go on their next time-travel adventure, she’s over it and
just wants to be with Daniel.
Atlanta reluctantly agrees to let her go on a date with him, to dinner
and the opera (ha ha ha, like Peri would actually like the opera) as long as
she back home by 10pm. The sisters
go on their mission and Peri goes on her date.
It’s clear that Peri is
pretending to be older than she is when Daniel orders champagne, then later
wine, with dinner and pours her a glass.
He remarks that he assumes she’s old enough to drink legally and she
says she is (bad Peri, bad!). He proceeds
to get her totally and completely drunk, while pumping her for information
about her family – including the fact that they’ve been faking their guardian
this whole time – and eventually talking about the Gift Bearer statue. After she’s so drunk she can barely
walk, he suggests they skip the opera and head back to his place, where he
clearly intends to pump her in a different way (oh my!). In a brief scene in his bedroom we see
her sleeping in his bed, apparently naked, and he wakes her up and forces her
to drink something else, then tells her to get dressed so he can take her home.
This is obviously a critical
point in Peri’s life, because it’s the first time she’s fallen in love – though
she was clearly more in love with the idea of being in love then actually in
love – and she honestly believes he loves her too. From her point of view they had a wonderful evening where
she got pretty drunk, and then she wakes up the next morning in bed with a
horrible hangover. She barely remembers leaving the restaurant and doesn’t
remember anything after that. All
she knows is that suddenly Daniel won’t return her calls and with a day or two
his number is disconnected.
Minerva took a sample of her blood when she was drunk and analyzed it,
finding out that he not only got her drunk he also drugged her so she wouldn’t
remember what happened.
Understandably, Peri feels used and extremely upset.
Her sisters comfort her while
declaring that they will kill that creep if they ever meet him again, then they
all decide to take a vacation to Ancient Greece – well, Ancient Roman Greece so
Peri can get an “authentic toga tan”. While there they meet up mother before she had them
which causes all kinds of miscommunication and confusion, but allows Peri to
finally get to know her mother and Peri and her mom get along great.
After what happened with Daniel
and meeting her mother, Peri starts maturing. She starts getting bolder, fighting back when she would
previously have just cried.
Instead of a throwing a tantrum because she didn’t want to do her
homework, she throws a tantrum because Camilla got away again, despite Peri’s hard
work to stop her including kidnapping their ex-lawyer and using a dart gun to
shoot Camilla with a tranquilizer – so she still throws tantrums, but about
different and more important things.
Then the girls get kicked out of
their mansion and have their assets frozen by their corporate rival, a man
named Victor Drake, and end up hacking the computer system at the nearest
college to get themselves enrolled so they can use their college fund, which he
hasn’t been able to touch. It
sounds stupid but if you watch the shows…well it’s still silly but it seems to
work. Anyway, they keep increase their efforts to find Camilla and bring her
back so they can reclaim their property (just watch the show…this is a bad
summary).
When the sisters time-trip gets high
jacked while on a mission to the 1820s, they get split up and land in a
different time on their own. Peri
ends up in 1325 and has neither the gold ball nor the statue, so she’s really
screwed. She also ends up crash
landing into a princess who is threatening to kill herself and accidently
pushes the princess onto the knife and kills her, so she’s doubly screwed. Suddenly realizing she killed someone,
she promptly faints.
She wakes up in a strange room,
hears footsteps coming closer to her door, grabs a heavy mirror, ducks into a
corner, then smashes the mirror over the head of the guy who enters, knocking
him down. The guy turns out to be Xavier – the time-traveler they first met at
the Salem Witch Trials and have met multiple times since then. He takes her to see the others –
Crumby, her mom’s lawyer who also turned out to be a time-traveler, and
Camilla, and they read her the riot act for messing up their plans. She demands to know where her sisters
are, they have no clue but they offer to help her get home if she helps them by
pretending to be Princess Cathrina – the woman she
accidentally-almost-killed.
They’re trying to marry the Princess to a powerful prince for some
reason that isn’t explained, and she agrees as long as she doesn’t actually
have to get married.
The Prince turns out to be
Daniel, her ex-boyfriend, and she finds out that Daniel is really Victor Drake,
that he only pretended to like her to get information from her to use against
them, and that he took advantage of her while she was drunk. Oh, and that Atlanta knows all about it
but didn’t tell Peri. Peri is humiliated,
heartbroken, and pissed – in that order.
Being forced to confront him and find out what happened is so upsetting
that she runs out of the room and goes someplace to hide and cry. Xavier comforts her, listens to her,
and helps her be strong. Together
they decide to humiliate Drake at the wedding and then kick his ass.
As the wedding begins, Atlanta
crash lands in the middle of the ceremony, creating chaos. Atlanta lands on Drake, knocking them
both down, then jumps up as soon as she sees Peri and rushes to protect her
sister. Peri proceeds to punch
Atlanta and yell at her. Xavier
attacks Drake. It’s a mess. In the end the sisters end up back in
their dorm where Atlanta discovers everyone is pissed at her, and Peri yells
out her, then refuses to see her for a while.
Being sisters, they eventually
they all work it out, and continue travelling. When travelling produces no results they decide to take a
break and concentrate on school.
Peri didn’t even finish high school and didn’t do so well when she was
there, but traveling through time and with everything that has happened to her
she’s become a better student and actually really enjoys history now. She starts to discover that she’s not
as stupid as she thought she was.
She also proves she’s stronger than she was when she attacks a guy who’s
stalking her. He turns out to be Xavier
and she manages to sprain his ankle when she tackles him.
Wow, this is so long. Okay, I’ll try to summarize
faster. Stuff happens and the
sisters find out that they are the result of a scientific experiment – known as
Project Genesis - orchestrated by their mother, and that they all have separate
fathers who are famous historical figures. They still don’t know who their fathers are and don’t find
out until the end. They also
discover that Xavier is their brother and was the first child born in the
experiment, and that the group who created them – the Echelon – now wants to
terminate the project by killing them.
With Crumby’s help, the siblings
run through time trying to save the other children of the experiment while
being hunted by the Termination Unit which is lead by their Aunt Camilla. While fighting to save a girl named
Genna, Peri is shot in the gut by Camilla and Xavier who are fighting over a
gun. The siblings scramble to her
side and get her to safety but they can’t take her to a hospital without
leading the Echelon right to them.
While the other siblings try to figure out what to do, Peri hangs onto
life as best she can. She lies on the bed, in a haze of pain, clinging to life,
and still manages to tell Xavier while he’s protecting her, that it’s not his
fault that she got hurt. This set
of scenes, this whole moment of Peri being mortally wounded, makes it clear
that she is the heart of the group.
She’s the baby of the family, the sweetest and kindest of them, and
although she’s gotten a lot stronger and smarter as she’s matured, she is still
seen as the one most in need of protection. She drifts in and out of sleep and is completely unaware of
what is going on around her. At
one point she actually dies, and later describes what happened from her
perspective.
She wakes up to find herself in
her old home that Drake now owns.
Her wounds have been magically healed by Drake, who made a deal with her
siblings to join him in exchange for him healing Peri and for his protection
from the Echelon. Although things
are tense in the house, they’re a lot better then she would have expected them
to be given the fact that they had been enemies for so long. However, Drake was not against them he
was against the Echelon and saw them as an extension of it.
After her brief journey to the
afterlife, she sees and understands so much more than she did before. She knows that Drake lied to her about
what happened the night he got her drunk just to make the sisters hate him
because he hated them. She also
realizes how stupid she was before the whole thing started. She has a speech where she says she’s
grateful to the Echelon for killing her, and thanks Drake for bring her back to
life saying she won’t waste it this time around. This is the most important ordeal in her life and she
becomes an adult and is wiser than any of her siblings after that (not smarter,
but wiser).
Unfortunately, after this moment
of enlightenment, she doesn’t have a lot to do in the series. She just hangs out helping wherever
she’s needed. Even in the original
second season (that was written but never filmed) she didn’t have a lot to
do. Although she did end up
becoming a priestess of Baste, discovering that her father was really Apollo,
and starts channeling the triple-spirit of the Gift Bearer statue so…I guess
that’s something. But that doesn’t
happen in the TV show, it’s just the alternate version of events that we were
planning to film before Yibble imploded.
Here is a scene from the original Season Two where Peri is
forced to confront the one person she despises most in the Cave of Unresolved
Issues, and can’t leave until she’s faces that person and deals with those
issues:
Setting: Peri's Bedroom in the Silverstone
Mansion
Peri
walks in and sees a woman sitting on her bed, reading a teen magazine. The girl's clothes are ultra trendy and
reminiscent of the old Peri. The
girl lowers the magazine and Peri gasps.
Peri stares at her and smiles, tossing the magazine aside and gesturing
towards the bed.
OLD PERI: Come
on, sit down! We can paint each
other's toenails!
(Peri
just stares at herself, then looks at her with disgust)
NEW PERI: The
Forces of Darkness are waiting to destroy us all and all you can think about is
painting your toenails?
OLD PERI:
Duh! Like I'm supposed to
care about that?!? It's not like
it affects me.
NEW PERI: You could die!
OLD PERI:
So? Ooh! You wanna come shopping with me?!? I need to buy a tank top cause there's
this really cute guy at school -- you remember Tim right? -- anyway, he stopped
by my locker the other day and--
NEW PERI:
Hello?!? I'm talking about
the Apocalypse here!
OLD PERI: The
what?
NEW PERI: The
end of the World?!?
(Old
Peri stares at her blankly)
NEW PERI: You
know? Judgment Day? Bang bang, everyone's dead?
OLD PERI: Judgment
Day? Isn't that like some new
band? I think I bought one of
their CD's.
NEW PERI:
(stares at her in disbelief, pause pause) Drake's right!
You are really dumb! Like
dumb dumb! SUPER dumb!
(Old
Peri looks at her with an evil smirk)
OLD PERI: Take
a good look in the mirror, girlfriend, cause I'm not the only one.
(New
Peri stares at her and a look of realization slowly dawns on her face. She smiles)
NEW PERI: No,
because I'm not like that anymore.
I care about something other then myself! Unlike you!
OLD PERI: You
are me!
NEW PERI: No,
I've changed. I'm not you
anymore. And you know what? I'm glad! I don't think I ever really liked you anyway! You're nothing but a spoiled, stupid
bitch!
OLD PERI: Oh
and I suppose you're better then me?
NEW PERI: yeah,
I am. Like I said -- I'm not you
anymore.
(the
door behind her suddenly swings open and New Peri turns to look at it. When she looks back at the bed Old Peri
has disappeared. Peri smiles and
walks out)
And just for fun here's some fan art stuff:
Ah, we were so young back then – so innocent and naïve. Well, I was. I knew about swear words of course, but I good little girl
and never (or rarely) used them. So naturally I didn’t put them into my
scripts. They weren’t really
necessary, and most of the actors at the time might not have been comfortable
saying them. Mostly it just didn’t
occur to me to use them since they were not a part of my vocabulary. The worst word used during this time on
screen was “damn”, not “god damn”, that came later. In fact I didn’t even know how to spell “damn it” when I
wrote the script for Destiny and spelled it as “dammit”. Yeah, that got a lot of laughs – worst
part is I didn’t know why they were laughing until I spell check. 
Some of the actors did swear after messing up a line or
after multiple takes (multiple takes of a single line is enough to make any
swear, honestly), but those were often college
people. They were like, all grown
up and stuff. I think if there had
been swearing on the set or in productions in general then Frumpy Gets It would
have held the record, considering how chaotic it was. 
Actually, that was the first scripted swear in Pandora’s
Box. The first on screen swear is
actually a few moment before when Turlo betrays her, Brother Bob calls him an
traitor and Cat replied “Traitor?!? Try asshole!”. Those lines were added in on the set
though. I’m not sure if there was
any swearing in the three-part story Together Again, but there might have
been. Frankly, the fact that
neither Cat, who was a general in the army for several years, nor any of the
other soldiers really swear much if at all is very unrealistic. Not that realism is what we were going
for overall, unless most of the people in the future wear vests and tan Ford
Mercurys from the late 80s are the majority of cars to survive the
apocalypse. 
At one point the person I mentioned before who used the word
“fuck” so many times that I could pay off my college loans if I had a penny for
every time she said it, looked at me somewhat shocked. I asked what was wrong and she said she’d never heard me
swear before – let alone swear so much.
I think I asked where’d she had been because I’d been swearing for a
while by that point. It was just a
funny, eye-opening moment to realize how slowly it had crept in and become a
part of my vocabulary – the same way it slowly invaded my scripts. The first season of The Gift Bearer
(Episodes 1-14) had quite a few swear words in it – all the tried and true ones
like “fuck”, “shit”, “asshole”, “god damn”, etc. But I still tried to keep it to only one or two per episode
because I didn’t want to have to bleep much out, and some episodes (especially
the early ones) didn’t really have swears at all. 
And it just kept going. Dream Chasers, filmed in the fall of 2002, has swear words
wherever I felt like putting them.
However, as in most of my scripts, there’s one or two characters who
swear a lot – usually having a favorite swear word – and the other characters
don’t really swear much. In Dream
Chasers the character of Marion Smith was very fond of the F-word, and Zoey
enjoyed “asshole” (probably in multiple ways – oh my!). The interesting thing about shooting DC
is that one of the actors did not want to swear at all – even a little bit -and
asked me if she could either cut out the words or change them to something
different. For example instead of
saying “she’s a bitch”, she said “she’s a rat”. 
The next production was Eidolon which began pre-production
in the spring of 2003 and finished filming in the spring of 2005. Since it seemed less likely that it
would be aired, at least not for a while, I didn’t bother censoring
myself. Overall I’d say the
swearing is on par with Dream Chasers, however the actors did a lot of swearing
on set after messing up which just shows how much we’ve all been corrupted by
the evil vocabulary of college and the “real world”. Probably about half the
swearing that occurs on screen in Eidolon was actually added by the actors,
either on purpose or without realizing it. 
At this point the swearing seems to have started
decreasing. I don’t think there’s
any swearing in Cursed Destiny – 2006, and minimal swearing in Quatrain –
2007-08. There’s some swearing in
the short films produced in 2009 to the present day, but not a lot and it’s
always situation or character specific – such as in the dark, modern version of
Little Red Riding hood where Red becomes a prostitute being chased by a bounty
hunter. Swearing occurred in that
one. 
