Recently I’ve done several poll on the SFF Facebook group to determine the Top 5 of lots of different things. For the 24 days leading up to the 25th Anniversary (and the day itself, of course) I will be posting a new Top 5 list each day, using the highly scientific and unbiased results from those FB polls. I’ll try to make these posts short but I’m pretty long winded and like to talk so…they’re probably all going to be pretty long. Enjoy?
Top 5 Not So Bad Guys
What makes a hero? What makes a villain? Is it their basic personality, their personal history, or how they were raised? Or is it the choices they make that get them labeled as good or bad? The truth is that almost everyone in the real world is not one or the other. There are some heroes and some villains but most people are shades of gray. Here are some characters that may seem evil or good but the more you learn about them the more you see the shades of gray.
CAUTION: SPOILERS AHEAD
#5 - Victor Drake
Victor Drake, played by Ja'e DeSoto, is a character in The Gift Bearer. He starts out as the main villain and ends up as their greatest ally. How the hell does that happen? In the first season he is despicable - he seduces Peri, rapes her when she's drunk then drugs her so she'll forget what happened, then taunts Atlanta with that fact implying at one point that Peri is a slut. Let's be clear there is NOTHING redeemable about any of that. He is also constantly sexually harassing Atlanta. He goes out of his way to make them miserable as if he wants them to hate him.
So how the hell does he become their ally? One day the Echelon, the mysterious time traveling organization that employs Xavier, Camilla, and Crumby, decides to terminate the results of one of their experiments - the results being eliminated are the Silverstone sisters. Xavier is revealed to be the sisters secret sibling and by this time has quit the Echelon to protect his sisters. All this time the sisters (and by extension the audience) assumes that since Xavier is always helping the sisters he must be a good guy and the organization behind him is good too. It's not, it's just that their goals have more or less aligned until now. They can't outrun the powerful Echelon, but Crumby/Derek (who has also defected in order to save them) insists they go to the one person who can protect them: Drake.
The sisters actually say "hell no!" and clearly with good reason. Drake is their last option and when Crumby dies and Peri is mortally wounded they have no choice but to go to him for help. Unknown to the sisters he actually protects the wounded Peri from the Echelon before they even ask for his help. He made up his mind to protect them when Xavier secretly joined his side. That's when they discover that his evil bastard attitude is more or less just a front. The evil Drake is a part that he plays. He's a sorcerer who got his powers from the Forces of Darkness so he considers that acting evil is in his job description - and he's very good at it.
However, he's not actually a bad guy. He didn't rape Peri, although he did drug her and made her believe he did. Why did he do that? He knew the sisters were the result of an experiment by the Echelon and he hates the Echelon. He took out his anger at the Echelon on them - or more precisely he really didn't care about them one way or the other. Getting back at the Echelon was all he cared about. He agrees to take in the Silverstones and protect them in exchange for a mysterious company their mother left them in her will called Janus Technologies. Also he constantly sexually harassed Atlanta just because it really annoyed her and he though that was fun. It's not a good excuse but at least he wasn't actually lusting after her.
He's done some terrible things that can't be forgotten but his worst crime was against Peri and she forgives him even if he can't really forgive himself. He does have a conscience even if he tries to hide it and the people that seem to be his minions are actually people who also hate the Echelon that he has basically adopted. They're not minions they're family. The longer the Silverstones stay with Drake the more they see his good side, even if he will never be a "hero" he goes above and beyond to keep his promise and protect them.
As Drake says in one episode "Evil is a matter of perception and betrayal is a state of mind. They're feelings, not facts."
#4 - Talin DuFole
Talin, played by Chris Lamb, is the only one on this list who starts out as a good guy, turns into a bad guy, then turns back into a good guy all because of his psychic powers and a very evil headband. Okay, so maybe he's not a good guy - he is part of a mission to blow up another space ship with living people on it, but he's a pretty average, overall nice guy. With psychic powers.
When he gets a psionic device from his organization to try out he has no idea what disaster it will bring. It enhances his powers to a terrible extent and when the other ship gets blown up he feels the death of thousands of people and passes out. He wakes up insane, truly believing he is actually the Grim Reaper and proceeds to stalk everyone on the ship. He murders Chevron, makes Captain Vesper go so insane she can barely talk anymore and tries to kill Tilia. Tilia fights back, gets the headband off him, puts it on herself and has a psychic battle with him that she wins. He passes out again.
Eventually he wakes up only to find himself handcuffed and heavily bandaged. Once Tilia is sure that he's back to being himself she explains what happened. He is horrified and when Tilia leaves to greet people from a mysterious ship that docks onto theirs he escapes from the handcuffs, apologizes to Chevron and Vesper and then, unable to bear the guilt of what he's done, he kills himself. He's truly a tragic character who caused death and pain but he didn't mean to and is not really a bad guy. He's just a victim of circumstance.
#3 - Mordecai
Mordecai, played Michael D., is a character in both The Curse and Eidolon. In the Curse he is introduced as a powerful sorcerer who tricks Zandra into waking him up from a thousand years of deathlike sleep (after sexually harassing her). He disappears right after that but returns six months later as the millionaire CEO of a powerful company all of which he obtains by using his magic. Mike D. described Mordecai's character best when he said, "He's not really a bad guy, but he sure as hell isn't a good guy."
What does he want from Zandra when he returns? Well actually, he just wants a date. Why he feels the need to taunt her in her dreams and made her think she's going crazy by appearing everywhere but no one else can see him is a mystery. That is definitely NOT the way to go about getting a date. Now we know he never get married back when he was first alive.
He does have his reason, it's kind of a stupid reason but at least he has one. Basically only his soul mate can perform the spell to wake him up, but there's a law in the Sorcerer's Realm that you either have to marry the person who woke you up or kill him/her. It's a stupid real and there are reasons for it but I'm not going to get into that right now. Mordecai thinks Zandra is his soulmate and wants to marry her because he doesn't want to kill her. He's in love with her but only because she's his soulmate, that's not a good reason to get married, and he clearly as no idea how to woo a woman. He makes a stupid bet with Zandra to compete in a treasure hunt with her as the prize: if he wins she marries him, if he loses he stays out of her life forever.
After a heart-to-heart conversation with Maria he loses on purpose and never bothers her again. Twenty years later he's become the star of his own TV show after losing most of his magic power for not killing Zandra (he assumes, it's complicated). He joins Maria in her quest to undo Zelda's curse, but his motivation isn't to help Zelda it's to help Maria and make her fall in love with her. Although there is still some sexual harassment it's only towards Maria which doesn't make it better. He needs some sensitivity training. To be fair he grew up in the Middle Ages when it was okay, and also to be fair he no longer lives in the Middle Ages and now it's NOT okay.
Eventually he and Maria do get together, get married, and have a kid (actually they have three) and for complicated reasons he becomes the God of Dreams. Really all he wanted was to find his soulmate, fall in love, and get a happily ever after ending, which he does. The nice thing is that he falls in love with Maria before he finds out she's actually his real soulmate, so this time his love is real. If you want to learn more about their relationship you can check it in the
Characters 101 post about them.
#2 - General Leffridge
General Leffridge, played by Annamarie MacLeod, is a character in Pandora's Box. She's a complicated character because even though Zarina is the main villain, Leffridge isn't exactly a good guy. Yes, she did kick Zarina out of power and take over the Empire in order to save people from the tyrannical rule of the sociopathic Zarina. However she turned the Empire into the Army Faction and made it into a military dictatorship. Things get better but people still don't have freedom.
In the end she abandon's the Army Faction in order to save her son's life after he's kidnapped and held hostage by Leffridge's enemy Mira Mernecky, who she now realizes is actually Zarina who everyone thought was dead. As I said, she's complicated. You can read more about her and her motivations in the
Top 5 SFF Mothers I posted in honor of Mother's Day.
Leffridge never seems like a villain even though the facts suggest she is and the heroes fight against her like they fought against Zarina. One of the reasons for this is Annamarie's performance. Annamarie didn't know she was playing a villain. She assumed Leffridge was a hero because the heroes fought against Zarina and Leffridge also fought against Zarina so they must be on the same side. It makes sense in a way but it's completely wrong.
There's a great episode where Leffridge and Cat are trapped in a "cave" and we learn more about both of them. There are some great scenes where Leffridge's personality and motivation are revealed and it's clear how charismatic she is and how she can get so many people to follow her. Leffridge truly believes that she can change the world for the better if she is in charge. In her own mind Leffridge is not a villain, or even an antagonist, she is the hero.
#1 - General Darion De Carlo
General Darion De Carlo, played by Chris Hutchens, is a character in Pandora's Box. He starts out as a villain, hating the rebels. He's an army officer who is absolutely loyal to the Empire and to Zarina. When he's ordered to massacre the druids he does it. When he's given the chance to bring down the rebel leader Cat he takes it by kidnapping her best friend and holding her hostage. He also kidnaps Diyara, the sole survivor of the druid massacre, and although she is usually a peaceful person her resentment at the man who murdered her family leads to her psychically kicking his ass and making him understand that what he did wasn't justice it was a horrible massacre and he's guilty of murder.
That incident is the catalyst for his change. It makes him question everything and combined with how Zarina badly treats him his loyal starts to waver. There has been a General De Carlo since the Empire began and his family has been loyal to the Empire in general and the Empress personally for generations so it's really hard to Darion to go against all of that. He has to break generations of tradition in order to follow his conscience and his heart. He was taught that "the Empire always comes first" since he was born and turning his back on that is not easy. Betraying Zarina feels like he's betraying himself, but in reality he's actually just undoing generations of brainwashing and thinking for himself.
He eventually abandons Zarina and joins the rebels. It may seem like he does it in order to reunite with the love of his life but it's actually because he truly believes that people should have freedom and their lives should not be control by either the Empire or the Army Faction. For more about his character and details of his relationship with Cat check out this
Characters 101 post.
No comments:
Post a Comment