Fans of 24: There's More To Peter Weller Than His Dirty Dealings With Sentox Gas


24 watchers have been treated to a real festival of bad guys this season, including the suave Julian Sands and familiar-to-horror-TV-fans-from-cult-favorite-Forever-Knight Geraint Wyn Davies, but sizing up as the best of the bad is the character of Christopher Henderson, as played by the always great Peter Weller. Never anything less than cool, intelligent, and fascinating, Weller's over 30-year career is full of terrific performances than his new 24 fans -- and we all love a bad guy, right? -- shouldn't miss.

Let's hope everybody remembers Weller's high-tech and heartbreaking performance as the titular Robocop in 1987's Paul Verhoeven-directed science fiction masterwork. Violent, disturbing, and fascinating, Robocop's success owed much to Weller's nuanced yet controlled work as Alex Murphy, a young police officer, slain in the line of duty -- and what a brutal sequence that is -- who is reborn into a super-powerful cyborg body. What happens when Murphy's memories of his left-behind family start to come to the surface is what gives Robocop its humanity; everything else is a bang-up full-bore action movie that has few equals. Not for widdle girls!

I'd also recommend Weller's obsessed -- and can you blame him? -- turn as an apartment dweller who does battle with a gigantic rat living behind his walls. 1983's Of Unknown Origin is a neat little urban monster movie; with any lesser actor this might have been a lousy TV-level movie, but Peter Weller's unshakable intelligence moves this creepy premise to something grand.

Weller's also great in another early '80s domestic thriller entitled Firstborn. He's the seemingly perfect and handsome new husband of a woman (Teri Garr), but she quickly learns he's a sadistic bastard, and it's up to her teenage son to try to get his mom out of this dangerous situation. Firstborn doesn't seem to be released on DVD at the present time, but perhaps it'll play on TV. Watch for it; you'll enjoy this early bloodcurdlingly evil glimpse of Weller's talent.

Connoisseurs of the completely weird won't want to miss Weller in director David Cronenberg's imaginative 1991 adaptation of William S. Burroughs fantastical novel Naked Lunch. It's a crazy ride and viewers desiring the straight and narrow need not -- indeed should not -- check it out, but I think you'll admire the vision and sheer audacity of making a movie so totally uninterested in pandering to a wide audience. You won't soon forget the world of Naked Lunch.

My favorite early Weller performance is in the delightful cult science fiction favorite The Adventures of Buckaroo Banzai Across the 8th Dimension, from 1984. A gleeful, off-center, unceasingly cool and completely charming Weller plays Buckaroo, a brilliant surgeon/rock star/inventor who, along with his band, the Hong Kong Cavaliers, and his public posse the Blue Blaze Irregulars, battles to foil the invasion of Earth by the evil Red Lectroids. With a cast jam-packed full of familiar faces -- Jeff Goldblum, Ellen Barkin, John Lithgow, Clancy Brown, Christopher Lloyd, Carl Lumbly, and many more -- Buckaroo Banzai has gathered a legion of fans devoted to this nutty and lovable movie. Gets even better with repeated viewings! Absolutely check this one out!

When you're writing about 24 you better work fast, because, especially so this season, characters are dropping like flies! Let's hope Peter Weller and the dastardly Christopher Henderson are around till the bitter end.

Enjoy 24 Monday nights on Fox, and on Global up in Canada.



If you -- like I did -- fall in love with Buckaroo Banzai, be sure to check out this terrific fan website.





 
The Season's Already Started --

Don't forget to check out my 2005 Fall Network Schedule Information and Analysis. My reviews are on their way; my favorite show so far is WB's Supernatural, which surprises the heck out of me a little!

If you're keeping track, several shows have received their full-season orders after only a few airings, among them How I Met Your Mother (which I think is fairly awful), Ghost Whisperer, Criminal Minds, Bones, The War at Home, My Name is Earl, Everybody Hates Chris, Prison Break, and thankfully, my fave Supernatural.

Happy viewing!

 
Beam Him Up


If the death of James Doohan doesn�t get me back onto this blog, nothing will! It�s been harder than I anticipated to try to keep blogging under the strain of my slower-than-slow internet access, but I�m back and will be doing regular updates from now on.

As one of the millions of people who love Star Trek, the death of one of the key cast members of the original Enterprise is a sad day indeed. I hope that no one will argue, at this point, whether Star Trek is the most important show ever to appear on television. It quite simply has changed the world -- all for the better -- and certainly was the show that changed my own life. It was Star Trek that got me into a career in television, specifically by being the program that motivated me to call my local TV station and complain, inquire, and find out that there was indeed some kind of job where you might have to talk to people about TV, about Star Trek -- and I knew that it was in a department at the station called Programming. Well, that was it. I knew, even in high school, that I knew as much about TV as that guy on the phone, and that I had to do that for a living. And I did, and loved almost every single minute of it. All because of Star Trek. All because I cared so much about TV, and what should be on TV, and what people wanted to watch, that I could not fathom why that local channel had taken it off the air.

I hadn�t even been much of a fan of the show during its original network run; I fell in love with Trek through reruns, reruns that I still watch now everyday on Space, the very good science fiction-oriented channel up here in Canada. Star Trek is simply one of the most important things to ever happen to me, and I don�t know what my life would have been like without it.

So losing Scotty is a big deal. A sad deal. Not because you expect people to live forever, but because it�s always, always, such a cold, hard reality when they pass, and not any less so when it�s a performer you�ve spent more than half your lifetime knowing. I�ve loved reading the quotes where he said that he used to fret about being known as Scotty for the rest of his life, until his dentist, four years after the original series went off the air, said he ought to just go with the flow and enjoy it, which Doohan obviously did.

James Doohan�s continuing enthusiasm for the Scotty and for Star Trek, and the unquestioned iconic status that his character achieved is quite a legacy. Wouldn�t any of us love to be fondly recalled whenever that ultimate feets-do-your-stuff phrase pops out of somebody�s mouth. "Beam Me Up, Scotty" isn�t about the person who says it, it�s about that lovable, hard-working Starfleet officer we hope is working the transporter for us. He never let any of us who love Star Trek down, and we�ll never forget him.