Thank Goodness for Small Favors

TV site CliqueClack interviews Defying Gravity creator James Pariott about his plans for the now-defunct series's future, and his revelations about the planned storyline for the character Nadia--a no-nonsense, unemotional, extremely sexually aggressive German woman--put even the most fail-tastic of science fiction shows to shame:
Nadia — She had quite the odd hallucinations, didn’t she? Who was that man she kept seeing, and why did he look so much like Nadia? As Parriott revealed to me, some fans of the show got it right in their guess that she was, in fact, a hermaphrodite when she was born. The choice was made for her when she was 11, by her parents, which sex she’d ultimately become. So that man we’re seeing is actually what Nadia would have been, had they chosen to raise her — or him — as a man.
Now, here’s the wild kicker. All those DNA changes that are happening with the crew, caused by Beta and the other artifacts? Well, they would eventually wind up causing Nadia to gradually turn into a man.
Parrriott also said that it was planned for Nadia to really have a more significant presence in season two. “If you see the way we wrote her, she sort of had that male sexuality about her, that ‘fuck ‘em and forget ‘em’ mentality. So we wanted to write her sort of as a male character in a female body.”
As you may recall, I wasn't terrifically impressed with Defying Gravity to begin with, and in its later episodes the show lost what little charm it had when it downplayed its trashy soap opera aspects in favor of a dull and drawn out SFnal story, but I wasn't actually glad, even thankful, for its cancellation, until I read this.  Honestly, I'm willing to forgive this entire crappy fall pilot season just for knowing that there is no chance in hell that this abominable storyline will ever see the light of day.

Comments

Alexnader said…
Wow. Just wow. That's epic levels of disturbing.

Normally I don't buy into the mentlaity of 'x author has expressed a work that seems racist/sexist/otherwise suspect so I will go out of my way to avoid them in response', but this kind of sentiment makes me want to avoid anything Pariott produces in the future.

Not that wider culture is particularly good with even understanding how to approach hermaphodite or other non-binary sexualities, or 'conventional' men and women, for that matter, but this concept is a much larger degree of just wrongness.

Perhaps the worst element is the way he congradulates some of the fans for 'getting it'. 'This character is sexually aggressive and has visions of a man--therefore a hermaphodite. Good job figuring out the logical point we were building to.'
November 08, 2009 9:13 PM
Abbi Glines said…
Sometimes our drive to be unique and stand out leads us to whacked out insaneness that crosses every boundary line out there. Glad this one isn't going to fly. Doesn't even sound as if it could be remotely appealing.
November 10, 2009 11:55 PM

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