The Geek6: Favorite SciFi Characters

Jason
Friday
11:13 am

GeekSix is evolving. No more do you have to listen to just my weekly top five. Now you get to listen to the collective Geek6. That is right, each of the staff will throw down the gauntlet with what is at the top of their list. Resistance is futile. You will be assimilated.

This week on The Geek6 is the staff’s favorite science fiction character. It was a pretty daunting task considering the breadth of possibilities and the selections showed that as picked ranged from literature to movies to television.

Here you go, listed in no particular order (well I did draw them out of an actual hat)…

Christy
Ender Wiggin – Ender’s Game
I bet you all thought I was going to say Starbuck, didn’t you?!  Well I was, but then I’d be a predictable BSG whore.  Not a bad thing, but I’m going with Ender Wiggin from Ender’s Game.  Here are my reasons why.

• I remember exactly where I was, what I was doing, and even what I was wearing when I finished reading Ender’s Game for the first time.  It was Christmas break, I was 17, I was wearing a green turtleneck and sitting in my grandpa’s recliner.
• He’s the reluctant hero that was cultivated and manipulated into a weapon.  His realization, and rebellion, of that resulted in the ultimate manipulation, the destruction of a race.  While this concept is definitely not unique in science fiction, I’m fascinated with Orson Scott Card’s delivery.

I can relate to Ender on a very small level.  I was continuously lied to by my dad.  Not in a bad, let’s kill people type of way, but in a what can I get my kids to believe sort of way that I now find funny.  For example, we were told that our Uncle Bill was one of the pirates on Swiss Family Robinson. Have you ever taken a close look at the pirates on Swiss Family Robinson?  They’re not Caucasian, which Uncle Bill is.

It’s a book I read every couple of years and it always satisfies my inner geek.

Jason
Luke Skywalker – Return of the Jedi
I was this close to saying Jayne Cobb from Firefly, but in the end I am going to have to go with Luke Skywalker from Return of the Jedi. I expressly said from Return of the Jedi, not Luke Skywalker from A New Hope. Why? Because I wanted to trounce Mark Hamill anytime he opened his whinny little mouth in the first Star Wars installment. At least by Return of the Jedi he had calmed down and dare I say become a little more bad ass.

I honest believe it is Jedi’s version of Skywalker that makes that particular Star Wars episode my favorite of all of them. He had grown up a bit more, realized his inner Jedi, and pulled it off, from the opening scene at Jabba’s palace to when he cast his father down a long, dark shaft. Just going through the thoughts on this is driving me to watch Return of the Jedi….again…. 

Autumn
Clarisse McClellan – Fahrenheit 451
This is is the wide eyed neighbor girl who made me aware of the dichotomy of science fiction - being the obsession with technology and the fear it will destroy our humanity. Although she disapears in the second half of the book but has left a very tangible impression in my life, for good or ill.

After reading just a few of her lines I was enamored with her profound enthusiasm for  life. So much so, I spent my teenage years creating rules for myself to live by based on her scant few lines.  Readers who know me personally will note that I have a very hard time being comfortable in large mindless situations, thus my dislike for dance clubs and…people yelling things (always reminded me of the kids that ran her over). There are other things.  I like to walk around and really look at things and think about what they really are, what they really mean.  Maybe she didn’t shape me so much as I think, maybe the little twelve year old me just recognized a kindred spirit on the page.  Anyway about it she’s still my favorite, and still important because she reminds us to discover joy in our humanity in this mad world in which we dwell. 

Blain
Ellen Ripley – Alien
If only the crew of the Nostromos had listened to Warrant Officer Ellen Ripley about quarantine regulations, they might still be alive. But then again we wouldn’t have had one of the most bad-ass sci-fi characters to grace movie screens. The heroine of the Alien movies, she’s proven that she can take care of herself and go into battle as an ultimate warrior without sacrificing her feminine qualities — unlike Linda Hamilton in T2.

She’s the only — and smartest — crew member to survive a skitso android and a xenomorph in Alien.  Then in Aliens, she outlasts the majority of a team of Colonial Marines and literally dives into hell to save a little girl named Newt from the biggest bitch of an alien you will ever meet. She’s the kind of woman we would proudly take home to our mom and show off to our drinkin’ buddies.  Ripley showed that she didn’t need stronger male leads to help define who she was. She was a major leap forward for female characters, paving the way for other sci-fi hot shots like Captain Janeway and Katie Sackhoff’s Starbuck.  And just to clarify, I’m only talking about Ripley from Alien and Aliens–I like to pretend Aliens 3 and Aliens: Resurrection were just really awful dreams Ripley had during hypersleep on her way back home after the events in Aliens. 

Joe
Newt – Aliens
Pretty much the only child sidekick in movie history that is both endearing and a champ, rather than annoying or cheesy.  She outwitted the baddies by herself until the marines showed up and kept her cool even when captured by the queen.  While she was a gutsy little lady, James Cameron didn’t force her into a hero role just for the sake of raising the stakes, which made her that much more of a believable character, especially when watching the film as a child.  Kind of made you think about how YOU would react if your normal world was turned upside down by the monsters under the bed.

Josh
Captain Malcolm Reynolds – Firefly 
For me, this is a piece of cake. From the moment I saw him order a glass of ng-ka-pei in ”The Train Job” to the last time he expressed shock when a buffer panel flew off his ship in the big-screen Serenity, I was hooked.

More than just a Solo clone, Reynolds exuded a deeper pain and more appropriately timed ideals than his possibly more famous counterpart, but he could still take on on the chin as well as Han. The man exuded cool, timing and debonair attitudes — except when things didn’t go smooth.

As with any good character, I have a hard time separating the character from the actor. Nathan Fillion brought Mal to life, and it’s still obvious in interviews with him today that he misses the captain as much as I do.

So there are ours. Who is yours? Ewoks need not apply.