So I did what any great, intelligent writer would do…ask other people to do it for him. So one hot and blustery August afternoon I made my way around the GeekSix offices, knocking on everyone’s door. And my simple question to each of them, “Who is your headliner out of the Whedonverse B-listers?”

After three days I emerged which a small list. Some of us at GeekSix couldn’t even fathom how any character in the Whedonverse could be considered a B-lister. So I wanted to share with you what little I was able to sluff off on others, as well as a few more to fill it out to actual make it a list.

Josh

First stop I made was first and foremost with the boss. He is always a good lackey when he doesn’t know he is one. But of course he is also the one who decided to talk for about two hours before actually deciding on his choice.

And that would be our good friend Badger from Firefly. Here is what my secret tape recorder revealed.

Badger.

Why? Take Mark Sheppard’s always fun style, and mix him with a character Joss Whedon originally wrote for himself, and you have a recipe for deliciousness. In terms of characters, Badger wasn’t deeply nuanced or complex, but Sheppard so perfectly nailed the self-important thief that he trumped even Adelai Niska in terms of enthralling support staff.

My favorite moment? “Course, you couldn’t buy an invite wif’ a diamond the size of a testicle, but I got my hands on a couple.” Mal and Jayne’s reactions were so real, and Sheppard played off of it perfectly with a stunned look, followed by an overblown volume of righteous indignation, before stammering “… of invites.”

Christy

I don’t know if you have picked up on it yet, but Christy sees through to the heart of most matters. So while most of us get wrapped up in old Megan Fox versus new Megan Fox, she simply says Starbuck would have kicked her ass also.

And for this exercise? She went past the character, straight to the man behind green mask.

Andy Hallett.  Lorne had some of the best one liners in Angel, but I think the main reason he’s my pick is that Andy used to lead these great Karaoke sessions at conventions.  He’d sing any song with anyone.

“Okay, I know I’m probably going to regret this. In fact, being prescient,  I’m actually sure of it.”

“Oh really? Yeah well I’m not some mystical vending machine here to spit out answers every time you walk in with a problem. I have a heart. Granted it’s located in my left butt cheek, but it’s still a heart, and that heart is broken.”

“Isn’t this the sort of ‘tude that got you where you are now? I think I’m speaking for everyone when I say… if all you’re gonna do is switch back to brood mode, we’d rather have you evil, then at least, … leather pants.”

Autumn

I think Autumn overheard Christy lamenting about the loss of Lorne, and her supposed wedding to Andy, and the joys of Los Angeles. So she decided to take a turn down the road to Sunnydale and Buffy the Vampire Slayer. She wound up stopping this conversation pretty quickly with the once love of Rupert Giles life.

I will definitely have to go with Jenny Calendar. How could you not go with Ms. Calendar? She was a super cool computer teacher and technopagan who turned back to being a gypsy in an attempt to stop evil. And the episode where she died…man Angelus was a dick.

Blain and Joe

I went by Blain’s office only to hear an argument coming from the breakroom. It seems he and Joe had taken up some very loud water cooler conversation. As I walked in this is what I heard:

“Man old Megan Fox was hot!”
“Was?! She still is!”
“Are you crazy? It looks like a plastic surgeon hit her with an ugly shovel.”
“Ugly shovel? You are telling me if she walked in here right now and demanded satisfaction that you would not give it to her?”
“What? You mean like she wants a Snickers?”

As I attempted to get their views on all this Whedony goodness, they simply turned and stared. After about five seconds they responded in unison, “Megan Fox wasn’t in any Whedon show.”

I left the room at this point.

Jason

And so that left me. And that meant I had to do some work left to do. I needed to actually contribute to this list. Which meant telling the hamster upstairs to get to running. And surprisingly, after just a moment of wheel spinning energy was expended, it dawned on me (well after convincing myself that I couldn’t convince you Jayne Cobb was B-list material)… Jubal Early from Firefly!

I am going to quote myself here because I just want to say that Jubal Early was once sick puppy. But a funny sick puppy. Like the one you want to help, but don’t because you want to see what funny thing it is going to do next. But for real? This man was danger and comedy wrapped into a tidy little package. In just the space of one episode you were connected to this villain of a character. And in the end, you were a little sad to see him floating around all alone in the black.

And now the couple of others who deserve their due when waxing poetic on this subject…

Oz

I think this can begin and end with basically the geek fanboy that is Seth Green. While it is a given that Oz was the one man to claim the heart of Willow before she decided she was all about the ladies, he always provided the comic relief in a way that outshined Xander. I am actually pretty convinced that if they could have replaced Xander with Oz in the Scoobies without a major revolt from fans, they may have done it.

Moist

Come on! How could Moist not make this list? He is like basically a sidekick to a sidekick to a sidekick. He makes things wet and soggy. And somehow he pulled off his own minicomic and has rumors that the next installment of Dr. Horrible’s Sing-A-Long Blog might actually be based on him (totally not going to happen). And despite all the humidity he brings to the table, the dude still has game with the ladies. Just ask Bait. Or was it Switch? Who knows? Somehow he was with both ladies at some point during the night.

So now that I left off the obvious. It is up to you to do more of my job. Like I said…good writers. Let me start you off with….”Hey it doesn’t look like you have anybody from Dollhouse on your list!!?!”

It was those famous last words of the office mascot the robodog that left us pondering what just are the best deaths among robots? Whether circuitry being fried, or being blowed up real good like, its always a little sad when someone from the other side bites the dust.

So we give to you, the Geek6 of robot deaths. The pantheon of metallic goodbyes.

Blain
Ash – Alien
This was a tough one to narrow down for me. I’ve always found the T-1000’s death in Terminator 2— it’s both beautiful and disturbing. And then there’s the Iron Giant’s self sacrificing and heroic send off (even though technically he’s still alive in the end). But when it comes to great robot death scenes, the one that still has the greatest impact on me — and makes me occasionally distrust technology — is the android Ash’s death scene from Alien.  Played by Ian Holm, he is trying to kill Ripley with a rolled up magazine (something about that is still unsettling for me) when Parker and Lambert intervene. A fight to get him off of Ripley causes him to start spewing milk and spinning around like a wind up toy with no direction. This part used to scare the hell out of me and the weird vocal whine he makes still sends creepafying shivers down my spine. Parker hits Ash with a fire extinguisher, decapitating him except his head is hanging by a thread of synthetic skin while running around like a chicken with it’s head cut off. Ok, more like a  chicken that just downed several gallons of milk. They rewire him and bring him back for a couple of minutes to interrogate him. After a snide “you have my sympathies” from Ash, Ripley gives him a final punch in the head, shutting the evil bastard down and then Parker incinerates his ass with a flame thrower.

Autumn
Roy Batty – Blade Runner

And of course you cannot go wrong with the Lego version!

Josh
Jazz – Michael Bay’s Transformers
While I should go with the death of Optimus Prime, which marred my childhood in untold ways (and still makes me choke up when I see it), I figure that’s too obvious. I’m going to go forward about 20 years for a different approach.

And that’s Jazz from Michael Bay’s Transformers slugfest. Why did it make me so sad, you might ask? It wasn’t emotional at all, you might say. And that’s just it, and that’s why it saddens me.

Take one of my favorite characters from the original cartoon (voiced perfectly by Scatman Crothers), suck out all of his personality, and reduce his few lines in the movie to be that of “the token black guy,” and you have the new Jazz.

He had about four lines, and then died in the big battle scene, because Michael Bay hasn’t yet figured out any other way to attempt to induce any emotion other than dizziness into his audience.

And then, they pretty much cast him off, with barely a mention. Even in the movie’s ham-fisted chronology, Jazz was a warrior that had fought loyally beside Optimus Prime for thousands of years. And then he dies, and gets a “we’ll remember him, but it’s time to move on.”

Weak, Michael Bay. Weak.

Jason
Optimus Prime – Transformers the Movie
I don’t care that it scarred you Josh and that you still cannot face the reality of it, the death of Prime has to be the pinnacle of robot death. How can it not be.  After years of being blasted and put back together, Prime left us. Not only did he leave us, he turned all gray and stiff and deadlike. Very creepy. How can he just leave us like that? It is still not fair.

Joe
Marvin – The Restaurant at the End of the Universe
It’s not *technically* a death and it’s not *technically* a movie, but when Marvin inadvertently gets left behind by himself for 576,000,003,579 years in Restaurant at the End of the Universe it is pure hilarity at the expense at the most lovably depressed android ever. “The first ten million years were the worst, and the second ten million years, they were the worst too. The third ten million I didn’t enjoy at all. After that I went into a bit of a decline.”

Christy
Scar – Battlestar Galactica
I loved him so. Do not tell Leo.

And in honor of the new movie, we here at GeekSix would just like to share with you our fond memories of Treks past. More specifically, the moment that stands out in our steel clad mindtraps as the cheesiest moment in all of Star Trek lore.

Blain
Star Trek: Voyager
Episode: “Threshold”
As cheesy as many of the episodes from Star Trek: The Original Series are, they had good intentions with them and I kinda cut them some slack ’cause it was the ’60s. But one episode of Voyager I remember watching has no excuse for how awful it was. That episode, titled “Threshold” surpasses the “WTF?!” factor in warp speed.

Essentially, here is a very quick summary of the episode: After they discover a more stable form of dillithium, the crew is convinced they can go to Warp 10 (why not shoot for 11?). After several fails, they succeed, but Tom Paris vanishes and then sometime later, reappears. He gets sick, starts de-evolving into a lizard like creature and kidnaps Janeway. The crew go to a planet looking for them and discover two large lizard creatures that are Paris and Janeway and they got busy and had baby lizard creatures. The crew gets them back to normal ok, leaves the lizard babies on the planet and Paris and Janeway decide to act like it never happened. Yeah. It was as bad as it sounds. Read more in depth about the episode here at Wikipedia.

Joe
Star Trek: The Next Generation
Episode: “Skin of Evil”
This was lame on several fronts. First off, the character was around for less than one season, making it ridiculous to fete so much emotion on her regardless of how cool she was. And she wasn’t cool. she was a stonefaced bore who was the focal point of way too many unbelievable fight scenes that you knew started out with the idea “Hey, let’s have a woman kick the crap out of guys just to be progressive!” This isn’t Kara Thrace who has many good reasons for being a badass, this is a woman who was just thrust into the roll of enforcer because the producers wanted to break ground like the original Trek did. But in 1987 you wouldn’t be deemed a rebel for just having an Asian guy on the crew.  But even if she WAS an awesome character who had been around for 17 seasons it would have been silly.  Taking the last ten minutes of an episode to have someone perform their own eulogy and say fortune cookie slogans to each crew member  automatically triggers this guy’s gag reflex.

Jason
Star Trek: The Next Generation
Episode: “Booby Trap”
Geordi La Forge falls in love with a frakkin’ holographic image of some chick who designed the systems on the Enterprise. Come on now. Geordi’s brain wouldn’t let him do that. Would it? If so, creeeeepy.

Josh
Star Trek: The Original Series
Episode: “Space Seed”
Kirk fights Khan. This. That is all. End of line.

Christy
Star Trek: The Next Generation
Episode: “Conspiracy”
I watched a lot of The Next Generation from my strategically positioned bed and my bedroom door cracked open.  My parents watched it every night at 10:00pm, they just didn’t realize I was watching with them.  I recently asked them if they knew about my Star Trek viewings.  My Dad was quite happy to report that he had no idea and also congratulated me on my successful sneaking.

This was the most memorable episode of Star Trek for me.  I watched it one night while I was home alone babysitting my younger siblings.  It freaked the living daylights out of me.  After re-watching it, I realized that it is indeed cheesy!

Autumn
Star Trek: The Next Generation
Episode: “Ménage a Troi”
Ménage a Troi? Omg that episode makes me so happy. And when her Mom realizes she is giving a Ferengi a hand job and keeps going….just not right.

Those are ours. What are yours?

And to be honest, it is not just Logan/Patch/James/Wolvie. It is also Marvel Studios who is trying to establish a franchise of standalone spin offs from the original X-Men movie trilogy. So it only begs the question, who is next? GeekSix sat down in the conference room and flung inanimate objects at each other in trying to decide just who deserves the next X-Men Origins flick. Here are the results and I am still wondering who it was that decided tossing a chocolate malt was a good idea.

Joe
Storm
There are a few X-men who would have interesting backstories, like Nightcrawler, who I can’t actually sign off on having an origin movie. That’s because whenever you make a movie like that about a foreigner, it turns into two hours of stereotypes and one-dimensional silly people with accents. So he’s out.

I’ll have go with Storm, who is a big enough name to actually care about, but also has been relatively unexplored as far as back story in the first three movies.  If it’s done right, X-Men Origins: Storm could be a nice tale that builds on what was shown about Rogue in the first movie.  This time it’s not just individual people who get hurt. It’s potentially droves of people who can be affected by one not being able to control one’s burgeoning meteorological abilities.

Blain
Magneto
Yeah, this seems a bit of a cop out, but I really did give this some thought! From what I can gather, X-Men Origins: Wolverine is more like X-Men Origins: Wolverine/Sabertooth/Deadpool/Gambit/Emma Frost/Cyclops. With that in mind who’s left that would make an interesting origin movie? Magneto? Yes …but they already have plans for that. It would be fascinating to see how he escaped the holocaust and became friends with Professor X and what else turned Magneto’s ideals around and against the Professor. So hopefully David Goyer will stop making crappy horror movies and get on the ball writing it.

As far as the rest of the crew, there’s nobody else I really care to see a movie about. So I say let’s pull a Star Trek and reboot it, but throw out all of the previous X-Men movie canon. But start it with the original X-men (Cyclops, Jean Grey, Beast, Ice Man and Angel) and when they were teenagers — like in the comics. That would get me excited about an  X-Men movie again. Oh, wait …. they’re planning on that too with X-Men: First Class. Hurm. Screw it. Let’s have X-Men Origins: Blue Dudes and tell the origins of Beast, Night Crawler and have Apocolypse as the baddie. Yes, I’m only kidding.

Autumn
Professor X
As much as I adore Rogue, her story was already told via one tragic makeout… So off I went and checked out Charles Xavier’s story on Wikipedia and there is definitely enough there for a movie, including his first meeting Magneto and their early debates on mutant power.

I grow weary of the Byronic hero (the, shall we say, interpretation of Aragorn in the movie.)  And perfect heroes are just plain boring.  What I want to know is what makes a man choose to do good with the innate power given to him.  There is a story there, and an interesting one, and most importantly a noble one.

Jason
Psylocke
What do you mean I cannot have a Kitty Pryde and Jubilee movie?! What if I throw in Dazzler! Very well. In that case I definitely have to go with Psylocke. Why is that? Because X3: The Last Stand totally jobbed her. Here was this interesting Brit come stateside to work with the X-men, but in the movies she wound up siding with the bad guys only to be cut down by the Dark Phoenix. What is up with that? And yes, I know I previous had said Gambit needed to be the next Marvel movie, but I stayed faithful to only characters appearing in the original trilogy.

But the tale of Betsy Braddock is one that needs to be told. Starting across the pond to her joining up with the X-men, this gal with telekinetic power is a handful. And as an additional bonus, British accents! Because everyone knows that movies with British accents always win awards. Just ask Dame Judi Dench or Dame Helen Mirren. No worries though, neither will not be playing Psylocke.

Josh
Cyclops
For some reason, I’ve always identified with “the flawed leader who can be a little bit of a dick” character. Whether we’re talking Tigh’s brief stint as Galactica’s top dog or Jack Sheppard on Lost, or in this case, Cyclops, I always defend the real leader over the happy-go-lucky-sometimes-leader. Sure, Wolverine can lead  in a time of crisis, but who’s holding down the fort day in and day out? Who keeps the X-men together, not just when the chips are down, but all the time? Command is hard work, and anyone can rally the troops when needed, but it takes a special person to bear the burden of responsibility the rest of the time.

Maybe it’s because I was thrust into leadership early, but I always sympathize with characters like Cyclops. Give the man his due, and save us from the horrible injustice he was dealt in X3: The Last Stand!

Christy
Havok
Alex Summers, Havok.  Here’s why:  He can absorb ambient cosmic energy, transform it and then release it as waves of energy which turns things into plasma.  Rad!  Plus, his story would include his brother, Cyclops.  What can I say, I’m a Cyclops girl (and no, not because of James Marsden’s portrayal.  The love started long before that).  His origin story would have it all: childhood trauma, alienation from family, confusion about his powers, re-uniting with his brother, and working towards the common good of all mutants.

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.