Q: Felix possesses some unique powers in this story. What exactly are these and how does it form how he perceives the world?
A: Felix was genetically engineered to take the best advantage of the fact that he may live indefinitely. His immune system was greatly enhance to include all known defenses, including, unfortunately, an ancient prion based response to cells foreign to his own. To improve his chances of dealing with other humans, he was given the ability to sense a full range of pheromones and to produce them practically at will. I call this pheromonics, the conscious communication using pheromones. Simply put, as hormones produced in our endocrine glands are the chemical messengers one’s body uses to communicate within itself, while pheromones generally produced by our sebaceous glands are the chemical messengers we use to communicate between ourselves and others.Pheromones do not smell, but we sense them on an emotional level. In fact, the nerves of our sense of smell link to our brain stem, whereas the nerves of our sense of pheromones connect to our amygdala, the site of our feelings. It may be said that we broadcast our emotions to others continuously via pheromones. Felix is special in his ability to detect the full range as well as recognize them, and his body can produce powerful pheromones detectable by others to influence their feelings.
Q: So, why was Felix covering his face, blocking Will’s view of the sweat on his upper lip? Was he ashamed?
A: Felix is not ashamed of his sweat. He knows his sebaceous glands produce powerful pheromones that match his emotions. He will use everything he knows about himself to protect himself. However, he tries to prevent unnecessarily exposing Will to his MHC pheromones, but that's because he's started to feel the need to connect with Will without overwhelming Will’s feelings with pheromones and so as not to manipulate Will's feelings. It's actually Felix's first ethical epiphany. Felix struggles over droning Will. Felix's gift to his tribe is more than saving them from extermination, it is leading them to a higher ethic, and thus making them worth saving. Everything else must in some way relate to the Felix story. This is Felix's story, and he's the most interesting character of all. We've certainly done that with adding the prion disease now beginning with Felix's birth and leading up to Jerry's losing Lily. Even Aurora and Tyler serve this as the antithesis of the non-drone status of Will to Felix.
Q: Felix and Will seem to butt heads from the first time they meet. Where does this tension arise from?
A: Felix and Will begin their acquaintance in a battle of wills when they first meet. Felix barely accepts Ursula's authority, looks down on cops, and Will is just another hired authority figure he has to deal with, so he tests him. Then Will tries to power trip him over being a bad example to the kids, leading to Felix belittling and marginalizing him. So when Ursula wants Felix to drone him, he's not going to have anything nice to say. Maybe Felix wouldn't call him a pain in the ass, but he would certainly show he feels superior to Will. Will has read Felix’s personal profile in the Foundation’s identity file, and Felix’s behavior is described as troublesome. Will has lived his life pretty much as model student, with ambitions to work in the state forests as a ranger, because of his sense of responsibility to his world. Add to that, that they are attracted physically to each other and unwilling to admit it, is an automatic source of abrasion.
Q: How would you describe the chemistry between Felix and Will? Obviously, you see their relationship as something special.
A: From the get go, Felix and Will are totally up front with each other about their feelings, no matter the consequences. We don’t usually get find continuous integrity in relationships, and where love and attraction gets involved, people can be too concerned about impressing each other. Whenever one has a real need, they learn that the other will step up and do what’s right. Why wouldn’t Will be fascinated by and drawn to Felix, who is bright, energetic and brimming over with self confidence, all very attractive traits? Why wouldn’t Felix be attracted to Will, who is bright without arrogance, strong and capable, and a solid mesnch? The fact that they’re both sexy, clinches the attraction.
Felix and Will finding love with each other through a difficult clash of cultures and purposes, until their devotion, trust and affection for each other is undeniable. Their relationship is the model of disparate parts of humanity finding family in each other. Their relationship at the end becomes a model for the tribe, which is why I like them arguing in front of everyone in the cafeteria near the end over right and wrong.
Every real life relationship is unique and yet some things are plausible and some are not. I believe that Felix and Will have an authentic bonding, and their falling in love is inevitable. To me, inevitability is the ultimate test of artistic creation. Listen to Beethoven's Sixth Symphony. We know he wrote and rewrote it over time, and had a notebook of ideas, and yet when we listen to it, it's not conceivable that one note could be different. He found its inevitable form. We need to find the finished form of this film that seems to be the only form it could have taken.
To extend this, I didn’t want Felix and Will's relationship endangered by infidelity. There are some love relationships that are beyond that, and theirs should be one. Whatever tries to come between them should be a from a much bigger picture than sexual temptation. We already know Felix and Will fall in love, based upon a burnishing of their relationship through emotional friction which leaves both of them knowing the sincerity and depth of the other’s integrity.
Q: What relationship does football have with this story?
A: The power of being a player is the major ice breaker with Will, instant connection, instant commonality, instant understanding of at least one part of the other. It is the most popular sport in America, it inspires the most passion, it demands the most coordinated team work, it confers respect and admiration, it validates manhood, it's extremely one on one physical while demanding enormous planning, coordinated practice, mental investment as well as heart. It has all the color of heraldry and knighthood. Most sports show off a person's body, but football uniforms exaggerate physique, and if you look at the iconic power of football helmets and uniforms, nothing else comes close.
Most important Felix likes to play it. Look around, he's not alone in that in America. Here he rolls it all up into one activity where he can be like the other guys, part of a team, a man instead of freak clone, he can make friends and even enemies among the team more quickly than in the classroom. We're witnessing examples on the high school level, of gays coming out to their football team members, sometimes with violent hatred in response, and sometimes with acceptance and respect for their courage. It's a unique function in our society. It's also innately great action, passion and intelligence.
The fact that he's a kicker, on the other hand, demonstrates that he's not fully accepted, since kickers are important, often very important, but they are not interlocked with other player the same way the offense or defense is.
Q: The “Ancient One” plays a small but defining role in this film. What was your inspiration in creating this character?
A: The Ancient One is not so made up by me as it is a retelling of my real life experiences with the Nyingmapa teachers of Tibetan Buddhism. As Richard Gere has worked with Dalai Lama who is a member of the Gelugpa sect of Tibetan Buddhism, my experience has been with Tarthang Tulku of the Nyingmapa. Nyingmapa actually translates to Ancient People, being the oldest of the Tibetan sects founded by Padma Sambhava. The conversation Felix has with the Ancient One, especially the answer to “How do I know the right path?” is a nearly literal account of my audience with the head of the Nyingmapa. Even the touch and blessing from him that induced a prolonged and profound state of bliss and hyper awareness is part of that experience. I have met the Dalai Lama on several occasions, but I see Tarthang Tulku as my lineage.
Regarding the Ancient Ones and Shambala, I'm not looking for something mystical or magical, but certainly in the mode of mankind's hidden history, and reworking myths into plausible explanations with a scientific rationale. Archeology is continually finding evidence that ancient people had significant technology, e.g. the Palimpset, the Antikythera mechanism, the Bagdad batteries, et al. I'd see the Ancient Ones as having prepared for centuries for the day when they must interfere in world affairs to prevent mankind's destruction and have a lot of gadgets and weapons that have long lost their superiority over modern science, but with some key knowledge of physics, psychology, anthropology and philosophy useful to Felix, Will. They also have a mini army of very bright, apt warriors ready to go out and work to save mankind.
Q: Did Felix answer the question correctly during his second encounter?
A: Felix asked the most fundamental thing he needs to know, "How to choose wisely?" but expressed as the metaphor of a path. He's assumed the Ancient One is a wisdom school teacher, and the metaphor is common among wisdom schools. This is not only autobiographical on my part with a Tibetan Lama, but it parallels the story of Solomon who chose wisdom when God offered him a choice of wealth or wisdom. The Ancient One's reaction is a calm answer with three more metaphors, so not only did Felix ask the right question, but the answer was very flexible. Felix is not being told to choose among them but to become them all.
Q: How does Reverend Orwell come to a deeper understanding of morality in this story?
A: We've rounded out Jerry's character by developing his family relationships, thank you David, making him more human. As I have used homophobia as a model of clonophobia, and Jerry Falwell as a model of Jerry Orwell, these are men who are resolute in their moral beliefs, not in spite of the facts, but in defense against the facts. He is conflicted, yes, but we see his struggle to maintain his belief system in posing three questions to Jason that in his mind resolves the matter, freeing him to go ahead and deny the humanity of clones. At the very end, he still has doubts that he expresses to Felix, but at least he recognizes at that point that Felix has compassion. I think he has to be pretty deep in delusion to be so involved with Jonathan and Sheldon and even having a militia that he encourages to fight against the clones. He even honors the young men in his congregation, and winks at the horror of what they may have done.
Q: As an audience, we feel great sympathy for Jerry Orwell’s wife Lily in this story. What were her complications?
A: Through the whole story, Lily has had a pregnancy problem. Her womb is infected, which not only mutates the growing fetus, but eventually spreads throughout her body. One of the body's strongest defense mechanisms is the blood brain barrier. Only a few diseases can pass from the blood into the brain. Once there, the organs controlled by the brain become affected in a kind of avalanche effect. The more infected she becomes, the faster it spreads.
Other diseases follow a similar pattern of a long period of being barely detectable to a rapid onset after passing a threshold. Doc and Bobby recognizing she is in the final death process, and is on the verge of releasing necrosis pheromones with the prions attached. The quarantine is to capture and contain those pheromones and prions before they are released when she dies. As for Lily dying, I think we've made it very clear, at least in version 11 that she is dying from her fetus, and Jerry's adamant refusal to abort, condemns her.
You may be getting the notion from all this, that to me, ethics is a vital to this story and in my mind life in general. I'm actually antagonistic toward morality because it so often is destructive, whereas ethics gives us a fighting chance to do the right thing in an unexpected situation. Throughout this writing process I've had to fight against long pedantic explanations of the science and science fiction, and I see you had the same problem. I've broken some of that up, and we have to look at what can be shown rather than described. This may be putting some of it in TV news or TV interviews.
Q: I imagine “extermination” would come as a shocking, pit-in-the-stomach feel to every clone. Why did you decide on such drastic measures?
A: The timing of the announcement itself is such that it's too late to prevent it, it's already underway. This is a nationwide surprise attack raid, so they do not have time mount a defense. It's an extermination, or massacre. The announcement is more to reassure the regular human population that what's going on around them is the good guys getting the bad guys, so don't panic.
NEWSCASTER (TV audio)
In related news, the Attorney General
announced immediate implementation of
a nation-wide plan to take rogue cloners
into custody and exterminate all clones.
(Note what Dobson says in the follow up)
SENATOR DOBSON (TV audio)
The era of this dangerous tampering with
the natural order of the evolution of our
DNA is over, thank God.
Support for clones is popular only in the usual nutty states like California, Oregon, Washington, New York, Massachusetts, Illinois, and Minnesota. Elsewhere, the federal position and the dominant TV evangelists have persuaded their dimmer brethren that clones must be eliminated and feel no pity for them.
In part two, we may be looking at a rounding up of clones and put into concentration camps. You know we talked about the opening scene with the Southern church interrupted by escaping clones gives them haven from the bloodhounds.
Q: Why is the torture of Jason so graphically brutal, and is that saying something about religion?
A: We are watching dark secrets coming into the light of the torture conducted on our behalf as citizens of the United States. What could be more important than countering the self-serving distortions of those who would defend that torture? We can make it very plain that torture sacrifices our humanity and perverts our knowledge of good and evil. If Adam and Eve gave up Paradise to bring us ethics, that is the knowledge of good and evil, then we owe it to them and ourselves to remember that we do know better.
Religion is like any human dynamic, it can serve to create, to maintain, and to destroy. There are many religious people whose personal sense of right and wrong exceeds that of those who set themselves up to teach them. On the other hand, there many religious leaders who act out of honest belief and love to spread their belief that Divine Will seeks for them to be saved from hurting themselves, e.g. Billy Graham seems to be such a preacher.
However, there are other leaders who use religion as a sceptre and sword, to gain wealth and power, sometimes cynically, sometimes hypocritically, sometimes out of willful delusion to believe their own lies, in our story, Jerry Orwell has real religious belief as a fundamental motive, but has fallen into a paranoid delusion of his place in God’s plan, while professing to know God’s plan.
Q: We see a powerful yet simple structure in Jerry’s sermons. What’s going on here?
A: If you've ever heard an evangelist preach, it does indeed sound gradeschoolish, as they say check your brains at the door of the church and pick up your crayons. Seriously, there is a rhetorical pattern that black preachers tend to use, and white evangelicals have their own. Jerry's intent is to make it look almost hopeless. There is a common structure to evangelist sermons, most of which is to make you feel in peril of eternal damnation and then pluck you to safety at the last moment through God's grace. Think of the application of mass psychology that uses.
Q: "All manner of sin shall be forgiven unto men but blasphemy against the Holy Spirit shall not be forgiven." Is this a direct quotation from the bible?
A: Yes, that's King James prose, considered by most Protestant churches as reliable to the faithful as the original Hebrew and Aramaic. Note Jerry gives the book, chapter and verse of the quotation, another trait common to Protestant sermons, and where we and he may slightly reword things for the sake of the syllogism, when one gives chapter and verse it must be an exact King James quotation.
Q: Why do you use the term “monkey” as a negative connotation for clones in this script?
A: A new abusive epithet is needed for use by clone haters. Most such words do indeed say that the hated group is inferior. In Viet Nam soldiers killed gooks, homophobes hate fags, the KKK hates niggers, skinheads hate kikes, and so on, all of which treats a group as less than human. I didn't think we could get away with making up a neologism now matter how clever. I gravitated toward using "monkey" because it connects to the Christian creationists claim that man came from monkeys, which misstates the actual theory that man and monkeys have a common ancestor, e.g. the Scopes trial. It also allows for some non-bigoted people to accidentally offend with "lab monkey" knowing the laboratory intervention involved in cloning.
When Will first calls Felix that name, he means it playfully like talking to a rambunctious little kid, talking down to him yes, but not in a bigoted way. Felix has to set him straight that around here it's an n-word. Later Will switches to "lab rat" which is less offensive and more playful, and allows Felix to toss the "back seat of a car" back at him.
Q: Jonathan is clearly the antagonist in this story. In some ways, his character is reminiscent of Dr. Faustus driven by Macbeth’s guilt and caught up in the TV series “Heroes”. Who is Jonathan?
A: Clearly we're coming back to Jonathan as the antagonist and need to look at the ending in that light. There is a delightful aspect to this in that Felix as extension of Jonathan's flesh, this becomes a struggle symbolizing the kind of internal struggle a person has with themselves over morality and ethics. Jonathan as antagonist. He created Felix recklessly, started the pandemic accidentally, reacted to the death of Doc's wife psychopathically, and behaves criminally. I want especially to be sure that we see his epiphany at the end realizing he was an ugly altered state of consciousness returning to sanity only for a brief moment before dying. Jonathan was there from the inception of Felix and the prion disease origin. I called him psychotic because of his break with reality. He begins as a committed doctor working to cure diseases, and the trauma of the death of Doc's wife causes a mental breakdown that transforms him into an engineer of mass murder, living for years under the delusion that clones have no right to life. I'd call that a clear case of psychosis. Jonathan coolly conducts experiments justifiably called torture on clones making him at a minimum a sociopath, a complete break from his commitment to healing. I suppose one might proffer that Hitler's Mandela thought he was making a better world also, but we tend to disagree with mass killers. Jonathan sways people in power from his science credentials that clones are the threat, and blames them for the epidemic which from his history of involvement makes him a bold faced liar. Orwell convinces people from his theological perspective that clones lack souls, and thus are not only not human but dangerous, which makes his role the contagonist. Jonathan repeatedly insists that Felix is his responsibility to deal with and tries to kill him. I think that all adds up to Jonathan as antagonist to Felix's protagonist. I know some successful stories have not paired the two roles, but I think the best stories focus the conflict on a pair. You can look at epic stories of countries taking to arms and battling at the walls of the city, can be exciting stuff, but if you don't have the climactic moment of David in mortal combat with Goliath, you've got action without dramatic punch.
Q: Why doesn’t Felix simply use his pheromonic gifts to order the death of the invaders?
A: At the outset Felix is hugely troubled by Zach's death as a consequence of their droning. Droning is a big ethical copout by our clones. It's not that clones are cowards, but they are conflicted by their reverence for life and their need to protect themselves from murderous enemies. Although our clones may be in many ways better than regular humans they tried to resolve the conflict by a twisted logic that people who have put themselves in harm way are simply being repurposed thus keeping clone hands free of bloodshed. Felix's ethical resolve to end cloning is not an embracing of violent solutions but a rejection of that twisted logic and an acceptance of personal responsibility. The gift of his strawberry essence pheromone is to stop the bloodshed, so if he orders "Fire", he is violating his principles of reverence for life, and not using his pheromones to manipulate others to act violently. Otherwise, we've created a "Hitler", and maybe Jerry is right that Felix is the Antichrist. Will is not so lofty in his cerebral analysis, but he does have unwavering moral fiber, thus he will use violence when it necessary and unavoidable, and in fact has training for it. Felix is a peace maker, although quite capable of defending himself, but ordering the death of another is beyond the limit.
SELECTED NOTES:
Points related to Felix:
Of utmost importance is the sense of what makes Felix special, to his friends, his enemies, us and the fate of humanity. Without that there's no reason for the story to exist at all. At the end of the story, we've lost Felix as a power to be reckoned with, to the point of his appearing useless. The massacre and the clones defending themselves against the militia is a powerful ending bringing head to head all the forces at work in the story, then with Felix stopping the hostilities he is revealed as truly beyond mere humans.
Felix relates easily to kids seeing them as real in expressing their feelings, plus nobody else appreciates him they way they do. Adults, especially those in authority, annoy him for having hidden agendas. At the very beginning, Felix should exit the gate with his football gear strapped to the back of his bike, too late for the MIBs to see him, who've already gone after Jason. He shows off for the kids and annoys Will and Nanny.
A lot of what has disappeared is Felix's struggle to find his place among both humans and his tribe. Your cold reading got it right, "So they treat me like a Martian, I am different, but I don't like being unique." The locker room scene should be before we see Felix on the field. The trick is to keep the pace up and I believe it can be done. Other parts of the opening should be tightened up to run faster.
I like the idea that the dark side of Felix is innate rather than a choice which satisfies me that the flaw is not in his character, but his body. With his pheromone abilities, he would only choose to do the right thing, but his body’s immune system like everyone else’s does it’s functions will very little conscious control. The fact that he awakens virtues and powers within himself that he doesn't yet know what to do with, couples nicely with his new knowledge that he is cursed with being toxic to humanity. Wow! That should certainly send him on a search to find guidance from the Ancient Ones in Part Two.
Points related to Felix and Will:
To understand Felix's approach to Will, Felix is an agressive, masculine, horse-playing, practical joker. He uses not only his pheromones, but uses joking and taunting as a way of exerting his presence. It's a pre-emptive ploy since he feel's insecure about fitting in, so he acts as if he owns the space. Such taunting gives him power over the other guys, which includes Will. Once he knows he has to relate to Will, he's takes on the challenge like a hunter, sometimes even as a warrior. Will is usually slightly off guard, preferring a more stable, responsible male role in life, but as Felix changes the game and ups the ante, Will is up to the challenge and meets him move for move.
Tyler outing of Will is a pathetic attempt to draw attention from himself, fortunately Felix grasps the real threat to the one he has started to care about, and so makes a hasty decision to spirit Will away to the woods to save Will's power of free choice, thus turning his back on the only family he has known. Once they are completely on their own, comes the chance for them to turn only to each other and allow their love to bloom. Romeo and Juliet would not have been much of a story if their families had been friendly, but their love was hugely romantic because they knew in choosing each other they had lost their families.
A lot of this is about the short period of time for Will and Felix's relationship to develop towards falling in love. Their meeting is fiery and abrasive, but real threats change the perspective and their response to real danger is the response of "no greater love hath a man than to lay down his life for a friend." People who face adversity together and succeed bond with love. If there's a physical attraction it can lead to falling in love. Now that I think about it, to complete the pattern, perhaps the motorcycle accident should occur on their way to the beach campsite the first time, so they've faced absolute peril together, triumphed, and so opening their hearts to each other follows naturally.
Will must come across as Felix's equal in intelligence and learning, maybe in different areas, but Felix needs a mate who contributes equally, otherwise, Felix's gifts would turn Will into a beloved pet instead of partner, and Felix would end up looking down on him. The difference is Felix's unabashed cocky self confidence running rampart compared to Will's lack of it holding him back. How can Will be Felix's moral compass is he's not as bright? Recognition of each other's fundamental nature has to be part of their attraction.
At the beginning of Act II Will is not yet fully involved with the goings-on at the Foundation and is still pursuing his college career. Repurpose the scene of Felix scolded by Will, then finding themselves with things in common. If Felix is grounded by Ursula, yet intrigued by Will (partly from reading Will's pheromones, which only he can do), he could sneak off to see Will play. This is not a fun scene at the game, never was. We retain him befriended by Johnnie, being attacked by his team mates after the game, the road house scene where Will hurts Felix's feelings, and Felix driving the drunken Will to his motel room. This gets Felix in trouble, causing Bobby, Ursula and Doc to see they can't control him, and triggers the idea of taking Felix away for his own protection. I'd still like to have a cameo by Elizabeth Taylor advising Felix on helping Will, so as Felix resists the isolation, it could be Auntie who has his trust enough that she persuades him to do it, and go on the bergamot hunt with Will.
A major moment is Felix nearly losing Will at the accident, and their learning each would risk their lives for the other. After Will crashes the bike, it's really wonderful when Felix insists that Will drive them back, sort of like the need for the near drowning victim to get right back in the water immediately to reinforce self confidence. Felix sees Will's virtues far better than Will does, and it's part of his mission to get Will to feel good about himself. In similar manner Felix discovering Will's innocent brilliance in math, while not seeing anything special in his own brilliance. His casualness and wit is seen in the line, "You're a smart guy, you dummy!"
Felix is very generous with Will, partly because Felix doesn't see significance in material possessions since he's always live with every need and desire easily fulfilled by the tribe's communal wealth. As Will becomes more involved, Felix sees it as natural that Will should have the same access to the tribe's resources, a way of testing himself and Will as potential family. Will rightly sees it as Felix trying to buy his friendship, which is something he's done before.
The physical attraction is also fundamental, but the reasons why one is attracted to another are mostly mysterious, and doubt in my lifetime I will see a credible explanation. Equally hard is to know is why someone loves one of us. This is a paradox. The most lovable things in our nature are those without ego, and thus if we know why someone loves us, then what we know can only be wrong. The upshot of all this is that just as doc tells Felix, “This is one thing you don’t need to understand. Just be thankful it has come to you.”
Felix deliberately chooses not to play pheromonic tricks with Will’s feelings, however, it is true, and Felix knows it’s true and ultimately Will too, that indeed their pheromones and hormones are doing what they do by their own nature. He knows his upper lip MHC's are much different from other humans, and so this would make his MHCs very attractive to others. His refusal to drone Will shows his craving the feeling of knowing that someone likes you for the simple reason that they do.
Likewise, Will’s annoyance arising from his misperception that Felix is trying to buy his friendship is cut from the same cloth, but the flip side, in that he wants his affections to be believed in thus he must feel free to feel whatever he feels and be trusted enough to feel the right things. On Felix’s side, he has always had everything he needs freely provided him, so he is just “sharing” with Will the bounty.
Miscellaneous points:
I have always resisted using TV news for story exposition even though in an age of excessive imagery it seems unavoidable. Frankly, news may die on broadcast and cable and degenerate to blogs and stringers, or it could be a feature of the PowerBoards. News items, like the Senate debate and decision, background on the cloning issues, etc., may be most efficiently conveyed that way. If we do do it, it needs to be innovative and interesting and a plausible extension of what's going on now with changes in media.
I had already painted Aurora as an empathic, caring person, to the extent Doc trusts her psychological analysis of Felix's emotional development. With the need to introduce the science behind Felix and Will falling in love, perhaps Aurora could be keeping an eye on family members, in a pro-active mental health worker capacity, using the comm system to observe people not necessarily aware they are being evaluated. Some of the sci-fi tools could be used to explain the body chemistry of Ursula and Craig as she drones him (even head of security is not immune to study), and then repeat some of this regarding Felix and Will but without explanation. Biometrics would easily be gathered, and there may be sensors that detect hormone levels and a few of the more common pheromones. The family could be gathering MHC's from every visitor, perhaps being the only place where this is being done. This could be a strong addition to Jonathan being able to deceive the security system. With Felix, the pheromone detectors would shows rows of question marks, as he emits pheromones of a wide variety.
Jerry has a real reason now to hate Felix specifically as the source of the world's and his own personal crises. So Jonathan and Doc were stymied in the creation of Felix, and the only fix was to allow for the fact that Felix's pheromonics could also produce prions, the lifeless simple molecules that in living cells can result in things like mad cow disease. They made their deal with the devil and lost, because Felix became the source of prions that attacked the reproductive process in other humans. Like other prion based diseases, once in a population they can jump from host to host. One more secret Doc keeps from Felix. I'm torn whether Charlie's problem should be nothing more than the developmentally arrested problem we already have today, or whether to add an additional connection between Felix and Charlie, perhaps a mutual instinct that Felix can actually help Charlie. Felix's MHCs have in them the possibility of creating a prion like antihistamine specifically against the rogue prions devastating the planet.
The Senate hearing where Felix exposes Doc with the incriminating tape, seems to doom Orwell's plans, and puts the Senate in a position from which they cannot vote against the clones. Wrong! Sheldon has reassured Jerry and Dobson that when the Senate votes against the clones, the DOJ is ready to act immediately to carry out an extermination plan across the country. Felix and Charlie still bond, and Charlie helps Felix not understanding the impact it will have on his father to have the tape played.
Lily coming to Doc for help is a last straw for Jerry. It's also her paralleling Felix's ethical determination to do what's right, with or without family approval. This is the one time Charlie does something on his own that's positive and successful, which is to heal the argument between Felix and Will.
You know, David and Steve, I am so gratified by our synergistic brainstorming, that I lack adequate words to express my appreciation for you.
Here's my suggestion: We can exemplify the science and the science fiction of the part pheromones play in the development of their feelings for each other. Much it is already there, but perhaps we can take it to a higher level. I want to tell this love story almost if it were an educational, nature program but of course without narration or without being pedantic. The actions and events should tell as much as possible how Felix and Will's pheromones affect each other and each other's hormones.
I think most audience demographics will be receptive to their story if it has heart, rationale and passion. Some of the unreceptive will never, ever give so much as an inch. Others however, will go along, so long as while it unfolds, it seems inevitable. We are telling how they fell in love, both with behavior interaction and chemical interaction. With Felix’s gifts, he would be aware of the process and able to articulate it. Will might learn to recognize which feelings he has are the pheromone response to Felix. Imagine Felix inhaling above Will’s upper lip then with great difficulty but with success list out for Will his family’s history of genetically influenced health issues.
The epilogue: I watched Lord of the Rings on PBS the other night and had to admit, it has a very long epilogue. Of course it's at the very end of the trilogy, and plays like an extremely extended denouement since there's no action or conflict involved. So our epilogue or climax may be a semantic difference. I agree it should parallel the opening sequence, but in both form and time alloted.
I've seen Doc as too old and tired, and self absorbed to do much more than intervene at critical moments.
The clones must rescue the clinic captives, the clones really are a force to be reckoned with, while generally hiding themselves away, can be awakened to be fierce fighters for themselves and loved ones. This is a struggle for supremacy and the clones are genetically superior. Better to make friends of them than enemies, but the fear of them motivates Jerry and others to hate them. I think Jerry would be a lot more pissed over the successful invasion of his clinic and arrests of his militia as part of the brewing storm of act II. The brewing storm is really what act II is about. |
