Scifiland Challenge - Dream Scifi Team
scifiland issued a challenge to come up with your scifi dream team; you can cull characters from any fandom. I want just about every character ever, but since that was not feasible I limited myself to ten men and women from the ranks of science fiction. Part of the challenge was to choose a theme song for each character and give a justification and links. There are YouTube links under the names of each song for all of them except Untraveled Worlds (you can find other choruses singing it, but they are not professional). I linked the Last.fm preview here, but it's available on both iTunes and Rhapsody. I also made a .zip with all of the songs in it, and the whole piece is in there as well.
Deputy Andy (Eureka)
Diamond Day by Vashti Bunyan
Just another diamond day
Just a blade of grass
Just another bale of hay
And the horses pass.
Just another field to plough
Just a grain of wheat
Just a sack of seed to sow
And the children eat.
Just another life to live
Just a word to say
Just another love to give
And a diamond dayI chose Andy because it never hurts to have an android on your team for brute strength and reference. Plus he's got a cheery disposition and is pretty easy on the eyes. The song reflects his sort of step-by-step, care-free existence. It's gentle, simple, and delicate with a sense of an intricate underlying format and pattern. The voice weaves through both the flute and guitar melody, and I kind of thought of these as different levels of Andy's processes.
Noah Bennet (Heroes)
Nothing Else Matters by Apocalyptica
instrumental
Noah Bennet is all you could ask for in terms of a foot solider - he's strong, good with weapons, blends into a crowd, charming, sneaky, subtle, and extremely intelligent with very little of that pesky thing called conscience. He's the epitome of an anti-hero. This version of the Metallica song has no words. It's simply a quartet of cellos, which I thought was a very fitting instrument for Noah; smooth and mournful, capable of so much depth of feeling and yearning. The melody rumbles along a sad path at the beginning, much like Noah's own past. It gains momentum and fervor as it progresses with an undercurrent of anger and betrayal - these are the events of the series. Eventually, it falls back into what it was in the beginning, lonely and bitter. The imagery in the music video is gorgeous, it's worth a look.
Samantha Carter (Stargate)
Snow (Hey Oh) by The Red Hot Chili Peppers
Come to decide that the things that I tried
Were in my life just to get high on
When I sit alone come get a little known
But I need more than myself this time
Step from the road to the sea to the sky
And I do believe it, we rely on
When I lay it on come get to play it on
All my life to sacrifice
Hey oh, listen what I say, oh
I got your hey oh, now listen what I say, oh
When will I know that I really can't go
To the well once more time to decide on
When it's killing me, when will I really see
All that I need to look inside
The more I see, the less I know
The more I like to let it go
In between the cover of another perfect wonder
And it's so white as snow
Running through a field where all my tracks will be concealed
And there's nowhere to go
Sam was the first person I picked. She's got field, combat, first aid, and weapons training, plus she's a brilliant scientist and engineer. She's the perfect choice, enough said. Snow has always been one of my favorite RHCP songs, and I'd like to think it reflects Sam pretty well. It speaks of an internal struggle, and Sam is full of those: the struggle between woman and soldier, scientist and warrior, duty and honor. I've sort of truncated the lyrics (it's surprisingly repetitive in content but actually not in form), but I see the slow disillusionment of a career soldier as she decides that maybe now it's time to take more of her life for her own.
The (Tenth) Doctor (Doctor Who)
Untraveled Worlds by Chorus Angelicus
I cannot rest from travel: I will drink
Life to the lees: all times I have enjoyed
Greatly, have suffered greatly, both with those
That loved me, and alone
I am part of all that I have met;
Yet all experience is an arch wherethrough
Gleams that untravelled world, whose margin fades
For ever and for ever when I move.
How dull it is to pause, to make an end,
To rust unburnished, not to shine in use!
As though to breath were life.
Life piled on life were all to little, and of one to me
Little remains: but every hour is saved
From that eternal silence, something more,
A bringer of new things; and vile it were
For some three suns to store and hoard myself,
And this gray spirit yearning in desire
To follow knowledge like a sinking star,
Beyond the utmost bound of human thought.
Come, my friends,
'Tis not too late to seek a newer world.
Push off, and sitting well in order smite
The sounding furrows; for my purpose holds
To sail beyond the sunset, and the baths
Of all the western stars, until I die.
Though much is taken, much abides; and though
We are not now that strength which in old days
Moved earth and heaven; that which we are, we are,
One equal-temper of heroic hearts,
Made weak by time and fate, but strong in will
To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield.
Oh the Tenth Doctor. He was really my first Doctor, and his enthusiasm for exploration and adventure, plus his encyclopedic knowledge and his sweet TaRDiS make him an easy choice. He's not as dour as Nine and not as manic as Eleven, but he's got a dark streak a mile wide (which can be useful, if channeled the right way). The song is a setting of the Alfred, Lord Tennyson poem Ulysses, about the legendary explorer who rallies his men to go into one last adventure that serves to be their demise. I think this whole bravado, the idea of being omniscient and powerful beyond the ken of men reflects Ten's descent into darkness at the end of his tenure, and quite possible at this tail end of his lives in general. The tone is manically positive, but the outcome is nowhere near.
Jack Harkness (Torchwood)
Mount Wroclai (Idle Days) by Beirut
And I know when time
will pass by slow
without my heart
what can I do?
You're in the halls
the bell gives way to a larger swell
without my heart
what can I do?
And we grow fat
on the charms of our idle dreary days,
seen the shadows grow,
see an ominous display.
With no alarm
could we say we'd have expected this way.
Under stars have died,
give incent to play.
Jack is one resourceful, determined bastard, and I love him for it. It's so interesting to compare that care-free, gung-ho man we met in Doctor Who and the dark, mysterious man in Torchwood. The latter is so filled with darkness and secrets, but he gets shit done that no one else can even bear to ponder. This Beirut song illustrates his frustration with his continued existence and his disgust for the idleness of people and their ability to limit their vision to what they want to see.
Daniel Jackson (Stargate)
Stone Language by Geoff Zanelli and Klaus Badelt
instrumental
A language and culture expert with diplomatic experience is always a plus. Also he's funny, sarcastic, and nice to look at. The beginning of this piece is gentle and delicate, just like Daniel was, once upon a time. It grows into a strong, ethnic beat and eventually full-fledged vocalization as he grows as a person and sees both amazing and horrible things, but becomes all the stronger for them. The end has echoes of the beginning, but is a much more developed, powerful tune.
Helen Magnus (Sanctuary)
To the End of the Earth by Glenn Stafford
instrumental
Helen Magnus is amazing. She's a doctor, a scientist, an inventor, an activist, a leader, a mother, a fighter, an explorer. And those legs haha. Her song evokes a sort of sea-based exploration that I think fits her origins in 19th century England. It's a little earthy and raw with a healthy dose of mystery and sadness, two things that surround Helen like a shroud. The bass drone is like a constant thrumming of electricity and power, also two things Helen has in spades. Yes, this is a song from World of Warcraft. Go ahead and judge.
Dana Scully (The X-Files)
Believe by The Bravery
The faces all around me they don't smile they just crack
Waiting for our ship to come but our ship's not coming back
We do our time like pennies in a jar
What are we saving for?
There's a smell of stale feeling that's drinking from my skins
The drinking never stops because the drink absolves our sins
We sit and throw our roots into the floor
What are we waiting for?
So give me something to believe
Cause I am living just to breathe
And I need something more
To keep on breathing for
So give me something to believe
Something's always coming you can hear it in the ground
It swells into the air
With the rising
Rising sound
And never comes but shakes the boards and rattles all the doors
What are we waiting for?
I am hiding from some beast
But the beast was always here
Watching without eyes
Because the beast is just my fear
That I am just nothing
Now its just what I've become
What am I waiting for?
Its already done.
She's a doctor, can shoot a gun, and is one smart cookie. For every whole-hearted believer, we need a skeptic willing to drag their heels lest we march off the edge of the cliff. For me, the song represents her struggle between reality and Mulder's dream/nightmare land where all the shadows are grasping for your ankles. She slowly comes to realize that it is not, in fact, paranoid if they are indeed out to get you, yet she never really knows what to believe. Her brain tells her a certain category of things are just not possible, but she sees evidence she cannot explain all the time. Over time, the veil between her eyes and the world as it really is lifts just a little bit, and she finds herself more willing to embrace unorthodox explanations. But at what price? The end of the series is pretty bleak, relatively speaking, and she really has no one but Mulder in her life. It's the price of a hero. At least she gets a hot boyfriend, even if he is a little crazy.
Aeryn Sun (Farscape)
Hunter by Björk
If travel is searching
And home has been found
I'm not stopping
I'm going hunting
I'm the hunter
I'll bring back the goods
But I don't know when
I thought I could organize freedom
How Scandinavian of me
You sussed it out, didn't you ?
You could smell it
So you left me on my own
To complete the mission
Now I'm leaving it all behind
I'm going hunting
I'm the hunter, I'm the hunter
I'm going hunting
I'm the hunter...
Aeryn is a finely-tuned killing machine and is indeed an anti-hero, my favorite type of hero. I would make her the leader of any strike force, and she, among some of the others, has lots of piloting experience. This Björk classic has a gentle, organic pulsing, suggestive of maybe a hive - fitting, considering her Peacekeeper origins. Aeryn is a hunter, deadly and precise. She was set adrift from the PK forces and initially tried to continue being that same PK whilst living apart, cut loose and free. She came to find their tactics brutal and found her own little pack with which to hunt, to search, to travel, just as the beginning lyrics indicate. No matter how soft she becomes, she will never shed all the habits of her former life, and this is good because those are the skills that keep her and those she loves alive.
Nathan Wuornos (Haven)
Night Squall by Balmorhea
instrumental
Let's be honest, I'm bringing him mostly for the eye-candy factor. But he is a cop, he is used to dealing with weird situations with aplomb, can shoot a gun, can probably hunt, fish, and camp. Plus he can't feel anything, which really has to come in handy sometimes, despite how very sad it makes him. Night Squall is one of my favorite songs ever, and I can see Nathan and Maine and the ocean reflected in its gentle rocking. Nathan and the sea are always moving subtly on the surface, but that covers a much more profound movement, change, and development underneath. Much like the sort of repetitive, sort of dynamic melody of the song, Nathan is comforting, dependable, something you could curl up against and trust to watch over you while you sleep. There is something that holds both the character of the cold, windy sea as it whips your hair and a warm fire in a cozy, dark cottage. Nathan's a cold fish on the outside, but it's really just a coping mechanism. Inside, he's warm and capable of so much love.
HERE'S THE WHOLE .ZIP - tracks + my stupid little art
Deputy Andy (Eureka)
Diamond Day by Vashti Bunyan
Just another diamond day
Just a blade of grass
Just another bale of hay
And the horses pass.
Just another field to plough
Just a grain of wheat
Just a sack of seed to sow
And the children eat.
Just another life to live
Just a word to say
Just another love to give
And a diamond dayI chose Andy because it never hurts to have an android on your team for brute strength and reference. Plus he's got a cheery disposition and is pretty easy on the eyes. The song reflects his sort of step-by-step, care-free existence. It's gentle, simple, and delicate with a sense of an intricate underlying format and pattern. The voice weaves through both the flute and guitar melody, and I kind of thought of these as different levels of Andy's processes.
Noah Bennet (Heroes)
Nothing Else Matters by Apocalyptica
instrumental
Noah Bennet is all you could ask for in terms of a foot solider - he's strong, good with weapons, blends into a crowd, charming, sneaky, subtle, and extremely intelligent with very little of that pesky thing called conscience. He's the epitome of an anti-hero. This version of the Metallica song has no words. It's simply a quartet of cellos, which I thought was a very fitting instrument for Noah; smooth and mournful, capable of so much depth of feeling and yearning. The melody rumbles along a sad path at the beginning, much like Noah's own past. It gains momentum and fervor as it progresses with an undercurrent of anger and betrayal - these are the events of the series. Eventually, it falls back into what it was in the beginning, lonely and bitter. The imagery in the music video is gorgeous, it's worth a look.
Samantha Carter (Stargate)
Snow (Hey Oh) by The Red Hot Chili Peppers
Come to decide that the things that I tried
Were in my life just to get high on
When I sit alone come get a little known
But I need more than myself this time
Step from the road to the sea to the sky
And I do believe it, we rely on
When I lay it on come get to play it on
All my life to sacrifice
Hey oh, listen what I say, oh
I got your hey oh, now listen what I say, oh
When will I know that I really can't go
To the well once more time to decide on
When it's killing me, when will I really see
All that I need to look inside
The more I see, the less I know
The more I like to let it go
In between the cover of another perfect wonder
And it's so white as snow
Running through a field where all my tracks will be concealed
And there's nowhere to go
Sam was the first person I picked. She's got field, combat, first aid, and weapons training, plus she's a brilliant scientist and engineer. She's the perfect choice, enough said. Snow has always been one of my favorite RHCP songs, and I'd like to think it reflects Sam pretty well. It speaks of an internal struggle, and Sam is full of those: the struggle between woman and soldier, scientist and warrior, duty and honor. I've sort of truncated the lyrics (it's surprisingly repetitive in content but actually not in form), but I see the slow disillusionment of a career soldier as she decides that maybe now it's time to take more of her life for her own.
The (Tenth) Doctor (Doctor Who)
Untraveled Worlds by Chorus Angelicus
I cannot rest from travel: I will drink
Life to the lees: all times I have enjoyed
Greatly, have suffered greatly, both with those
That loved me, and alone
I am part of all that I have met;
Yet all experience is an arch wherethrough
Gleams that untravelled world, whose margin fades
For ever and for ever when I move.
How dull it is to pause, to make an end,
To rust unburnished, not to shine in use!
As though to breath were life.
Life piled on life were all to little, and of one to me
Little remains: but every hour is saved
From that eternal silence, something more,
A bringer of new things; and vile it were
For some three suns to store and hoard myself,
And this gray spirit yearning in desire
To follow knowledge like a sinking star,
Beyond the utmost bound of human thought.
Come, my friends,
'Tis not too late to seek a newer world.
Push off, and sitting well in order smite
The sounding furrows; for my purpose holds
To sail beyond the sunset, and the baths
Of all the western stars, until I die.
Though much is taken, much abides; and though
We are not now that strength which in old days
Moved earth and heaven; that which we are, we are,
One equal-temper of heroic hearts,
Made weak by time and fate, but strong in will
To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield.
Oh the Tenth Doctor. He was really my first Doctor, and his enthusiasm for exploration and adventure, plus his encyclopedic knowledge and his sweet TaRDiS make him an easy choice. He's not as dour as Nine and not as manic as Eleven, but he's got a dark streak a mile wide (which can be useful, if channeled the right way). The song is a setting of the Alfred, Lord Tennyson poem Ulysses, about the legendary explorer who rallies his men to go into one last adventure that serves to be their demise. I think this whole bravado, the idea of being omniscient and powerful beyond the ken of men reflects Ten's descent into darkness at the end of his tenure, and quite possible at this tail end of his lives in general. The tone is manically positive, but the outcome is nowhere near.
Jack Harkness (Torchwood)
Mount Wroclai (Idle Days) by Beirut
And I know when time
will pass by slow
without my heart
what can I do?
You're in the halls
the bell gives way to a larger swell
without my heart
what can I do?
And we grow fat
on the charms of our idle dreary days,
seen the shadows grow,
see an ominous display.
With no alarm
could we say we'd have expected this way.
Under stars have died,
give incent to play.
Jack is one resourceful, determined bastard, and I love him for it. It's so interesting to compare that care-free, gung-ho man we met in Doctor Who and the dark, mysterious man in Torchwood. The latter is so filled with darkness and secrets, but he gets shit done that no one else can even bear to ponder. This Beirut song illustrates his frustration with his continued existence and his disgust for the idleness of people and their ability to limit their vision to what they want to see.
Daniel Jackson (Stargate)
Stone Language by Geoff Zanelli and Klaus Badelt
instrumental
A language and culture expert with diplomatic experience is always a plus. Also he's funny, sarcastic, and nice to look at. The beginning of this piece is gentle and delicate, just like Daniel was, once upon a time. It grows into a strong, ethnic beat and eventually full-fledged vocalization as he grows as a person and sees both amazing and horrible things, but becomes all the stronger for them. The end has echoes of the beginning, but is a much more developed, powerful tune.
Helen Magnus (Sanctuary)
To the End of the Earth by Glenn Stafford
instrumental
Helen Magnus is amazing. She's a doctor, a scientist, an inventor, an activist, a leader, a mother, a fighter, an explorer. And those legs haha. Her song evokes a sort of sea-based exploration that I think fits her origins in 19th century England. It's a little earthy and raw with a healthy dose of mystery and sadness, two things that surround Helen like a shroud. The bass drone is like a constant thrumming of electricity and power, also two things Helen has in spades. Yes, this is a song from World of Warcraft. Go ahead and judge.
Dana Scully (The X-Files)
Believe by The Bravery
The faces all around me they don't smile they just crack
Waiting for our ship to come but our ship's not coming back
We do our time like pennies in a jar
What are we saving for?
There's a smell of stale feeling that's drinking from my skins
The drinking never stops because the drink absolves our sins
We sit and throw our roots into the floor
What are we waiting for?
So give me something to believe
Cause I am living just to breathe
And I need something more
To keep on breathing for
So give me something to believe
Something's always coming you can hear it in the ground
It swells into the air
With the rising
Rising sound
And never comes but shakes the boards and rattles all the doors
What are we waiting for?
I am hiding from some beast
But the beast was always here
Watching without eyes
Because the beast is just my fear
That I am just nothing
Now its just what I've become
What am I waiting for?
Its already done.
She's a doctor, can shoot a gun, and is one smart cookie. For every whole-hearted believer, we need a skeptic willing to drag their heels lest we march off the edge of the cliff. For me, the song represents her struggle between reality and Mulder's dream/nightmare land where all the shadows are grasping for your ankles. She slowly comes to realize that it is not, in fact, paranoid if they are indeed out to get you, yet she never really knows what to believe. Her brain tells her a certain category of things are just not possible, but she sees evidence she cannot explain all the time. Over time, the veil between her eyes and the world as it really is lifts just a little bit, and she finds herself more willing to embrace unorthodox explanations. But at what price? The end of the series is pretty bleak, relatively speaking, and she really has no one but Mulder in her life. It's the price of a hero. At least she gets a hot boyfriend, even if he is a little crazy.
Aeryn Sun (Farscape)
Hunter by Björk
If travel is searching
And home has been found
I'm not stopping
I'm going hunting
I'm the hunter
I'll bring back the goods
But I don't know when
I thought I could organize freedom
How Scandinavian of me
You sussed it out, didn't you ?
You could smell it
So you left me on my own
To complete the mission
Now I'm leaving it all behind
I'm going hunting
I'm the hunter, I'm the hunter
I'm going hunting
I'm the hunter...
Aeryn is a finely-tuned killing machine and is indeed an anti-hero, my favorite type of hero. I would make her the leader of any strike force, and she, among some of the others, has lots of piloting experience. This Björk classic has a gentle, organic pulsing, suggestive of maybe a hive - fitting, considering her Peacekeeper origins. Aeryn is a hunter, deadly and precise. She was set adrift from the PK forces and initially tried to continue being that same PK whilst living apart, cut loose and free. She came to find their tactics brutal and found her own little pack with which to hunt, to search, to travel, just as the beginning lyrics indicate. No matter how soft she becomes, she will never shed all the habits of her former life, and this is good because those are the skills that keep her and those she loves alive.
Nathan Wuornos (Haven)
Night Squall by Balmorhea
instrumental
Let's be honest, I'm bringing him mostly for the eye-candy factor. But he is a cop, he is used to dealing with weird situations with aplomb, can shoot a gun, can probably hunt, fish, and camp. Plus he can't feel anything, which really has to come in handy sometimes, despite how very sad it makes him. Night Squall is one of my favorite songs ever, and I can see Nathan and Maine and the ocean reflected in its gentle rocking. Nathan and the sea are always moving subtly on the surface, but that covers a much more profound movement, change, and development underneath. Much like the sort of repetitive, sort of dynamic melody of the song, Nathan is comforting, dependable, something you could curl up against and trust to watch over you while you sleep. There is something that holds both the character of the cold, windy sea as it whips your hair and a warm fire in a cozy, dark cottage. Nathan's a cold fish on the outside, but it's really just a coping mechanism. Inside, he's warm and capable of so much love.
HERE'S THE WHOLE .ZIP - tracks + my stupid little art