a thinky thought picspam on chris skelton [SPOILERS FOR A2A S3]
after a week's respite, i'm back with zee picspams for the main A2A characters. this time? it's chris.
when we first met him in manchester, during LOM, chris was aloof and, well, slow, not to mention nearly joined at ray's hip. but sam took him under his wing and mentored him, introducing him to more modern police methods, which he was eager to learn.
years later, in london, chris is still aloof and a bit slow at times, not to mention he's still ray's best mate. he's the first person alex recognizes after being rescued by the team. (interestingly enough, chris is the first of the team sam meets as well.)
this time, unlike in LOM, chris has a love interest: shaz.
i mentioned in my shaz picspam that the two of them are the only ones present when alex presents the "D(ystopia) / E(verything is significant) / A(nalyze) / D(estiny)" lecture (if you will). this has to be important in the grand scheme of things, methinks.
anyhoo, chris's main function in the first two series is to provide us with a bit of comic relief thanks to his slowness and whatnot. oh, and beat up gil hollis after he stabs shaz.
that is, until we get to series 2. but first!
some gratuitous shots of chris doing the full monty for shaz. something alex kinda-sorta taught him. 'cause, y'know, she hates it when he looks at other nekkid women. but him, stripping down to nothing? in shaz's own words... "fab!" oh, and look! he's a blonde boy now. :D
anyway. amidst the whole police corruption thing with supermac and everything else, chris finds himself in corrupt territory himself.
it all started with him needing extra dosh for shaz's engagement ring.
ALEX: How did it start? Was it the engagement ring? Is that who you paid for it?
CHRIS: It was just a loan. I-I never thought... It was just a loan.
ALEX: Who from?
CHRIS: It was a bloke Ray knew. He said he couldn't help me, but he pointed me to someone who could. No problem. Pay me back when you can.
ALEX: How much?
CHRIS: Five hundred. I wanted the best. I didn't want to let her down.
ALEX: And did you pay it back?
CHRIS: A bit. He didn't seem to mind, you know. He, he didn't put pressure on or, I mean, I had so much else to think about. The wedding and all that. It didn't seem... It didn't seem that important.
then things began to get a little...shall we say...shady.
CHRIS (continued): I got a call.
ALEX: Who from?
CHRIS: He didn't give a name. He, he just said he knew I'd do him a favour, this one favour.
ALEX: But you knew it was about the money?
(CHRIS nods.)
ALEX: What did he ask you to do?
CHRIS: Lose a file.
ALEX: What file?
CHRIS: Prison transfer file.
ALEX: Who's file? Chris? Who's file? Who's file, Chris?
CHRIS: Kevin Hales' file. It's, it's not as if it was a big thing, you know? It wasn't passing information, or, or planting evidence or anything, it was just... Just don't find it. I mean... I didn't know it would be so important.
ALEX: No. Don't you see, but if we'd known where Kevin Hales was being held, we could have got to him before Mac did. Before he was murdered, Chris.
CHRIS: I didn't know that. I-I didn't know.
ALEX: Did he pay you?
CHRIS: Fifty quid. An envelope through the letterbox. I thought that was it, I thought it was finished. I'm so sorry.
but wait! there's more!
GENE: Jarvis.
ALEX: What, you...? You told Mac that we'd arrested Jarvis?
GENE: A nonce.
CHRIS: I thought, I thought, right? What I thought was...
(CHRIS starts to break down.)
CHRIS: I'll go along with it, and I'll find out who's doing this. Who's making me. And I'll go to the Guv. And I'll tell him. And he'll make it stop.
ALEX: But you didn't tell him.
no, chris didn't tell him. :(
CHRIS: Well, it, it'd be all right for a while. A-and then I'd get a call. Lose a file. Shred a file. Move this record. Fill in the wrong address. Not that phone number, this one. And the more envelopes got pushed through my door, the more I couldn't stop. I was in deep, Boss. I was in deep.
ALEX: Did you take the note from the evidence room?
(CHRIS nods.)
CHRIS: Yeah.
ALEX: Did you forge PC Summers' signature?
CHRIS: Yeah.
ALEX: Did you tell Lafferty that Tomascz had read it?
CHRIS: Not directly. A-a voice on the phone. If I didn't tell them who you'd brought in, they'd tell you about... About what I... About everything. I-I-I didn't want to do it. I didn't. They gave me a number to call. Told me to think about it.
ALEX: And you called it. And you give them Tomascz's name.
GENE: And he ends up in intensive care.
(GENE walks out.)
CHRIS: I'm so sorry, Guv. I am so sorry.
(The door slams.)
chris found himself in too deep. much too deep. so deep that...
(Gene's office. CHRIS puts his warrant card down on GENE's desk.)
GENE: What's that?
CHRIS: Warrant card. I wish to offer my resignation from the force with immediate effect.
GENE: No.
CHRIS: What?
GENE: No. You don't get off that easy. I want you to stay a copper. And know every second, of every minute, of every day, the true depth of your full betrayal of the force. Of Shaz. Ray. Yourself. Jail isn't your sentence, Chris. I am.
(GENE hands back the warrant card then goes to the door to usher CHRIS out. Everyone in CID turns to look.)
GENE: You are my team. As far as you are concerned, I am judge, jury and executioner. Detective Constable Christopher Skelton made a mistake that he deeply regrets. It ends here.
RAY: What?
GENE: You don't like it, you come to me. You don't take it to the Super, you don't take it to the Yard. You come to me.
(RAY walks out.)
GENE: Ray!
(One by one all the members of CID, and VIV, leave the room in disgust. Only SHAZ and ALEX remain.)
CHRIS: Shaz, I am so sorry. I just... I just want- I just wanted... I just want you.
(SHAZ, close to tears, leaves too.)
in one fell swoop, chris has lost trust in not just gene, but virtually the entire team. except for alex (and, to at least some extent, shaz).
you may remember that, at the start of 2x07, alex's vision of molly fades into chris, as he's trying to wake her up during a late-night stakeout. first, there's the whole family dynamic thing. chris is "baby bear" to gene's "daddy bear", ray's "big bear", and alex's "mummy bear", similar to how molly is alex's "baby". babies are the picture of innocence, naivety, purity, and that sort of thing. molly fading into chris, to me, suggests innocence lost.
2x08...
ALEX: Chris?
CHRIS: I can't go back.
ALEX: Yes, you can. Walk in with me. Come on.
CHRIS: No, ma'am, you don't get it. That... that way you're looking at me, that's how they look at Kurt Russell when they think he's the Thing in, well, in The Thing. When they think he's a monster on the inside. I-I can't take that.
ALEX: Come on, it'll be all right.
yet, chris still receives the cold shoulder from most of CID. they've not forgiven him for what he did. when CID go to investigate a murder, chris isn't invited. when he makes a quip about ray eating the deep-fried dead man's willy, no one laughs. when he encourages ray to show some initiative regarding some evidence regarding tiny, ray lambasts him (only to secretly kick himself for it).
but then...
SHAZ: Ma'am? I think they got in touch with Chris again. The Operation Rose people. He took a call earlier and...
ALEX: Where is he, Shaz?
(Rear of the police station. CHRIS is sitting on the bonnet of a squad car throwing stones at the wall. This is telly speak for 'unhappy'.)
SHAZ: Chris!
CHRIS: Go away.
(CHRIS starts to walk away.)
ALEX: Chris, they called you, didn't they? They still think you're with them.
CHRIS: Well I'm not, okay? I'm not!
ALEX: Where did the call come from?
CHRIS: Another police station I think. Just leave me alone, please!
SHAZ: Chris, please.
(SHAZ runs to catch him up.)
SHAZ: It was a horrible shock, but... I'm not ashamed of you, Chris. I'm proud of you.
CHRIS: How can you possibly be proud of me?
SHAZ: Because you care when you get it wrong. It matters to you. And that takes something special. I love you for that. D'you hear me? I love you.
CHRIS: Do you?
SHAZ: 'Course I do, you narna. Now I've got a wedding dress fitting tomorrow. Am I going to it? Am I, Christopher?
(CHRIS smiles and they kiss. Well, snog. ALEX is left slightly embarrassed, playing gooseberry.)
ALEX: Um. Hmm. Er... Well, this is lovely, but, um... Er, Chris? Er, Chris, we haven't...
(CHRIS recollects himself and puts SHAZ down for later.)
CHRIS: Oh, yeah. They want to meet with me. In one hour.
ALEX: Right. You have to do it.
(CHRIS nods.)
chris takes the job and gets ray back on side in the process. the diversion is successful. then there's this telling line, which i'll expand upon momentarily...
MARTIN SUMMERS: You're not happy, are you, son? Neither was I, and I wasn't even involved. Just a spotty kid asked to turn a blind eye. It'll hurt, you know. The guilt. It'll hurt like a bitch, I should know. I bid you and your conscience adieu.
and with that, on to chris and series three...
CHRIS: Oh, er, Shazzer's coming in later. We're not together any more, but that's cool. And The Gang. Hmm. It's not the same without you any more, ma'am. Can't you wake up and...
chances are, we'll never know what triggered the breakup with shaz. just that it's a very odd happening. at the end of series two, they were madly in love, about to be married. three months later...they've split up?! makes no sense. yet.
but something else has happened in the interim. in fact, one could say it's been an ongoing process. since the beginning of A2A -- and even LOM -- chris's intelligence has improved. shaz has been loaning him books to help him learn things. he's reading magazine articles about things most people wouldn't think of (like female circumcision). he's using bigger words.
something else, too. in the ensuing episodes, he starts helping keats -- mostly with paperwork. maybe even with other things, too? in 3x06, we know keats visited HMP fenchurch. chris tells ray and gene that some of the inmates may recognize him, when he's volunteered (along with ray) for an undercover job (which ends up going wrong). did chris go with him? as for the paperwork...is he doing anything similar to what he did in series two? martin summers did "bid [his] conscience adieu", after all.
but then, maybe chris is employing a very simple but clever tactic: "keep your friends close and your enemies closer." he knows keats has something against gene. we also know, via chris himself in 3x02, there's nowhere he'd rather be than in the guv's shadow. i'm also fairly confident the writers aren't going to go down the corruption route with chris yet again after being busted for it in series two. however, i wouldn't put it past them to make us think they're retreading that path.
on the other hand, chris has been known to march to the beat of his own drummer. he was willing mentored by sam in LOM. in the first two series of A2A, his loyalties were, for all practical purposes, with his own team. now his loyalties are divided between them and keats. let's also recall chris has neither had his LOM moment (aka "bowieflash") as ray and shaz have, nor has he seen the stars as they and alex have (although he's aware ray has seen them). if the bowieflashes are synonymous with pledging loyalty to gene, this doesn't quite make sense, as chris's loyalties are, again, divided. if they mean receiving something from gene that one is looking for, or conquering a fear of something, this makes a bit more sense, i think. chris doesn't really ask for much; he just does as he's told. i don't think he's looking for absolution for his involvement in operation rose; to me, he received it already.
but consider this: in an episode of LOM, chris ends up being gene's personal punching bag of sorts. (highlight within the brackets for a 3x07 spoiler.) [in 3x07, it looks as though gene will be doing so again.] through both shows, gene has never taken him seriously. maybe that is what chris wants most of all?
lastly, a leftover tidbit. think back to alex's morgue vision in 1x07, when the bowie clown tells her he's going to take someone, and he asks "who's it going to be?". of the members of CID she sees lying dead, chris is the only person shown with his eyes closed. everyone else's eyes are open. (in 1x05, when she sees her own dead corpse, her eyes start closed but then open.)
anything else? (yet again, i finished this up at arse o'clock.)
screencaps by nancherrow, stormfronticons, nextjuly, tryingtorevive, and mubbles_icons. please visit the comms to download the original screencaps. thanks!
(also on dreamwidth)
when we first met him in manchester, during LOM, chris was aloof and, well, slow, not to mention nearly joined at ray's hip. but sam took him under his wing and mentored him, introducing him to more modern police methods, which he was eager to learn.
years later, in london, chris is still aloof and a bit slow at times, not to mention he's still ray's best mate. he's the first person alex recognizes after being rescued by the team. (interestingly enough, chris is the first of the team sam meets as well.)
this time, unlike in LOM, chris has a love interest: shaz.
i mentioned in my shaz picspam that the two of them are the only ones present when alex presents the "D(ystopia) / E(verything is significant) / A(nalyze) / D(estiny)" lecture (if you will). this has to be important in the grand scheme of things, methinks.
anyhoo, chris's main function in the first two series is to provide us with a bit of comic relief thanks to his slowness and whatnot. oh, and beat up gil hollis after he stabs shaz.
that is, until we get to series 2. but first!
some gratuitous shots of chris doing the full monty for shaz. something alex kinda-sorta taught him. 'cause, y'know, she hates it when he looks at other nekkid women. but him, stripping down to nothing? in shaz's own words... "fab!" oh, and look! he's a blonde boy now. :D
anyway. amidst the whole police corruption thing with supermac and everything else, chris finds himself in corrupt territory himself.
it all started with him needing extra dosh for shaz's engagement ring.
ALEX: How did it start? Was it the engagement ring? Is that who you paid for it?
CHRIS: It was just a loan. I-I never thought... It was just a loan.
ALEX: Who from?
CHRIS: It was a bloke Ray knew. He said he couldn't help me, but he pointed me to someone who could. No problem. Pay me back when you can.
ALEX: How much?
CHRIS: Five hundred. I wanted the best. I didn't want to let her down.
ALEX: And did you pay it back?
CHRIS: A bit. He didn't seem to mind, you know. He, he didn't put pressure on or, I mean, I had so much else to think about. The wedding and all that. It didn't seem... It didn't seem that important.
then things began to get a little...shall we say...shady.
CHRIS (continued): I got a call.
ALEX: Who from?
CHRIS: He didn't give a name. He, he just said he knew I'd do him a favour, this one favour.
ALEX: But you knew it was about the money?
(CHRIS nods.)
ALEX: What did he ask you to do?
CHRIS: Lose a file.
ALEX: What file?
CHRIS: Prison transfer file.
ALEX: Who's file? Chris? Who's file? Who's file, Chris?
CHRIS: Kevin Hales' file. It's, it's not as if it was a big thing, you know? It wasn't passing information, or, or planting evidence or anything, it was just... Just don't find it. I mean... I didn't know it would be so important.
ALEX: No. Don't you see, but if we'd known where Kevin Hales was being held, we could have got to him before Mac did. Before he was murdered, Chris.
CHRIS: I didn't know that. I-I didn't know.
ALEX: Did he pay you?
CHRIS: Fifty quid. An envelope through the letterbox. I thought that was it, I thought it was finished. I'm so sorry.
but wait! there's more!
GENE: Jarvis.
ALEX: What, you...? You told Mac that we'd arrested Jarvis?
GENE: A nonce.
CHRIS: I thought, I thought, right? What I thought was...
(CHRIS starts to break down.)
CHRIS: I'll go along with it, and I'll find out who's doing this. Who's making me. And I'll go to the Guv. And I'll tell him. And he'll make it stop.
ALEX: But you didn't tell him.
no, chris didn't tell him. :(
CHRIS: Well, it, it'd be all right for a while. A-and then I'd get a call. Lose a file. Shred a file. Move this record. Fill in the wrong address. Not that phone number, this one. And the more envelopes got pushed through my door, the more I couldn't stop. I was in deep, Boss. I was in deep.
ALEX: Did you take the note from the evidence room?
(CHRIS nods.)
CHRIS: Yeah.
ALEX: Did you forge PC Summers' signature?
CHRIS: Yeah.
ALEX: Did you tell Lafferty that Tomascz had read it?
CHRIS: Not directly. A-a voice on the phone. If I didn't tell them who you'd brought in, they'd tell you about... About what I... About everything. I-I-I didn't want to do it. I didn't. They gave me a number to call. Told me to think about it.
ALEX: And you called it. And you give them Tomascz's name.
GENE: And he ends up in intensive care.
(GENE walks out.)
CHRIS: I'm so sorry, Guv. I am so sorry.
(The door slams.)
chris found himself in too deep. much too deep. so deep that...
(Gene's office. CHRIS puts his warrant card down on GENE's desk.)
GENE: What's that?
CHRIS: Warrant card. I wish to offer my resignation from the force with immediate effect.
GENE: No.
CHRIS: What?
GENE: No. You don't get off that easy. I want you to stay a copper. And know every second, of every minute, of every day, the true depth of your full betrayal of the force. Of Shaz. Ray. Yourself. Jail isn't your sentence, Chris. I am.
(GENE hands back the warrant card then goes to the door to usher CHRIS out. Everyone in CID turns to look.)
GENE: You are my team. As far as you are concerned, I am judge, jury and executioner. Detective Constable Christopher Skelton made a mistake that he deeply regrets. It ends here.
RAY: What?
GENE: You don't like it, you come to me. You don't take it to the Super, you don't take it to the Yard. You come to me.
(RAY walks out.)
GENE: Ray!
(One by one all the members of CID, and VIV, leave the room in disgust. Only SHAZ and ALEX remain.)
CHRIS: Shaz, I am so sorry. I just... I just want- I just wanted... I just want you.
(SHAZ, close to tears, leaves too.)
in one fell swoop, chris has lost trust in not just gene, but virtually the entire team. except for alex (and, to at least some extent, shaz).
you may remember that, at the start of 2x07, alex's vision of molly fades into chris, as he's trying to wake her up during a late-night stakeout. first, there's the whole family dynamic thing. chris is "baby bear" to gene's "daddy bear", ray's "big bear", and alex's "mummy bear", similar to how molly is alex's "baby". babies are the picture of innocence, naivety, purity, and that sort of thing. molly fading into chris, to me, suggests innocence lost.
2x08...
ALEX: Chris?
CHRIS: I can't go back.
ALEX: Yes, you can. Walk in with me. Come on.
CHRIS: No, ma'am, you don't get it. That... that way you're looking at me, that's how they look at Kurt Russell when they think he's the Thing in, well, in The Thing. When they think he's a monster on the inside. I-I can't take that.
ALEX: Come on, it'll be all right.
yet, chris still receives the cold shoulder from most of CID. they've not forgiven him for what he did. when CID go to investigate a murder, chris isn't invited. when he makes a quip about ray eating the deep-fried dead man's willy, no one laughs. when he encourages ray to show some initiative regarding some evidence regarding tiny, ray lambasts him (only to secretly kick himself for it).
but then...
SHAZ: Ma'am? I think they got in touch with Chris again. The Operation Rose people. He took a call earlier and...
ALEX: Where is he, Shaz?
(Rear of the police station. CHRIS is sitting on the bonnet of a squad car throwing stones at the wall. This is telly speak for 'unhappy'.)
SHAZ: Chris!
CHRIS: Go away.
(CHRIS starts to walk away.)
ALEX: Chris, they called you, didn't they? They still think you're with them.
CHRIS: Well I'm not, okay? I'm not!
ALEX: Where did the call come from?
CHRIS: Another police station I think. Just leave me alone, please!
SHAZ: Chris, please.
(SHAZ runs to catch him up.)
SHAZ: It was a horrible shock, but... I'm not ashamed of you, Chris. I'm proud of you.
CHRIS: How can you possibly be proud of me?
SHAZ: Because you care when you get it wrong. It matters to you. And that takes something special. I love you for that. D'you hear me? I love you.
CHRIS: Do you?
SHAZ: 'Course I do, you narna. Now I've got a wedding dress fitting tomorrow. Am I going to it? Am I, Christopher?
(CHRIS smiles and they kiss. Well, snog. ALEX is left slightly embarrassed, playing gooseberry.)
ALEX: Um. Hmm. Er... Well, this is lovely, but, um... Er, Chris? Er, Chris, we haven't...
(CHRIS recollects himself and puts SHAZ down for later.)
CHRIS: Oh, yeah. They want to meet with me. In one hour.
ALEX: Right. You have to do it.
(CHRIS nods.)
chris takes the job and gets ray back on side in the process. the diversion is successful. then there's this telling line, which i'll expand upon momentarily...
MARTIN SUMMERS: You're not happy, are you, son? Neither was I, and I wasn't even involved. Just a spotty kid asked to turn a blind eye. It'll hurt, you know. The guilt. It'll hurt like a bitch, I should know. I bid you and your conscience adieu.
and with that, on to chris and series three...
CHRIS: Oh, er, Shazzer's coming in later. We're not together any more, but that's cool. And The Gang. Hmm. It's not the same without you any more, ma'am. Can't you wake up and...
chances are, we'll never know what triggered the breakup with shaz. just that it's a very odd happening. at the end of series two, they were madly in love, about to be married. three months later...they've split up?! makes no sense. yet.
but something else has happened in the interim. in fact, one could say it's been an ongoing process. since the beginning of A2A -- and even LOM -- chris's intelligence has improved. shaz has been loaning him books to help him learn things. he's reading magazine articles about things most people wouldn't think of (like female circumcision). he's using bigger words.
something else, too. in the ensuing episodes, he starts helping keats -- mostly with paperwork. maybe even with other things, too? in 3x06, we know keats visited HMP fenchurch. chris tells ray and gene that some of the inmates may recognize him, when he's volunteered (along with ray) for an undercover job (which ends up going wrong). did chris go with him? as for the paperwork...is he doing anything similar to what he did in series two? martin summers did "bid [his] conscience adieu", after all.
but then, maybe chris is employing a very simple but clever tactic: "keep your friends close and your enemies closer." he knows keats has something against gene. we also know, via chris himself in 3x02, there's nowhere he'd rather be than in the guv's shadow. i'm also fairly confident the writers aren't going to go down the corruption route with chris yet again after being busted for it in series two. however, i wouldn't put it past them to make us think they're retreading that path.
on the other hand, chris has been known to march to the beat of his own drummer. he was willing mentored by sam in LOM. in the first two series of A2A, his loyalties were, for all practical purposes, with his own team. now his loyalties are divided between them and keats. let's also recall chris has neither had his LOM moment (aka "bowieflash") as ray and shaz have, nor has he seen the stars as they and alex have (although he's aware ray has seen them). if the bowieflashes are synonymous with pledging loyalty to gene, this doesn't quite make sense, as chris's loyalties are, again, divided. if they mean receiving something from gene that one is looking for, or conquering a fear of something, this makes a bit more sense, i think. chris doesn't really ask for much; he just does as he's told. i don't think he's looking for absolution for his involvement in operation rose; to me, he received it already.
but consider this: in an episode of LOM, chris ends up being gene's personal punching bag of sorts. (highlight within the brackets for a 3x07 spoiler.) [in 3x07, it looks as though gene will be doing so again.] through both shows, gene has never taken him seriously. maybe that is what chris wants most of all?
lastly, a leftover tidbit. think back to alex's morgue vision in 1x07, when the bowie clown tells her he's going to take someone, and he asks "who's it going to be?". of the members of CID she sees lying dead, chris is the only person shown with his eyes closed. everyone else's eyes are open. (in 1x05, when she sees her own dead corpse, her eyes start closed but then open.)
anything else? (yet again, i finished this up at arse o'clock.)
screencaps by nancherrow, stormfronticons, nextjuly, tryingtorevive, and mubbles_icons. please visit the comms to download the original screencaps. thanks!
(also on dreamwidth)