'Centennial' provided Toobworld with an interesting "Born To Run" theory for Two For Tuesday......
After the Wendells killed Soren Sorenson in 1889 and got away with it,
their fortunes increased and they became the biggest private land owners in all
of the Centennial region. In the mini-series, if not in the book, it appears
that Mervin Wendell died at the age of 74 a few years after the end of the great
World War. For the purposes of this Toobworld theory, I think he may have been
dead by the year 1921. (Jim Lloyd read his obituary to Hans Brumbaugh and it
mentioned the war as having already ended.)
I've written in the past that not only does reincarnation exist in
Toobworld, but that certain souls are destined to be reunited in their next
lives. The example I usually cite is that of Ross Poldark, of the landed gentry
in Cornwall back in the 18th Century, and his gypsy bride Demelza Carne. In the
1990's, their souls were reunited, but now he was a well-to-do lawyer in San
Francisco named Greg Montgomery and she was Dharma Liberty Finkelstein, the
daughter of hippies.
The souls of Mervin and Maude Wendell were reincarnated as well, not too
long after their deaths; reborn into new bodies by the mid-1920's. Had they
been allowed to remain in the afterlife for a while longer, perhaps the karma
they brought upon themselves would have been lessened. Instead, they came back
too soon and so their destinies played out much like a TV rerun. ["Born To
Rerun" is the term I use to describe reincarnation in the TV Universe.]
Nicholas Frame and Lillian Stanhope were Shakespearean actors of the London
stage whose automatic claim to fame was fast falling behind them by the 1970's. Things were so bad that they had to resort to trickery in order to get
their latest production of the Scottish play on the boards - Lillian began an affair
with their producer, Sir Roger Haversham, so that he would continue to finance
the production.
But eventually Sir Roger found out......
You can see the parallels - sex as the ploy in the con; the deceived
learning too late that he had been duped; and the woman causing the death of the
victim. Maude used the handle of the fake gun to club Sorenson to stop him from
attacking her husband, and Lillian threw a container of cold cream at Sir
Roger's head as he attacked Nicholas. We even saw both couples performing the Scottish play!
Usually I claim that the character is the same age as the actor who plays
him, and that if the plotline is set in the present, then they share the same
birth year. This wouldn't work with Nicholas Frame, however, since Richard
Basehart was born in 1914 and Mervin Wendell was very much alive at the start of
the war, selling war bonds. (Although he is slowly dying.) But Basehart looked
as though a few years could be shaved off his age with no harm to the
credibility of the character done.
BCnU!
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