A home for geeks

I didn`t get involved in Twin Peaks when it was on television in this country. Some of my peers were gripped by this scary, strange programme, but I somehow never managed to get around to watching it, and even when I did try, the complicated interrelationships were too far advanced for me to have any hope of grasping so late in the game.

But this past weekend, the threat of horrible weather, combined with general winter laziness, meant that I felt a yearning for a good dose of DVD viewing, so a friend and I went to the video store and rented the entire first season of the series.

There were two things that I was prepared for. One was that Twin Peaks would be weird. The other was that while it might be interesting, I shouldn`t try too hard to analyse what was going on, because David Lynch directs his shows almost serendipitously, in flights of creative fancy.

I enjoyed my couch potato weekend thoroughly, and am looking forward to the DVD release of the second series, which is apparently even stranger, but even the supposedly quite mild first season left me with a whole lot of nagging questions.

Luckily, the Internet is a breeding ground for Trekkie-like television show fans, who gather together in chat rooms to pontificate on the symbolism and meaning contained in episodes that they have watched over and over again. Simply typing in a couple of keywords around the area of confusion yields a wealth of information on David Lynch`s intentions.

How series geeks must delight in the Internet.

Georgina Guedes, Editor, ITWeb Brainstorm

Mix this with the titbits I gathered from the bonus CD at the end of the series, and I find myself pretty well informed on a topic about which, until the Friday before, I knew almost nothing.

For instance, I know that BOB, the demon killer, made his first appearance accidentally in the filming of one of the early episodes. A props assistant, he was adjusting the edge of the bed when filming started, and his ominous grey-haired head appeared in a shot over the shoulder of one of the actors. Instead of reshooting, Lynch worked his appearance into the script, and BOB was born.

I learnt that discussions held in the red room, in a strange language that sounds similar to English, were actually shot in reverse, with the actors pronouncing phonemes backwards, so that when they were played the right way, the language sounded almost like English, but not quite.

How series geeks must delight in the Internet. Before, they occupied dark corners of school playgrounds, or later, record stores, and argued about the first sighting of Leonard Nimoy`s missing ring finger in Star Trek, or what the lyrics of the Cockteau Twins songs actually meant. Now, through a web of interconnected computers, they can link with other similarly preoccupied fans, and exist in a blissful world of intense television scrutiny.

And for those of us who dabble in geekdom, but would probably be unlikely to approach the weirdos in the dark corners of record stores to get their opinions on what might have been happening in the red room, this information is available to us at the touch of a button, and with no human interaction required at all.

In light of this, I am able to indulge my desire to see the next season (once it is released) with the knowledge that no insight will be off limits, and my every question will find an easy and detailed answer. Bring on the second season.