--- In PotaDG@yahoogroups.com
, tshaf37@... wrote:
>
> I was reading Planet of the apes revisited and I noticed Taylor was
actually named George Taylor. He was never called this in the movies
but I was wondering if anyone know the first names of Brent,
Stewart, Dodge, Landon and how about Brent's skipper?
>
-------------------------------------------------------------
*** It's only in the End Credits of the first film where we learn
that Taylor's first name is 'George'. Incidentally, it's only
in "ESCAPE" that we learn that he was a colonel in whatever branch of
the military he served (Air Force? Army?). We know that Stewart was a
lieutenant, due to Taylor having referred to her as "our lovely
Lieutenant Stewart" and it's probable that the other 2 astronauts
were also lieutenants (in "ESCAPE" -- the script -- Hasslein refers
to the astronaut Zira mentions having been stuffed and displayed in
the ape museum as "Lieutenant Dodge"). Unfortunately, the ANSA
uniforms worn by all the actors who portrayed them did NOT have any
rank insignia, so you'd never know just by looking at 'em what their
rank is.
As for First Names of the others, in the "PLANET" script, Taylor
approaches the lobotomized Landon calling him "John..." and, surprise
surprise, in the script for "BENEATH" Brent -- when questioned by the
Mutants -- refers to his own name as "Brent... John Christopher."
Brent's skipper's name -- as best I've been able to glimpse that
famous B&W photo where Brent's using the oxygen thingy to keep him
alive -- is "_ADDO_" (the first and last letters on his uniform's
nametag are not legible. So, something like "Haddon" or "Maddox" or
something like that.
Unfortunately, there's no information out there at all to give us any
of the other characters' first names, which is too bad. According to
Jakes' novelization of "CONQUEST" Breck's first name is 'Jason', but
we never do learn the first names of Kolp, Hoskyns, or MacDonald...
which is annoying since his brother (also last-named 'MacDonald') is
in the last film and it would be handy to know their first names, to
differentiate WHICH 'MacDonald' we're talking about at any given
time.
One last item: Hasslein's first name is 'Otto' -- not 'Victor', as
Pournelle's novelization has it. I wonder why he changed it? Maybe he
liked the name, or perhaps thought that it would be an appropriate
symbolic name... denoting a personality that is bent on being
the 'victor' at all costs. Imagine being first-named (or even nick-
named) "Winner"... how much pressure there'd be to NOT LOSE. I knew a
guy in high school who -- even without such a name -- was put under
enormous pressure by his parents to ALWAYS get an "A+" in every
class, on every project. Not that his parents would beat him if he
didn't excel all the time, but just the 'disappointment' he knew
they'd feel... man, I felt for him. He was (and probably still is) a
terrific guy, and I hope he's doing well; but one of my most vivid
memories of him in high school was when the time limit for an
essay/written test was up... and he wasn't finished writing it... so,
when the teacher said "drop your pencils" and went around picking up
the tests, she got into a tug-of-war with him -- he wouldn't give it
up, 'cuz he just HAD to do it PERFECTLY--
And I'm sure he got an "A" on it... but he was probably crushed that
it wasn't an "A+" instead. He probably lost a point by not giving it
up at the moment we were all told to put our pencils down.
I wonder if Pournelle, thinking about how he was going to flesh out
Hasslein for his novelization, thought up a moment in the character's
life as a kid... his dad telling him, "You are Victor Hasslein...
Victor... your name means 'winner', and you WILL win... you will
always be successful, because you are suPERior to everyone else,
because you are MY son, and we -- our race -- is the Master Race!"
Hasslein, after all, is a German name, and it's quite possible that
he, as a kid, would have been raised as one of the Hitlerjugend...
if, that is, he was raised in Nazi Germany. Or, if he was raised by
an American of German ancestry who -- in the 1930's -- was a
sympathizer with the Nazi movement.
Pournelle must have put some extra thought into how he would flesh-
out the characters in the screenplay -- at one point in his
novelization, Stevie Branton tells Lewis Dixon how she met Hasslein's
wife once... and two of their kids; they have three, but... you
know... the third one has Down's Syndrome (Pournelle has Stevie refer
to it as 'mongolism'). I think Pournelle added THAT little detail
just to give us a deeper awareness of his psychology.
Remember that bit in the movie where Hasslein passionately bitches
that "LATER we'll do something about the Population Explosion...
LATER we'll do something about Pollution... LATER we'll do something
about the Nuclear War! We think we have all the time in the WORLD!
How much time has the world GOT!? Somebody has to begin to care!"
In Pournelle's novelization, he adds this bit to Hasslein's rant,
addressing Larry Bates (one of the two 'professional' interrogators
of Zira and Cornelius): "Bates, do you know that twenty-five years
ago they told me that LATER they were going to do something about
Mongolism in children?" It's a non sequitor to Bates, but it tells US
all we need to know about this driven man.
Thus, at the end of the story, Hasslein fires bullets into a baby
chimp that he BELIEVES is the child of Zira... a child who he
believes would otherwise probably grow up to have a higher level of
cognitive abilities than his own mentally retarded child who
(according to Branton) is a 14-year-old with the intelligence of a 6-
or 7-year-old child.
I think, in a way, that Pournelle was establishing HIS version of
Hasslein as a personally tortured man who has visions of ALL MANKIND
reduced to a state of barbarism... a condition comparable to the
mental status of his own retarded boy. "In future times, another
Shakespeare, another Edison, another Einstein, may be crawling on all
fours, unable to speak, a brute with no culture doomed to a life of
misery--and all because of these apes." How much of his own
handicapped son's condition is he 'projecting' onto the potential
future humans he fears for?
If Zira, during her sodium pentothal 'confession', had mentioned how
the Top Ape (Zaius) had had one of Taylor's crewmembers subjected to
a prefrontal lobotomy... well, it's just as well she didn't get asked
about that! Hasslein probably would've strangled her on that cot on
the spot! It's bad enough that one of his three sons was born
retarded... but to know that a powerful ape in the future would
subject a talking human to "experimental surgery... a kind of living
death" wherein Landon would "lose [his] identity" (as he threatened
to do to Taylor, too)... Hasslein would feel more-than-justified to
kill the Ape-onauts, and their child.
Pournelle, for whatever reason, changed Hasslein's first name
from 'Otto' to 'Victor'. His novelization is "Based on the screenplay
by Paul Dehn"... but the name in the screenplay is 'Otto'. Why change
it? Unless, for artistic reasons, he wanted to give an extra 'hint'
about Hasslein's personality.
Patrick
