Hello and welcome back to Favourite Character Praise Friday!
This is one of my absolute favourite posts to write and I hope you enjoy my
picking apart of my favourite characters enough to stick around while I examine
my next victim, I mean, character. Don’t worry, I do not rank these characters
in a particular order, it just so happens that some characters are better worth
sharing praise for at a different point in time to others! Remember, every
fifth instalment is Least Favourite Character Praise Friday, so keep an eye out
for me probing at characters I can’t stand and raving about how well they were
written in order to evoke such a reaction.
So, who is the subject of my next Favourite Character Praise
Friday?
James Lester from Primeval!
Warning: The following will contain spoilers!
For those who are unfamiliar with Primeval, it was a
television series which ran from 2007 through to 2011, spanning five seasons.
Lester was a supporting character throughout the franchise but made a
significant impact on the show.
So, what makes him so special, and why have I decided to
praise him?
The first thing that I loved about Lester was his sense of
humour. He was always a character that had a blunt and reserved disposition. He
tended to respond sarcastically and rudely, which balanced out the way other
characters such as Connor Temple were depicted. In the first season, Lester
posed as an anti-hero, over a character that was supporting the protagonist,
this was because he stood in the way of Professor Nick Cutter’s pursuit of
knowledge about the anomalies appearing. He, as a civil servant, was a man who
had to have the public’s best interest in mind. Considering this, the fact he
was a constant hurdle for Nick and his team to get past made his sense of
judgement something the viewer later learns to respect. He, might be the
decision maker in the microcosm, but he still answers to people like The
Minister, whom is never actually seen on screen, but holds the means and power
to cease the entire operation. This is more prevalent from the second season onward,
after the universe is changed by Nick Cutter’s excursion into the past and
instead of being a civil servant, he became the operations manager at the ARC;
the Anomaly Research Centre. He, therefore was more agreeable but still
bickered with his underlings, particularly Nick Cutter, which tended to be for
the sake of both plot-progression in the form of insubordination, or comic
relief. The prime example being when Lester fires Nick in season two, but,
instead of “pretending to act sacked”, Nick simply continued looking for clues
about the creatures that had passed through the anomaly.
Another thing that made James Lester a favourite character
of mine was the level of reverence he genuinely had for his colleagues. When
Captain Hilary Becker is introduced at the start of Season Three, Lester makes
it clear that the purpose of his employment is for security and protection of
the researchers, as he didn’t want a repeat of what happened to one of his
late-colleagues, Stephen Hart, who sacrificed himself, locking himself in a
room full of creatures to protect Nick, and the residents of London. He was,
consequently, ripped to shreds. Another example being in Season Five when the Admiral
of the UK Marines assumes that the technological analyst Jess, who tended to
wear short skirts, pastel colours and high heels, is merely a secretary,
instead of a crucial member of the team, and asks her to make him tea. In response,
Lester says that he will have one as well, and asks Jess how she would like
hers, thus sending the Admiral to prepare the drinks. The level of respect he
had for Jess was clear in that instance, because if he hadn’t thought much of
her, he would have allowed her to give up her seat and prepare tea for the men.
Instead, he subtly defended her and her position on the team, whilst snubbing
the rude and sexist Admiral. The way in which Lester would do this made his
character increasingly likeable throughout the franchise, as a once blunt and
reserved civil servant developed to become a loyal, dependable and sharp
leader.
The last, and most shocking thing about Lester, which, even
as a child, had my opinion completely changed, was how adaptable he was. At the
end of Season Two, a future predator, a “super bat”; highly adaptable, quick
and ruthless killer from an unknown and unexplored future, ends up being
released into the ARC. Lester, despite being wounded, is put in a situation,
where he must break into the armoury and defend himself and his workplace from
this creature. With knowledge of how dangerous this creature was, he did not
hesitate to use lethal ammunition and ended up, killing the predator. Him going
from a stern, professional and commanding presence to a frantic yet thoughtful
member of the team, and successfully, single-handedly killing the creature was
a shocking turn of events. Yet, at the same time it was completely reasonable
within the scenario he had been presented with; in such a situation, he would
have died if he hadn’t taken the initiative to instigate an attack. He does
this again in Season Five as well, when he is presented by a predator with even
more heightened senses, and he helps the team kill it; a nod to his heroism in
the past.
Please, if you have opinions on James Lester, feel free to
share them with me! Don’t forget you can check out my previous Character Praise
by looking through the hashtags below.
And remember!
Per Aruda Ad Astra
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