Lance on "Castle" November 15, 2010

[Guest WaveCrest]

Don't you think Rob Bowman and co missed a perfect opportunity to have a thousand Millennium fans SQUEEEEEEEEEEE themselves into oblivion? All he had to do was insert a line or two and have Lance's character respond to a buzzing pager flashing the legent '2000' on its screen. Believe me folks, this Millennium fan would have something akin to a religious experience. XF references are nice, there's no denying at, but a little reference to MM wouldn't have hurt now would it?

Eth

Let's hope Lance gets another guest star role with more to do. I know he's played a lot of villains in his film career and there's the danger of getting typecast, but I would like to see him guest star on Law & Order: Criminal Intent as a bad guy who drives a red Cherokee. Or appear on the Los Angeles spin-off with Skeet Ulrich (who starred in the Millennium-like series Miracles).

The pager idea would be an ace idea. It wasn't over-used in Millennium and would be a welcome bit of Millennium nostalgia.

[Guest teedub]

Thank you Richard. So the ratings weren't affected by the subject matter or the guest star then? Curious. I would have thought a few Philes would have tuned in out of curiosity and bumped the ratings a little. Thank you for the clarification.

As "Castle" airs on NBC does anyone know if they would have needed permission from Fox to use trademarks associated with XF in their episode? I have a feeling that copyright doesn't extend to parody or homage but could well be wrong?

Eth

As Laura said, nothing was explicitly mentioned. The closest they came was the whistling of the X-Files theme song, and that was only 6 notes. And saying the name Mulder. But you're right; it would have fallen under parody which is allowed under U.S. copyright. Thankfully. Otherwise, I'd spend all my time getting sued.

[ethsnafu]

Thanks folks. Coopyright seems like an absolute nightmare to understand. I have attempted to gain an understanding of it when we started doing montage videos and to be frank it seems everything and nothing is covered by it depending upon who you listen to.

Now I don't know if this is true but a fellow LH fan told me that Lance's role was originally intended for Mitch Pileggi. Now this makes a whole lot of sense considering the episode was a nod to XF. Apparently Mitch had already signed to do Medium and was unable to take the part and Bowman campaigned for LH rather than another figure from the world of XF as he felt he was more of a draw for viewers. It certainly generated some press so I guess that was the case.

Was there absolutely no nod to Millennium at all in the episode? Not even something that could be tenuously considered a nod?

Eth

[Guest teedub]

Was there absolutely no nod to Millennium at all in the episode? Not even something that could be tenuously considered a nod?

Eth

Nope.

The Mitch Pileggi thing makes sense.