Mother’s Day is the day we take to reflect on how much our mothers have done for us, and to show them our appreciation. It’s also the day that we choose to collectively ignore the fact that childbirth is just about the most fascinating, terrifying, revolting, sticky thing to which people willingly subject themselves to. What with the screaming, crying, ripping, bleeding, and pooping, it’s no wonder that a profound fear of the process would creep into our collective unconscious, only to be spat out again in our entertainment.
Supernatural television shows, both science-fiction and fantasy, cheerfully pay each other homage by plagiarizing the same idea over and over again, with varying degrees of success. They seem to have focused particular attention on the bloodbath of childbirth, mixing it up with each show’s unearthly gimmick. Specifically, they like to come up with preternaturally accelerated pregnancies, which gestate over a matter of hours or days. I will be comparing and rating seven different shows that played the speedy delivery card, in terms of effectiveness and creepiness.
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ANGEL
Poor Cordelia Chase. As the pretty, ambitious receptionist of Angel Investigations, she gets her womb invaded by supernatural spawn not once, but twice during the course of the series. Only the first one is accelerated (because the second one reflected Charisma Carpenter’s real-life pregnancy).
After a one-night-stand with a handsome photographer in the Season One episode “Expecting,” Cordelia wakes up with a heavily pregnant belly and no idea what happened to her. Her vampire boss Angel tries to track down the father while rogue demon-hunter Wesley takes Cordelia to the doctor, who verifies that she is almost to term with a large number of squirming monsters. Cordelia’s behavior becomes increasingly erratic as she begins to emotionally bond with her babies. She eventually ditches her friends to seek out the true father of her children: the demon Haxil, who has been using human male dupes to knock up lonely girls with his spawn. Luckily, Angel and Wesley manage to attack the Haxil Beast long enough to kill the babies and sever the thrall he has over Cordelia, giving her time to kill him.
“Expecting” is essentially a typical “monster of the week” episode, with no long-term consequences in terms of plot. The material is elevated, however, by how well it helps establish and deepen the emotional relationships between the three main characters. Angel, of course, is a spin-off of Buffy the Vampire Slayer, which spent years developing the characters of Angel, Cordelia, and Wesley, but the new show had to convince us that these three characters really cared about each other and belonged together. The demon-worshipping photographer who impregnates Cordelia does it because he sees her as an easy mark, with no close friends or family who will protect her. He is wrong.
The overall result is an enjoyable, if slight, entry in the genre. Even Cordelia jokes that the experience hasn’t exactly broken new ground, as she remarks, “I learned something, too. I learned, um, men are evil? Oh wait, I knew that. I learned that L.A. is full of self-serving phonies. No, had that one down, too. Ahh. . . sex is bad?” Angel deadpans back, “We all knew that.”
Grade: B
FRINGE
Fringe decided to get the obligatory accelerated-pregnancy plot out of the way early, in the second episode. The poor mother isn’t even a main character, but instead is a bit player who gets to crawl around in her undies and scream for about three minutes until the pregnancy kills her, all before the opening credits.
The explanation for the accelerated pregnancy is that the father of the baby is the result of a failed genetic experiment that causes him to age extremely rapidly. He controls his own aging in a particularly disturbing way involving young women, but has no control over the process once he accidentally impregnates his intended victim. After the doomed mother gets to the hospital, where her baby is untimely ripped from her womb, the child grows exponentially and finally dies of old age within half an hour, fully grown, still covered in afterbirth with his umbilical cord attached.
It’s gross.
I have a few quibbles with this episode. For one thing, the accelerated pregnancy and birth are the most interesting things that happen, and they’re over within the first few minutes of the show. Frontloading the plot like that makes the rest of the hour feel like an afterthought. Also, the fact that the pregnancy and death happen to a stranger minimizes the horror and effectiveness of the situation.
It may be an exercise in futility to try to reason out the scientific explanations behind an obviously fictional scenario, but it still irks me when a plot pretends to be logical and yet leaves gaping holes in the structure. In both Fringe and Angel, the baby is feeding off of the mother, which leads Cordelia to eat more than normal and drink blood, and Poor Dead Girl to be in extreme pain and then die. I can accept that. But it simply doesn’t make sense to me in Fringe that the baby would be able to grow old within half an hour. Once taken from the mother, the baby would have no source of nutrition and (given how quickly it is metabolizing) would have starved to death in seconds. Instead we’re supposed to believe that an eight-pound baby manages to grow into a 180-pound adult by converting. . . what? Air? Plus the few ounces of birthgoo clinging to the newborn wouldn’t be enough material to cover a grown adult.
I’m pleased, however, with the fact that this episode doesn’t confine itself to a cultural fear of childbirth, but also throws in a cultural fear of aging. Our villain has become a serial killer to stave off his inevitable decline into old age, and the monster baby was just a by-product.
Grade: C-
XENA: WARRIOR PRINCESS
In direct contrast to the previous two entries, the accelerated pregnancy in Xena is deeply integrated into a larger story arc that spans several seasons.
The kind, pure character of Gabrielle is used on the show to be a dramatic foil for the more war-like, assertive Xena. After years of traveling together, Gabrielle has still never taken a human life, until she is tricked by worshippers of an evil God, Dahak, into killing one of his priestesses. This transition from innocent to murderess gives Dahak the opportunity he needs to plant his child inside her. Gabrielle is impregnated by a bunch of swirling fire, which actually looks pretty cool. You can see clips of it in this montage (please excuse the silly overlaid music):
On television, the surest sign that a woman is pregnant is that she vomits: this is taken as infallible proof of pregnancy, and women never vomit on shows for any other reason. Sure enough, poor Gabrielle is queasy the following day after being fire-raped, followed by extreme hunger and a desire for bloody, barely-cooked meat. Anyone who has seen Rosemary’s Baby knows this is a bad sign. After an encounter with some prophetic banshees and the Knights of the Round Table (no joking), Gabrielle ends up giving birth in a barn to a little girl, Hope, whom she immediately dotes upon to an unreasonable extent. The birth is ridiculously easy: thirty seconds of sweating and heavy breathing, and then the child is born. Gabrielle can run and jump and horseback ride immediately with no ill effects. She also refuses to believe that Hope might be evil: even the baby choking one of the knights to death within hours of birth cannot convince her. Gabrielle ends up fleeing with Hope from Xena, who is determined to kill the baby.
Finally, Gabrielle ends up hiding the baby and convincing Xena that it died. This precipitates what is known among Xena fans as “The Rift,” a long period of estrangement between the two leads. Eventually the child, Hope, returns to the story both as a little girl and a grown woman, and is a destructive force that causes death and anguish.
For all the inherent silliness of the show, with the cheesy sound-effects and the ridiculous costumes, the writing for this story arc is actually quite well-done. The story of the baby deliberately subverts traditional Judeo-Christian storylines. In fact, Gabrielle at first thinks that the worshippers of Dahak are very early Christians. She is impregnated by the God, gives birth in a stable, and sends Hope away in a basket down the river, just like Moses.
Xena isn’t afraid to dwell on the ill effects of the mystical pregnancy and birth, and allows the ramifications to play out over years.
Grade: A-
HEX
Hex is an awful show. Really. The first season was only about five episodes. I continued to watch a couple of the second season episodes because I was so sure it would eventually turn into something I would like. It had all the fantasy elements I enjoy: witches, creepy old mansions, ghosts, demons and so on, but it was so poorly written and acted that I eventually gave up. The show didn’t seem to have any interior logic of how the supernatural elements were supposed to co-exist with the more realistic portions, and often gave the impression that they were making up rules as they went along. For instance, look at the picture above. The girl holding the pregnancy test is a ghost, and yet she can pick up and interact with physical objects. She cannot, however, touch any human person. Does that make sense? She also can’t fly or dematerialize, and yet she pops up wherever she’s needed without any form of transportation.
The girl on the left is the one who is mystically pregnant. You can tell by her face that she’s as excited about this plot development as I am.
Her name is Cassie, and she is in her late teens, attending a boarding school somewhere in the English countryside. Once there, she figures out that she is the last in a line of witches mystically tied with a malevolent creature named Azazeal. He is supposed to be handsome and sinister, but he does little more than stand around and mope soulfully, which makes him about as frightening as a male model at a photo shoot. Eventually he possesses Cassie, somehow, and convinces her to sleep with him.
Typically, Cassie immediately starts vomiting. Her pregnancy progresses over the next several days, while her ghostie friend discovers that the birth of the child will release a legion of fallen angels, but if Cassie terminates the pregnancy, the veil between the worlds will mend, which is good (except that it will also banish the ghostie friend). I think it’s supposed to add tension. It doesn’t work.
Cassie has mixed feelings about the entire thing, as she feels somewhat affectionate towards the child, but agrees to get an abortion. The doctor also agrees, despite the fact that the baby ages two months between her first and second visit (he asks her if she has diabetes, because that would totally explain it). They admit Cassie to the hospital a full day before the procedure, for whatever reason, which gives Azazeal time to interfere.
You see, the doctor who is supposed to perform the abortion is also a cleric at a church, but I guess we are supposed to believe that he has never paused for a moment to reconcile his religious and professional beliefs, because all it takes is a couple of monotone platitudes from Azazeal, and the doctor is convinced that he should save the baby. Instead of performing the abortion, he removes the child (who is about six months developed) and puts it in an incubator.
Exciting! No, wait, it’s not. It’s boring. I’m not sure that my write-up can accurately depict how dull they manage to make this (somewhat intriguing) premise. The child survives into the second season, but I didn’t, so I can’t tell you how it plays out in the long run. Avoid this clunker.
Grade: F
STAR TREK: THE NEXT GENERATION
Star Trek managed to put a unique spin on the accelerated pregnancy storyline. The Starship Enterprise attracts the curiosity of a wandering life form that is little more than a speck of blinking light. It seems intrigued by what it finds, particularly the sleeping Counselor Troi… so it slips under her covers and makes her pregnant.
It’s clear from the story that Blinky Light is not actually the physical father of the child, but the child itself. The fetus is half human-half Betazoid, just like Troi, so it is simply a composite of DNA she already had. Troi at first seems nervous and frightened by her sudden pregnancy, but once Doctor Pulaski shows her a video of the developing fetus, she becomes very calm and appears attached to the child. She flatly refuses to terminate the pregnancy.
The gestation takes place over several days, followed by a swift and painless birth. The child grows rapidly for about a week, and Troi takes to motherhood with alacrity. She plays with the boy and fixes him meals and names him Ian Andrew, after her father. After a series of problems on the ship, however, it becomes apparent that the boy is giving off radiation which is disrupting normal operations and endangering the crew. Never meaning any harm, the boy chooses to quietly die and float away as a blinky light again, leaving Troi to grieve her lost child.
Now, it’s an interesting twist to have the mystical pregnancy bring forth a non-hostile child, and I respect the show for attempting it. However, insisting that the entity means no harm feels a little bit disingenuous. Listen to this preview for the episode:
She says, “Something which I can only describe as ‘a presence’ entered my body.” Here on earth, Deanna, we call that “rape.” Malevolent or not, the presence violated her body without her consent, and had her bear a child without giving her any kind of choice. Any way you cut it, that’s pretty creepy.
And, frankly, having the child be harmless is pretty anti-climactic. It’s just not very interesting story-telling. It’s too bad, because the episode brought up some intriguing questions.
Grade: C+
ROSWELL
It seemed to me that Roswell could never decide if it wanted to be a creepy supernatural mystery, or a whiny teenage drama where attractive youngsters have long conversations about their feelings. A proper balance between the two was never achieved.
The three teenage half-alien-half-human hybrids from the beginning of the series are eventually joined by Tess, a fourth alien hybrid who was separated from them for a time. She is convinced that she is meant to be with Max, and spends considerable time and effort to alienate (pun intended) him from his human soul-mate Liz. She finally succeeds, and they spend the night together. She becomes pregnant immediately, and informs Max that alien pregnancies only take about a month.
At this point, sense gets thrown out the window. If she is only supposed to gestate for a month, her pregnancy should start showing almost immediately, but her belly is as svelte after a week as it was before. Perhaps Emilie de Ravin is psychic and could intuit how much of her future career on Lost would involve fake pregnancy bellies. It wouldn’t be too annoying to have a perfectly flat belly, except that it becomes obvious through scans that the baby already has a fully developed skull and skeleton. Where exactly is this baby growing? Back in her spine? At one point, you can even see the glowy alien hand (with five unwebbed fingers) through her stomach.
Tess convinces the other three aliens that the human atmosphere is dangerous for the baby and they need to return to their home world. They agree, and are about to leave when (surprise, surprise) they find out that Tess is evil and has been killing and brainwashing their friends. They dump her, and she returns to her planet alone.
A year later, near the end of the third season, Tess returns with her baby, who has been rejected by the other aliens because he is 100% human. The characters affirm that this is possible because both alien parents are half human. Now, I’m no geneticist, but I’m willing to bet good money that whoever wrote the episode isn’t, either. If you breed together two labradoodle dogs, you don’t get a purebred poodle puppy. You get another labradoodle. I took this theoretical problem up with a science-savvy friend, and he postulated that if half of the chromosome pairs in each parent were alien and the other half human, the chances of an offspring inheriting only human from both parents is statistically about 1 in 70 trillion. Let’s just say, it’s more or less impossible.
That little logical fallacy is only the first of the problems, though. The end of the storyline is beyond anti-climactic. Tess eventually gives up the baby without a struggle and kills herself, and Max takes one look at the child and realizes that it’s probably going to put a cramp in his make-out schedule with Liz, so he puts it up for adoption. The end.
What perhaps bothers me the most about the story arc is how perfectly unnecessary the entire thing is. Why have aliens only gestate for one month? They weren’t going to increase the drama by giving Tess a belly or any conventional symptoms of pregnancy. She left before she gave birth. It didn’t make any difference a year later when she returned with the child, as the baby had nothing to do in the story but lay around and look cute, which it could have done at three months old as well as at a year old. The entire set-up seemed to exist simply to get Tess out of the picture, which could have been accomplished in many more affecting ways.
Grade: D
TORCHWOOD
After a shaky first season, Torchwood evolved from a silly guilty pleasure into a genuinely intriguing and effective show. A spin-off of the rebooted Doctor Who series, it manages to find a similar balance between creepy and hilarious, while being geared towards a more adult audience.
In Cardiff, Wales, the Torchwood members are tasked with controlling and occasionally eradicating alien life forms that slip through the rift in space-time that exists there. The team is lead by the charismatic, immortal, and time-displaced Captain Jack Harkness, but the main character is actually the extremely normal Gwen Cooper, who is a human former police officer and helps ground the show in the real world.
The night before her wedding to her long-suffering boyfriend Rhys, Gwen is chasing down a shape shifting alien who bites her before she manages to kill him. Unfortunately for her, this particular alien breeds by infecting a host with a fertilized seed, who then carries the child to term. The biological mother, another shape shifter, will stalk down the host and kill it to retrieve the baby. The next day, Gwen wakes up with a hangover, a huge pregnant belly, a craving for pickles, and a hundred guests on the way.
Torchwood gets extra points for combining the accelerated pregnancy storyline with the classic nightmare wedding scenario. When a main character on a show gets married, it can never go smoothly: every possible disaster has to occur before they can walk down the aisle. For Gwen’s wedding, not only does she have the obnoxious future in-laws to placate, she has to explain to everyone why she is suddenly extremely pregnant. Oh, and she needs a new dress.
Really, though, this episode is flawless. It’s funny, scary, touching, and exciting. In my favorite moment, the female shapeshifter, disguised to look like Rhys’ mother, holds Gwen’s mother hostage, and Gwen has to take her out with a gun hidden in her wedding bouquet. Come on. That’s awesome.
Eventually, when it becomes clear that Gwen isn’t going to be able to get through the day without giving birth, they zap the baby out of her with a “singularity scalpel” which is supposed to be able to destroy one thing without affecting anything surrounding it, i.e., Gwen. In a nice bit of continuity, we’ve seen the singularity scalpel used in previous episodes, and we know that it’s more likely to make everything explode than to work properly. Poor, disheveled Gwen finally manages to get married in a blood-stained dress before Torchwood gets around to erasing the memories of her nearest and dearest.
My favorite scene in the episode, however, is the one where Gwen explains to Rhys that she still plans on getting married, supernatural pregnancy or no. It does a good job of showing both why these two drive each other crazy, and also why they absolutely belong together:
All in all, a completely fun romp.
Grade: A+
• • •
And that’s that. What instances of accelerated pregnancy did I miss? Who did it best? And did you remember to hug your mother this Mother’s Day and thank her for never getting knocked up by a hideous demon angel alien mutant? She would have appreciated that.
