ID4 ON THE TELLY

I caught Independence Day on the box again the other night. You know the one: squidgy aliens invade Earth in vast ships that hover over Capitals. 

I've seen ID4, as it became affectionately known, so many times that I know the dialogue almost off by heart! "No peace", "I belong in the air", "kick the tyres and light the fires Big Daddy". It's one of those 90's flicks that is full of memorable quotes and like its late-Nineties stablemates Deep Impact, Twister, Lake Placid and Armageddon, it caught the prevailing zeitgeist as the Millennium loomed large, promising carnage and disaster for us all.

Besides the A-listers starring in ID4 like Will Smith - who can forget him seeing the New York spaceship for the first time - and that go-to boffin Jeff Goldblum - a role he mastered earlier as Seth Brundle in the Fly and Ian Malcom in Jurassic Park - there were other less well-known actors who, for me at least, who brought the film alive.

First up was Harry Connick Jnr. 

Connick was the young Frank Sinatra of the Nineties, belting out the big ones before Michael Buble started crooning us away. Not your typical actor, his unusual toothy looks were perfect for the incarcerated killer Daryll Lee Cullum, who was obsessed with Sigourney Weaver [who wouldn't be] in Copycat and in ID4 he played the Captain "Reverend" Jimmy Wilder, calming the fighter pilots with his in-flight sermons. Its an eccentric character and I wanted to see more of it. I was sad when he got blown away by a nasty bugface. I have never seen Harry in anything else since ID4, so for me he will always be the Reverend.

The second is Brent Spiner who played the geeky scientist Dr. Brackish Okun. Not an A-list genius like Jeff Goldblum's code-busting nerd guru, Dr. Okun nevertheless had the privelege of performing the gooey alien autopsy at Area 51 and "communicating" with the creature via his tentacled vocal chords.

When I first heard Okun's voice I immediately though of a cartoon character from my childhood, the Hooded Claw. I can't for the life of me recall the cartoon but Okun had the same voice, although he's far too young to have been the Claw. Further confusion came in ID4 for me as Okun looks like the crop-dusting tippler who saves humanity at the end of the film played by Randy Quaid, brother of Dennis.

And yet the real revelation came to me watching the film again last week. I stared at Dr. Okun and thought, I've seen those strange facial looks somewhere else. And bam! it came to me. Dr. Okun is Data from Star Trek the Next Gen! Blimey! Yes!

So yes, ID4 has a warm place in my heart, a tentacled place where giant ships are poised over skyscrapers ready to unleash a city-scorching pulse of blue hell.

Do you like Independence Day readers?