SPIN - OFF - THE NEPHILIUM

[Scott]

Spiritkas, writing in the Charmed Ones forum, offered these thoughts on a possible spin-off:

I also had an idea I posted in a couple of threads. I'll just repost it here, but I think we need a new twist or Arch Angel is right; it will be just more of the same. Please tell me what you think.

So, I'm sitting here, watching the DVDs I recently bought of the first 5 seasons, picking through episodes in early seasons and I take a break to watch this made for TV movie, called Fallen. Not the one made a few years back with Denzel Washington, which was disturbingly tragic, but one on the ABC Family Channel. Briefly, it's a bout a kid, an orphan, who in reaching his 18th birthday, discovers one of his parents was an Fallen angel. This makes him a Nephilim. Which is also what's going on in the BBC show "Hex", where a Fallen angel has a son with a witch (any of this sounding familiar yet) who is a special nephilim, much like the 18 year old. Oh, did I mention the 18 year old can freeze time, is a special Nephilim, known as the redeemer, because he can redeem Fallen angels and they can go back to the Creator, or at least heaven. He also has wings and can fly. Anyway, in Hex, the Fallen angel, who is the bad guy of the story, is suddenly not looking all bad and his son is the one who can free other fallen angels. I think they've all read from the same play book here.

That's when I had this epiphany, though a small one, about the Charmed Sons. This is the angle the show needs. Wyatt, as is Chris, is the son of an Angel and a human (OK, a Witch). He is Nephilim, by definition, which were banned from happening. Which is why some Killer Gestapo angels hunt down the Nephilim, soon after their 18th BD, and kill them.

This is the missing story for the Charmed Sons. Yes, it will copy both these shows, but one is just a movie (which will have some six hour mini event in 2007) and the other is BBC. This is the twist that can be added to make the Charmed Sons it's own show and not just a continuation of TCO. Wyatt is the Redeemer and he and Chris, another Nephilim, realize they need to help others like themselves and other Fallen Angels (like Sam was) to redeem themselves. This is why many in the Underworld (or at least can add to the explanation) think of Wyatt as a abomination, so they want him evil or destroyed. It's why the Elders forbid relations between White lighters and witches, cause they breed Nephilim. This would add so much to the story of Wyatt and Chris and give them a mission independent of saving innocents, which was their mother's hobby. What do you think?

To which vandergraafk eventually replied:

Spiritkas, suppose we accept as fact your point about the nephilium. First, we would have to resurrect Chris who, as I strongly believe, died at the conclusion of Season 6. In my short story, I am endeavoring to save his life. Now, Chris will returned to an altered future where now there are Elders and evil Wyatt does not exist. Perhaps Chris will be tempted to explore his dark side (something Paige obviously did not try to do). He hooks up with a Phoenix (Bianca) and pursues demons for the sake of killing demons, let's say. The Elders are forced to take a stand, especially as Bianca and Chris plan to have children. This leads to the division you seek among the Elders. Certainly, this would be an improvement over Gideon's lone ranger approach. It would also also the whole question of the Elders to be explored more fully.

To get to this point, it might help to have a TV movie where P4 get together to stop a resurrected Source. Chris would be a young boy dabbling on the dark side. This leads to the strained relationship between Leo and Chris (which we saw in Spiderboy Chris). Foreshadowing the nephilium in Chris could be a way to ease into a spin-off.

Before vandergraafk replied however, Spiritkas sought comments from anyone in Charmedverse:

Does anyone have any comments on what I posted about a possible plot for the spin off? I really do think it could regain the orginal Charmed darker side and show that not all the Elders are in agreement. Factions, as it were, amongst the Elders.

Also, the plot idea not only is a reasonable extension of the story, but it gives a whole new basic storyline to explore. Not just more demons and innocents. The show would need a new twist or concept or the networks will all look at it as just rehashing the same old ideas. Why were the Star Trek spinoffs successful. Except for Enterprise, they all lasted eight years, and there have been what, like eight movies. This is because they gave each new series it's own identity and it's own mission. Although they could intertwine the stories or some aspect (like the Borg) into nearly all of them, each had its own "feel" and its own cast, who could stand alone.

This is what the spinoff needs. Whether it's my idea (stolen from the shows I mentioned) about using the Nephlim concept, or something else, it needs to either get away from or at the very least add a significant and new main or basic concept to the show. It seems very clear to me that the networks will not rehash Charmed with the Charmed Sons any time soon, unless there is some fresh ideas to write about. I truly think this is vital to the spinoff ever becoming a reality. Any thoughts about this?

On a side note, I hope, if the show Supernatural survives for several more years, that at some point they could have a story where one of the Charmed sisters, probably Piper, crosses paths with the demon hunting brothers. It could make for a good storyline and keep the darker feel of the show intact, if done right. What do you think?

Other replies came in. Some addressed his idea as it related to Supernatural:

I think Supernatural and Charmed (or any spin-off, for that matter) are too different to do any crossovers. The Winchester brothers would not fit in Charmed anymore than the Halliwells would fit into Supernatural. They are two extremely different shows. Even if The Charmed Sons ever gets picked up, other than both shows having brothers fighting demons, they are extremely different. The kinds of demons the Winchesters fight are very different from any kind of demon they ever fought on Charmed, so even the demon fighting part is different. So the similarities pretty much end with both shows having two brothers as the leads.

Spiritkas replied as follows:

I see your points, but we may just have to agree to disagree. What I mean by this is that I see the details of what you're saying and that if you push hard on the concept, it has issues on how these two shows would allow a crossover. What I'm saying is that something a bit different would have to happen and that the similarities are sufficient enough for the general viewing public to ignore the differences. Charmed was more than about witches fighting demons. It was about family, friends, and how you should treat them. It was about empowering women, but also about instilling confidence in oneself, independent of gender, to do what you dream about doing. It was about a lot of things which Supernatural is only partly about, agreed, but the similarities do not end with just two brothers in each show.

First of all, there is no clearly defined concept of what The Charmed Sons would be about, yet, other than they are powerful witches, children of Piper and Leo, who will still be fighting demons, some of the time, at least, in the future. However, they do travel back in time to the present, often, it would seem.

Yes the magic is somewhat different, but what we are seeing on Supernatural is the true dark side of evil, which really does exist to create loss for those around them. However, they do seem to have a plan, or at least the main demon they're chasing does. I think it's not such as great a leap as we would like it to be to have HMC recreate her role. We've seen mortals, like Brody, chasing demons (though he knew not what he was chasing), in Charmed and other mortals who have helped in the fight against them, drawn in by some destiny.

I understand the shows are different and it would have to be an episode which bent a little on both sides, but I do believe it could be done. However, like I said, I don't expect it to happen any time soon, if ever.

How would you imagine a spin-off scenario? The nephilium is just one idea, an idea that carries potential. Comment on this, or suggest your own.

[kat29]

The nephilium idea is interesting, (I enjoyed Hex although I was disappointed with the ending). I am not sure the nephilium idea would work too well on Charmed but do agree a spin-off would need an edge. I think the brothers need a powerful Nemesis to fight again as TCO's had the Source, but the Nemesis has to be more powerful than the Source and last for the entire run of the show. Once the TCO's vanquished the Source the show started to lose its way, a spin-off would need a consistant threat.

[vandergraafk]

Yes, but probably a disgused demon. Keep the boys wondering. But, therein hangs a tale! One of the difficulty shows built around a single theme have is that once the secret's out, the show is over. Once Lois Lane kisses Clark, Lois and Clark is dead. Once Diane and Sam get involved on Cheers, the suspense is gone. A super Source would be great, but the show would need to go beyond one truly powerful demon!

[spiritkas]

Some historical background on Nephilim from Wikipedia:

The origination of the Nephilim begins with a story of the fallen angels. Shemhazai, an angel of high rank, led a rebel sect of angels in a descent to earth to instruct humans in righteousness. The tutelage went on for a few centuries, but soon the angels pined for the human females. After lusting, the fallen angels instructed the women in magic and conjuring, mated with them, and produced hybrid offspring: the Nephilim. [citation needed]

The Nephilim were gigantic in stature. Their strength was prodigious and their appetites immense. Upon devouring all of humankind's resources, they began to consume humans themselves. The Nephilim attacked and oppressed humans and were the cause of massive destruction on the earth.

The traditional Jewish view, deriving from the Book of Enoch, is that the fathers of the nephilim, the "sons of God", were the Grigori (also called the Watchers); however, there is some controversy on this point (Targum Yonathan) [1]. Some commentators[citation needed] have suggested that the nephilim were believed to have been fathered by members of a proto-Hebrew pantheon, and are a brief glimpse of early Hebrew religion, most of the details of which was later edited out from the Torah, and that this passage may have offered monotheistic Hebrews a way to fit semi-divine pagan heroes into their cosmogony. However, the idea that the Torah was somehow changed is not in keeping with traditional Hebrew practice, in which if even a single character is out of place in a parchment translation of the original Hebrew Torah, the entire parchment must be destroyed and replaced anew.

Others, especially some Christians, suggest the "sons of God" were fully human. It is sometimes suggested that ridding the Earth of these nephilim was one of God's purposes for flooding the Earth in Noah's time.

Despite the literal text of the Bible and its traditional interpretation, the idea that heavenly beings mated with humans is controversial, particularly among many Christians, who cite an interpretation of the teaching of Jesus in the Book of Matthew that Angels do not marry; however, they may take the verse in question out of context, because Jesus said that the resurrected do not marry in heaven, but are "as the angels". Others who find the idea of angels mating with humans as distasteful have suggested more figurative interpretations of the nephilim, such as the idea that they were the offspring of men possessed by demons.

Still others, including the Ethiopian Orthodox Church and Latter-day Saints, take the view of Genesis 6:1 that the allusion refers to some men, from the godly lineage of Seth, called sons of God (an expression denoting those in covenant relationship with Yahweh - cf. Deuteronomy 14:1; 32:5), began to pursue fleshly interests, and so took wives of the daughters of men, i.e., those who were descended of Cain. Not only is this unequivocally stated in most Orthodox versions of I Enoch and Jubilees, but this is also the view presented in a few extra-biblical, yet ancient works, particularly the Second Book of Adam and Eve.

According to several ancient works, including Enoch and Jubilees, as well as 2 Peter 2:4 and Jude 1:6 in the New Testament, the fallen angels who produced the Nephilim were cast into Tartarus (Gehenna), a place of 'total darkness'. However, Jubilees also states that God granted ten percent of the disembodied spirits of the Nephilim to remain after the flood as demons, to try to lead the human race astray (through idolatry, occult, etc.) until the final Judgement.

[spiritkas]

More on Nephilim from Wikipedia

Nephilim in parahistory
There have been many interesting attempts to reconcile mythology with science; many have theorized that mythology can and does contain grains of truth in the form of a highly distorted "folk memory".

In this context, the Nephilim have been associated with inhabitants of Atlantis that allegedly descended from extraterrestrials. The most prevalent theory among those that accept the correlation between science and the Bible is that the Nephilim were actually surviving Neanderthals, or a Homo sapiens-Neanderthal hybrid.

It is believed by some people that modern man shared several thousand years of history with Neanderthals, and also that the Middle-Eastern region was home to some of the last surviving pockets of Homo sapiens neandertalensis or H. neandertalensis. Therefore, it is conceivable that a folk memory of these creatures survived by way of mythology. In addition, it appears that the very last Neanderthals adopted some of the technological and cultural innovations of their H. sapiens contemporaries. The theory is that surviving Neanderthals or hybrids might have been large, powerful men possessing the intellect and societal characteristics of our own species, which would explain their identification as "mightiest ones" and "men of renown." One flaw in this theory is that H. neanderthalensis were slightly shorter than H. sapiens. On the other hand, they were giants compared to their even shorter predecessors, Australopithecus and Homo habilis.

Zecharia Sitchin and Erich Von Daniken both claim that the Nephilim are our ancestors and that we were created by an alien race. In Sitchin's voluminous works he uses Semitic language etymology and translations of Sumerian cuneiform tablets to equate the ancient mesopotamian gods with the fallen angels (the "sons of Elohim" in Genesis). Seeing that all angels were created before the Earth, they can not be from the Earth... and thus, they could all be considered "extra-terrestrial" semantically. (see:Ancient astronaut theory)

David Icke has a similar theory, in which interdimensional reptilian beings somehow created offspring through genetic engineering, whose traits are large stature, light skin, and susceptibility to any form of hypnotic suggestion (which, he states, is when the demons possess their offspring and demand allegiance), and that this bloodline has been in control of the world from the days of Sumer to today.

[vandergraafk]

Thanks, Spiritkas, for this excellent background information.

[whichwitchiswhich]

First, we would have to resurrect Chris who, as I strongly believe, died at the conclusion of Season 6.

I can't understand that. Since it was only his future self...that hadn't even happened yet. Piper even says to Leo in A Call to Arms (if that's correct) that "Chris isn't dead, he's alive." And he is...as a baby. His future is just different and even if they didn't change it he would still have yet to go through his life and make it to that point to truely die.

I like the spin-off story idea though!

[vandergraafk]

See Die Chris Die! Although there is no concensus on this point among the legion of Charmed fans, it is the opinion of this writer that Chris is doomed to repeat past events when he grows up. A future Chris will have to go back in time to end the Titan threat and to rescue Paige and Phoebe from imminent death. Now, since the future of the Chris that we first encounter in Oh My Goddess has been altered, it is not necessary for him to repeat all of the events in Season 6. Some must be retained in order for his own future to be altered, lest it revert to the one we glimpsed in Chris Crossed. At some point, Chris will have to deal with Gideon and Paige, she's my choice for the heroine, will have to figure out a way to prevent Chris from dying at the hands of Gideon and send him back to a future that he will be more or less familiar with. The Season 6 Chris, had he been sent to that future, would have been out of place. One hopes that whatever his future will be like, it is one that sees Chris meet, fall in love with, inspire and eventually marry Bianca!