| From Borg to Dune with Alice Krige By IAN SPELLING Sci-Fi Syndicated Columnist The Lady is a Queen. Or at least she was one, in another life. Alice Krige oozed menace as the Borg Queen in "Star Trek: First Contact" and in "Endgame," the "Voyager" series finale. Now she's gracing Arrakis as Lady Jessica in "Children of Dune," the Sci Fi Channel's six-hour follow-up to its 2000 miniseries, "Frank Herbert's Dune." "Jessica is immensely interesting," Krige says, "Because she's a woman who has all the powers of the Bene Gesserit, and those powers are extraordinary. If you start to imagine your way into that, it's an amazing challenge. There are highly accomplished mystics in the East who can do this kind of thing, who have extraordinary physical control that's been arrived at through a focused lifetime of meditation. "So I have to think it's possible," she says, "And in the realm of 'Dune' I have to believe she's capable of all that. If you're so in touch with your body, it follows that it rises out of your mental and emotional capacities. Jessica is also a woman of extraordinary imaginative flexibility," Krige adds. "In an instant she can assess a situation, and assess it as it's developing. Most of us don't see situations as they unfold – we deal with them and make choices while we're in the middle of them." Combining Frank Herbert's novels "Children of Dune" and "Dune Messiah," the new miniseries - which will air March 16-18 - picks up the story 12 years after the events of "Dune." Jessica's son, Emperor Paul Atreides (Alec Newman), watches helplessly as his empire falls prey to corruption, greed and family rivalries, as well as the machinations of his long-overlooked sister, Alia (Daniela Amavia). The future, Paul determines, rests with his twins, son Leto II (James McAvoy) and daughter Ghanima (Jessica Brooks). Jessica returns to Arrakis well after Paul has vanished into the desert, and she immediately spices up the intrigue as she confronts Alia, who's possessed by the evil spirit of Jessica's father, Baron Harkonnen (Ian McNeice). She also connects with Leto and Ghanima, and matches wits with Princess Wensicia (Susan Sarandon), the devious and powerful older sister of Paul's wife, Irulan (Julie Cox). "In 'Dune' Jessica made the choice to have a son, even though she knew that the implications would be huge," Krige says by telephone from a hotel in Sydney, Australia. "She didn't know what the implications would be, though, because she's not prescient like Paul. And the implications started to change the known universe. She chose to save Paul and she jeopardized Alia," the actress says, "And she set in motion action-reaction chains of consequence. She then did something that moves me greatly: Jessica was so wounded by the loss of her husband that she actually didn't stay to deal with the consequences of her actions." Heightening the emotional impact, the actress adds, is that Lady Jessica's efforts to atone are fruitless. "It's too late," Krige says. "She can't help Alia. There's a very clear suggestion in 'Children of Dune' that she returns to do the Bene Gesserit's work, and I think instead that she comes back to see how her grandchildren are, and also because she knows from the Bene Gesserit that Alia is heading toward abomination. So I think Jessica is there to try and make good on what was really, truly her doing," Krige concludes. "Everything that happens in 'Children of Dune' is the consequence of one of her choices." An actress's career is full of choices as well, but Krige says that she never had any intention of becoming a sci-fi and horror staple. "No no, it's not true," she says. "I don't mind the association at all, but it just happens that there are three or four things I've done that resonated with a lot of people. I suppose 'Ghost Story' is horror. 'Sleepwalkers' was Stephen King with his tongue in his cheek. There was also the Borg Queen in 'Star Trek,' and now there's 'Dune.' That's four pieces of work in a 22-year span," adds Krige, who's in Australia to play Natalie Wood's mother in a television movie and recently reprised the Borg Queen in "Borg Encounter," a 3-D theme-park attraction. "Those four pieces of work just seem to have been, shall we say, visible." Krige's list, however, omits at least seven other treks to the lands of sci-fi, fantasy and horror. What about "The Calling," "Dinotopia," "Habitat," "The Little Vampire," "Reign of Fire," "Superstition" and "Twilight of the Ice Nymphs?" "My God, I haven't thought of any of those," Krige says, laughing sheepishly. "I suppose so." Back |