The Invisible Man (2000 TV series)

The Invisible Man
Created by	Matt Greenburg
Developed by	Carlton Prickett Breck Eisner
Starring	Vincent Ventresca Paul Ben-Victor Eddie Jones Shannon Kenny Mike McCafferty Brandy Ledford
Country of origin	United States
No. of episodes	45 (list of episodes)
Production
Running time	60 mins
Original release
Network	Sci Fi Channel
Release	9 June 2000 – 1 February 2002

The Invisible Man series debuted in 2000 and starred Vincent Ventresca, Paul Ben-Victor, Eddie Jones, Shannon Kenny and Mike McCafferty. Somewhat more successful than previous television series involving invisible secret agents, Ventresca played Darien Fawkes, a thief facing life imprisonment who was recruited by a low-rent spy organization and given the power of invisibility via the implantation of a special "Quicksilver gland" in his head. The gland lets Fawkes secrete a light-bending substance called "Quicksilver" from his pores and follicles. The substance quickly coats his skin, hair, nails and clothes and renders him invisible. He can consciously release the Quicksilver, which then flakes off and disintegrates. The Quicksilver gland was sabotaged at its creation by scientist Arnaud DeFehrn, to release a neurotoxin that accumulates in his bloodstream and causes intense pain, followed by psychosis and antisocial behavior. He requires regular doses of "counteragent" to keep him sane and healthy, which is controlled by said government agency. This series lasted for two seasons, before being cancelled due to cost issues and internal bickering between the Sci Fi Channel and its then-parent company, USA Networks.

Plot

The Invisible Man is both an action and a comedy (though the pilot episode was far more comedy oriented than the rest of the series), with plenty of buddy-cop elements.

Episodes were generally of two types. Many dealt with cases given to Fawkes and Hobbes by The Agency. These usually dealt with assassinations or government experiments that had run amok. During the second season, The Agency was given a nemesis agency called Chrysalis which was usually behind that week's conspiracy.

Alternatively, episodes dealt with Fawkes' quest to remove the gland from his head and reduce his dependency on the counter-agent. His unorthodox methods included reviving the mind of his dead brother and periodically contacting Arnaud DeFehrn, one of the gland's creators, though these encounters usually ended with one of the two in pain. The agency considered the gland too great an asset to remove so Fawkes' personal quest usually brought him head to head with those in power.

Episodes usually begin with a voice-over with Fawkes who would open with a quote, usually from a famous person, and commentary about what he was currently thinking. The voice over would reemerge at the end of the episode to sum up Fawkes' opinion on the mission or allow him to voice lingering questions.

Episodes

Main article: List of The Invisible Man (2000) episodes

Characters

The following is a list of characters featured in the American science fiction series The Invisible Man. This list may not list characters that have only made guest appearances.

Main characters

Darien Fawkes (Vincent Ventresca)

Darien Fawkes is a former career criminal and catburglar, who gained multiple misdemeanor convictions and two felony convictions before he was thirty. After being arrested during a botched break-in, under California's three strikes law he was sentenced to life in prison without parole. This was where his brother, Kevin, stepped in. Kevin was a research scientist who had been working on a top-secret project, and cut a deal with his bosses to get Darien out of prison in exchange for using him as a test subject. When Darien agreed, he was then implanted with the Quicksilver gland, but Kevin's rush to remove Darien from prison meant that he implanted the gland before devising a way to remove it without killing Darien. One of the other scientists, Arnaud De Thiel, was actually a terrorist that had infiltrated the project, and led an attack on the research facility that caused Kevin's death and the loss of most, if not all, of the project research. Darien escaped but was unwillingly drafted into The Agency, who had funded the project. In exchange for the Counteragent he needed to stay sane, Darien agreed, albeit reluctantly, to being an agent under their employment. He has surprisingly high morals for a career criminal – he could have easily escaped after his final break-in except he surprised the elderly owner into a heart attack, and stayed behind to perform CPR. He is a highly talented thief with expert-level breaking & entering skills, learned from his many incarcerations, and finds these skills quite useful in his new career as an espionage agent. A recurring expression of his is "Oh, crap."

Robert Hobbes (Paul Ben-Victor)

Robert "Bobby" Hobbes is one of the agents working for the Agency, easily the most experienced and thus their most highly capable asset in the field, right next to Darien's invisibility powers. He is given Darien as a partner when Darien joins the agency. At the start of the series, Hobbes has been at the Agency for several years, as The Official hired him when his quirks and mild manic depression had gotten him tossed out of every other government intelligence agency. Despite being given this last chance by the Agency, Hobbes feels underappreciated there, receiving very little pay and being sent on mostly unfavorable missions. His relationship with Darien begins somewhat badly, with Darien being new to undercover missions and frequently blowing their cover, but they become friends eventually. They often banter with each other, much to the annoyance of those around them. Hobbes seems to enjoy using guns, constantly carrying at least one on his person at all times. He frequently pulls it out and threatens people with it, often referring to it as his 'insurance policy'. He is a former Marine who served in Operation: Desert Storm, and in addition to his Marine corps hand-to-hand combat training, is also an expert in the Korean martial art Hapkido. Hobbes displays signs of extreme, sometimes comical paranoia in most cases, acting as if the world is out to get him. He frequently runs background checks on people he's suspicious of, and is not above stalking people to see if they are up to anything. Being trained by the FBI and the CIA, he is excellent at spying and information gathering, both of which only serve to make his paranoia worse.

Charles Borden aka The Official (Eddie Jones)

Charles "Charlie" Borden is the long-time head of The Agency. Most of his background is unknown, due to Borden's flat refusal to divulge information about himself to his agents(for instance, Darien first learns Borden's name upon hearing two U.S. Marshals place Borden under arrest). He has been the head of the Agency for an indeterminate time, but it is insinuated from photographic evidence that he has served in this capacity since at least the Kennedy administration. He typically expects his orders to be carried out with no argument to the contrary from Darien, Hobbes, or Claire, usually dismissing any of their questions or concerns out of hand or after only brief consideration. The Official is concerned with two things above all else: carrying out the missions he is entrusted with, and keeping an eye on the Agency's bottom line.

Albert Eberts (Michael McCafferty)

Albert Eberts came to the Agency from the IRS, and serves as both assistant to The Official and the Agency's bookkeeper. He usually conducts Darien and Hobbes' briefings, frequently going into more detail than The Official deems necessary and being told: "Shut up, Eberts."

Claire aka the Keeper (Shannon Kenny)

Claire is The Agency's resident medical doctor and researcher, and was a minor researcher on the team that did preliminary work for developing the Quicksilver gland. She is responsible for monitoring Darien's health and compiling data on long-term usage of the gland. She is also the one who mixes and administers the counteragent serum. She does not particularly care for Darien at first, possibly because he reminds her of Kevin (who she had been romantically involved with before his death) although eventually she and Darien become friends; Claire even risks her career to cure Darien permanently of Quicksilver Madness.

Alex Monroe (Brandy Ledford, season two)

Alex Monroe is an addition to the cast in the show's second season. She is a federal agent working for the Agency, and is regarded as one of the finest agents overall. She has top security clearance and is the sole agent that has her own office in the Agency. She has a personal vendetta against a group called "Chrysalis", who used her to produce a genetically engineered son. After birth, they took her son, and she has been looking for the group ever since.

Minor characters

Arnaud DeFehrn (Joel Bissonnette)

Terrorist and primary antagonist of Darien Fawkes, being responsible for implanting him with the Quicksilver madness- a defect he included in the gland to give him control over all invisible men- and killing his brother. Later on he developed his own version of the gland, but this version, although lacking the defect that would cause quicksilver madness, rendered him permanently invisible until he managed to have it removed, forcing him to wear a life-like mask cloned from his own tissue to pass for normal. He appears in 9 episodes.

Jarod Stark (Spencer Garrett)

The charismatic leader of the mysterious Crysalis organization.

Allianora (Idalis DeLeón, season one)

One of Crysalis' agents. Through bio-modification she has gained the ability to breathe water and regurgitate it under pressure, making her capable of drowning people with a kiss. Killed by Stark in the season one finale.

Kevin Fawkes (David Burke)

Darien's brother and the developer of the Quicksilver gland. He is murdered by Arnaud DeFehrn, but appeared in a later episode as part of a plot by Arnaud to trick Darien into thinking he'd survived. Later on, Kevin's memory RNA was injected into the gland—essentially resurrecting him in Darien's body—in the hope that he would be able to figure out a way to remove it, but he declined, believing that the gland made Darien a better person.

Thomas Walker (Armin Shimerman)

Formerly an engineer who worked for the same government facility that helped Kevin Fawkes develop the Quicksilver gland. He volunteered as a test subject for one of the earlier projects, only to see it fail. The failure rendered him into an "insensate", meaning he was robbed of his senses - save for his sense of touch. With his remaining sense he was able to construct what he refers as a sensor array strapped onto his chest that enables two of his dysfunctional senses - hearing and vision - to function in a crude but useful manner. Allowing him to perceive the world as "lights and shadows", and hear sounds as "loud and soft"

The Agency

The Agency is a U.S. government espionage and special operations agency, but one that is extremely secretive - so much that it doesn't have a proper name. Charlie Borden (known as "The Official"), the director of The Agency, explained that the organization takes on cases that the other agencies "can't, won't, or don't". References in the show point to the Agency as being a 'Cold War relic', which makes it likely that The Agency was founded during that time.

The most curious characteristic of The Agency is how it keeps being 'absorbed' by Federal Departments that are completely unrelated to intelligence. During the first season, The Agency was a division of the "Department of Fish and Game" (presumably the California Department of Fish and Game). In the pilot episode, it was explained this was due to the fact that the DFG had a surplus of money at the time.

During the second season, The Agency changed departments several times, having been absorbed by the Bureau of Indian Affairs, the Department of Health and Human Services, and (very briefly) the United States Postal Service before settling in the fictional Bureau of Weights and Measures. All of this led to a running gag in which Hobbes and Fawkes are never taken seriously as federal agents, since their identifications always include their department name.

Broadcasters

Country	Alternate title/Translation	TV network(s)	Series premiere	Weekly schedule
United States		Sci Fi Channel	June 9 2000	Fridays 21:00 p.m.
Australia		Network Ten
Austria		ORF
Croatia		Croatian Radiotelevision (HRT)
France		TF1
Finland	Näkymätön mies	MTV3
Germany		RTL 2
Italy		Italia1	July 13 2004	Monday to Fridays 01.30 a.m.
New Zealand		TV3

DVD releases

The Invisible Man was released for Region 2 as a two-part collection in March and April of 2003. The Invisible Man - Season One was released as a complete Region 1 DVD set on March 25, 2008.

The Region 1 release, however, contains the alternate version of "Money for Nothing, Part II," (where Hobbes attempts to take Darien into custody) instead of the episode that the fans had chosen (where Hobbes joins forces with Darien). No explanation has been issued for this, and may simply be included on the second Invisible Man DVD release, as it was in the release for the UK.

External links

• Archive of The Official site
• The Invisible Man at IMDb
• Sci Fi Channel: The Invisible Man