Hey everyone! How're your weekends going so far? Mine's actually been pretty good so far. Tonight I was sitting at my laptop, checking out Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, and the stats on Josh's Movie Review Corner, and for some reason I began to think about my favourite fictional romantic couples. Riker and Troi from Star Trek: The Next Generation, Uncle Jesse and Becky from Full House, DJ and Steve from Fuller House, and Emma and Sean from Degrassi: The Next Generation are some of my favourites. However, apart from Corran Horn and Mirax Terrik from the Star Wars: X-Wing novel series and Frank Hardy and Callie Shaw from The Hardy Boys, I don't have alot of favourite romantic couples from novels. However there is one fictional romantic couple that is my all time favourite and that is Rachel and Tobias from Animorphs. Both the book series AND the short-lived late '90s Nickelodeon live action TV show adaptation. So let's talk about why I love Rachel and Tobias, and why I love their romantic pairing. There will be some spoilers for both the books and the TV show, so be aware of that. Also, apologies for using an image of the TV versions of the characters, but there really aren't any images of just Rachel and Tobias together that are from the books and I didn't want to use fan art for it either.
One of the things that makes Rachel and Tobias's relationship so unique is that, unlike Riker and Troi and Corran and Mirax, who all met during the course of their careers in either Starfleet or the Alliance Military, depending on the couple you're talking about, Rachel and Tobias met before they were thrust into a war against alien invaders. They met when they still just ordinary kids. The TV show makes it a little more obvious than the books do that there's an attraction between Rachel and Tobias from the very beginning. Mainly because Jake is the narrator of the first book and he wouldn't necessarily have picked up on it. Though books 2 AND 3 begin to hint at it slightly as Rachel narrates book 2 and Tobias narrates book 3. While the TV show doesn't allow you to get into the characters's heads like the books do, there are a few visual cues and cues within dialogue that show, at least on Rachel's side, there's an attraction between them. Particularly in Episode 3, "Underground" which has a cute scene between them as Tobias walks home with Rachel after the group's meeting at Jake's house. After Rachel's sister Sara takes a picture of them together, they give each other this cute little smile, which is pretty adorable.
In the books though, Rachel and Tobias don't really get together until Tobias regains his morphing powers and gains his original Human form as a morph in book 13 The Change. They hang out before that and fly around with Rachel in her Bald Eagle morph, but they don't actually acknowledge it as dating until The Change. Regardless though, Rachel and Tobias kind of act as anchors for each other. Rachel acts as Tobias's anchor so he doesn't lose himself in his trapped Hawk body. Tobias acts as an anchor for Rachel so that she doesn't lose herself to her more violent tendencies that were brought to the forefront in the early days of the war with the Yeerks. In a way they need each other to tether them to the world they came from and to allow each other to still act like ordinary people from time to time.
You can see the progression of their relationship as in pretty much every Rachel book and every Tobias book, starting with book 13, the book starts and ends with a Rachel and Tobias date scene basically. Mostly in the Tobias books, but the Rachel books seem to end with her going to see Tobias, after book 22 The Solution. It's been a long time since I read Animorphs beyond the first six books so I don't remember for sure if what I just said in this paragraph makes sense or if I pulled it out of thin air.
While the TV show hints at an attraction between them in the very first episode, it isn't until Episode 16, "Tobias", that we see just how deep their bond really goes. In the episode we see that Rachel is the first person Tobias met when he arrived at school, not long before the kids meet Elfangor. And then later, when it shows offscreen moments from the second episode it shows that Rachel and Tobias confiding in each other about their fears concerning their roles within the Animorphs. Which we really don't see much of in the books, because we're already getting the narrating character's thoughts in each book. It's almost a plot device for the audience to be able to get some exposition about how the characters feel, but in a way it inadvertently builds the relationship between the TV show versions of Rachel and Tobias, who are slightly different characters there since the show never delves into the darker aspects that the books explored. Particularly with the books after the first fourteen had come out.
The question I would like to ask is, would Rachel and Tobias have fallen in love with each other and gotten together if the war with the Yeerks HADN'T happened for them? Actually, the answer is simple. No, they would not have. As we saw in Megamorphs book 4, Back to Before, as well as the episode, "Not My Problem", if the war with the Yeerks hadn't happened for them, Rachel and Tobias wouldn't've interacted as much.
In the book, which actually came out after the episode had aired, Tobias would've ended up as a Controller as he would've joined the Sharing and been infested not long after, and Rachel would've ended up with Marco instead. In the TV episode, Rachel is the one who became a Controller, while Tobias is the only one to meet Elfangor and get the power to morph, becoming an Animorph. I think trying to answer the question of, would they have gotten together if the Yeerks hadn't invaded Earth at all? is a bit more difficult. For the books, I honestly don't think so, because, while they knew of each other prior to the events of the first book, they didn't really interact with each other before joining Jake, Cassie, and Marco at the mall to go home through the construction site.
For the TV show it's a little bit harder to tell. As we saw in the episode, "Tobias", Rachel and Tobias did interact with each other before they helped Jake, Cassie, and Marco find Jake's dog, Homer, who'd run away from the mall, with the kids giving chase in the first episode. So who knows, maybe they would've eventually, but maybe not as quickly as they did in the show itself.
I have two favourite scenes between Rachel and Tobias. The first is at the end of the first episode of season 2, "Face Off, Part 3". The Animorphs and Ax are at the Cyber-Cafe at the mall, after their major battle in the Yeerk Pool. As Rachel had morphed a Yeerk and had gone into Tobias's head, Tobias asks her if she'd learned anything about him while she was inside there, meaning, he wanted to know if she discovered his feelings for her. After they talk about how scared Rachel had been being morphed as a Yeerk, she asks him what the thing was he didn't want her to know in that late '90s/early 2000s way that we've seen on TV hundreds of times. We never get Tobias's answer because it cuts to commercials, or the next scene if you're watching it on iTunes, but it's still a cute scene between them.
The second scene, which I took this post's image from, happens at the end of the series finale, "Changes, Part 3". The Animorphs and Ax are once again at the Cyber-Cafe, though this time it's because their school dance was ruined due to the Yeerks. Tobias shows up, as he'd been occupied learning about his father, turns on the jukebox, because a Cyber-Cafe in the year 2000 had a jukebox, and asks Rachel to dance. She accepts, of course, and they dance. That's it. That's why I love that scene. It's just a romantic couple dancing. I love scenes like that in TV shows and movies. Particularly ones like Power Rangers, Animorphs, and other shows where teenagers have hidden extraordinary tasks, like being a superhero or working on a Federation starship (still salty about Wesley Crusher not getting enough normal teenager stuff on Star Trek: The Next Generation).
When it comes right down to it, the reason Rachel and Tobias are my favourite fictional couple of all time is because they're ordinary kids, with extraordinary circumstances and despite the dark turn their lives take by the end of the books, Rachel and Tobias love each other and find solace in each other's company which is all too rare when you're fighting an army of aliens bent on your enslavement and destruction of your planet.
That my friends is it for me for tonight. I will be back on Monday where I'll finally be doing my overview of the various trade paperback editions I've had for Batman: Knightfall. So until then have a great rest of your weekend, and a great night and I will talk to you all later. Take care.
No comments:
Post a Comment