Lindsay Wagner: Syfy and Warehouse 13 gain a Doctor and an Icon

Lindsay Wagner

When Lisa F (Alphagirl, head honcho) sent an email around last week asking if anyone was available to take part in a conference call with Lindsay Wagner I nearly fell off my chair. LINDSAY! WAGNER! I jumped at the chance to talk to her. It’s hard to express how much she meant to me growing up.

Lindsay Wagner played Jaime Sommers, The Bionic Woman, and portrayed a woman who was sporty, compassionate, intelligent, nerdy and self-determining. She looked great but that wasn’t the point. She had a purpose, a calling and she kicked ass when she needed to. She fought spies, fembots and her inner demons but still took time to teach class.

The conference call was arranged through SYFY, to promote her upcoming appearance in their series, Warehouse 13.  Ms Wagner plays Dr Vanessa Calder, the Warehouse 13 in-house doctor who is called in to treat a member of the team. Her first episode will air Tuesday, August 17th at 9 PM ET/PT.

An early question was about how she chose the role of Dr Calder. The answer was through her agent. She doesn’t watch that much TV but when her agent told her about the offer she looked up Warehouse 13 on the Internet, watched some episodes and liked what she saw. It offered the kind of sci-fi that she would watch with her family without gore or excessive violence – things she feels are too prevalent on shows today.

When asked about a memorable moment during the filming of her Warehouse 13 episodes, she said it was as soon as she arrived in Vancouver for filming. The rewrites had been done.  The writer had been to her website and had incorporated some of the ideas and techniques she uses in her workshops into the script for Dr Calder. This was a very pleasant surprise and she was happy to expand that side of Dr Calder.

While she was asked more questions about her character and what happens in the episodes she is in, she was very careful not to reveal any spoilers – even though she wanted to. It seemed that she was very happy about the way her character is developed and Dr Calder’s place in the show. As to whether she will be coming back – that is open at the moment but certainly appeared to be something that she would be happy with.

Airlock Alpha asked about her website, http://www.lindsaywagner.com and the ‘Quiet the Mind & Open The Heart’ workshops and retreats she runs. It was obvious from passionate and informative way she talked about the programs and the benefits she and others have had from them that this is a core part of her outlook on life.

Apart from The Bionic Woman, Ms Wagner has starred in over 40 TV movies, 5 mini-series and 12 feature films. In answering another question she explained how she was able to use her platform to highlight issues such as child abuse in the film “A Child’s Cry” and domestic violence in “Shattered Dreams”. She has been the honorary chairperson for ICAN (http://ican.co.la.ca.us/home.htm) for 20 years.

It was very reassuring to hear the answer to whether or not she was tired of people asking about The Bionic Woman after all these years was emphatically no. She was very gratified when people who had watched the series tell her they taken so much away from it and had seen the elements that they had tried to add in to keep the stories real within the framework of the show.

When it was my turn I first asked Ms Wagner if she used the Internet regularly. She said not really, but does use it for research.  She also watches movies and TV shows if away from home or there is nothing good on TV. I then asked her if she had thought about creating her own webseries since there were plenty of people on the Internet who would love to connect with her. She confirmed that she has a Twitter account (http://twitter.com/opentheheart).

She replied that she had thought about offering some of her workshops online and that she was excited by the possibilities that the Internet offered for that kind of reach. When I mentioned that other stars like Kelsey Grammer and Lisa Kudrow had their own webseries she was surprised and sounded intrigued. I hope we will hear more about Lindsay Wagner online before too long.

Since Lee Majors is slated to for a new comedy on Syfy, “Me and Lee”, I asked Ms Wagner if she had thought about doing comedy. It was clear from her answer that she was certainly interested in doing more comedy. In a previous answer she had spoken about how draining drama can be. She explained that portraying deep emotions meant experiencing stressful emotions and while she had wanted to do all the TV Dramas she had appeared in, it mean that she wasn’t on casting directors’ minds for comedy roles.

She described her sense of humour as “dry” and was keen to point out that The Bionic Woman had lots of gags and humorous moments – something that she was very happy to do. So if she found the right script and writer, comedy is something that would definitely be on the cards.

The whole conference call lasted about an hour and throughout Ms Wagner was polite, engaged and took time to think about her answers. You always hope that people you looked up as a child are good people – that they were more than the characters they played on the TV. Lindsay Wagner leaves no doubt that about that. I hope we see a lot more of her in the future.

I’ve not watched it before, but I will certainly be tuning in to see her in Warehouse 13 next Tuesday.

WorldofHiglet is the online persona of writer Mary R. Higgins, a born-again geek reclaiming her heritage bit by bit. A youth filled with sci-fi, horror and adventure in TV, films, computer games and books was crushed by years of office grind. Buffy brought her back into the fold after years of denial. Discovering Firefly sealed the deal. Now she geeks fulltime on her blog ‘the last geek bus home’ . Her first novel ‘Turning left at Albuquerque” is complete and she has just launched HigletFilms.com, a new webvideo entertainment site serving new, original videos every Monday.

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