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The mysterious Mrs. Frederick on "Warehouse 13"

Q: So are we finally going to learn what’s the deal with Mrs. Frederick on the upcoming season of Warehouse 13? — Ava, Green Bay, WI

A: Sorta.

“In episode eleven, we learn a tremendous amount about her connection to the warehouse and how it operates, and how she operates,” Jack Kenny, Warehouse 13’s executive producer (and showrunner) tells The Oracle.

“You don’t want to learn too much about her, or she’ll lose her mystery,” he adds. “But we learn some really cool stuff about her that I think in a way makes her more mysterious.”

CCH Pounder, who plays Mrs. Frederick, will appear in five (out of twelve) episodes this year, including the season premiere on July 6th.

Q: So this is a fantasy question, right? I know the story of Icarus is a myth, but is there any evidence that the ancient Greeks actually tried to build human wings? — Mark, Brooklyn, NY

A: There is no known evidence, but it seems pretty likely, doesn’t it? The legend of Icarus dates from at least 1400 B.C., and surely there were boundary-pushing scholars (and drunken college idiots) even back then!

The first known attempt at such heavier-than-air flight was by the Arab scholar Abbas Ibn Firnas in the 9th century, who attached wings and feathers to himself and reportedly flew some distance, and then returned to where he’d started (and seriously injured himself while landing).

Another man (or possibly the same man with a different spelling of his name — accounts differ), Armen Firman, may have made a similar attempt 20 years earlier, jumping from a tower with a cloak with wooden struts. He too was injured, though the cloak supposedly slowed his fall enough that it was not serious.

And keep in mind that while Icarus flew too close to the sun, his father, Daedalus, who built the wings and warned his son about the dangers of the sun, made it just fine in his flight off the island where they were both imprisoned.

In other words, the moral of the story isn’t what it’s often interpreted to be: “Don’t try bold, new things.” No, it’s, “Go ahead and try ‘em — just don’t be an arrogant jackass about it.”

Q: I have this memory of an exploitative, anti-D&D TV movie that came out in the 80s. What was it called and was it as bad as I remember? — Bruce, Colorado Springs, CO

A: CBS’ 1982 TV movie, Mazes and Monsters, starring none other than a 26-year-old Tom Hanks, is absolutely as bad as you remember: an anti-RPG screed that came at the height of the D&D hysteria that broke out in the late 1970s and 1980s.

Scenes from "Mazes and Monsters"

It was based on a 1981 novel that was itself based on news reports about a boy, James Dallas Egbert III, who attempted suicide in the utility tunnels under Michigan State University, then hid out with some friends for a month.

A private investigator hired by the parents speculated that James, who played D&D, had gone into the tunnels to play a “real-life” version of D&D and gotten lost. This was falsely reported by the media as true — and author Rona Jaffe irresponsibly rushed out a thinly disguised novel to capitalize on the notoriety of the story.

Even if the story had been true, it doesn’t, in any way, implicate D&D. Has no football player ever committed suicide?

Sadly, James successfully committed suicide the following year, and the private investigator, William Dear, wrote a 1984 book, The Dungeon Master, acknowledging that James’ death had to do with family dynamics and nothing to do with D&D.

Anyway, in the movie, Tom Hanks plays Robbie, a troubled college student who has previously become so obsessed with the fantasy role-playing game Mazes and Monsters that he had flunked out of school. He meets a group of equally troubled other students who encourage him to play the game again.

One of his friends decides to commit suicide in some local caves, but he changes his mind and decides to lead the others in a new game of Mazes and Monsters — a campaign that eventually causes Robbie to lose all touch with reality and want to jump off the World Trade Center.

The movie ends with him permanently lost his fantasy world — all due to the EVIL DANGERS of DUNGEONS & DRAGONS!

Wait, I mean Mazes and Monsters.

The movie, like the whole, ridiculous anti-RPG hysteria, did real damage to good people at the time.

But in a twist befitting the most expert DM, the film (available on DVD) is now considered a ridiculous camp classic, and none of the principles (except for Hanks) went on to do anything of note. Meanwhile, role-playing games and the genre of fantasy are more popular than ever.

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Three Torches (Out of Five)

You think you know people who are bitter with the Catholic Church?

Whoever you know, they’re nothing compared to the Illuminati, the ancient society at the center of Angels & Demons, the latest adaptation (after The Da Vinci Code) of Dan Brown’s novels about “symbolgist” Robert Langdon.

The Illuminati are the real-life organization that once tried to popularize notions of science and rational thinking — much to the dismay of the Catholic Church, which executed some of them and sent the rest into hiding.

According to Angels & Demons, the Illuminati have nursed a grudge all these years. Now, on the verge of the election of a new pope, they’re out to get their revenge by kidnapping the four leading papal candidates, with plans to execute them one by one in the hours before midnight.

What happens at midnight? A bomb made of antimatter hidden somewhere in the Vatican will take out the whole damn church. Science is going to destroy religion at long last — at least if the Illuminati get their way.

Fortunately, the Illuminati’s ancient plans are all spelled in a series of anagrams and riddles buried deep in the Vatican archives, and clues hidden in plain site in sculptures all over the city of Rome.

Who ever could put the pieces together in time to save the church?

Enter notorious religious skeptic Robert Langdon, once again played by Tom Hanks. Why would the Vatican seek the services of the man who almost single-handedly destroyed the church in The Da Vinci Code?

Well, it might be because in the series of novels, Angels & Demons takes place before The Da Vinci Code, whereas since Code was filmed first, the filmmakers decided that, rather than confuse the audience, they’d just turn Angels into a traditional sequel.

As source material, the ideas in The Da Vinci Code are far more interesting — and attention-getting — than the ones in Angels & Demons. But when it comes to the story, and the riddles themselves, the latter has the edge. Brown took real-life Roman locations and sculptures and did an incredibly clever job of making it seem like they’d been sculpted and positioned precisely so they could spell out the clues to Illuminati’s nefarious plot (so much so that Angels & Demons tours are now very popular in the Eternal City).

As a movie, Angels & Demons is quite a bit better than The Da Vinci Code, but since that movie was borderline-unwatchable, this isn’t saying much.

The problem, as in The Da Vinci Code, is that for the puzzles and clues to have any impact, you have to have some historical background. In Angels & Demons, Langdon is always helpfully explaining that necessary background to whoever happens to be standing by him at the time.

Which isn’t to say the movie is all talk. There is also much rushing down hallways and some genuine thrills. The end result is like riding a roller-coaster, but with someone talking in your ear, explaining it to you the whole time.

I will say this: when the Illuminati plot is finally exposed, it really does hang together (despite some coincidences and a ludicrous third act sequence involving a helicopter  — though not nearly as ludicrous as in the book).

The pieces of the puzzle are all here. The problem is that putting them together just isn’t all that much fun.