Darth Wiki / Marionettes

You're hearing the Scare Chord in your head right now, aren't you?^note Or the recap song.

"We've invested years of effort, hundreds of billions of dollars, on this purple-haired gobshite?"

— Joan O'Sullivan

Marionettes is an adult animated sci-fi/urban fantasy/horror/conspiracy thriller/dramedy series airing on TBS.^note Really just a fake show imagined by Glide08. Not to be confused with the MLP Fanfic of the same name, but that work did serve as inspiration for this one...

The series follows Alexandra "Bev" Beverley (voiced by Michelle Creber) and Deborah "Deb" Miller (Claire Corlett), two American college graduates who embark on a post-graduation trip across Europe together, joined later down the line by Dutch Football Hooligan Elsa van Tonder (Madeleine Peters). The two soon find themselves pursued by two MenInBlack, Joan O'Sullivan (Pauline McLynn) and Carl Chapman (Nathan Fillion), for reasons they don't understand and embroiled in a grand conspiracy.

Not to be mistaken by the fanfic of the same name.

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This Work Contains Examples Of:

• Accent Adaptation: Oddly (but rather fittingly, for a show with characters from both sides of the Atlantic), Marionettes only has one Spanish dub, with Latin American and European Spanish used depending on what side of the pond a character hails from. For example, Bev's Southern American accent is rendered as Northern Mexican Spanish and Deb's midwestern accent becomes standard Mexican, while O'Sullivan's Hiberno-English becomes Galician Spanish^note a region of northwestern Spain with cultural and geographic links to Ireland and Elsa (who also has a midwestern accent in the English original) sounds like she's from Barcelona.
• Actor-Shared Background: O'Sullivan is a Sligo native, Much like her voice actress Pauline McLynn.
• Androids Are People, Too: A major theme of the series.
• Big Bad: The Council of Moirai, the five-person board leading the Hands of Fate.
• Bittersweet Ending: The investigation into Futura Industries resulting from "All Boils Down to This" - stated to be "the biggest corruption case since the Panama Papers" - exposes the Hands of Fate. However, HoF-probing is still in its early stage as of the "Where Are They Now?" Epilogue.
• Blonde, Brunette, Redhead: Elsa (though hers is dyed purple), Deb and Bev respectively.
• Book Ends: The show begins and ends with O'Sullivan being awakened by a work-related phone call. At the beginning, she and Chapman are dispatched to London to recover Bev, whose flight just crossed the US border; at the end, O'Sullivan invited to Bev's hearing before the International Court of Justice.
• Breakout Character: Director Miranda Iglesias. Being essentially an evil version of Rarity (with all the hamminess that implies) quickly made her a fan favorite.
• Casting Gag:
  • The two Hands of Fate recruiters (and implied G2 Marionettes) who persuade Daniel to upload Bev's mind instead of raise funds for another cure by going into the Meth buisness are voiced by Bryan Cranston and Aaron Paul.
• Censored for Comedy: In a promotional short, an interview with O'Sullivan is chock-filled with liberal uses of the censor bleep. Judging by her intonation (and the fact a similar Elsa-centric short had her dropped an uncensored F-bomb), it's most likely classified information instead of anything profane.
• Child Soldier: The Brunner twins. Oh lord, the Brunner twins. The fact they were added to the G4 prototype roster caused Sophie's resignation from the Marionettes project.
• The Comically Serious: O'Sullivan.
• "Do It Yourself" Ending Theme: There's a different one every episode, sung by the main cast in-character. These are always thematic, with some of the lyrics directly referencing the episode's events or characters.
• Dragon-in-Chief: Director Miranda Iglesias, who oversees the Marionettes project. The Moirai are too busy bickering between themselves and manage literally hundreds of cells, shell companies, et cetera, leaving her as the main threat.
• Emergency Transformation: Bev's mind was uploaded into a Marionette body when she was 9 years old, obstensively to cure her ALS.
• Expy:
  • Bev, Deb and Elsa certainly bear lots of resemblance to their VA's previous characters...
    • It even extends to the rest of the Beverley family!^note If you ignore the fact that Bright Mac and Pear Butter/Granny Smith's and Daniel and Arlene/Daniel's unnamed mother's fates were swapped.
  • So, the N.G.O. Superpower's second-in-command is called Miranda, and is an attractive, dark-haired and pale-skinned lady wearing a black-and-white Spy Catsuit. Where have we seen this before...
• Flashback Episode: "Sex, Lies, and Southern-Fried Robot Girls" is mostly told from Daniel's Po V, and shows how Alexandra got involved in the Marionette project. "And Gabi makes three" is this for the Brunner twins.
• Flawed Prototype:
  • The Hands of Fate didn't quite nail down the right AGI architecture at first: G1 Marionettes were dumb as a brick and had the mental maturity of a child; to compensate, G2 Marionettes were made intelligent, but completely emotionless; and whatever AGI flaws G3 had resulted in the whole generation being recalled and mothballed.
• "Friends" Rent Control: O'Sullivan lives in the Docklands, a posh neighborhood in central Dublin – specifically, in Pearse Square. Justified, since as a high-ranking agent of a conspiracy with unlimited resources, this central a location is well within her means.
• Heart Drive: Marionette brains are a small sphere kept inside a reinforced casing where a human's brain would be. As long as the sphere is intact, it can be transferred into a new body — or a simulated environment — as the need arises. Both of these happen to Bev.
• Hidden Agenda Villain: Nobody, not even the Hands of Fate themselves, knows their motivations behind anything they do. Then again, they are described as having an incompetence as unlimited as their resources.
• I Have Your Wife: Bev's father is kidnapped by the Hands of Fate.
• I Need a Freaking Drink: At the end of "Twelve Million", Bev, Deb and O'Sullivan are drinking in a bar, clearly in the middle of processing what just happened.
• "It" Is Dehumanizing: Chapman and O'Sullivan constantly refer to Bev as either "it" or "G4T01", showing they only see her as an asset to be recovered.
• Knight of Cerebus: Grace Newton, alongside Gabi and Lia Brunner.
• Limited Wardrobe: Bev averts this – she's been shown to wear t-shirts with over twenty distinct designs over the course of the series, the most common ones being a plain black one and a yellow one with a red Jack Stagg logo.
  • On the other hand, Deb is never seen without her lavender turtleneck. perhaps she wears her own unique set of shirts under it?
  • Elsa is a downplayed example – her most common (and iconic) get-up by far is her Netherlands Home Jersey, but she has been shown to wear something else once in a few episodes – most of the time, it's her equally-as-common Feyenoord Jersey.
• Meaningful Name:
  • Joan O'Sullivan somewhat resembles "Dana Scully", and that's no coincidence. She has an insanely rigid worldview, seeing the Marionettes as little more than mindless automata meant to do the Hands of Fate's bidding and stubbornly insisting the HoF's actions are justified. She eventually snaps out of this worldview. Violently.
  • Carl Chapman clearly sounds like an Anglified version of Karel Čapek, foreshadowing his true nature as a Marionette. Also doubles as an Ironic Name; In Čapek's R.U.R., the robots were little more than slaves who broke into violence when they Turned Against Their Masters after going rogue, whereas Chapman was an Elite Agent of the Hands of Fate who was Driven to Suicide by his own programming.
• Mid-Season Upgrade: In "Cyberology Lesson", Bev is upgraded into G8T01.
• Not-So-Omniscient Council of Bickering: The Council of Moirai deconstructs this: their constant inflighting makes coordination hard, rendering the HoF a bloated organization both resources- and manpower-wise, lacking in concrete long-term goals.
• The Political Officer: The Hands of Fate's Personnel Recovery officers are assassins specifically tasked with disposing of rogue agents.
• Previously on…: Marionettes' previouslies consist of Jonathan Coulton singing a disturbingly upbeat recap of the previous episode's events, played over the appropriate footage. Uniquely, the previouslies go after the Cold Open, thus doubling as a Theme Tune.
  • In "Shaken and Stirred and Hung All Over", Coulton starts to do the recap song, but gets stressed out trying to sum up the events of "Twelve Million". Madeleine Peters fills in for him.
    *the "previous episode's" footage shows an orange wing waving in front of clearly-worn-out Bev and Deb*
    Madeleine Peters: So now, I'm gonna pack my things and-
    Michelle Creber and Claire Corlett: Oh my god, you're in this too?!
  • Madeleine also sings the recap for "You, Me, and the Dipshit of Destiny". Considering she voices Elsa, who debuts in that episode...
• Psychic-Assisted Suicide: After his Robotic Reveal, Chapman's arms have their remote override engaged, causing him to put a gun against his temple and blow his own brains out. However, since he remains fully aware of the situation and in full control over the rest of his body, this is accompanied by ultimately futile calls for help.
  Chapman: Was my whole life a li-*BANG*
• Rank Scales with Asskicking: The Hands of Fate seems to runs on this trope - their Elite Agents are considerably stronger than the rank and file ones to the point it generally takes at least two people to defeat one unarmed, and their top-level leadership is all but stated to be chosen entirely through Klingon Promotion.
• Reasonable Authority Figure: Preston Rawlings is a rare villainous example.
• Ridiculously Human Robots: The titular Marionettes.
• Scotireland: Invoked by (a drunk) O'Sullivan:
  and a can of Irn-Bru^note A Scottish soft drink renowned as a hangover cure, which also outsells Coca-cola in Scotland for the yanks...
• Shout-Out:
  • The recap songs are this to BrainDead (2016), down to the music.
  • If you pause at the right place, you can see Grace smokes Il Gallo cigarettes.
  • Marionettes who don't have Restraining Bolts programmed in are said to be unshackled.
  • Bev's reconstruction as G8T01 resembles Leeloo's reconstruction quite closely....
• SkeleBot 9000: Early-generation Marionettes were this; the transition to a Host-like format took place somewhere between G5 and G7, though it's unknown when exactly.
• Super Prototype: G4T01 to G4T18, including Bev, are this to the other Generation 4 Marionettes; In addition to being trial-series Marionettes^note and thus, both installed with beta versions of features which didn't see production until G5/6 and calibrated to higher specifications than their production-series counterparts, they each also have uploaded human mind for an AGI - which means they're unshackled, due to not being programmed with any Restraining Bolts in the first place.
• Tagline: "Discovering Ourselves Again".
• Title-Only Opening: Similarly to The Closer, the entire opening sequence consists of a simple black card with the title in white type (pictured in this article), with only a Scare Chord for soundtrack.
  • Subverted from Episode 2 onwards, where the black card is followed by the recap song.
• Upgrade vs. Prototype Fight: The fight between Bev and Chapman is this – The former's a prototype G4 marionette, whereas the latter's a production-model G7, and thus technologically superior despite being physically weaker. Ultimately, neither of them win; they both entered the fight with the assumption that they're fully human, and their respective Robotic Reveals stop it dead in its tracks.
• Wham Episode:
  • "Twelve Million" has not one but two Robotic Reveals (both for Chapman and Bev) and the start of O'Sullivan's Heel–Face Turn, plus Grace Newton's debut.
  • "Sex, Lies, and Southern-Fried Robot Girls" shows us just how Bev got where she is now and what she truly is.
• You Are Number 6: The Marionettes are referred to with serial numbers by the Hands of Fate: Bev is G4T01 (G8T01 post-upgrade), while Chapman's own programming refers to him as G7P094.