TW Pays Tribute To Robert Patrick

By Owen Quinn

Photo copyright Fox

Have you seen how people throw a wake for themselves just to see who would turn up and what they would say about the deceased? Well, I thought, why wait until a celebrity you admire to die before writing how much they have impacted you through their movies or television roles.

Like everyone else, when Robert Patrick melted into that liquid metal Terminator, the T-1000 in Terminator 2, I was hooked.

In a clever move, Patrick looked so different from Arnold that when he was revealed as the big bad, it was a real shock. We, as an audience, thought all Terminators looked like Arnie but now we knew that wasn’t so and somehow, Skynet was improving on its nearly perfect killing machine. How could anyone defeat something that could morph at will into anything and mimic their voices perfectly. With the buzzcut hair, Robert’s T-1000 went on to become iconic, making several cameos as the character left right and centre and the great thing was, it never got boring.

His career took off after that and I followed it closely for years. My big regret is that the week before I was due to meet him and Linda Hamilton, I lost my leg. Part of me should have just told them to delay it by a week so I could meet Robert Patrick in person in Dublin.

But c’est la vie. There is still hope.

But my other big reason for wanting to meet him was the fact he was the only man that could replace David Duchovny on The X-Files. As John Doggett, he brought a whole new dynamic to the show. He and Scully played off well together and their deepening working and personal relationship was done cleverly and realistically. When Mulder and Doggett finally came face to face, it was screen magic. It was a lost opportunity when Doggett didn’t return to the reboot or the movies.

In Reacher, he was a bad ass villain and wasn’t intimidated by the sheer size of Reacher. In The Walking Dead, he was a tragic figure that I would have liked to see go beyond the one episode. In True Blood, he was the grizzled father of werewolf Alcide Herveaux, he would arrive in the fifth season and stay to the seventh.

As the alien infected coach in The Faculty, he was one scary dude but no matter what you see him in, there is something magnetic about him. His story arc as Davey Scatino in The Sopranos was brilliantly depressing and his role in Night Agent cement his bad guy image and while he will forever have the sci-fi tag because of Terminator, Robert Patrick’s career is so extensive it will last forever. I always think an actor wants to be remembered for certain roles and Robert Patrick will certainly have that legacy. He has even lent his talents to The Ultimate Spiderman.

Of course, there are certain things he has not appeared in and Star Trek is certainly at the top of that list. If ever you needed a bad guy to scare even Klingons, then Robert Patrick is that man.

But for me, Robert Patrick will forever belong to sci-fi. He has eyes that can scare angels back into heaven. I really hope I get to meet him one day.