COUNTERPART
The Honourable DoppelgangerW W W.SCI FI N OW.CO.U K |^059
“It’s easy for us all to other-ise
everyone else who isn’t aligned
with our way of life, our line of
t ho u ght,” explains Betty Gabriel who
plays Naya Temple, an FBI agent of Islamic
faith in Season Two of Counterpart.
Gabriel plays a new character to the show
who she describes as having “an air of
mystery and cunning. She's dissecting and
microscopically sniffi ng people out. I love
that about her. As the season continues, you
see her getting closer to the truth but also
grappling more with what she thought was
true her whole life in regard to her faith.”
Temple is brought in to investigate how the
‘Offi ce of Interchange’ was compromised and
infi ltrated to pull off a tragic mass shooting
at the end of Season One. Due to the terrorist
act, the border between the two sides of
a parallel Berlin has been closed. Though
the gateway is heavily controlled and kept
secret in a government facility this isn’t quite
Stargate with the only destination being a
subtly different reality... the explanation so
far behind the phenomenon is that in 1989
(the same year as the fall of the Berlin Wall)
the world simply broke away and replicated.
The show blends science fi ction with Cold
War era spy thriller. Created, written and
executive produced by Justin Marks and
featuring top notch directors such as Morten
Tyldum (The Imitation Game) and Jennifer
Getzinger (Outlander and Jessica Jones)
it taps into timely and politically charged
issues such as border control, warring
ideologies, government corruption, global
overpopulation and terrorism, weaving
them through multiple storylines about
assassination plots and covert operations.
The two realities display minor differences
in technology and population due to a deadly
fl u epidemic that hit one of the worlds in
the early Nineties which in turn has led to
conspiracy theories that it was all by design.
“I think what the show does so well is it
takes a deep, disturbing look into the hows
and whys,” says Gabriel. “These issues are
so complex. Of course, we will all never
agree on these matters and we'll always
have our differences, but perhaps a certain
understanding of the deeper roots of these
issues will allow for more awareness and
more participation from the ground up.”