RAPS in Retrospect – Part 2 [Daniel Miller]

/ March 13, 2017

Right now I should be working on a mega-exciting mammoth translation of “crisis guidelines”; instead, I am much more inclined to indulge in some Berlin memories – this time, last week, I was there *sigh*… How better to indulge than to compile the Daniel Miller shrines… It’s quick – because there are only three such so far. Really not enough, considering that there is a wealth of material available, plus it is the OOA’s most recent role. Hm.

Interestingly, I made the three shrines in relatively quick succession, not in terms of actual time but in sequence. They are numbers 120, 127 and 131 in the shrining oeuvre, yet they cover seven months between the first and the (so far) last one appearing. The RAPS Inc. production lines evidently move at snail’s pace… Also interesting: two out of the three shrines were made *before* BS aired, i.e. they are reactions to the show’s excellent promo releases…

The paragraph headings below link back to the original posts.

#120 Daniel Miller

The “taster” shrine borrowed heavily from the logo of the show – and was all dark and black.

I remember some frantic screen-capping of Daniel sneaking around the roof to catch him and his thighs of thunder clearly and without blur…

 

I think that some of my design decisions were guided by the wish to make the shrine a sort of ‘promotional item’, like an advertising gimmick as promo for the show. Ha, just imagine if film studios were to hand out little mass-produced dioramas like this one to the potential audience! I’d say they’d be eye-catchers…

One of the best things about this shrine – my photo shoot *lol*. I went up on the roof of my house to shoot it. It was a mild spring day, the sun was out, and the shamrocks on my roof garden were in full bloom. Even though I live in the city centre, the bustle and noise of the street feels very far away when I am up there. It’s like a true oasis.

The shrine eventually went to Lady Clorinda.

#127 Spy-Candy

The second Daniel shrine, however, was made for a specific recipient. It was conceived as a thank you for MatildRAs, for guiding me to the various then-known BS locations in February 2016. I handed it over in August, when we met again and MatildRAs took me on another tour. As this was pre-release, the shrine contains an image that is not from BS. But here’s the BS-originated spy-man in action:

#131 White Christmas

Well, what can I say. Guylty left all inhibitions at the door and let loose on this shrine. White, the colour of innocence? *coughs* Well, not really in this cheeky little number… The bottom part of the shrine is even worse cheekier…

Note the lollipop that has replaced the nasty cigarette!

Whenever I see that picture/scene, I notice that discreet little fold across RA’s tummy, and I have to smile. For some reason, it looks to me like a belly chain, worn around the waist. Oolala, Daniel… He is nowadays jingling his waist-chained snake hips for Stephanie, who won the shrine in the subsequent raffle.

Those were my three DMPSs. But wait, there is one more!

Bonus: #110 Spying in Berlin

This was a mixture of a BTS selfie, captured by Michelle Forbes, and a Daniel scene from the promos, hence I didn’t count it as a full DM RAPS. That selfie – well, it was irresistible, even if RA was blurred. But that impish smile and the whole scenario of RA photobombing (?) Forbes’ selfie, playfully hiding behind her, it really was too good to ignore. Especially since I had some fluffy black feathers in my stash, which I could use to obscure Forbes’ hair in the shot and instead pretend that RA was hiding behind a massive feather fan…

 

This shrine, btw, has found a permanent home in Berlin. I saw it again last week, displayed in my friend’s sitting room.

In conclusion, a collage:

#120 Daniel Miller
#127 Stylish

Have you got any favourite pics/scenes of Daniel ‘Dark Horse’ Miller? There are a few pics in my folder that are begging for shrine inclusion…

At the end, here is a question for you, dear readers: Has Daniel yet become anyone’s favourite chaRActer, btw? 

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64 thoughts on “RAPS in Retrospect – Part 2 [Daniel Miller]”

  2. Ooooh That DOES look like a belly chain!!!!

    Someday, I will finish watching this series. We have spring break next week. Spawn will be back in school, so maybe I’ll have the house to myself in order to indulge.

    That said, I DO love Daniel – or at least so far I love him. But Sir Guy and Gary…. still hold my heart!

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    • Sorry, that is probably now a thing you won’t be able to ‘unsee’.
      Oh, lucky you, re. free gaff. I am longing for a week off – by which I mean a week when I am at home, alone, no work, so I can do everything I never do…

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      • Well as much as I’d like to say ‘no work’ – it will be the opposite. We’re rearranging my cave – turning it into a proper family room. Of course, we have no furniture to SIT on – so I’ll be dredging the thrift stores looking for a couple of chairs or a sofa.

        I’m counting the days – 3 more days until spring break and when we return, 40 more days ’til the end of school.

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  3. I think Daniel is definitely swoon-worthy. But he hasn’t replaced Porter or Thorin in my affections. Of course, if you happened to have some Daniel Miller shrines that were in want of a home, I would never turn one down. Maybe the grittiness of the Berlin spy business requires RA’s gorgeousness to be turned down a notch. We have had very little dreamy closeups, IMO. But a hundred would be too little and maybe take away from the drama. No, not possible.

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    • I am hoping that season 2 will establish Daniel as the major heart-breaker – in a good way, of course. Not in a “I don’t love them, and then I leave them” kind of way, but in a “total caring, protective, alpha hero” kind of way *grins*. Mind you, we already have Porter for that (although he had even less romance than Daniel *hmph*). Here’s hoping that Epix has copped on to the presence of the RArmy… I’d be very happy if they played to the ranks a little bit.

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      • Amen to that. Porter did not have much romance, true. But he had lots of closeups and shirtless scenes to make up for it. At least that is my memory. I think I need to refresh my Porter recollections. 🙂

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        • Porter always came across as very caring, even if there wasn’t much in the way of love interest. Daniel hasn’t really shown me that yet – we really don’t know much about his interior life at all so I’m hoping that might be corrected in season 2. So no, not my favourite at the moment, and he’s going to have to be very good to eclipse Lucas in the spy stakes 😉

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          • Fully agree with you, Helen. Despite Porter not really being paired with a proper lover, the way he looked after Katie Dartmouth was a clear indication that he had a caring nature. Daniel came across as rather cold in season 1 – he did not seem to feel any remorse for having (inadvertantly) caused Claudia’s death, for instance. His relationship with Esther – IDK, I always felt as if he was in it for the pillow talk, not the emotion. Maybe things will have changed between them now that he knows that Esther tried to warn him at the end of season 1? Here’s hoping… A little bit of *real* emotion would be welcome.

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  5. Daniel is really good looking. However, I think Steinhauer’s conception of what spies do is such that they’d be creating narrative problems if they gave him any kind of real relationship or caring for people outside his real love — the security of the US. Armitage keeps saying “I wanted to play a patriot,” and I think that’s the role he’s playing: pragmatic patriot. Which means we’ll see some more hide the sausage with Esther, for the sake of intelligence exchange, and probably some personal sacrifice for the US (and probably some uncovering of why he’s so mysterious and potentially a scarred, wounded guy), possibly some mentoring relationship with this new agent they’ve cast, but not more than that. I’m just not hopeful.

    I found myself really missing Porter over the weekend.

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    • “hide the sausage” 😂 🤣 😄 I have never heard that expression, yet it is immediately clear to me, what that means…
      But yes, what you say makes perfect sense. Daniel is far too busy (and professional) to get sidetracked by “silly” emotions. (Although that little scene in one of the middle episodes of season 1 where Esther takes him to the spot where his mother perished and he got all emotional over it, was rather inconsistent with the characteristics of a single-minded, rational spy who doesn’t have time for love. Or at least that’s how I felt about that particular scene, even though I welcomed the opportunity of seeing RA emote…) The only caring outside of his own sphere of work, is probably his relationship with his family (Patricia and Max).
      Porter is the man!

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      • Fandom is so educational 🙂

        Yeah — I think that the question of his past / youth / unresolved issues from his mother being murdered will probably be explored in more detail and we’ll get some emotion out of that, which I would welcome, but I don’t know that it will lead him to seem more connected with the other characters.

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        • Unless they cut a huge amount of stuff from the first season, the bulk of the family issues will have to be resolved now. Maybe that is the “red thread” that runs through the show. I do look forward to finding out about that mystery, not least because it will have a proper German slant. Oh, plus: teenage Daniel… *grins* looking forward to that…

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  6. I don’t hold out a lot of hope for Daniel becoming all emotional ever in this series You may see cracks here and there of break through but I don’t expect much. I think the “control” will prevail. As far as favorite character, not for me. He is interesting, but he is not a “giving of self” character in many ways. Porter though never in romantic situations showed through RA’s dynamic expressions his many caring facets and yes his many physical tributes..lol…then there is Sir Guy.. what a devil……but you loved him, didn’t ya???

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    • Guy was a wonderful dichotomy – the deeply romantic, hopelessly-in-love, possessively caring man vs. the cold, opportunistic henchman. Excessive emotion vs. clinical detachment. Idealism vs. pragmatism. Even though only a supporting character, that role really was exciting because it had scope for extreme displays of weaknesses and strengths. Theoretically, Daniel could be the same, based on his tragic family background, yet rational, patriotic facade. Alas, Serv is probably right – that probably doesn’t fit in with the spy stereotype that the showrunners want to perpetuate. Daniel is far from my favourite – too cold, too detached. Or maybe he is just inconclusive and we haven’t seen enough of him yet. Yes, I think that’s it. WE HAVE NOT SEEN ENOUGH OF HIM YET *grins*

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  7. teenage Daniel — he’ll have to lose even more weight. Hmmm.

    I have mixed feelings, because Steinhauer claims that he’s a huge expert on the RAF, but what the way that he conceptualized the German-American intelligence relationship in the first season suggested to me is that (giving him the benefit of the doubt and assuming he follows the German-American intelligence relationship as closely as is possible in the press, so he’s familiar with the actual facts) he is willing to sensationalize things in ways that kill their credibility to me. Supposedly he’s lived in Germany but (as you know) there were significant, decisive plot elements in season one that were just not credible on a basic level.

    In the Milo Weaver books (and Milo seems a lot like Daniel to me), Milo’s mother is given an RAF past. The RAF is a fascinating topic and in the last fifteen years, along with the discussion about whether certain of them should be released, a ton of “alumns” have published their memoirs in German, particularly the female ones. Even five years ago there was a decent amount of scholarly research developing particularly on the topic of why women were involved in the RAF or why they supported men who were. So it’s not just Meinhof that everyone goes off anymore in understanding that particular trend. I’m just not confident, based on how he portrays the German side of the US-German intelligence relationship, that anything he portrays about German radicalism will bear much relationship to reality.

    And I would say the same thing, mutatis mutandis, if they plan to explore the Stasi aspect. And there’s mountains and mountains of research on that, tons and tons of primary sources to explore, even published ones.

    I am probably one of a tiny subgroup of fans who care about that part of the show, but it is frustrating and doesn’t leave me hopeful.

    Additionally, based on his portrayal of women in general in this series, I’m not sure we’re going to get much depth or humanity, even if we do learn more about Daniel’s mother. Steinhauer’s sympathies seem to lie primarily with his male characters. So, yeah, I guess I still ended season 1, even after the marathon rewatch, in the “I’m watching this b/c Armitage is in it [and because Berlin is so beautiful],” camp. As far as everything else goes — well, we’ll see.

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    • Well, you are preaching to the choir here, Serv. Tbh, I lost a lot of confidence in Steinhauer based on just one silly little detail. The fact that Daniel’s mother is called “Sara”. So unlikely for a woman of that generation (just born after the war). But ok, that is a superficiality, and granted, there are always exceptions to every rule. However, I also had reservations because the show never made it properly clear whether the (West-German) wife of a US intelligence officer was dating a West-German spy or an East-German spy. Or maybe that was intended??? Weird confusion, yet it has big implications for interpreting DM’s mother, her loyalties, even her relationship with her husband. In any case, like you said, the “Baader-Meinhof Complex” is exactly what it says on the tin: COMPLEX. However much research there is – there is also still controversy over the interpretation of their motivations, politics, lack of politics, personal incentives, objectives, aims, mode of action, international impact and and and… Since this show is written by an American for an American audience, I doubt that they will make this story arc a predominant one. They’ll concentrate on the issue of patriotism in the face of administrative implosion. Everything else is accessories.
      The portrayal of women – let’s just say I have high hopes that things will improve. *coughs*

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      • That bugged me too, although I wondered if he was suggesting she was Jewish. (Also, almost every non-Jewish German I’ve met named “Sara” spells it with an “h,” but that’s anecdata, and Luther spelled it without the “h” even though it has a hey in Hebrew, and even nowadays one meets German Jews with either spelling). But there we’re back to the red herring that looks like it could be a clue even though it’s probably a mistake (“Bundesvermögensamt”).

        re: who she was dating — I thought it was an East German and that was why Esther had the file about his mother, and thus the whole spiel in the episode about how East Germans thought those who spied in West Germany took on the status of martyrs. (and to be fair: she could have been a West German w/RAF sympathies who was seeking to defect when the BRD got a little too warm for her — there were quite a few of those cases unveiled after 1989). I’m not going to look for it now, but I have this vague memory that in episode 6, we saw Daniel Miller reading a file page and it indicated that his mother was dating an East German. He had a doctorate in economics or something along those lines from Erfurt. Or am I confusing that with something else?

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        • Glad I am not the only one who stumbled over the name Sara (and yes, the issue with the missing ‘h’ occurred to me, too.).
          I think you are right about the East German spy lover. I am not going to check, either, but in my memory there was some sort of double bluff, of an East German spy posing as a West German… I vaguely remember thinking that it was overly complicated – like so much on the first season. Another indication that maybe the first season acts as the big “Stichwortgeber” – with lots of little clues that will be the starting point for later story arcs.
          The Bundesvermögensamt was a major gaffe. I still don’t understand how that slipped through with all the German crew on board…

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          • well, I guess if there was a double bluff, I missed it (and I watched it three times). I thought they were pretty clearly indicating he was an East German.

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              • oh — for me that triggered an RAF association (BMW=”Baader Meinhof Wagen”) rather than something more generally West German.

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                • Interesting – I had never heard that term before you mentioned it. I knew that the RAF used BMWs, but I had never heard the abbreviation used that way. That puts a new slant on things…

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                  • http://jalopnik.com/5975558/how-bmw-became-a-terrorist-icon-in-the-1970s

                    But I think I learned this from Stefan Aust’s book (first thing I read on the topic, in the 1990s, before the translation, which I would also recommend if anyone is interested in this topic). However, that article above connects to Richard Huffman, and I’ve wondered a bit if Steinhauer was influenced by his views on the RAF at all, just b/c Huffman’s father was one of the American officers charged with dealing with Baader Meinhof bombings in the 70s (although afaik his mother was American), and because in the 90s if you read about BM on the Internet, you were probably familiar with Huffman’s site, “The Gun Speaks” (seems to be gone now).

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                • Meine Güte! Diese Abkürzung hatte ich ja noch nie auf dem Radar. Heilige Einfalt. Vielleicht habe ich mich zu wenig mit der RAF beschäftigt. 🙄

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                  • I had a thesis student who wanted to do a comparative study of terrorism (Tupac Amaru vs RAF) in 1999. He read Spanish but not German. So I spent a fair amount of time reading about it (trying to find stuff he could read that had been translated into English — at that point there wasn’t much, although a lot of the “2nd generation” started publishing their memoirs at that point: Irmgard Möller, Inge Viett, Stefan Wisniewski, Margrit Schiller. The big “Renaissance” in RAF stuff in the English-speaking world came 2008ish, just as some of the bigger figures who were still in prison were coming up for release (Birgitte Hogefeld comes to mind) and then there were a few books by children of RAF targets around the same time (Anne Siemens is the one I remember). Anyway, i started reading about it for his thesis and then I stayed interested in it.

                    (No worries — he’s gone on to lead a public policy think tank in Maryland that supports anti-poverty efforts. So he didn’t become a terrorist even after studying it.)

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  9. he was written in such a way that he appealed to men and women. I’m not sure that’s true of Daniel Miller. His physique appeals to women — but not his emotional level — and I have no idea what a man thinks of him.

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    • Who was written to appeal to men and women? Guy? Porter?
      Maybe Daniel’s lack of conclusive emotions is deliberately designed to make him appeal to men??? (Although that is assuming that men are emotionally stunted or something like that… o_O)

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  10. Favorite detail: the tiny silhouette in no. 120. I also think the overall design of 127 is a huge winner. And no 110? Who could say no to that lollipop? I’m going to have to start calling you Naughty instead of Guylty 🙂

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  12. Daniel Miller ist noch nicht mein Favorit. Aber die Serie liefert ein paar Ansätze. Er braucht meiner Meinung nach keine Romanze zu haben, nur etwas mehr “Tiefgang”.

    Naughty Pleasure – hat was…

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    • Wenn Romanze, dann bitte eine echte, keine Informationsübermittlungsfalle. Wie du schon sagtest, da war ja schon einiges Schönes zu sehen. Ich gönne ja sogar Esther einen Daniel. Aber doch bitte auf Augenhöhe.
      Ich überleg mir das mal mit dem Naughty… *oolala* 😉

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  13. No, Daniel has not become a fave yet… I think it’s the lack of emotion, lacking any hint of what he may be like underneath it all, that has me annoyed. So much so that I haven’t been able to bring myself to watch the last 4 episodes yet… Even his tryst with Esther can’t tempt me… and that’s saying something… I will watch it, just haven’t made up my mind when yet.

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    • I think that is a very valid point. Lack of emotion – or certainly lack of insight into his emotions. Without that, it is hard to find a connection with a character. I felt very similar.

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