You may have already read my preview of what we can expect from the next couple of episodes of “Human Target,” but in a conference call with Mark Valley – Christopher Chance himself – on Monday, I asked the actor to take a step back and consider how the show has developed since its original inception. After all, a lot of series spend their first season just throwing things against a wall to see what sticks. Basically, I was curious as to whether or not he felt as though the show had gotten into a groove…and, if so, when he felt like that had happened.
“I think they’ve been throwing me against a wall for 11 episodes,” joked Valley. “I think I’ve been throwing all of Vancouver’s stuntmen against the wall to see what sticks.”
After a pause, Valley laughed and asked, “Uh, what was the question again?”
Duly filled in, he then considered the question and answered it seriously.
“I think when it really clicked for me was probably the episode ‘Rewind,'” Valley said. “We didn’t have a lot of locations and didn’t have a lot of big set pieces going on. It all took place in an airplane, and you got an idea of, ‘Okay, very simply, this is something that has to get done in this plane.’ And it was broken down, and all our characters were…well, Chi and I were in the same location shooting as well, which is kind of cool.
“I think that episode ended the pace that we came up with and that we realized we could work at. I think it was the second or third episode we did. The pace that we came up with and the shorthand that we all developed with the crew and with the cameras and with the actors…it was pretty amazing the result that came out of that. And then we realized, ‘Oh, wow, this is what we can do. We can make a movie in eight days. Uh-oh, we have ten more to do.’ That was probably the one point where I realized, ‘Oh, wow, we’ve got something here.'”
Valley admitted, however, that he walked into “Human Target” with no real vision of what it would turn out to be.
“I’d been on shows before that have been new,” he said, “but with this one, not only is the show new, but Chi (McBride) is kind of new to the genre, I’m new to this genre, even the show runners are sort of new to this. So I went into it with an open mind thinking, ‘This is going to be exciting,’ as to how it’s going to come together. And it has been exciting. It’s sort of a collaboration in some ways, where everybody’s influence is kind of…if it’s not heard, then it’s felt and it’s reacted to, and the end product is something that everybody feels a part of.”
