Kathy Reichs (left), author of Temperance Brennan series and Emily Deschanel (right) star of Bones, a TV show loosely adapted from Reichs’ series. Image courtesy of www.kathyreichs.com/bones.
From the outset it was important to me that the heroine of the series differ somewhat from that in my books. If the two were identical, how would that impact future novels? I often give nicknames to the victims I analyze at my lab. I guess I’ve done that with Bones, labeling the two manifestations of my character “TV Tempe” and “Book Tempe.”
-Kathy Reichs, from her sub-site on Bones
Bones is approaching the ten-year mark. Season nine is well underway and the popular crime drama has been renewed for another season. But before there was Bones, forensic anthropologist Kathy Reichs penned the Temperance Brennan series. Reichs has mentioned during interviews that she began writing the series after she became a tenured professor at the University of North Carolina at Charlotte. After authoring journal articles and textbooks, Reichs was interested in trying something new. Fiction seemed like the best way to share science with a more generalized audience.
Reichs wrote Déjà Dead, the first book in the series in 1997. Now, in 2014, there are sixteen books in total, with number seventeen due out at some point in the next year. Reichs’ Temperance Brennan series and subsequent Bones TV adaptation, which debuted in 2005, have infiltrated pop culture. But the two formats, more aptly, the two Tempes, are quite different across several categories.
“Book Tempe” is a little older than “TV Tempe” and more situated in her career. She’s also a divorced mom whereas her TV counterpart is has never been married and is child-free. “TV Tempe” works at the fictional Jeffersonian Institute in Washington, D.C. and “Book Tempe” splits her time, much like Reichs, between teaching at UNC-Charlotte and assisting on crime scenes at the Laboratoire des Sciences Judiciaires et de Médecine Légale in Montreal. Both deal with personal problems. For instance “Book Tempe” negotiates her past alcoholism whereas “TV Tempe” struggles with her deficient social skills and lack of pop culture knowledge (an ongoing joke in the show); her behavior has been remarked on for its characteristics reminiscent of autism.
The Tempes have at least two things in common though – each series is long-running and each exists as a result of the support and input of Reichs. In the case of the novels, Reichs is the author, tapping into her life experience. On Bones, Reichs is a producer who balances the entertainment with scientific accuracy. Reichs has written one episode for Bones, “The Witch in the Wardrobe,” which aired in 2010 (Season 5, Episode 20). They might be markedly different, but the two incarnations of Tempe have Reich’s stamp of approval. Audiences can feel free to love two versions of the same woman.
While Bones is not available through the UNC-Chapel Hill Library catalog, all of the published books in the Temperance Brennan series are available. You can read a previous synopsis of the series here. This blog has individual entries on Death du Jour, Deadly Decisions, Fatal Voyage, Bare Bones, Devil Bones, Spider Bones, Flash and Bones and Bones of the Lost.
Sources consulted here: Bones Wiki (two different entries), E! Online, IGN, Kathy Reichs, NPR, Screen Rant, Wikipedia (two different entries)
A devastating heartbreak three years ago sent Phoebe Keller to Chenocetah, North Carolina, to start over without any reminders of handsome Comanche lawman Jeremiah Cortez. When Cortez’s hasty marriage squashed Phoebe’s dreams of a long-term relationship with him, Phoebe dove into her career as an anthropologist. Now as the curator of the Chenocetah Museum, Phoebe has made a simple life for herself in this small mountain town with her chow, Jock. Hoping that eventually she will forget about Cortez and the pain that he created, she has sworn off men.