Cult-TV Theme Watch: Tattoos

A tattoo is a form of body art involving indelible ink. Thus, it is a permanent form of body art.  American attitudes about tattoos have moved towards deeper acceptance over the last decade or so, but tattoos have still often played an often sinister role in many well-known cult-tv programs.

For instance, in a first season episode of the syndicated Friday the 13^th: The Series (1987 – 1990) titled “Tattoo,” a gambler uses cursed tattoo needles which can materialize any monstrosity carved into the flesh (including scorpions and spiders) to further his winning streak.

Similarly, one of the most high-profile episodes of The X-Files (1993 – 2002), “Never Again,” involves a man named Ed Jerse (Rodney Rowland) who gets a tattoo depicting Bettie Page (with the voice of actress Jodie Foster). 

Before long, the tattoo starts urging Ed to commit anti-social acts of violence.  In the course of the episode, a rebellious Scully (Gillian Anderson) -- chafing under Mulder’s tutelage -- meets Ed and gets a tattoo herself, one of an Ouroboros.  The scene of Scully being tattooed proves rather…sensuous, but the danger is that the tattoo (containing ergot) could send her, like Ed, over the precipice into insanity.

The same year, 1997, a Buffy the Vampire Slayer episode “The Dark Age” (1997) involved a tattoo. This story finds a group of Rupert Giles’ friends from his rebellious teenage days dying under strange, supernatural circumstances.  

Each one bears the “Mark of Eyghon,” a tattoo representing a body-jumping demon.  In this case, the tattoo represents the adolescent penchant to make anti-authoritarian decisions, only there’s a magical (and demonic) repercussion.

The UPN disease-of-the-week program called The Burning Zone (1997) also featured an episode involving tattoos called “Elegy for a Dream.”  There, Dr. Taft (Bradford Tatum) discovers that a Yugoslavian tattoo parlor is using contaminated tools and ink, and thus responsible for an outbreak in high school of a flesh-eating virus.

In the short-lived Brimstone (1998 – 1999) on Fox, Detective Stone (Peter Horton) sees his (resurrected) flesh covered entirely in strange, unearthly tattoos.  These are actually prisoner identification emblems from Hell, indicators of prisoner identity.  

When Stone sends each escaped convict back to Hell and damnation (by destroying the eyes), that convict’s tattoo burns off his flesh…painfully.

In Smallville (2001 – 2011), Lana Lang (Kristin Kreuk) is at one point in the fourth season unexpectedly marked by a tattoo on the small of her back that marks her as the vessel for an ancient witch’s evil spirit.  

For a time, in the episode “Spell,” Lana hosts the witch’s form, and also transforms Lois and Chloe into members of her coven.

Since the 1990s, tattoos have become more and more common, and as mere fashion statements rather than expressions of evil.  

In Star Trek: Voyager’s (1995 – 2001) Chakotay (Robert Beltran) is distinguished by his Native American heritage, and a symbol of that heritage is the tattoo on his temple and forehead.  

You know a trend has gone mainstream when it appears on 1990s Star Trek, and that's the case with tattoos, to be certain.

Characters including Stefan (Paul Wesley) on The Vampire Diaries, Mal (Nathan Fillion) on Firefly and Starbuck (Katee Sackhoff) on the re-imagainted Battlestar Galactica all have marked their bodies with tattoos as well.