Sci-fi gets sexy in ‘Forbidden Science’

Anyone who has ever done laps around the TV dial late at night should be familiar with the erotic thriller series — shows such as “Red Shoe Diaries,” which have long been staples of some specialty and pay-TV channels. Now the form has left Earth’s orbit with “Forbidden Science,” airing Fridays on Space: The Imagination Station. Call it Geek TV with a libido. “It’s the first of its kind, to bring this kind of eroticism into a sci-fi show,” says Toronto-born Noelle DuBois, who stars in the series. “You never, ever get that, not in this way.”
By “in this way,” DuBois means a sort of noirish vision of a dystopian future in which scientists can download and sell memories, devise weird, metallic centipedes that invade the body and suck out brains, and construct androids that act like million-dollar sex toys. That last is one of the adventures of DuBois’ character, Dr. Penny Serling, an odd blend of nerd and sex goddess.
“Who doesn’t want to be that?” DuBois says. “She’s an absolute, complete genius — and a woman who likes sex.
“It was a great character to play, because I felt like I was Wonder Woman.”
DuBois confesses to being a sci-fi geek like her character — who falls into a relationship over a common love of “Flash Gordon” serials. “I love everything about it,” she says. “There’s no specific. I just love it all. And I’m a huge Trekkie.”
The series has already aired in the United States and developed something of a following. “I went to a Comic-Con convention about a year ago,” DuBois says. “And that was an experience in itself. It was only on Episode 6, and I thought, ‘Nobody is going to want to talk to me.’ And we were so busy, we couldn’t get up for a full eight hours. I was shocked.”
DuBois grew up in BC and Ontario, the only daughter of parents “with itchy feet” who liked to move around a lot. She got into modeling when she was in her late teens and living in Toronto — even though, at 5 feet 2 1/2 inches, she’s “a little short. With print work, it doesn’t matter, as long as you’re proportioned,” she says. “But I’ve also done Fashion Week for the past four years in a row.”
She moved to Los Angeles because her fiance lives there and has fallen in love with the place, she says. “Forbidden Science” is her first foray into acting. She was in L.A. and modeling full time when she told her agent that she wanted to branch out. “About a month later, he came to me and said, ‘I have an audition for a show,’ ” she says. “And I thought, ‘Good Lord, you have to be crazy sending me to this. I’m going to make a fool of myself.’ ”
Even having been a model didn’t prepare her for some of the demands of the role, DuBois says — such as having to do love scenes with male and female “love bots.”
“My very first love scenes were in that show,” she says. “Those were my first two, and they were back to back. And they were extremely stressful. But we had such a wonderful crew, and the producers were incredible; they were very good about giving us time if I was nervous or upset. Yes, the scenes were hard to do, but not any harder than real life.”