Four years after 'The Office' debuted, Ricky Gervais returned with what he said would be its "disappointing follow up", Extras. Does he know about transits? The show went exactly on his second transit Saturn opposition natal Saturn, with the first broadcast moment's Ascendant conjunct his Saturn. The burden and lowering of expectation hung in the media air before it was even shown; fascinatingly these are themes repeated in the show itself.

In the new programme, Gervais plays Andy Millman, a man who aspires to be and actually is an actor but can only find work as an extra, a background figure at best, cut from the scene whenever he tries to draw attention to himself. Millman is desperate to get a line to speak but never does. Frustrated, inept and unintentionally offensive, like David Brent in 'The Office'.

The Sun has just set here and has nearly, though not quite found the Leo spotlight; other people are the stars in Millman’s working life. He is the sixth house Sun, trapped, sinking away from daylight by a squashing established Saturn that still peeps over the horizon and has 'made it' into the sign of showbiz. Saturn symbolises the real life Hollywood stars Gervais got to guest in the show, sending show business and themselves up. Ego, winning awards and attracting stars who were fans of his first show, astrologically associated with the Sun and Leo, have been themes of how the programme became possible as well as what it depicts.

In the show’s chart, that 'extra' to astrology, Chiron, is rising, close to an exact opposition to the setting Saturn-Sun conjunction. Chiron is a foreign body captured by the Solar System, its eccentric orbit an indication that may one day be flung out again. Millman, like Chiron doesn’t belong with the stars, but rubs shoulders with them; he’s become an extra, a background object.

The rising, wound-associated Chiron shows up in another way. Like Brent, Millman has squeamishly inappropriate reactions to people with disabilities, and in the first three shows two such people have featured to continue this line in dark humour.

With such strong emphasis on the first and seventh houses, Ascendant and Descendant, astrologers would expect partnership issues to be to the fore. This is very much the case. Millman is not part of an ensemble like Brent was in ‘the Office’, here, each week, he gets to be overshadowed by another big star. Other than that, while he is not completely alone, he only has two ongoing relationships, one with his fellow extra Maggie, the other with his useless agent, played by Gervais’s writing partner Stephen Merchant. Maggie is a rather off-the-wall type, in the chart a Moon in Aquarius. His agent is crushingly incompetent and work shy, a living permutation of Saturn on the Descendant.

As I write, three shows have screened. The Saturn on the Descendant square Mars is showing up for me and I'm finding 'Extras' frustrating and limited, a bit too much of "a disappointing follow up to 'The Office'". Astrologically it lives and breathes Saturn in Leo, but just off stage and out of its period of glory looms the show that made Gervais and Merchant; 'The Office' is shown in this chart as that angular Sun, staring back at the Ascendant, something nigh on impossible for this writing team to top.

 

Note: this is a follow up on a follow up.
A longer piece on 'The Office' is online at www.astrologer.com/aanet/pub/transit/may2004/theoffice

Pete Watson has a website: www.starscan.plus.com, and can be emailed at: mr.p.watson (at) gmail.com