THE DREAM POLICE

It's not unusual for me to have television dreams, usually after watching something on the DVR just before I go to bed. In some of these dreams, I'm a participant, but in most of them I'm an observer - just not with the bald head and wearing a grey flannel suit and fedora.

It happened early this morning and unfortunately I woke up just as it was getting good......

Late last night, I listened to Episode 3 of the BBC Radio 4 presentation of "Cobwebs", a 'Doctor Who' audio play by Big Finish. In the first episode, the fifth incarnation of the Doctor and his companions Nyssa, Tegan, and Turlough discovered their own skeletal remains.

After Episode 3 ended, I popped in the Netflix disc of the first two episodes of 'Dalziel And Pascoe' so I could finish it off and get it into the mail today before pick-up.

With the second episode, Dalziel and Pascoe discovered the skeletal remains of a murder victim under the base of a statue that was being relocated.

Once I finished that second episode, I went to bed.

And this morning I had a dream in which Dalziel and Pascoe discovered two dead bodies in a cave and it didn't take long to realize that the bodies were their own.

Despite that puzzle, they got to work and quickly found enough evidence to point them to the guilty party. And that turned out to be more than they needed because the suspect screamed at the sight of them. (He was one of those little milquetoast kind of guys with thick glasses.)

As the murderer was led away Pascoe warned the lead investigator that they still had no clue as to how they could be still alive. Had the other Dalziel and Pascoe come from the Future? If so, there would be a paradox until they went back in Time to get killed.

Dalziel told him to bleep off - he didn't care so long as he got the killer. And besides, he wasn't planning on taking any trips into the Past any time soon.

Of course, that's when the roar of the parking brake announced the arrival of the TARDIS right in front of them.

And then I woke up.

I don't even know which incarnation of the Doctor would have been featured in my dream!

I'm down in the building's laundry room "now", and as I'm writing up this "dream journal" entry, I know how I would have finished that story.

The murdered Dalziel and Pascoe weren't from the Future. They were from "Over There", the alternate dimension as seen in 'Fringe'. (As well as in "Mirror Image" and several other episodes of 'The Twilight Zone'.)

Whatever crime he may have committed over there, "Milquetoast" was able to escape through the dimensional veil to the main Toobworld. The Alt-Dalziel and Parallel Pascoe followed him through (further weakening the walls between worlds) but "Milquetoast" was able to get the drop on them.

So it's come to this.... I'm dreaming fanfic......

BCnU!

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WHATCHOO CROSSING OVER?

On Friday we inducted the character of Arnold Jackson-Drummond, primarily known for 'Diff'rent Strokes', into the TV Crossover Hall Of Fame. So here are a couple of videos which show him in crossover mode....

First up, Arnold meets poor little rich kid Ricky Stratton in an episode of 'Silver Spoons'. This is a clip that definitely is confined to its own time, just based on that computer alone!

With this next clip, we're visiting a different dimension, not only of sight but of sound - sorry, runaway train of thought!

In this dimension, the Tele-folks watch the same shows as we do, but those TV show characters can cross over from Earth Prime-Time. So it's a TV world in a TV world in our TVs......

This was the central theme to a TV show called 'Hi Honey I'm Home', which was about a family of sitcom characters living in the "real" world. A lot of classic TV characters made the jump from Earth Prime-Time to this other TV dimension over the course of the series in cameo appearances.

Arnold was yanked out of the main Toobworld to replace this guy's son in his world in the "Remote Control Man" episode of 'Amazing Stories'.....

BCnU!

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"THE TWILIGHT ZONE - THE AFTER HOURS"

The late Anne Francis had a memorable role in an episode of 'The Twilight Zone'. I found it at YouTube and would like to share it with you here:

"THE AFTER HOURS"
PART ONE



PART TWO



PART THREE



For me, her other most memorable role after this and of course after 'Honey West' came in an episode of 'Columbo', "A Stitch In Crime". (She was also in the episode "Short Fuse".) I found a video that shows some of her involvement in "A Stitch In Crime", but as that was a mystery show, I didn't want to ruin it for you by sharing that video clip. Nothing stops you from checking it out yourself, however.....

BCnU!

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A ZONED-OUT CHRISTMAS: "THE NIGHT OF THE MEEK"

I thought it might be nice to try out the remake of the 'Twilight Zone' Christmas episode from the 1980s for today's TV holiday video.

Besides... it was all in one segment and this week has been all about saving time since I'm away from Toobworld Central!

BCnU!

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IVAN'S DAY: MANSIONS OF STORY

In "The Church Bell" episode of 'Mayberry RFD', we got a location shot that was more than an echo. Luckily Ivan was there to catch it: There is then a cut to the exterior of this imposing mansion…and the second I spotted this, I thought: “I have seen this place before.” So I grabbed a disc from The Andy Griffith Show: The Complete Final Season and cued it up to “Barney Hosts a Summit Meeting,” the episode where Barney Fife (Don Knotts) returns to Mayberry and enlists Andy’s help in trying to convince a rich old fart to lend his house to a delegation of visiting U.S. and Russian dignitaries. As you can plainly see, it’s the same damn house. So…what precisely is the deal here? I suppose it’s possible that there could be two houses in the tonier section of town that look the same—when my family and I still lived in Teays Valley, WV our house was an exact copy of our next-door neighbors’, apparently the work of an architect who didn’t have much imagination. (It really creeped me out, too.) My next thought was that the current occupant of the Mayberry manse bought the house from the former owner…though I’d like to think he foreclosed on the guy and kicked him to the curb (the previous guy also had quite a bit of loot, so it was like watching a wrestling match between rich people),

MILLIE: Lucius Fremont? The man who lives in the big white house?

Okay, so I guess he did kick the previous owner out into the street. Dude is cold-blooded, Jack…

It seems to me that Lucius Fremont came to the Mayberry area as a young man, seeking his fortune, and instead found love. But as we found out in "The Church Bell", Mr. Fremont lost out on that one true love. So instead he must have returned to his original goal, with a slight twist - to make a fortune but then use it against anybody who stood in his way.

This might have included Mr. McCabe, the character played by Paul Fix in that summit meeting episode of 'The Andy Griffith Show'. What if he was the man who stole Fremont's one true love away from him? And since McCabe was the guy who owned that house, wouldn't Lucius Fremont then do all that he could to at least take that away from him? Now I said that I believed that Lucius Fremont wasn't native to the area. I think he may have come from Ohio. And when he moved away from the state, Lucius Fremont left behind the only family he had left - his brother and his brother's wife and their young son...

Anthony Fremont.

And if so, even though we don't see any proof of it in the episode, maybe Lucius Fremont never got over the loss of his family when Peakesville, Ohio, disappeared off the map in Toobworld.....

Yeah, I know. I'm a bad man. I'm a real bad man for thinking that.....

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REAL SCARY, KIDS! AROOOOO!

For the Halloween musical interlude, how about a little "Twilight Zone", Toobworld style......?

BCnU!

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BY ANY OTHER NAME: THEY WENT HATHAWAY

When Martha Bronson decided to take a trip from her home in Riverside to Indian Caverns, she had her friend Mrs. Hathaway as her traveling companion. Along the way, they stopped in Mayfield to visit with Martha's niece June Cleaver and her family. (They were misdirected, but they eventually found their way to 485 Mapleton Drive.)

Mrs. Hathaway was the widow of a general who had been quite involved in governmental affairs, and she kept his memory alive by invoking his name constantly.

We met Mrs. Hathaway in 'Leave It To Beaver' episode "The Visiting Aunts". And although it wasn't stated in the episode, it is the opinion of all of the voices in my head that Mrs. Hathaway's first name was Margaret.

The reasoning for that is pure conjecture, but that's never stopped me before.....

While on her visit to Indian Caverns, Margaret Hathaway must have met a man with whom she fell in love, despite her devotion to the late General. His surname was Gettys, and he was visiting from Minnesota.

With the shared philosophical outlook that they weren't getting any younger, the two of them quickly married and Margaret Hathaway Gettys moved with her new husband from Riverside back to the "Twin Cities" area of Minnesota.

Even though she had a new man in her life, Margaret Gettys was still devoted to the memory of her first husband, General Hathaway. But she must have realized that talking about him in a state where he was not a known figure would serve little good. Instead, she decided to put into practice the principles espoused by her late husband.

Margaret Gettys decided to become politically active.

It probably began on the local level. ("All politics is local," said "Cheers" patron Tip O'Neill.) But she became more involved until eventually she ran for her district's seat in the United States Congress.

By the 1970's, Congresswoman Gettys was still in office... and being invited to disastrous parties at Mary Richards' apartments.

Finally, just a few theories of relateeveety: General Hathaway either had a younger sister or cousin named Jane Hathaway who lived in Beverly Hills, California. And Margaret had a twin sister who married a scientist named Dr. William Loren, a genius who created several androids.

SHOWS CITED:
'Leave It To Beaver' - "The Visiting Aunts"
'The Mary Tyler Moore Show' - "The Dinner Party" & "Mary's Big Party"
'The Beverly Hillbillies'
'The Twilight Zone' - "The Lateness Of The Hour"

BCnU!

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THINK FLOYD

Every so often, I come across a TV show episode that has plenty to offer Toobworld, or at the very least it provides a few puzzles to splain away.

I got one of those last weekend from 'The Andy Griffith Show' mini-marathon on TV Land. I knew "Mayberry Goes Hollywood" was going to be a big help with regards to splainin away how so many people outside the Mayberry/Mt. Pilot area knew about Sheriff Andy Taylor, his son Opie, Deputy Barney Fife and all the rest of the townfolk - the movie that was made in Mayberry back in 1961 gained the town and its citizens national recognition.

But it also provided a few facts that would later become discrepancies in future episodes.

Most of that was due to the introduction of Floyd the Barber in this, the thirteenth episode of the series. So with this post, we'll be focusing on him.....

Floyd the Barber was played by Howard McNear, but his character seems to be named Floyd Colby, whereas we know him today as Floyd Lawson from the rest of the series' run. "Colby's Tonsorial Parlor" is prominently displayed on the barbershop window during the Hollywood mania and the movie's producer, Mr. Harmon, addressed Floyd as "Mr. Colby" when he was taking his leave after their first meeting.

This is easy enough to splain away, but we have to go back over thirty years before the episode... and also head north to New York City.

Floyd Lawson always wanted to be a barber, ever since he was a little boy. As a teen, he used to practice on the neighborhood cats. (As Floyd tells Mr. Harmon, Mayberry had the baldest cats in the county.)

By the way, Mayberry is a good wholesome town. That's why neither Andy or Floyd stooped to the obvious joke that comes to mind when talking about giving a close shave to cats. And being their guest, Mr. Harmon probably thought better of mentioning it himself.

Floyd must have gone to the local barber college, probably located in Mt. Pilot. However, once he graduated, Floyd must have come to the realization that Mayberry was a one barber town. And Mr. Colby already had his practice established just down the street from the courthouse. That may have proved to be the situation in most of the towns in North Carolina, so Floyd must have set upon the idea of moving to New York City. In a town where there are eight million stories, there's almost that many heads to be clipped (minus the baldies) so the Big Apple was always going to have work for a barber.

Therefore, it's the opinion of Toobworld Central that Floyd Lawson made a complete break - he traded in Mayberry's fresh air for Times Square. (Yeah, I know that's a reference to a different rural comedy. Sue me.) He moved to New York City and set up his own barbershop on the lower East Side... about a year before the Great Depression hit. So much for making enough money to get that penthouse view on Park Avenue......

But Floyd most likely didn't stay long in New York City - after all, Andy did mention to Mr. Harmon that Floyd had been giving them uneven sideburns since most of the town was young-uns. (Hard to believe, since a lot of the townfolk were on average in their late fifties!).

And it's pozz'ble, just pozz'ble, as Muskie Muskrat says, that while he was in New York City, one of his haircuts lasted into the Twenty-Third Century..... Eventually, Floyd may have heard from his sister (who was married to a man named Ferguson) that Old Man Colby had passed away, and that Mayberry was in need of a new barber.

Floyd was probably feeling nostalgic for the old hometown. His parents may have passed away, but there was still his sister and his nephew Warren to think of. And if he was aware of his existence, Floyd also had a half-brother named Mitchell living over in Pitchville Flats, North Carolina (seen to the right of Somerset Frisby). But the main attraction was the chance to take up the mantle of being Mayberry's barber.

Since he was working out of the same location as Old Man Colby did, Floyd must have taken up the lease for the barbershop. But he apparently decided to leave the name of the establishment as it was - "Colby's Barbershop". Change doesn't come too quickly in Mayberry, and you wouldn't want to confuse Goober.....

But when the town went crazy over the idea of becoming a Hollywood off-shoot, Floyd altered the name to "Colby's Tonsorial Parlor". After the Hollywood hysteria died down, Floyd decided to revert back to a style more in keeping with the Mayberry ambience. And since he was going to do that anyway, he probably figured the time was right to change the name of the place to "Floyd's Barbershop" (using the same lettering design as he had in New York City) in order to establish his identity and presence in the town.

As for Mr. Harmon calling Floyd Lawson "Mr. Colby", that was an assumption on the movie producer's part: Andy only introduced the barber as "Floyd", and the name of "Colby" was on the window. Since Mayberry folk are a good-hearted people, neither Floyd nor Andy thought of correcting him to spare him the embarrassment.

One final note of interest - Mitchell of Pitchville Flats was his half-brother as far as Toobworld Central is concerned. But Floyd Lawson had another relative who looked just like him. However, instead of it being another example of his father being a tom-catter, this other TV character was more in line with the theory of relateeveety established by 'The Patty Duke Show' - identical cousins.

And they were more than identical in just looking alike. His cousin - named Andy, by the way - was also a barber. He practiced in Mayfield, home of the Cleaver family. Two barbers who looked alike, one in Mayberry, one in Mayfield.......

As it always is in television - somebody gets a good idea, somebody else runs with it.

BCnU!

PS:

Eventually, Floyd Lawson will be inducted into the TV Crossover Hall of Fame on the Birthday Honors List because of his theoretical connections to 'Star Trek', 'The Twilight Zone', and 'Leave It To Beaver'......

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THE SUPER SIX LIST: "THE ANDY GRIFFITH SHOW" CONNECTIONS

'The Andy Griffith Show' recently celebrated its fiftieth anniversary, and we're still celebrating here at Toobworld Central. In honor of this milestone, Inner Toob presents a Super Six List of six other TV shows with connections to 'The Andy Griffith Show' - some legitimate, some hypothetical.

1) 'Make Room For Daddy'
This is where it all started. On a family trip back north through North Carolina, Danny Williams got caught in Mayberry's speed trap. Because of his famed Lebanese temper, Danny ended up in the jail cell where he got a first-hand look at how Mayberry operated.

Only thing was, Aunt Bea wasn't Aunt Bea. Frances Bavier played an elderly widow who only looked like Aunt Bea. It could be that Aunt Bea's father (probably Andy Taylor's grandfather), taking a page from that scoundrel Seth Taylor's playbook, was tomcattin' around town back in the day. And as a result, he fathered another daughter out of wedlock. She grew up looking exactly like Aunt Bea, but folks in Mayberry were too polite to point that out.

2) 'Gomer Pyle, USMC' & 'Mayberry RFD'
Okay, we're cheating here, listing two shows instead of one - the heirs to the legacy, the spin-off and the sequel.

Gomer Pyle left Wally's Service Station to join the Marines in the first one; while 'Mayberry RFD' switched the focus to a local farmer who became a member of the town council. Most of the townsfolk from 'The Andy Griffith Show' were still around, and even Aunt Bea remained as a housekeeper for Sam Jones and his son Mike* for a time. In fact, Sam started dating Howard Sprague's ex-flame, Millie.

(She was Millie Hutchins when she dated Howard back on 'The Andy Griffith Show', and almost married him. But she was Millie Swanson when she started dating Sam Jones. Between those appearances, she did get married to a man called Swanson, who could have been related to Henrietta Swanson and her daughter Darlene. Either Millie was divorced or widowed not long after.)

Gomer Pyle, on the other hand, was pretty much on his own at Camp Henderson in California, but he did get visits from Andy, Opie, and Aunt Bea.
3) 'The Mary Tyler Moore Show'
This connection is actually via 'Gomer Pyle, USMC' and is the first of our hypotheticals...... For Ted Baxter, it all started at a 5,000 watt radio station in Fresno, California, which must have been the city closest to Camp Henderson. Only he was using a stage name for his radio gig - "Don Mills". As Don Mills, Ted Baxter interviewed Gomer Pyle because of a heroic deed he allegedly performed. (In reality, it was Sgt. Carter who was "The Would-Be Hero".)
4) 'Fringe'
Inner Toob actually covered the story of Deputy Warren Ferguson's son earlier this year.....

5) 'The Twilight Zone' - "Hocus Pocus And Frisby"
Mr. Frisby lived in Pitchville Flats, in an extremely rural area of North Carolina, but probably not too far from Mayberry and Mt. Pilot. At least it was probably close enough for Floyd Lawson's father to visit another woman in that town, because Floyd had an identical twin named Mitchell (Mitchell Lawson?) who liked to hang around Frisby's general store and listen to Somerset Frisby spin his tall tales - even if he didn't believe them.

(Toobworld bloodlines are strong, so it could be that Floyd and Mitchell don't have the same father, but instead can trace their ancestry back to the area's first Indian agent, Daniel Lawson.)

6) 'Star Trek' - "Mira"
Those aliens who visited Mr. Frisby (and unsuccessfully tried to kidnap him) were so taken with the architecture of Mayberry that they recreated it on the planet FGC-347601 III. (By the time we got to see it, it was already at least 300 years old.)
Ya'll come back now, y'hear?

Oops.... wrong show.....

BCnU!

* AKA Mike The Idiot Boy as he's known in "Mayberry Mondays", a weekly feature by my blogging buddy down South, Ivan of "Thrilling Days Of Yesteryear" fame. (The link for which is to the left....)

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REMEMBERING KEVIN McCARTHY

I'll have more tomorrow, but I just wanted to post this to remember Kevin McCarthy who passed away Sunday at the age of 96......

Good night and may God bless.

BCnU.....

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SHAKES' FACE

A new History Channel special called "Death Masks" will premiere on September 13, featuring this 3-D image of what William Shakespeare supposedly looked like: It doesn't look too far off the mark from the way "The Bard" looked when he visited the early 1960's by way of 'The Twilight Zone': BCnU!

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LAND OF THE MIDNIGHT SUN

According to the weather widget on my computer, the temperature as of 2:30 pm Tuesday, here in the real world, is 102º. (That's Fahrenheit, by the way; Toobworld Central refuses to go metric.)

So I thought it was as good a time as any to slide over to an alternate TV dimension in which the Earth came to an end back in the early 1960's.......

'THE TWILIGHT ZONE'
"THE MIDNIGHT SUN"

PART ONE


PART TWO


PART THREE


BCnU!

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AS THE WORM TURNS

Last night, the American TV audience (in general) finally got to see what all the hoopla has been about in Great Britain regarding the new Doctor in 'Doctor Who'. (Actually, it's the same Doctor, just his 11th incarnation.)

And that means Toobworld Central is now free to discuss certain aspects of that first episode, "The Eleventh Hour".

And I'd like to get right into it with a Toobworld theory about the villain of the piece, Prisoner Zero.

(There's no need to discuss the latest incarnation of the Doctor, now played by Matt Smith. You can find plenty of that sort of thing all over the web In the TV Universe, he's still the same man, just with new physical features and personality quirks. I'll just say that Matt Smith is fantastic in the role and move on.)

"Prisoner Zero" is not a name; it's a designation. On the other side of the crack in the skin of the universe which was found against the bedroom wall of Amelia Pond, there was a prison. And Prisoner Zero escaped through that crack to Earth. Why did it come to Earth, or rather, why did it choose to remain on Earth, when it had all of the universe to choose from?

I think it's because it had been to Earth before, sometime before its capture.

Its designation was "Prisoner Zero", and like the "Patient Zero" of the AIDS epidemic, that designation must signify that it was there at the prison right from the very beginning. But then the prison's first prisoner should have been "Prisoner One". So Prisoner Zero must have been imprisoned at that place since before the prison was even constructed. Whatever held Prisoner Zero imprisoned, the Atraxi saw it as the perfect place to augment the strength and security of the prison they sought to build. (The Atraxi are the intergalactic jailers who look like giant eyeballs floating in crystalline spaceships. More on them later.)

So why was Prisoner Zero locked up? I think it was because of some crime it committed on Earth Prime-Time near the very beginning of the planet's life.

And who might have imprisoned him?

I think it was the mice. Toobworld Central has already established its theory that Earth Prime-Time is not the Earth as seen in the Bible stories; it wasn't created in six days by God. That televersion of the Earth would be the twin planet of Mondas which was in orbit around the Sun first. Earth Prime-Time was an inverted copy manufactured by the Magratheans for their clients: pan-dimensional beings who took the form of mice in the main TV dimension. They wanted a super-computer that could run the program which would ultimately provide the question for the answer to Life, the Universe, and Everything - which was "42" (as depicted in 'Hitch-Hiker's Guide To The Galaxy'.)

And the pandimensional mice who commissioned the project were not going to let this alien snake ruin everything with its presence in the program. So they had it removed from the planet and imprisoned elsewhere in space. That way, the computer known as "Earth" could run properly.

As such, Prisoner Zero was the first computer worm.

The story of Satan in the Garden of Eden actually played out on Mondas, as did many of the biblical legends. When the stories were brought over to Earth Prime-Time by some Mondasian space traveler, it was adapted to be about the Great Snake who tempted Eve Norta (whom we met in 'The Twilight Zone' episode "Probe 7, Over And Out".)

Prisoner Zero knew it would be killed by the Atraxi should the jailers ever recapture it again, so it chose to remain on Earth where it already had a feel for the place. Since the Atraxi did recapture it with the help of the Doctor, it's likely that they ordered an immediate execution. (After all, they were willing to boil the planet just to make sure Prisoner Zero was killed.) So it's unlikely Earth Prime-Time will ever see it again.

And as for its actual name, we still don't have a clue, but it wasn't the Devil. As mentioned before, His Maleficence was doing his thing in the Garden of Eden over on the planet Mondas. (And this depiction of the Garden comes from the opening credits to 'Desperate Housewives', of course!)

BCnU!

(This is just a theory, and O'Bviously the furthest thing from the mind of Steven Moffat when he wrote the episode. In its way, it's also a poor tribute to the late Elizabeth Montgomery, who played Eve Norta, and whose birthday was earlier this week.)

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CROSSING ZONE: TAKING SHELTER FROM THE SOAP

Here's the TV.com description of "The Shelter", a third season episode of 'The Twilight Zone':

When a nuclear attack appears imminent, several suburban friends and neighbors fight over control of a single bomb shelter.

(I could have printed the full summary, but the whole point of 'The Twilight Zone' is the twist you never see coming. I will say this - "The Shelter" was one of the more realistic episodes....)

Dr. Bill Stockton and his family lived in a suburb of New York City, within a forty mile radius from the Big Apple. And since his small town wasn't named in the episode, I think we're free to give it a name; give it a theoretical link to another TV show which took place within a forty mile radius of NYC.
That's why I'm declaring the Stocktons, the Harlowes, the Hendersons, and the Weisses to be all living in Dunn's River, Connecticut. You may know the town as the location for most of the action on 'Soap' over thirty years ago.
This is where the Tates live.....
And the Campbells live here.

If I had to hazard a guess, I'd say that this home owned by Dr. Stockton and his family is just a few blocks over from the Campbells, closer them perhaps than to the Tates.

My reason for the hometown of the Stocktons is that it had to be close enough to Manhattan for all the restaurants visited by the characters in 'Soap'.
Best of all, it may be a small town, but still big enough that nobody ever had to mention Bill Stockton or Marty Weiss or Jerry Harlowe. And they weren't about to go around bragging about that dark night back in 1961, so there's no reason for the Tates and the Campbells to know about it or discuss it.....
BCnU!

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