FLASHMAN-LIGHTMAN-CARTWRIGHT

Dr. Cal Lightman may have sown his own wild oats while at university, to such an extent that he might not even have realized that Emily is not his only child.

It's pozz'ble, just pozz'ble, that while Cal was studying for his doctorate, he used his abilities to read people's body language and micro-expressions in order to score with women. Lots of women. And if Harry Flashman was his ancestor, it could be that Lightman followed in his footsteps and had sex with even the willing married women he met in the pubs.

One of these women may have been Mrs. Cartwright. And as one would expect in Toobworld, so redolent in soap opera conventions, she may have become pregnant by Lightman. Rather than cause trouble for herself, however, she probably passed the child off as being her husband Terry's.

As the boy, whom they named Jay, grew older, his resemblance to Lightman (diffused by the genetic additions of his Mum) became noticeable. They shared similar facial expressions - there was a time when Dr. Lightman was on the stand in a court case, and his snarky grin looked just like Jay's.

Terry Cartwright may have suspected that Jay was not his own, but it doesn't seem likely that he confronted Mrs. Cartwright about it. However, it may splain why he treated Jay so horribly in front of his friends, making fun of his deficiencies in the lower realms of anatomy, as it were.....

With Jay Cartwright's obsession with sex, it could be that the trait was a dominant one in the Flashman-Lightman family tree.......

SHOWS CITED:

'Lie To Me'

'The In-Betweeners'

'Tom Brown's School Days'

BCnU!

Read more...

A FLASH IN THE PUN

In writing about Boilerplate, the latest fictional character whom I'd like to see get a televersion, I mentioned a previous candidate - Harry Flashman. Flashman was the school bully in "Ton Brown's School Days", a Victorian novel by Thomas Hughes. The book has been filmed several times, and twice for television, so Harry Flashman has had his day in the cathode sun, but there was more to his life than his school days.

Not only because it was the first production broadcast, but also because its episodic form as a TV series provided the opportunity to add as much detail from the novel as possible, the 1971 TV version is the one established in Earth Prime-Time. (The later version from 2005 does boast the presence of Stephen Fry as Dr. Thomas Arnold, though. Tempting as that is, that version has to remain in the Land of Remakes.) 

Harry Flashman attacks Tom Brown

In 1969, George MacDonald Fraser published "Flashman", an historical novel purportedly based on the recently discovered papers of Harry Flashman. Over the course of twelve novels, Fraser recounted Flashman's exploits from his early twenties to advanced old age. And along the way, Flashman had adventures in which he crossed paths with many historical figures.

(As a side note, I highly recommend these books, especially if you enjoy salacious depictions of Victorian ribaldry - a lot of "rogering" goes on, which was an excellent source of... shall we say, "inspiration" to a lad in his teens. That is, so I've heard.....)

So far, none of the "Flashman" novels have been adapted for television, although the second novel, "Royal Flash", does have a home in the Cineverse as a movie starring Malcolm McDowall as Harry, with Alan Bates and Oliver Reed in support.

I think the Fraser series of novels about Harry Flashman would make for a great TV series on HBO or Showtime or even Starz, especially with the freedom provided by a premium channel to portray prurient content. (Ah, alliteration!) With the success of 'Game Of Thrones' on HBO and 'The Borgias' and 'The Tudors' on Showtime, perhaps its time to give old Flash a shot.....

I'd like to think that, even without a television series or made for TV movie already established, Harry Flashman's life in Toobworld at least follows the basic guidelines set down by Fraser for a thoroughly debauched life led by Flashman. After all, even though we might not see it take place on our TV screens, Harry Flashman's life did continue after the events of the "Tom Brown's School Days" TV series had ended. 

Harry Flashman
with Tom Brown & Scud East

So let's assume that the Rugby School bully grew up to become a lecherous, immoral coward at least similar to, if not exactly like, the Flashman depicted by Fraser. This TV Flashman would end up rogering his way through the ladies of his times, perhaps even with fictional females from other TV series. (Let's say a parlor maid or two in the Bellamy household a decade or two before we met them on screen?)

Being a bounder and a cad, Flashman would not have been morally constrained from any dalliances with married women; and he would have no qualms in leading a young lady on with false promises of betrothal, in order to bed her and rob her of her virtue. And in the course of such a pursuit, he might have proferred a false identity in order to elude being sued for breach of promise. 

From the movie "Royal Flash"
But the Toobworld Flashman would find himself in a similar situation

Let's say he did pluck a young lovely's virginity and with such skill that she acquiesced without even learning his name. But as Flashman made ready to flee the following morning, suddenly the deflowered miss might have inquired as to who he was. Caught off-guard, he may have concocted a fake name on the spot.

But what name might he have used?

The Belgian detective Hercule Poirot was faced with such a situation while investigating a murder aboard a particular train.

"'I claim no credit this time. It was not a guess. Countess Andrenyi practically told me.'

'Comment? Surely not?'

'You remember I asked her about her governess or companion? I had already decided in my mind that if Mary Debenham were mixed up in the matter, she must have figured in the household in some such capacity.'

'Yes, but the Countess Andrenyi described a totally different person.'

'Exactly. A tall, middle-aged woman with red hair - in fact, the exact opposite in every respect of Miss Debenham, so much so as to be quite remarkable. But then she had to invent a name quickly, and there it was that the unconscious association of ideas gave her away. She said Miss Freebody, you remember.'

'Yes?'

'Eh bien, you may not know it, but there is a shop in London that was called, until recently, Debenham & Freebody. With the name Debenham running in her head, the Countess clutches at another name quickly, and the first that comes is Freebody. Naturally I understood immediately.'"

Oftentimes, false identities are similar enough to the original to make them easier to remember. (This is probably why almost everybody in the Albuquerque WITSEC program usually keeps their first names - unless it's something strange and/or Amish like Yonni - and gets a last name with the same initial as their original last name.)

A similar situation may have arisen for Harry Flashman when pressed by a romantic conquest to reveal his identity.

There are two ways in which he may have gone with his reasoning to choose the name I have in mind.

ONE - thinking of other uses for his particular variation on his name, he might have thought of the phrase "Flash of lightning".

TWO - This coital quandary may have taken place after his return from the Crimean War. (Again, only if Harry Flashman's TV existence followed the same pattern as that established in the literary universe.) Thinking back on his alleged involvement in the most infamous battle, which took place in late October of 1854, Flashman might have drawn inspiration from the regiment immortalized in the poem by Alfred, Lord Tennyson.

So whether it was "lightning" or the "Light Brigade", Flashman might have combined the key word with the last part of his own name right there on the spot and convinced her that his name was Lightman. 

An older Harry Flashman

And off he would have absconded, assured that he would never see her again.

But he may have left a little something to remember him by....

Again, this is all speculation, so why stop now?

What if some woman he rogered found herself pregnant, by this fellow named "Lightman"? O'Bviously she was never going to track him down to do right by her. But she might still have given the child the last name of its father, never knowing how false it was.

And so the family tree of Dr. Carl Lightman might have been established.........

SHOWS CITED:
'Tom Brown's School Days'
'Lie To Me'
'Agatha Christie's Poirot'
'Upstairs, Downstairs'
'In Plain Sight'

OTHER SOURCES:
"Murder On The Orient Express"
"Tom Brown's School Days"
"Flashman"
"Royal Flash"
"Flashman At The Charge"

BCnU!

Read more...

WNU-TOOB: PEERING INTO ANOTHER UNIVERSE.....

This past Tuesday, Titan Books went to street with its new edition of a Philip Jose Farmer classic, "The Peerless Peer". The tale is one of the foundations for the concept of the Wold Newton Universe, with Sherlock Holmes and Dr. Watson meeting the Lord of the Apes, Tarzan.

I still have my paperback from the mid-70's, back when I devoured anything I could find about Holmes. I always had a fondness for the pastiches, since that was how I first got into Sherlockiana, via Nicholas Meyers' "The Seven Per Cent Solution". And after reading the omnibus collection of Conan Doyle's works, I think "The Peerless Peer" was next on the list.

This all followed on the heels of my reading the "Incompleat Enchanter" series of stories by Fletcher Pratt and L. Sprague deCamp, and the combination of the two were the guiding forces into my own foray into shared universes with the Toobworld Dynamic.

Having made frequent visits to the Wold Newton site run by Mr. Farmer's worthy acolyte Win Scott Eckert, and having read several of Win's books on the subject, I feel it's time to read "The Peerless Peer" once more. Although it was a "cracking read" the first time round, I'm sure there were plenty of references to other sources that went right over my head back then. Now I'll be able to more fully enjoy the experience.

And I plan to order this edition to do so, for two reasons. One is that I'm not sure my battered old paperback from thirty plus years back should be subjected to any further wear and tear - much safer to leave it tucked away in the crate full of other books on Sherlock Holmes.

The second reason is that I want to do my part in showing support for this new line from Titan Books. See, on the back cover the novel is trumpeted as being a "Wold Newton Universe Novel". And should Titan Books see that there is interest in such a line, other books may follow. And fans of the Wold Newton concept can only benefit from that.

Of course, from the Toobworld perspective it doesn't work, unfortunately. The adventure takes place as the stage is set for World War I, and while the TV Sherlock Holmes would be present during that time period, the tele-Tarzan was to be found in the late 1960's. Still, that's all for the best, I think. The differences between the two shared universes might spark interest in them both from each concept's fans.

If "The Peerless Peer" sounds like something you might be interested in as well, check out these links:

The Peerless Peer by Philip José Farmer - Direct from Titan Books - Afterword by Win Scott Eckert

* Amazon

* BN

* BN NOOKbook (eBook)

BCnU!

Read more...

REMAINS TO BE SEEN, 2011 - BOILERPLATE

A big thanks to fellow crossover enthusiast Jose Ricardo Bondoc for bringing this to my attention:

BERKELEY, CA (6/2)- Local artists and authors Paul Guinan and Anina Bennett have created a steampunk sensation in the form of the robot known as Boilerplate. According to their site, "Boilerplate was a mechanical man developed by Professor Archibald Campion during the 1880s and unveiled at the 1893 World's Columbian Exposition... Built in a small Chicago laboratory, Boilerplate was originally designed as a prototype soldier for use in "preventing the deaths of men in the conflicts of nations."..

Although it was the only such prototype, Boilerplate was eventually able to exercise its proposed function by participating in several combat actions, charging alongside such famous figures as Teddy Roosevelt and Lawrence of Arabia.... Professor Campion and his robot also circled the planet with the U.S. Navy, trekked to the South Pole, made silent movies, and hobnobbed with the likes of Mark Twain and Nikola Tesla....

Boilerplate is one of history's great ironies, a technological breakthrough that languished in obscurity—until now...." Recently this reporter had the chance to interview the artist and author behind Boilerplate, and discuss the secrets behind his creation, and the upcoming J.J. Abrams film currently in production.

Here's the link to the interview in Facebook:

Usually at the beginning of the year, I offer up a character that deserves to have a live-action televersion adaptation. In the past I've made the case for comic book characters like Zatanna (which did come true) and Green Lantern (which won't happen now until the movie franchise finally fades away), and for characters from novels like Silver John the Balladeer and Harry Flashman (who technically exists in Toobworld - in an adaptation of the original novel in which he appeared, "Tom Brown's School Days").

Reading through this article and reading about Boilerplate elsewhere online, I think this would make for a great little series on Syfy. Perhaps it could have the same framework like 'New Amsterdam' - with a story set in the present (or some set point in History) but with flashbacks to some point in Boilerplate's "life" interacting with historical figures.

So hopefully - if Abrams' movie is just successful enough to spark interest, but not so boffo at the box office to get tied up in movie sequels - there may be a decision to bring Boilerplate to Toobworld.

BCnU!

Read more...

ALT-COLUMBO II

Thanks to TV shows like 'Fringe', 'Star Trek: Deep Space Nine', 'Hercules: The Legendary Journeys', and 'Buffy The Vampire Slayer', and of course, 'Sliders', we know that alternate TV dimensions contain the counterparts of characters to be found in the main Toobworld.

Which means that this clip from a movie could be that of Lt. Columbo from the "Evil Mirror Universe"......

If he ever said, "Just one more thing" in this TV dimension, I'd be afraid he was going to whip out a knife!

BCnU!

Read more...

THE ALICIA LINE: A THEORY OF RELATEEVEETY

The Toobworld concept is basically a fantasy universe with mythological overtones and many of the trappings of Fantasy. Wizards, dragons, quests, enchanted/enchanting maidens, and objects imbued with great power all have their counterparts in the TV Universe.

This post, while a theory of relateeveety, will take a look at one such fairy tale aspect - the evil stepmother and the absence of the princess' real mother.....

'Flying Blind' was a FOX sitcom that ran for only one season (1992-93) and will be chiefly remembered for bringing Tea Leoni to national prominence. (She certainly caught my attention!)

Leoni played a mysterious free spirit named Alicia caught up in an affair with a tightly-wound recent college graduate named Neil Barash, whose mannerisms suggested that he worshipped
at the altar of Woody Allen. (Not sure the Catholic imagery works in a Woody Allen analogy though....)

And by "mysterious", I mean we never learned very much about Alicia, not even her last name. We got to meet her father, a spy and adventurer who may have fathered children in the South Seas, but we never even learned his name at all; he was just "Daddy" to Alicia (and "Sir" to Neil).

Alicia would talk about her mother, but the woman sounded like a horrid witch, as bad as - if not worse than! - the mother of the 'Absolutely Fabulous' Patsy Stone.

Here's a good example - when Alicia finally came downstairs ready for her high school prom, she found that her mother had already seduced Alicia's prom date, and she was rolling a cocktail onion across his stomach with her tongue.

By the time 'Flying Blind' took place, Alicia's Dad must have divorced that harridan because he mentioned that he had a girl-friend when he showed up and Alicia didn't treat the news as though he was cheating on her mother.

For Toobworld's purposes, I don't think that woman was actually Alicia's mother; rather, she was Alicia's evil step-mother, who had been in Alicia's life for so long that it just made things simpler for Alicia to refer to her as "Mother" whenever she mentioned her.

She may not even have remembered her true mother, whom I believe passed away when Alicia was only a few years old. And I have a candidate for Alicia's birth mother, as well as a theory about her family tree that would bring in not only 'Voyage To The Bottom Of The Sea' but also 'The Adventures Of Sherlock Holmes' as well.

Here are two online descriptions of the episode from 'Voyage To The Bottom Of The Sea' entitled "Escape From Venice":
ONE



A smiling, happy and relaxed Lee Crane, looking oh so dashing in a white tux, steps into a Venetian gondola with a very pretty girl. But romance is the last thing on the couple's mind. Crane has gone undercover in Venice to pick up a secret code from another agent -- the seemingly innocent girl in the white veil. However, unbeknownst to Crane and Alicia, the enemy is on to them. The girl is viciously murdered, Crane is severely wounded, framed for the murder, and is now a hunted man. Now the only person on earth who knows the code, Crane must stay alive long enough for Nelson to effect a rescue.

TWO

Crane and Alicia, a female agent, are in a gondola in Venice, Italy. She sings Crane a song with lots of LaLas. Then he sings it--it is a message which will decode Dr. Leonetti's tapes which explain a defense against the ultimate weapon. Leonetti, Crane calls Seaview and tells them, is dead. His body was fished out from under a canal--and they are calling it suicide. A young sandy haired man is in the radio shack aboard Seaview, not Sparks. If the song is put through the computer, sonically, it will decode the tapes. As Alicia begins to sing it over the radio to Seaview--the gondolier, an enemy agent, stabs her in the back through the curtain. She gives Crane the key and address to the safe house and dies. Crane fights the killer but falls overboard in the fight. The killer calls for help in Italian.

It will be my contention that the late and lovely spy named Alicia was the mother of Alicia from 'Flying Blind'.

'Voyage To The Bottom Of The Sea' took place in the early 1970's, even though it was broadcast a decade earlier. If we do a bit of wibbly-wobbly timey-wimey juggling, Alicia would have been about five years old when her mother was murdered on that gondola.


Alicia's Dad in the late 1960's



I think Alicia's Dad met that agent named Alicia during the course of an undercover operation and they fell in love. Whether or not they got married, I don't know; but I'd like to think that their relationship resulted in the birth of a daughter which "Dad" insisted on naming after his wife (although it may have been that he was following a tradition from the maternal side of his wife's family).

After Alicia was murdered in Venice, a distraught "Dad" may have unwisely married a woman simply to give his baby daughter a maternal influence. He had no clue at the time that she would turn out to be the stereotypical evil stepmother.

Regarding the naming of Alicia after her mother, it's possible that this was a family tradition handed down through the generations along the maternal branch of her family tree. I don't know if they would all prove to be free spirits and adventuresses, but it just might be that one of them was singular enough back in the late 1800's to have a ship named after her:

"The cutter Alicia, which sailed one spring morning into a small patch of mist from where she never again emerged, nor was anything further ever heard of herself and her crew."

Dr. Watson mentioned this case of Sherlock Holmes in the "Thor Bridge" story, which had to have occurred before October 1899. (Although "The Problem Of Thor Bridge" was adapted for the series starring Jeremy Brett and Edward Hardwicke, we hear no mention of this case which never received a full report from Holmes' Boswell. Then again, it may still lay unread in a safe deposit box near Charing Cross.....)

As usual with my theories of relateeveety, I can't prove any of this. But as it's unlikely 'Flying Blind' will ever be revived (Forget about Brett's Holmes and 'Voyage'!), then it can't really be disproved either.

Since 'Flying Blind' was canceled after only one season, I have no idea if Neil and Alicia are still together twenty years later. But as with most fairy tales, I'd like to think they lived happily ever after........

BCnU!

Read more...

SKED ALERT! "DOCTOR WHO" MID-SEASON FINALE!

Tonight is the mid-season finale of 'Doctor Who' - "A Good Man Goes To War".

At least here in the "Magnited States Of America". The Brits have already seen it. (And yes, so have I.....)

So, my fellow Yanks, here's a little something to whet your appetites:

I will say this and no more - a good case could be made for a new spin-off, just from this episode alone......

BCnU!

Read more...

FROM PAWNEE TO SCRANTON... LITERALLY

Kona Gallagher of CliqueClack TV has made the case for a TV crossover character to be the new manager at the Dunder-Miffline/Sabre branch in Scranton.

All it would take would be a move from Pawnee.....

BCnU!

Read more...

WNU-TOOB: IF ONLY.....

And I couldn't finish off the topic of 'Barnaby Jones' without this little oddity.....

Not the way I'd want these two great characters to cross over, but that sampling of the 'Barnaby Jones' theme music makes it hard to resist!

BCnU!

Read more...

A QUINN MARTIN-STEVEN MOFFAT M*A*S*H-UP

I know American "Who" fans are going through withdrawal this weekend since BBC-America pre-empted 'Doctor Who' for Memorial Day Weekend content, and in the middle of a two-parter at that. So here's another video to help stem the cravings.....

I could have asked for a better voice-over, one more in keeping with that original deep voice. And it probably should have been a mash-up in the titles as well - it should have been "Barnaby Who". But otherwise, the 'Barnaby Jones' theme music makes everything better.

And at least thanks to this mash-up, I now know why the character of Jorah Marmont in 'Game Of Thrones' looks so familiar to me. I really liked Bishop Octavian in that "Weeping Angels" two-parter and I still hold out hope that the angel didn't kill him; rather it sent him back in Time. We may yet meet him again in 'Doctor Who'.....

BCnU!

Read more...

"LO:LA" - A MIXED-UP, MUDDLED-UP, SHOOK-UP TOOBWORLD

'Law & Order: Los Angeles' ends its run on June 27th......

It wasn't around for very long, less than a full seaon, but in its disrupted, revamped run, 'Law & Order: Los Angeles' displayed the spectrum of the population for the City of Angels: Whites, Blacks, Hispanics, Asians, immigrants, rich, poor, religious fanatics, the homeless, and members of the LGBT community. But there was one group of L.A.'s society that was never represented in any of the episodes.

The Tenctonese.

The Tenctonese, an alien race derisively called Slags and Spongeheads by the native human population, landed on Earth Prime-Time in the early 1990s, just outside the Los Angeles area. Over 300,000 of them had been held captive aboard a slaver ship but had rebelled, forcing the ship to land in the desert. When we first saw them in the TV series 'Alien Nation', it was around the year 1995 (although the series aired earlier in the real world).

By the time the series started, the Tenctonese had established themselves as part of the Los Angeles population (although not fully accepted), not partitioned away like the Prawns in "District 9". But I don't think many ventured farther than California, to other states in America, in their expansion.

Since the series ended after its first season, the Tenctonese should have been at least visible in background scenes in other TV shows that were set in Los Angeles - or so it would be if this was a perfect Toobworld. I'm not saying that a whole plotline from 'Law & Order: Los Angeles' had to be about the Tenctonese, but why didn't we see any at crime scenes as police officers (if not detectives like George Francisco)? As bystanders at those crime scenes? Or back at the headquarters for the district attorney, working as members of the secretarial pool at least?

Dick Wolf certainly missed an opportunity with the casting of Corey Stoll......


Sorry about that, Chief.....

Why haven't we seen the Tenctonese in shows like 'Arrested Development' and 'The Bold & The Beautiful'? In the jury pool of 'Murder One', in the audience at a late night taping as seen on 'The Larry Sanders Show', or even a deceased Tenctonese being prepared for viewing on 'Six Feet Under'? Once 'Columbo' returned to the airwaves in 1989, we could have seen a few of these aliens in some of the later episodes, and along the same lines, in one of the TV movie reunions for 'The Rockford Files'. (Although I think they would have avoided Jim's trailer on the beach since the combination of salt and water is deadly to them, which could have led to a murder mystery investigated by Dr. 'Bones' Brennan.)

The Tenctonese could have been buying their variant of 'Weeds' in Agrestic (although sour milk is their drug of choice.)  Wouldn't they be perfect as the focus in a 'Fringe' case, or one of 'The X-Files'? And if there was one place in Southern California where they would not seem out of place, it would have been Sunnydale (as seen in 'Buffy The Vampire Slayer'.)

But in those fifteen years since we know they were well-ensconced in the area, those oversized, spotted craniums without ears are nowhere to be seen in the state.

I think there can be only one splainin - somehow they were all loaded up into another space-ship (or their original one was refitted and made space-worthy again) and transported to a new world on which they could recreate their former lives on Tencton.

It may even be that the Gallifreyan Time Lord known as the Doctor got involved, preferably the Eighth incarnation seen in "Doctor Who - The Movie". That old girl the TARDIS could have taken them all to a new planet somewhere in the galaxy. As big as it was on the inside, it may still have needed a few trips to get the job done, but the Doctor could have played the part of the ferryman in less than a day.

A few Tenctonese may still be around on the main Toobworld, even whole families, and I think at the very least every one that was part of the main cast on the 'Alien Nation' TV series would have chosen to stay behind (just in case any more TV movies should occur.) But otherwise this will stand as the Toobworld Central position on the matter - the majority of their species departed Earth Prime-Time to lived elsewhere among the stars.

Each episode of 'Law & Order: Los Angeles' was named after a different location in the Los Angeles area - "Echo Beach", "Hayden Tract", "Zuma Canyon", etc. If they had done an episode involving the Tenctonese, they would have had two options: "Little Tencton" or "Slagtown".....

BCnU!

Read more...

FROM THE LAST STREET IN MANHATTAN TO ALBUQUERQUE

With the 'Law & Order: Criminal Intent' episode entitled "The Last Street In Manhattan", NBC (as the parent company) missed out on a great chance for a two-part crossover on USA Network.

In "The Last Street In Manhattan", Sean was a bar owner in Inwood (just north of Toobworld Central), and when his daughter Vanessa thought he had been killed by a neighborhood mobster, she finally told the truth about how that thug killed her former boyfriend. Afterwards, she was reunited with her father who was very much alive.

That's where the episode ended. But the story of Sean and Vanessa should have continued - straight into the show that follows 'Law & Order: Criminal Intent' on USA Network: 'In Plain Sight'.

In order to protect Vanessa from harm before she had a chance to testify against the mobster - and afterwards as well - she and her father should be put into the Witness Protection Program with new identities.

And that would mean we'd get to see U.S. Marshals Mary Shannon and Marshall Mann interact with Detectives Bobby Goren and Alexandra Eames as the transfer of the two took place. Then we could see Sean and Vanessa's story continue in Albuquerque, New Mexico.

'Law & Order: Criminal Intent' and 'In Plain Sight' are already connected, so it's not like this would have been an impossible dream.  Mary Shannon showed up in New York to take custody of a witness and she met with Captain Danny Ross and Detectives Mike Logan and Megan Wheeler.

Oh well. Maybe next time.....

But at some point, we may see actor Jack McGee (who played Sean) in a guest spot on some other show.  Since he's such a good character actor, that's probably a given.  And if we don't learn that much about his character - and so long as he's in some other location than New York City, we might be able to make the claim that he's actually Sean in his new identity.

BCnU!

Read more...

MAYBERRY MUSINGS

Team Toobworld member Pat Coleman cobbled together this great movie poster:

And it reminded me of that classic (ain't they all?) episode of 'The Andy Griffith Show' in which Barney's disguise foiled the marital plans of Ernest T. Bass.

Not that Ernest T. Bass was a time traveler, mind......

A Facebook group dedicated to 'The Andy Griffith Show' posted this behind-the-scenes photo from that episode, showing Andy Griffith and Don Knotts between shots:

And "between shots" could be taken in a different way as well. They both look like this is a scene from the prequel to "The Hangover". (Tagline: "Now Mayberry's Got Them")

Thanks, Pat!
 
BCnU!

Read more...

LOOKING BACK (AND DOWN) ON "THE DOCTOR'S WIFE"

Since this is the Video Weekend, it's about Time to check in with 'Doctor Who'!

I wasn't very satisfied with last week's episode. I had heard so many plaudits for Neil Gaiman as a writer, that I really expected to have my socks knocked off with his script for "The Doctor's Wife". I even put socks on for the occasion!

But it was somewhat of a humdrum affair. Part of the blame could be laid on the budgetary concerns for the show, as a lot of plot ideas that he had were put aside for lack of money. Here we finally got a chance to roam around in the TARDIS outside of the latest console room and all we got were corridors! No quick peeks into any other rooms, save for another console room and that had to be the last incarnation. I suppose that was a cost-cutting measure as well since they still had the set, but really - would it have been that expensive to recreate the control room from Hartnell's time? It was all cardboard!

Still, the story felt like we had been down this road before, and it wasn't just because of the many touchstones he put in to episodes from the past. (The Ood, the message cube, etc.) And the idea of a human body hosting the living persona of the TARDIS had been done before in a couple of outside-Toobworld venues. In fact, I remember - just before the Christmas special of "Voyage Of The Damned" was broadcast, one of the newspapers over in the UK suggested that Kylie Minogue's character of Astrid would turn out to be the TARDIS. (It's an anagram, you see, Jamie.....)

Suranne Jones, however, was lovely and fetchingly off-kilter in the role of Idris/TARDIS. But the other big name guest star - Michael Sheen? I didn't mind that he was just the disembodied voice of "House", the big baddie, but his voice was augmented so that it could have been just about anybody. (I listened to "Cobwebs", a 'Doctor Who' audio-play on BBC Radio 4 all this week, and the voice of the computer Edgar sounded just the same. They could have hired a much cheaper actor, saved Sheen for a later, meatier role, and used that spare cash to build me that early console room!

Oh well......

Read more...

A TASTE OF BLACK OIL VENOM

In the Facebook page for the TV Crossover Universe (Link to the left for the blog, Me Hearties!), Robert Wronski, Jr. and several of our like-minded comrades discussed the possibility that the entity which was the malevolent Spiderman suit symbiote known as "Venom" was actually the living, sentient Black Oil from 'The X-Files'.

Here's a couple of excerpts:

Gordon Long:
There's also the Black Oil, a living entity itself, which might be similar to the inhibition-releasing virus from "The Naked Time" ('Trek TOS') and revisited in 'TNG' ("The Naked Now").

Ivan Ronald Schablotski:
I'll point out for the sake of being pointy that a theory exists linking the Purity (black oil) alien virus to the Venom alien symbiote, especially the way it is depicted in the movie SPIDER-MAN 3.

It was an interesting discussion in which unfortunately I could not partake. The TVCU draws on several sources besides TV, as does the Toobworld concept - like certain movies and online content.  But they also use comic books and consider the character as a whole. With Toobworld, the Cineverse is a separate realm; there are exceptions, but the "Spiderman" franchise is not one of them. Its Spiderman is not the same as the TV Spiderman.

So far Venom has only been seen in the universes of movies and comic books. Back in the 1970's, Venom wasn't even in the comic books when Spiderman was in his crime-fighting glory on Earth Prime-Time.

As for the Black Oil, it may have been living and lurking on Toobworld since the Dawn of Time; it may have arrived with the aliens known as the Silence of recent 'Doctor Who' fame, or even earlier - with Scaroth or even in the clutch of Racnoss eggs planted at the core of the planet......

So it could be that the Black Oil-created Venom was in a Spiderman adventure not seen on TV back in the 1970's, about a decade before it was created for the comic books. If so, it has to be an off-screen adventure and could very well be the reason why Spidey stopped appearing on our TV screens. (Within the "reality" of Toobworld, of course. 'Twas ratings killed the series.)

I just can't claim that this crossover between 'The Amazing Spiderman' and 'The X-Files' actually did take place, because then I'm veering definitively into fanfic territory. (My splainins and theories of relateeveety have always been just tenuous possibilities.)

Still, it's a great theory and I extend kudos to whoever first came up with the idea. I just wish I could use it.....

BCnU!

Read more...

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!

Read more...

CRISIS AT TOOBWORLD CENTRAL!

It's really not all that bad, especially not when compared to the problems of others, but that heading does have a nice movie-of-the-week tone to it, doesn't it?

I'm into Day Two of a cable-unready existence. Yesterday my cable box systematically proclaimed every channel I visited to be unavailable. When I called T-W (and that ain't Toob World!), they told me to reboot the system by unplugging from the wall.

By doing that, I blew a fuse.

Once I did get it up and running again, I now couldn't access the system at all. I should have known better; I should have watched as much as I could off the DVR before I called it in. Now I have an appointment for tomorrow morning - only two months since they last swapped out the boxes.

Hopefully they won't have to do that because I've got a lot more stored up on there than the last time. It was only 19% full then, it was about 50% this time. And there was a lot of stuff I really wanted to see.

The TV shows I'm not so worried about - the season finale of 'Hawaii Five-O', the last three episodes of 'Raising Hope', the latest 'Doctor Who' (written by Neil Gaiman) which I wanted to see again, wondering if my opinion had changed to something more positive..... Most of that stuff I can find elsewhere online like Hulu or CBS.com, or - as is the case with 'Doctor Who' - I can wait until it repeats later in the week.

But the one that really bums me out is the Chuck McCann movie "The Projectionist" shown on TCM. I knew I should have watched it right away; I recorded it soon after the DVR was last replaced and I knew it could happen again at any time.

I've never seen "The Projectionist" and having heard such rave reviews for it, it's always been a holy grail among movies.

That'll larn me.

Add to that the news bomb dropped on me by the superette when she came up to change my fuse - because of the unreasonable demands made by my next-door neighbor, everybody's rent will have to go up once they do major renovation to the front entrance. If they could do it through one of the two side doors in the basement, the cost wouldn't be passed on to us, but her social workers apparently are pushing her to hold fast to her original demand.

Since I heard that, variations on the first twenty minutes of 'Columbo' have been playing out in my mind.....

BCnU!

Read more...

THE MOLE MEN IN "COUGAR TOWN"

I said I'd have more to say about the Mole Men.....

In the latest episode of 'Cougar Town', Jules Cobb tried to rouse her son Travis out of his funk over the breakup with Kristin by turning on the lights in the living room. When he groaned in protest, she quickly turned them off again to please him.

"We can keep it dark," she said. "We could live like mole people. They're real, you know. They live in sewers and -#" And then she awkwardly left the room, acting like a Mole Man.

Maybe Jules was trying to at least get a chuckle out of him, but nothing indicated that she didn't think Mole Men actually existed. And since we know the Superman of Earth Prime-Time encountered them, the news of their existence must have spread from Metropolis to West Gulfhaven over the last sixty years.

But somehow, Jules got the facts twisted along the way......

Toobworld note - "Superman And The Mole Men" may have started out in the Cineverse, but it's been absorbed into the TV Universe. In fact, it was later shown as a two-part episode of the series.

BCnU!

Read more...

THE HAT SQUAD: SADA THOMPSON

Actress Sada Thompson was better known for her theater work Off-Broadway than on Broadway, let alone her work in television. But she made her mark in Toobworld as the matriarch of 'Family' from 1976 - 1980. She was nominated as Best Actress for the role and won the Emmy award once.

She passed away on Wednesday at the age of 83.

Here are three inter-related clips from the early period in the history of 'Family', showcasing Sada Thompson's incredible talent, with able support from James Broderick, Elaine Heilveil, Kristy McNichol, and John Rubinstein.

Now, I didn't even realize that the role of Nancy was ever played by anyone else but Meredith Baxter-Birney. And now having seen just a sampling of Ms. Heilveil in the role, I think it's likely she was replaced in order to "goose" the ratings with "a hot blonde". Because Elaine Heilveil is good in the role, and she looks more like she was the daughter of Broderick and Thompson.

Anyhoo, here's Meredith Baxter-Birney in the role of Nancy, having no choice but to be outshined by Sada Thompson:

I always believed that Sada Thompson would have been the perfect embodiment of 'Mrs. Columbo'.

Good night and may God bless Jackie Cooper, Marian Mercer, and Sada Thompson.

BCnU........

Read more...

SILENT OBSERVATION

From the 'Fringe' wiki "Fringepedia":

According to the episode "August", The Observers (though it is not made clear which observer specifically) have been spotted at various important events throughout history evidenced by his appearance in notable historical paintings and images.

An Observer is present as an onlooker in the crowd depicted in the painting "The Bloody Massacre" which depicts the Boston Massacre of 1770.

An Observer is present, again as an onlooker in a crowd in a painting of Marie Antoinette being taken for execution during the French Revolution

An Observer is present in a photograph of Archduke Franz Ferdinand and his wife leaving a building moments before their assassination which served as the catalyst for World War I.

"It's more like they're observing time. I think these guys show up at important moments. Um, historical, technological, scientific. But it's rare. Maybe two dozen different definite occurrences in the past 5,000 years of human history. But recently, I've charted twenty-six sightings in the past three months alone. It kind of makes you wonder." - (Lab technician Brandon, to Olivia and Peter in "August" about the research and data he had collected)

Since the Observers from 'Fringe' have been around for a few centuries (at least), were they ever able to detect the presence of the Silence? It really wouldn't matter if they could - their function seems to be just to observe.....

BCnU!

Read more...