The 49er

Today is the forty-ninth anniversary of the first broadcast of An Unearthly Child, the first episode of Doctor Who. Therefore this time next year will be the show's half century, but this post isn't about that. Instead I want to focus on other anniversaries of things related to Doctor Who that all happened on the 23rd of November:

Today is also the 49th birthday of Joe Ahearne, the Director of Dalek, Father's Day, Boom Town, Bad Wolf and The Parting Of The Ways. Happy Birthday Joe.

Today is also the 44th anniversary of the first broadcast of The Invasion, Part Four in 1968.

Studio filming for The Robots Of Death was carried out 26 years ago today in 1976.

It's also the 31st anniversary of the repeat broadcast of The Three Doctors Episode 1 which unites the first three Doctors as part of The Five Faces Of Doctor Who season in 1981.

Twenty-nine years ago today, another multi-Doctor tale, The Five Doctors was first broadcast in the USA in 1983.

Astonishingly, the episode which introduced Ace is 25 years old today as Dragonfire, Part One was first broadcast in 1987.

The silver anniversary story Silver Nemesis is just one year shy of its own silver anniversary. This day in 1988 saw the first part broadcast in the UK, all three went out in New Zealand and some of this story was set on this day as well.

Twenty-three years ago today in 1989, the closing speech from Part Three of Survival was re-dubbed to make it a bit more satisfying just in case it was the last we ever heard of the good Doctor.

Mary Whitehouse, head of the National Viewers' and Listeners' Association, complaining old witch and continual thorn in the side of Doctor Who's producers died eleven years ago today in 2001.

And finally (as far as I am aware, but there may be others) today is also the fourth anniversary of the first broadcast of The Zygon Who Fell To Earth in 2008.

See you next year.

Please Reprint Me #1

I thought I'd write another Please Release Me post, but on a slightly different tack. I've been reading a lot of 2000 AD graphic novels recently and I've fallen in love with them all over again, but for books usually bearing the word Complete they have some frustrating omissions:

Harlem Heroes
A 1977 comic strip about a sport like a cross between American Football and boxing with jetpacks that ran for 27 weeks. It's endearing stuff and The Complete Harlem Heroes is excellent, but omits two stories from annuals, a Whatever Happened To? strip and a 3000 AD reboot. The strip was reintroduced to 2000 AD in 1990 and ran for another 49 parts, but has never been reprinted.

- - - - -

Flesh
The brilliantly bizarre concept of cowboys versus dinosurs with time-travel is something to be celebrated in and of itself, but here's hoping that Flesh - The Dino Files is volume one of more and that Legend Of Shamana Book 1 & 2, Chronocide, Flesh 3000AD and Midnight Cowboys can be included as well.

- - - - -

Walter The Wobot
Judge Dredd's robotic sidekick with a speech impediment got his own one page strip and the first nine appeared in Judge Dredd The Complete Case Files Volume 01, but the subsequent nine strips weren't included in any of the later volumes.

- - - - -

Judge Dredd newspaper strips
2000 AD's favourite son took his brand of justice to both the Daily Star and Metro newspapers. The few I can find are great and a fascinating insight in writing the character and his world for a new audience. It would be great to have them available again.

- - - - -

Judge Dredd
Following the 1995 Judge Dredd film DC comics launched their own comic strips to break him into another new audience, the American market. He managed an 18 issue run, alongside 13 issues of Legends Of The Law, 23 of Lawman Of The Future and then nothing. I don't know if they have ever been available in the UK at all, but I'd love to see them collected together.

- - - - -

Tharg The Mighty
2000 AD's alien editor Tharg appeared in a number of strips, but two that really intrigue me are Tharg's Head Revisited and A Night 2 Remember. Both are celebratory strips, the former for reaching the comic's 500th Prog and the latter for its 25th Anniversary, both feature dozens of crossovers from other strips and both are so rare that I can't even find any images of them online. Astonishing when you consider that these are strips that combine ther likes of Invasion, Dan Dare, Rogue Trooper, A.B.C. Warriors, Big E In Action, Harlem Heroes, Metalzoic, Judge Dredd, Halo Jones, Robo-Hunter, Mean Machine, Satanus, Chopper, Venus Bluegenes, Nemesis The Warlock, Torquemada, Bonjo from Beyond the Stars, Dash Decent, Marshal Law, M.A.C.H.1, Finn, Storming Heaven, Nikolai Dante, Sinister Dexter, Judge Death, Tor Cyan, Walter The Wobot, Strontium Dog, Ace Trucking Co, Stix, Zenith, D.R. & Quinch, Mazeworld, Lenny Zero, Judge Anderson, Hewligan's Haircut, The Balls Brothers and The Spacegirls together. They might be wonderful, they might be dreadful. I've no idea, but I'd love to find out.

- - - - -

What would you want to see reprinted?

Where Would I Be Now If We'd Never Met?

Here's another video of a performance of a song from Pulp's Brixton Academy gig, this time 'Something Changed':




I've chosen this video for its sound quality rather than its camera angle.

Carruthers Camera #28

Five more Carruthers blog photos that I took:

Borderland is a photo of Monmouth Street in Central London. I always forget to check whether it's usually like that or whether it was during some Anglo-French festival.

The Trunk in Trunk is in a park and Word-Up was a coach that tried to drive around said park, but instead almost took a U-Turn, followed by a thirteen point turn and then reversed the wrong way down a traffic-filled one-way street.

Why Aye? is a shot of a Bounds Green billboard advert and surrounding view of North London.

These Happy Plums were some graffiti on a temporary hoarding in Southwark.

Media

I'm in a video that has recently surfaced as an advert for the media course at the college I taught at.

Crucially, I didn't didn't teach media, but the video features footage of the actors and dancers as well. I can be seen silently directing the cast of The Cherry Orchard with bigger gestures than I remember, while some of the cast of the The Undiscovered shot a scene which would be played into their show.

There's Tidy

What do you think of the new look? It's very closely modelled on the old look.

I've had a bit of a spring clean. I know it's not spring or any cleaner, but I decided to have a bit of a change to the look of the place. I've changed the blogger template I was using and moved the furniture around a bit, so to speak. Mostly because I was getting really sick of re-sizing pictures all the time.

As a result I think it looks a bit more spacious here, but I'm aware that much of the pagination under the old template will now probably have jumped about and look even more slapdash than usual. I'll work my way through the older posts to try and tidy them up.

Tidy is a strange word which has two particular connotations for me. Tidy in Wales means something is great, but also genuine. To do a tidy job means to do it properly, while the phrase "There's tidy" means "that's great" with a real sense of satisfaction. It's unlikely you would use it in relation to tidying.

The other thing that always springs to mind are Stoppit and Tidyup from the cartoon Stoppit and Tidyup. All the characters are named after phrases that children get overly used to hearing: Eat Your Greens, Wash Your Face, Go And Play, I Said No, Don't Do That, Clean Your Teeth, etc. The nature of the show meant that whilst reinforcing the message it also subverted the phrases in question and almost nothing made me laugh more than my mother saying "Go And Play" or "I Said No". I absolutely loved this TV show as a child and it was with a little trepidation that I watched it again as an adult and it was absolutely as good as I remembered.

It was proper tidy.

Scare Me! Blogfest

Budd over at Scifi Media is holding the Scare Me! Blogfest.

So here's how it works in Budd's own words:

"The purpose of the Scare Me Blogfest is to write about the scariest book that you have read, Movie you have watched, Ghosts you have encountered, and/or to share your own scary story. Just sign up on the Linky below and post your entry on Halloween. A panel that includes me, myself, and I will argue and fight to decide which entry was the best and that entry will get an award. Who knows, I may make several."

I've chosen to write about three of the scariest things I've ever seen on screen in the order I saw them. All three are British, although that wasn't deliberate.

Doctor Who: The Curse Of Fenric
This four-part 1989 Doctor Who story sees Sylvester McCoy's Doctor visit a Top Secret naval base during World War II. It borrows heavily from Norse mythology and combines it with a healthy dose of vampires to make an excellent and uneasy tale. The script, performances, monsters, location, effects and even the weather all work together to make a brilliant story.

Why is it scary?: The Haemovores are vampires in all but name and have a look that would put you off your lunch, but the scariest thing about The Curse Of Fenric for me is how it deals with ideas of faith. Vampires in many stories are repelled by crucifixes. Haemovores take that idea to its logical conclusion and are repelled not by the crucifix, but by the faith of the person holding it. If you have an absolute faith in anything then you are safe. At the tender age of eight I sat down on four successive Wednesdays to be scared out of my wits by the simple idea that my own doubt could kill me.

- - -

The Wicker Man
This 1973 film set in the Scottish Islands follows a policeman searching for a missing girl in a convoluted conspiracy and ritual sacrifice. The Wicker Man features Christopher Lee in drag, Britt Ekland's body double's buttocks and a truly excellent performance from Edward Woodward.

Why is it scary?: We come back to faith again and by extension certainty without the need for proof. All the characters in The Wicker Man are certain that their own beliefs are correct even in the face of overwhelming evidence to the contrary. The merry dance that the islanders lead the policeman on is all the more scary second time around. The climactic scene is terrifying and shocking. I haven't seen the remake, but the fact that someone could watch this and think they could improve on it is truly horrifying.

- - -

Threads
Asking what might happen if they dropped an atom bomb on Sheffield, this 1984 TV Movie is an unflinching look at a Nuclear holocaust. I was recently reminded about the severity of Threads and have ben unable to get it out of my head.

Why is it scary?: It's an unflinching look at a Nuclear holocaust. How could it not be scary? If the other two stories here examine ideas of faith, then Threads brings us full circle, but it's more like abandon hope all ye who enter. The documentary style and unrelenting plausibility of it all wears away your expectations and rather than rooting for the survivors you begin to see them as the real victims. This film is harrowing in the extreme.

- - -

What scared you?