For today we shall be venturing into the shallow and turbid waters of <shudders> Current Affairs. which are normally anathema to BOOJUM! but - well, if it means a bit more traffic on the blog, who am I to protest?*
Here an aside - yes, already! You may be familiar with this evening's title in the singular, as it comes from "Forbidden Planet", when Doctor Morbius (rather unsympathetically, I fear) condemns the actions of Doctor Ostrow, and ends with " - as though his ape's brain could contain the secrets of the Krell!"
| Robbie was also really really good at playing Rock-a-bye. |
Which has very little to do with the BBC's flagship dramamentary 'Doctor Who', although that's where we're headed. Eventually.
Okay, let us whiz over to the unfashionable environs of Little Plumpton, Lancashire, in the bucolic shires of Perfidious Albion. Yes, this sounds like the scene of a murder mystery featuring Miss Marple, when in actuality it is the Allotment of Eden's premier site for - FRACKING!
Which sounds rude, yet isn't, unless you're from Greenpeace. Art?
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| Little Plumpton. Much like Trumpton. |
The current fracking activity has been suspended temporarily, due to the minor matter of an inconsequential, insubstantial and entirely anticipated bit of - er - subterranean jiggery-pokery, which you and I would better recognise as an "Earthquake".
STOP RIGHT THERE!
Have we not been here before? Did Hugh Everett III postulate alternative realities as a function of quantum mechanics in vain?** Are walnuts an acceptable and cheaper alternative to pecans?
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| Funny money |
The reason Project Inferno got the go-ahead vice 'Doctor Who' and their dramatic reconstruction of "Inferno" is that it was an alternative source of energy that came free. FREE counts for everything with the Treasury; if they can get something for nothing they will, and they will pull out all the stops to ensure same. So what if it destroys the planet? We're in the black! Art?
| From port to starboard: Brigade-Leader Lethbridge-Stewart, The Doctor, some bloke with lurgy |
That very excellent character actor Derek Newark played the part of Sutton, an oil drilling expert brought in to add a little technical expertise to the project, and who realises that the jig is up for Planet Earth once - ahem - 'Penetration Zero' occurs. As he puts it, once earthquakes and tremors are experienced far afield within the Allotment of Eden, without any response from the nation's dictatorial government, then the Earth is doomed. If there was any hope of survival then Project Inferno would be getting as much kit as it needed or wanted to resolve the problems.
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| Mr. Sutton and Petra (the feminine derivation of "Petrol"***) |
Now, look at the fracking proj - er, operation - fracking operation being carried out in Little Plumpton. Mister Freud would have something to say about it, doubtless, which is not what I meant to type - it is, after all, a crust-penetrating energy-exploitative proj - operation, which the Treasury looks at with fond regard, because it means getting money for nothing ...
Look upon those miniature earthquakes as sinister warnings, O thou foolish humans!
| Overwhelmed by a tidal wave of boiling scarlet porridge! |
You may be wondering where Hugh Everett comes into all this. Nothing to do with music, pop-pickers. Rather, he came up with the 'Many Worlds' interpretation of quantum theory, wherein you may have many, many, many different alternative versions of our contemporary reality. Including one in which Perfidious Albion was successfully invaded by the forces of Teuton extremism in the Second Unpleasantness, which "Inferno" hints at in a nicely done bit of understatement.
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| A thoroughly bad sort. And being clean-shaven is not good enough. |
Incidentally, Derek Newark was in "The Unpleasantness at the Bellona Club", playing the immensely able and practical Bunter, butler to Lord Peter Wimsey, which I have been watching of late. It was in a rather undefined black and white copy on Youtube, even if the end credits stated "BBC Colour", so I presume that once again the Sinister saboteurs of the Cold War had arranged for the originals to be destroyed, leaving only a fuzzy monochrome version.
| Pin-sharp it ain't. |
* I realise it's a bit odd when I'd be protesting about myself to myself - ah what do you know, 21st Century Schizoid Man.
** Mark Everett of Eels dad.
*** This may be a little bit untrue.
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