Agents Of SHIELD

Yeah, Just Not How You Imagined Them

Conrad remembers watching a season or two of this a few years back, and wasn't especially struck by it.  There was a man with an artificial leg that made him super-strong, which struck me as ridiculous, and - something about HYDRA?  Plus a female version of Thor, I think.  None of it exactly stuck with me.  There was Agent Coulson, holding everything together.  Art?

Some of them do - things!

     Conrad unsure why they've covered half their face in woad.

     Anyway, this item is nothing to do with any of the above, and it serves you right for assuming that "SHIELD" is the same as "S.H.I.E.L.D. because it's not.  For Lo!  We are coming back to a subject I've threatened you with before, namely the Thames Tunnel.  Previously all we did was explain that it was the world's first underwater tunnel, running from Rotherhithe to Wapping; what we didn't go into was the epic of how it got made.  Art?

     You can see the 'how' here in isometric form.  There was a huge metal shield massing over 120 tons, divided into individual chambers, which gradually moved forward as the men in the chambers excavated the mud ahead of them.  The whole shield move slowly forward as the excavation was carried out, whilst directly behind it, masons lined the subsequent tunnel with brick.
     However, I have rather gotten ahead of myself.  Before the horizontal tunnel could be dug, a huge vertical shaft had to be dug to get down well beneath the bottom level of the River Thames.  Art?

     This was done by laying a baseline iron ring on the surface (well clear of the river bank to avoid flooding), upon which were built thousands upon thousands of bricks, the earth then being dug away from beneath this circular structure, which gradually descended under it's own weight.  If the descent slowed at all, why! you just added more bricks.  There aren't a whole lot of illustrations showing this part of the engineering, so you'll just have to make do with this one: 

     I know what you're thinking at this point:"Ah! The triumph of late Regency engineering, sorting out the natural world and displaying the ascent of man!"

     Wrong!  The story - we have now reached the year 1827 - has only just begun.  More to come at a later date.

     Motley!  Bring me my bucket and spade, for I feel inspired.

That Reminds Me -

Speaking of shields in tunnels, Conrad is minded of that old and splendid film "Labyrinth", which name we must whisper lest those Hollywood trolls decide to remake it with <thinks> Paris Hilton as the baby and Kim Cardassian as the Jennifer Connelly character and <thinks again> Julio Iglesias instead of David Bowie -

     Enough of the stuff of nightmares!  Recall that frightening moment when Sarah and Hoggle are trapped in a tunnel by a metal shield sporting whirling blades and various sharp pointy things, hurtling towards them at a rate of knots?

When you need a bit of Mo Farah about you

     It draws remorselessly closer and closer, a positive plethora of dervishly-whirling daggers and blades and points and piercers ...

     

Of course they avoid being turned into ground pound at the last second, as they turn and see what the hideous engine of doom looks like from the rear -

     Frankly, a touch of bathos.  Sorry, no actual screen-shots available and I'm not taking half an hour to track one down just for you lot.  Use your imagination.

"Gilly Gilly Ossenfeffer Katzenellen Bogen By The Sea"

For Lo!  We are back to looking at Doctor Hope analysing last year's Season One of "The Boys", and this time he's looking at <drum roll> - 

     The Deep!

     You probably guessed, given this item's title.  Conrad thought it was peculiarly appropriate, though that may just be me.  Art?

There's something finny going on here ...

     The good doctor points out that having gills in the neck simply wouldn't work for a human being, the surface area is far too small.  Even having such large abdominal gills is still too small a surface area, though it does make The Deep's underwater breathing ability more credible, which is what they're going for here.  Doctor Hope also explains about the Mammalian Diving Reflex, which is a variety of responses the human body undergoes when diving underwater, all of which serve to maximise the ability to remain submarine.  So, it's possible that The Deep has an incredibly enhanced version of this MDR, meaning his under-sized gills can cope.

The Deep.  In reality, incredibly shallow.

     Nobody's begun how to explain he can communicate with and even direct marine life - that will have to come after Season Two wraps up.

O Marketa!

I do apologise for neglecting you of late, my sweet young angry Czech, it's just that when I get on a creative roll, items tend to go on and on, and we have to sacrifice the odd smaller item.  Er - which has a strangely ironic resonance, given today's Unusual Czech Word You Didn't Realise You Needed To Know.  Marketa?

"Chudáček":  Someone with bad luck.  I'll say!  This would apply to the whole of Czechoslovakia in 1938, wouldn't you say, hmmm?  

Number 2 in the Czech Hate Parade

     Then there was also 1968, when their Sinister brethren came to liberate them from the chains and slavery of Socialism With A Human Face, without being invited.

Number 3 in the Czech Hate Parade, with a bullet!

     Don't go away, because the bad luck hasn't finished yet.  Recall the acronym "C.H.U.D"?  It stands for "Contamination Hazard Urban Disposal", and we can see where this will end up.  With the streets of Prague a-swarm with -

C.ANNIBALISTIC H.UMANOID U.NDERGROUND D.WELLERS!

     Run, Marketa, save yourself!

"We Have Ways ..."

Yes by gum, Robert Crumb.  I was listening to this podcast last night, which was extra-specially amusing, given that their very special guest was Brian Johnson, the arch-rocker and ex-vocalist of AC/DC, who came across as utterly unpretentious and also funny - if rather sweary.  One of his tales was about joining the Territorial Army in the late Sixties, because you got paid for doing it (above and beyond your normal wage), and he had his beady eyes set upon a new amplifier for his band (the "Gobi Desert Canoe Club").

Brian (the cap is surgcally-attached)

     Last thing, he brought up that whiskery old canard, or at least it is amongst us military history anoraks:  why didn't the British (and Commonwealth and Allied Armies in exile, which is such a mouthful I usually abbreviate it to "British" and have done with, which I'll do from now on, if that's okay, ta) use their 3.7 inch anti-aircraft gun in an anti-tank role, as the Teutons so famously did with their 88 mm flak gun?

     Your Humble Scribe has a few answers to this, although since we've gone so far over the Compositional Ton they will have to wait until tomorrow at least.


Finally -

O I say!  There seems to be a lightening of  - THAT'S TWO 409 BUSES GONE PAST DOWNHILL AT THE SAME TIME! Dog Buns, First Bus, you just wait till I take over <froths and slobbers with hideous rage> - where was I? O yes - there is a break in the ten-tenths cloud cover way over Babylon Lite (Oldham if we're being formal).  Conrad wonders - will we see the sun today? <crosses many fingers and toes>

     And with that we are done done done!  DONE!