The Future Now!

At Times It Does Seem We Already Have It

The future, that is, because who could have predicted that millions of folk could watch the Martian rover Perseverance land on the surface of another planet, tens of millions of miles away?  Perhaps Philip K. Dick.

     Which, of course - obviously! -, has nothing to do with what this Intro is about, which is in fact a gleeful return to "Daleks' Invasion Of Earth 2150", because Conrad has been doing his homework.  Art!

PAY ATTENTION! for we will come back to this.

     O what homework, having to watch science-fiction films and make notes on them.  Mike Nelson, I feel your pain.

     As Your Humble Scribe mentioned yesteryon, that future date is rather bizarre and definitely anachronistic (not a word you expected to see today, nicht wahr?) as there is absolutely nothing in the film that suggests we are at any date beyond 1967.

     Here an aside.  Conrad acknowledges his - er - 'homage' to Peter Hammill in today's title, because - lawyers.  Not that he has anything against Pete, who is an awesome musician and songwriter, if perhaps a bit too clever for the mainstream.  He was the driving force behind Van Der Graaf Generator, prog rock stalwarts of the early Seventies (and whose "H to He Whom Am The Only One" is possibly the only song to ever reference nuclear fusion as a power process).  Art!

Bleak but brilliant

     "I want the future now!" he sings, and the Daleks oblige, except 10 years earlier.  Art!

     Here we see Wyler, played by the impressively physical Andrew Keir - you would not like to get on the wrong side of this chap in daylight, never mind a dark alley at night - tuning in to the Daleks on a radio that looks state-of-the-art.  For 1936.  2150 my hairy white posterior!

     Here's Wyler fitting a magazine into a sub-machine gun and giving it a good slap to make sure it seats properly, which implies he's quite handy with guns - STOP RIGHT THERE! Sub-machine guns are a niche market today, a good thirty years before the braying pepperpots show up; where are all the assault rifles and grenade-launchers and shaped charges that we have today?  Once again 2150 my still hairy and even more blanched posterior.

     O what a coincidence, the fashions and styles and fabrics and clothing of 2150 just so happen to MIMIC EXACTLY those of 1966, who would have guessed it!

     I would!  Again again, 2150 my hirsute hindquarters!  The producers could have eliminated a lot of quibblings such as Conrad's if they'd only jumped to the Nineties.  Although how could they have imagined that, in the future, there would be means and methods of analysing film in a literal frame-by-frame fashion?  If one were to study each frame for five seconds and make notes for another ten (shorthand) then it would, of course, take 21 hours to watch the whole thing.

     Hmmm.  Perhaps that should have been done as an Aside.  Art!

     Art?  What on earth have you been drinking! (or smoking) - ah, I see what you did there.  We shall forego the Tazers for tonight.

     Don't worry, we are nowhere near finished with DIOE2150, O no.  You know, isn't it strange that you can abbreviate words but not numbers?
     

It's Finger-Kicking Good!

In the spirit of never giving a sucker an odd break, let alone an even one, Your Humble Scribe continues to pile ordure upon yet more ordure atop that televisual combination of dumpster-fire and trainwreck "Batwoman".  Not that I intend to waste Second One watching it; no, instead we salute the brave Youtube reviewers who watch endure it on our behalf, and whom deliver a critical shoeing (or kicking, if you prefer) accordingly.  Art!

A far superior product

     If you have been following this farrago, then you remember that last week's viewing figures were so low that they were in the sewer outlet, having gone beyond the toilet.  They stood at 509,000.  This week they were down to 507,000, which is only a loss of 2,000 viewers!  Last week's numbers were not adjusted, which Your Humble Scribe thinks may be an artefact of how low they have fallen, although we can stand to be corrected.  Art!

     As an example of the <ahem> 'writing' on this show, the lead villain (above) decided to hold the city to ransom, by - let me get this straight - infecting mice, which would get eaten by rats, who would then sport the same disease, and would then get eaten by bats, who would then sport the same disease, and which would then attack humans and infect them - 

     No.  Just no.  Chiropterologists around the world are up in arms.  What next?  "It was all a dream and Kate Kane is happily alive and married to Bruce Wayne".

Still Living In The Future

Isn't that a track by Jethro Tull?  Ah, get me, all nostalgic for Seventies prog rock as played by Alan "Fluff" Freeman on Radio One on Saturday afternoons <clears throat and realises this dates self terribly> er yes - O look a flying saucer!

     No, what I wanted to post and point out is the creation of physical artefacts by means of the 3D printer, which, to be honest, smacks of witchcraft to the rest of us, if not Darling Daughter*.  Art!

     This is a 3D-printed Chieftain tank in 20mm 1/72 scale, which would make it several inches long on the wargames table, the Chieftain being a bit of a bulky battlefield beast.  So what you see above is what you'd see on the table at about six inches from your eyeballs.  Obviously the slanted armour is a point of contention, and our valiant gamer above has chosen not to sand the contours out, which is their choice**.  Give it another five years, when the difference between layer levels (this may not be the technical term but I think you know what I mean) is down to fractions of fractions of a millimetre, and we shall look back on these simulacra (again, not a word we ever expected to hear today) with tolerant amusement.

     Which is where we came in.

*  Arts graduate, happy as Larry with these sinister satanic synthesising  systems.

**  Wrong, yet still their choice.