The Web -

How Very Apt!

Here we are, promulgating a title on the World Wide Web.  And NO! we are not going to discuss that Doctor Who serial just yet, because Your Humble Scribe was struck by a thought as he considered webs.  Art!

     I refer to an album track "Web Of Sound" from the Comsats' masterly album "The Glamour".  No picture because it was never released as a single, no apologies for that.  Use your imagination.  I've no idea what the song actually means, except that it sounds great.  So, there we are with webs.  For the sake of any arachnophobes present we shall avoid images of those horrid eight-legged beasties.

     Now for "The Web Of Fear" again.  Conrad finished watching it last night without taking any pictures - sorry! - in addition to the Extras disk, which was jolly interesting in it's own right.  Art!

Yeti Mark One

     It was held that these yeti were too cute and cuddly, hence the significantly scarier version that appears in TWOF.  Art!

     Conrad is not going to give away too many plot points, but given that the serial is 53 years old you can't expect me to keep my lips sealed completely.  However - and you knew that word was coming - there is a bit of plot hole at the beginning.  Professor Travers reactivates a control ball, which is a unit that powers a Yeti - and the next we know London is over-run by the furry freaks.  How?  Does that first Yeti go off and construct a Yeti-producing factory?  Where did the power come from?  The raw materials?  Planning permission from London County Council?

     Conrad would also like to point out the widely inept tactics as used by the soldiers in the Battle Of Covent Garden.  As we already have been informed by Corporal Lane, if you hit a Yeti between the eyes, that puts the kybosh on it.  Art!

     In best Hollywood style, the only sure thing about these two (and nearly all the others) is that they are going to miss what they are firing at.  

     Of course, I could be overthinking this a bit .....

     Motley!  Go and swim the Channel.  You know, just like Captain 

A Dish Of Dystopia

For Lo! we are back on that biography of Nigel Kneale, you remember, the Quatermass chappie who terrified the nation in 1953.  He and director Rudolph Cartier had somehow accrued a reputation of being able to put together a television production at speed yet with quality, so, when the BBC decided it needed to do "1984" in a hurry, they were chosen.  The unseemly haste was due to the South Canadians determining to do a film, which the Beeb needed to beat to broadcast or become a very second-best.  Art!

     It was broadcast shortly before Christmas 1954 and O my! the critics were horrified and appalled by it, because - SPOILER! - it does not have a happy ending, and is in fact unremittingly grim.  Yes, that is Peter Cushing in the role of Winston Smith, with the equally talented Yvonne Mitchell as the love interest.

     Sadly, very little remains of this broadcast, as it was performed live at a time when there was no technology to record television programs.  We must be happy with what fragments are left, and also rejoice that it offended the critics.  Art!

Peter and yes, that is Donald Pleasance

More Musical Critique

I do apologise that we are still stuck on "King's Lead Hat".  There's a lot of lyrics to it, you see, and Your Humble Scribe doesn't like moving onto another victim review until he's finished whatever he's started.  Thus -

Time and motion (motion carried) time and tide

Hello?  With all this talk of tide, are we back to that ship you mentioned before?

All I know and all I have is time and time and tide is on my side

There is only one person I know who has time on his side.

A ship, just not how you imagined

King's lead hat put the poker in the fire, it will come, it will come, it will surely come

Conrad VERY STRONGLY SUSPECTS that this is about either sex or drugs.  Or both.

King's lead hat was a mother to desire, it will come, it will come, it will surely come

You said this before and it's still not arrived!  Unreliable, that's you

The weapon's ready (ready Freddy) the guns purr

My dear chap!  Guns do not 'purr', they go BANG very loudly.

Hang on, you're not trying to fire a cat, are you?

     We're about two-thirds of the way through this farrago, for your information.  Next!

As My Wimsey Takes Me

Oho, and also aha! for Conrad has discovered a series of Lord Peter Wimsey BBC broadcasts on Youtube, which he is pretty sure he's not seen before.  I have, of course, read all the novels and then given them away again, because once I've read a murder mystery I won't forget the solution.  The perils of having a retentive memory, don'cha know*.  It is "The Unpleasantness At The Bellona Club" so I know who the guilty party is already.  Yes yes yes but it's amusing and entertaining to see other folks work out whodunnit.  Art!

Lord P. at starboard

     One thing Conrad noticed is that all the actors smoke like chimneys, lighting up all the time and making no bones about consuming tobacco.  Lord P. himself has a habit of tapping his against his cigarette case - nothing as vulgar as a packet for his lordship - in order to - er - expel evil spirits?  Conrad not a smoker, you see, thus not up on tobacco etiquette. 

Finally - 

Hopefully the house is not burning down.  Conrad, you see, has his headphones on, which block out all extraneous sounds as he's playing music, so the crackling of the flames would be entirely effaced.  Before you comment on the smell of smoke, recall that Conrad has approximately 1% of a normal human being's sense of smell, so that wouldn't warn me, either.  As for it getting progressively hotter - why, the weather is cold enough for the heating to have come on, surely?

     And on that sombre note I shall leave you!

*  Here I am attempting Lord Peter's trademark insouciance.