NO! We Are Not Talking About Stealing Watches
Although that does bring back memories of Ernest Pemberton Smith, better known as 'Wolfie', who was blessed both with ESP and tremendously bad luck. As a penniless vagrant, he was slavering over the watches in a jewellery store window, when one of them leapt through the window, smashing it, and flying into his hand. That's one of the things about ESP, it can be a bit of a beggar in real life. Art!
Er - wrong Wolfie. But we'll let it stand because it might bring in more traffic than the black and white artwork of an obscure comic character from the mid to late Seventies. Art!
The aftermath of Wolfie's leaping watch.
No, you see I am referring to the BBC, and the Beeb as it was back in the Sixties and Seventies, when it was almost exclusively the provenance of middle-class, middle-aged, politically conservative (note the small 'c') white males in the top posts. What did they not like? Art!
First of all, it was in the much-derided 'sci-fi' genre, which had actually evolved from men in rubber suits threatening young ladies in bikinis, as was typical of the Fifties. It took a long time for this to filter into the upper echelons of the BBC. Well, some men like looking at young lad
ANYWAY next problems were the production staff for the very earliest 'Doctor Who' episodes, because - Art!
Director Waris Hussain Producer Verity Lambert
As you can see, Waris is very definitely not a middle-aged white man. He's Asian. As you can also see, Verity is not even a man, Egad! And Jewish to boot.
Nowadays nobody would turn a hair at this display of diversity, but back in 1963 it was as if the barbarians were at the gates, with nerve gas and tanks.
Okay, allow me to demonstrate a couple of Doctor iterations. Art!
Two still from the Hartnell and Troughton years, most notable for being in black and white. Only in 1970, when Jon Pertwee arrived, did the serials debut in colour, otherwise "The Green Death" would have been a tad anti-climactic.
So, the crusty coffin-dodgers at the pinnacles of power at Broadcasting House took stock of their B & W collections of filmed television programs, decided that future generations of viewers would jib at ever watching B & W programs ever again, and decided to destroy them, in order to make more room in storage. Not build more storage, or rent storage capacity out; just destroy stuff.
There were a couple of other reasons; thanks to the contracts actors had via Equity, all the actors in a serial had to give their permission to allow it to be released on video, which led to fruitless searches for permission from actors long since dead. Also, videotape as used by television studios at the time was surpassing expensive, so the motive to re-use it and save £££ was always there.
ANYWAY there are currently about 97 episodes missing, which is an improvement on 1980, when there were well over a hundred. They turn up in foreign television studios as film exported by BBC Enterprises, or in the attics of ex-BBC television technicians, or the disorganised collections of collectors. Art!
Take this one, for example: only one episode was known to exist, until four more were discovered, and Your Humble Scribe now owns it on DVD.
Why all this fuss? Because it's entirely possible that another nine missing episodes are going to be returned after being tracked down by painstaking detective work. Art!
The Holy Grail of these entirely independent and un-funded detectives is the missing Fourth Episode of "The Tenth Planet", where William Hartnell morphs into Patrick Troughton.
It might happen*.
As Overheard Today
There were four young lads in the shop ahead of Conrad, who were bantering in a good-natured manner with the sales assistant, a drolly down-to-earth young chap himself.
"That lad who's banned is going to come back in with water balloons and spit on your window," they jovially informed the assistant.
It transpired that his mum had come previously into query why he'd been banned.
"Because he's a little s***", the assistant had explained to her.
"Fair enough," she responded.
"You might need some Wet Wipes for your window," I commented, gesturing at said plastic sheeting.
"It's only water!" he cheerfully responded.
Ah, what it is to be young!
Conrad Ponders Plot Holes
Your Humble Scribe was re-watching "X-Men; The Last Stand" with the commentary and realised where the director had been, let us say, economical with the honesty. Art!
 |
| Ignore the reflection! Ignore the reflection! |
This is the prison truck transporting three dangerous mutant prisoners from Somewhere to Anywhere, because the plot requires it. Note that these first two prisoners are secured behind closed doors. As for the shape-shifting psychopath Mystique, who seems to kill because she enjoys it -
An open cell with bars, so you slobbering perverts can look at her change shape, and which also allows her to murder people quite handily. Since the guards had the anti-mutant serum already in convenient gun delivery-systems, why not simply dose all three of them and render them totally innocuous?
Partly, one supposes, because That Would Be Sensible. In fact, why not fly them from Somewhere, since that would be a lot less vulnerable to ambush?
Ah, what it is to have a logical mind!
"City In The Sky"
We're now moving beyond the beginning and are establishing the basis for the later plot, where we make a jump in time.
The long, looming shadow of the Bonetti
Report had caused some of those in power – a prescient few – to consider other,
cheaper and quicker alternatives to costly and complex orbital stations as
havens. As yet, with no convincing
cause, none of these options remained more than plans and outlines, all
suggested by the other teams working for the HSP.
CHAPTER 2 :Virginia Plane
2040
8:15 a.m.
When a high-speed trio of sleek black limousines slid into the
underground car park of the DS-5 Tower, CCTV systems in the security booths
picked them up. The Tower guards had
been warned the night before about such an arrival, thanks to the date, and
were ready. A quick phone call later,
the chief resident of the fifteenth floor stood ready and waiting in his office
suite. He crossed to one side of the
glass-walled room and threw back the cover of an A1 flipchart, revealing a
short, bold message.
The cluster of VIP’s from the limousines used a restricted-access VIP
lift to get up to the fifteenth floor,
and they emerged to strut imperiously across the lobby, into the secure floor-plan
and towards the premiere office space away in a corner. As per instructions, nobody on the staff
present tried to stop them, not even the narrow-eyed and suspicious secretary
sitting behind a desk adjacent to the big sliding office doors.
When the group came in, they – consciously or not – formed a wall around
a slim, teenage girl clad in an expensive silk Italian business suit, who moved
with the assurance of a jaguar across the anechoic floor tiles.
I know, I know, 2040's not that far off, but I wrote this years ago. At least 8 years gone. Art!- Bernal Sphere, on the double!
Finally -
The clouds are thinning but it's still pretty humid, and I appear to be sharing the Sekrit Layr with a moth (no problem) and a fly (DIRTY! DIRTY! DIRTY!), so I shall prepare myself with a newspaper. What ho!
* Possibly even in my lifetime.
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