BOOJUM!: Matt Paint

O How I Amuse Myself Sometimes!

This isn't one of them. Right, pay attention, we have an Intro to produce here, and first I need to inform you what it's not about, in time-honoured fashion. Firstly, we are not talking about the BBC's premier dramamentary "Doctor Who", and specifically not about the episode featuring Matt Smith as the titular 'Doctor' (doctor of what is never made clear), where he was squiring around Vincent Van Gogh. Art!

I still get to post a picture of it

It's called "Vincent And The Doctor", which neglects the leggy and vivacious Amy, for shame.

ANYWAY that's the red herring disposed of. Let us now mention Albert Whitlock, whom we here at BOOJUM! have mentioned previously, who was a British artist whom the South Canadians poached. Art!

????? Art, have you been sucking the insides out of spent fuel rods again? you know it throws your sense of sense off, severely. Okay, try a dose of curative cattle-prod and we'll start again. ALBERT WHITLOCK!

You see? You can do it when you try. O stop whining and put a bit of Sudocrem on it

Ol' Al was a specialist in the ancient and venerable craft of 'Matte Painting', which, again, we've mentioned before. Alas, when Ol' Al passed in 1999, matte paintings had gone the way of the cassette tape and floppy disks, replaced by CGI.

Briefly put, a matte painting faked a huge, very expensive set by being painted on a sheet of glass. Usually part of the sheet was blanked out, and this is where the action would be filmed and blended in. When done well it's hard to tell where the artwork and the scene begin and end. Art!

Part of the most terrifying documentary ever made, here's Ol' Al providing a matte of the alien ship in "The Thing".

Going back to the sci-fi theme, I wanted to focus on Ol' Al's contributions towards "Star Trek" in the original series, which a few of the better-informed of you out there might have encountered. Art!

"Where No Man Has Gone Before"

This is the autonomic lithium-cracking plant on Delta Vega, an unmanned industrial installation, which accounts for the lack of people present. Typically Ol' Al would have a week to work on his glass sheet, and although costs are not mentioned, his work was expensive enough to not be all too frequent. Art!

That's the actual set with actors present, which will have cost only a few dozen bucks to build, as opposed to the thousands to construct an actual replica of a lithium-cracking plant, even with models and foreshortening. Art!

"Dagger Of The Mind"

As I said, Ol' Al didn't come cheap and this looks like Desilu using the half-completed artwork for WNMHGB as backdrop for another episode. They were not shy of re-using props, so why not upcycle a half-finished painting, that meant they got twice as much value out of Ol' Al for the same price, because I bet they didn't pay him twice. Art!

Eminiar VII, "A Taste Of Armageddon"

Very bright and futuristic, and how much would it have cost to build this set using models? Of course, only a fraction of what you see is utilised as a matte, and if we can prod Art into action again -

How very ingenious, I'm sure you're thinking. Yes, absolutely! If you wanted to flesh out your sci-fi television background with sets that would take weeks to construct and thousands of dollars to fund, then a large glass panel bedaubed with oily smears is a definite winner.

Conrad isn't sure if Ol' Al got on-screen credits for his work STTOS, and it would require me to go trawling through the end titles on a Netflix episode - which is not beyond the bounds of credibility. Just don't count on it.

R.I.P. Ol' Al. An era died with you.

A Heavy Hitter

Conrad has just noticed that Ian McCollum, of "Forgotten Weapons" is doing an article on the Teuton Mg08 machine gun, which deserves at least a picture or two. Art!

This is the Teuton's machine gun of choice, which went into service in 1908, hence the title, after seeing what machine guns could do to massed infantry in the Russo-Japanese war (hint: bloody execution). The one Ian is looking at is an early model, as the later ones incorporated a small shield on the receiver, because the opposition liked to pick off the gun crew. Art!

Now, Conrad, being an inquisitive chap, has seen one of these close up and personal at the Lancashire Fusilier's museum in Preston. Out of curiosity I attempted to lift it with one hand, to see what kind of heft it had.

Dog Buns! That way lay a hernia. Bear in mind that the water jacket had been drained and there was no ammunition box mounted, and it was incredibly heavy.

Ian points out, to Conrad's hollow laughter, that in duress a single man could drag the gun with it's front legs folded all the way to the rear. Art!

Nope

Or, with the front legs extended fully forward, two men could howk it around. He reckons. Art!

This might explain an urban legend of the First Unpleasantness, where aggrieved British soldiers claimed that the Teutons were hefting machine guns around under the pretence of being stretcher-bearers. Well, if the two of you are carrying around your piece of precision engineering and don't want dirt to get into it, because the Unterscharfeldwebel will have your guts for puttees, what else do you do but cover it with a tarp or blanket?

I don't think the French experienced this problem as they shot or shelled any Teutons visible, stretcher bearers or not.

Well so far we've managed to steer clear of either Ruffia or Donald Judas Trump, which must make a pleasant change for any readers out there.

JUST BOW THE KNEE SOUTH CANADA!

Conrad keeps on saying this, BECAUSE IT'S TRUE. The South Canadians lack a sense of purpose and destiny as a benighted Republic, and clearly itch to be a part of the Commonwealth, because how else can you explain follies like this? Art!

How on earth does this qualify as 'news'? It doesn't, but it does allow "The Daily Beast" to satiate the unquenchable thirst their readers have for The British Monarchy STAND UP FOR KINGIE! and this is only one of two articles they have on TBM in today's edition.

Bah!

"City In The Sky"

Featuring a lawn Dart that weighs two hundred tons.

‘Excellent. After which I am going to pilot it to an interception of the Lithoi’s base.’

And the captain had made his statement. He had years of experience flying M3’s MEV.

‘Because you’re going to hit trouble when the Earth’s curvature interrupts your signal. Not to mention Arcology One’s own rotation.’

For a moment the other man’s attention was occupied by his control joystick. He clicked the cursor over an onscreen button labelled “Engine” and the inset view changed rapidly, shifting to bring Earth into centre view.

‘No, Captain, the trouble will begin when the Lithoi detect my guided missile. Fortunately my colleagues Downstairs are putting a diversionary scheme into motion as we speak.’

Oswald shrugged.

‘Let me know if you need any help. Is it okay if I call back after our next run?’

The straw boater was tipped in polite acknowledgement as Doctor Smith concentrated on his piloting.

When the captain returned again from the next MEV lunar run the small man had taken off his coat, revealing a strange armless sweater made from what the captain believed was called “wool”. The audience around him stood three deep and nobody tried to move away this time. The inset view on the laptop had been enlarged to fill almost half the screen, showing Australia in daylight.

Things are cracking on.

Schadenfreude!

It's that delicious Teuton word that, unusually, stands in for a whole sentence: The malicious enjoyment of other people's misery. We here at the blog love the concept and the practice of 'point and laugh', because we're terrible people, and the word 'people' is doing quite a bit of heavy lifting here. Art!