Beyond the Roundels

I signed up for icons10in20 (a challenge comm where you make 10 icons in 20 days to specific themes), and made a set for the 1977 BBC Dracula:

Teaser:



( Full set under here )

I am all behind with what I've been watching, as well as other things. In the summer, I watched Bill Brand (Thames TV 1976), starring Jack Shepherd in the title role, as a ex-college lecturer and idealistic new Labour MP for an industrial northern borough. It also featured Lynn Farleigh as his wife, Cherie Lunghi as his girlfriend (amusingly, called Alex Ferguson) & Alan Badel.

It was quite a high-profile series at the time and earned Jack Shepherd a BAFTA nomination, but I had very mixed feelings about it. ( Maybe it would have been better without Bill Brand? )


I have also watched two (and a bit) episodes of the psychological horror anthology Shadows of Fear, ( Mixed feelings, but also pretty pics and the Revenge of Isabel Archer on the wrong suitor (but it's easy to make a mistake when everyone's called Ed )


* I am still grudgy at Ed Bishop for pushing her down the stairs in UFO. I am delighted she got her revenge, even if she got confused about which Ed she should be sending down the stairs. These things are perfectly understandable, and they were both mean to her anyway.

1. I went into town today so I am tired again (brain. what is that?) I made some gifs, though, so that was something. Also, of course, I went into town and now have a) pens that my Dad claimed weren't in Smiths (Dad, you don't look hard enough! /ungrateful daughter) and b) chocolate and c) books from a charity shop. (One from a crime series I hadn't heard of that looks fun, and another that is on the Norman Conquest to join my pile of books to be read on the Norman Conquest.)


2. Friending meme! "I'm so glad I live in a world where there are Octobers."
A friending meme for Autumn 2018.

→ come and find new friends! ←

(I haven't done my entry yet, because tired, but hopefully I will. Still, friending meme! \o/)


3. Have a gif of Cherie Lunghi and Peter Egan as Princess Charlotte and the Prince Regent (from 1979) as proof that I made a thing, such as it is:

A bunch of icons made for various iconthat challenges:

Teaser:



( 12x icons for OUaT, Doctor Who, Thriller, Sense & Sensibility )

I have re-uploaded my Sapphire & Steel icons I lost via Photobucket (both the latest fiasco and the previous thing where someone hotlinked something and ate up all my bandwidth). Hopefully these'll last for a while this time. I need to do this for several other lost icon batches, but sovay expressed an interest in the S&S ones, so it seemed like a good place to start.

These icons were made across a couple of years in various batches (but inevitably focus most on Assignments 3 & 6. You can probably work out why).

Teaser:


( Icons under here )

Earlier this year when I watched Manhunt and Doomwatch, I planned to do this sort of primer for both (and for all my old things!), because I like doing them, they hopefully explain the obscure things I'm on about & they may even be useful. And then I did Manhunt, but was slow to screencap Doomwatch and then decided there was no point in posting things like that. Which is just silly, and, in short, here is my best stab at a guide to Doomwatch and why you might even want to watch it, if you don't mind beige TV!

(The fandom_manifesto tag below will take you to the others of these I've done so far, although I see that Photobucket ate the pics from the Enemy at the Door one.)

Anyway, welcome to the future. It probably wants to kill you...

Doomwatch


Doomwatch was a BBC drama series that ran from 1970 to 1972, created and script-edited by Gerry Davis and Kit Pedler (who invented Doctor Who's Cybermen) and produced by Terence Dudley.

It focused on the Ministry of Security's Department of Observation and Measurement of Scientific Work, nicknamed 'Doomwatch' (which is what the team also name their computer) as they investigated possible dangerous side-effects of new scientific discoveries from plastic-easting viruses to killer rats to the dangers of DDT and lead in petrol, often having an eerily prophetic tendency to predict the headlines and sparking more than one debate in parliament. According to the Cult of Doomwatch, when Channel 5 tried to revive the series with a modern version, they got some scientists to give them cutting-edge ideas for storylines... and found that all of them had been covered by the original.

Doomwatch was headed up by Nobel prize-winning mathematician and phyisicist, Dr Spencer Quist, backed by Dr John Ridge (a chemist who had worked for MI6), Colin Bradley (the down-to-earth, Northern (TM) computer specialist and general dogbody), young chemist Tobias (Toby) Wren and the secretary, Pat Hunnisett.

So, Our Heroes vs Whitehall and unethical scientists + real issues & science and environmental crusading + an occasional edge of horror = the cult phenomenon that was Doomwatch.

( You've done the impossible; now don't try and do the intolerable )

A salute to two Doctor Who luminaries who have died very recently:

Pioneering female director Paddy Russell (responsible for Pyramids of Mars and Horror of Fang Rock, among other serials and series).


And composer Dudley Simpson, who was the sound of Doctor Who from the mid 60s to the late 70s - pretty much the peak of its popularity the first time round.

But, of course, he also scored nearly all of Blake's 7 and the thing I'll remember the most when all the kazoos are forgotten, is its marvellous theme tune.

Now I've finally finished my Thriller (Part 1) review/picspam post, I am behind again. Let me talk about what I have been watching over the last couple of months (or more), other than the first 5 discs of Thriler.

1. I finished Secret Army. I did mostly enjoy it, although I got impatient with it again at the end. Terence Hardiman as Reinhardt (who doesn't give a damn about anything since they've lost the war and most of his friends have just been executed in the wake of the assassination attempt on Hitler) did liven things up, though. He was great, and not even actually evil, either. (Particularly his exit when ( Spoiler ) Kessler is rightly both awful and complex, of course, and Clifford Rose was very good in the role.) Bernard Hepton spent most of the last series in prison, on film, but he did eventually escape and return to the studio, and I gave it a lot of plus points for what eventually happened with Monique, too. Anyway, I watched it! I now know where 'Allo 'Allo is coming from.


2. I skipped ahead briefly to watch Suzanne Neve's second Thriller, and while I'll cover it in its turn, I can report that she is better at terrorising innocent Americans than James Maxwell: she sticks them in her underground pottery kiln and bakes them, no angsting required. 1970s Suzanne Neve is so far a lot more evil than 1960s Suzanne Neve. (I would side-eye the ending of the 1968 Dracula here, but personally, I blame Ed Bishop for throwing her down the stairs in UFO.)


3. I finally got to the E-Space trilogy (DW), watching Full Circle and State of Decay (before an appropriate break for the BBC 1977 Dracula). Full Circle has a good SF idea at the heart, but nothing else much with which to pad it out. Except Adric, but, er, well...

I enjoyed State of Decay a lot, though, especially in comparison to Full Circle (it's good to see that future spaceships will go on with BBC Acorn computers on board!). Plus, the whole Time Lords and Vampires mythology backstory is potentially fun to play with and Romana gets two great costumes, while Adric spends at least an episode unconscious, and it has a great look, particularly for that era, especially the location scenes. What more could I ask for? (I'm sorry: Adric wasn't bad in this one! I'm mean, I know.)


4. And so, then, what more appropriate than that I pause to watch the TV show that caused State of Decay to be postponed for 3 years and gave us Horror of Fang Rock instead? (Accidentally; my viewing is not really that well planed!)

I'm not really sure why the BBC were so nervy about this version of Dracula that they thought DW doing vampires at the same time might make them look silly, but apparently they were. They had no need: this is lovely. It's unlike most of the old TV I've been watching - it was 1977 doing glossy event TV with a 2 1/2 hr feature-length version of the novel that's probably the most faithful adaptation still. (Although there are some changes, of course.) It was very good! I recommend it even if you're not usually into old TV, but are into Dracula. (I believe it is up on YouTube, and I got the DVD pretty cheap anyway.)

( Cut for further Dracula rambling )


6. I then decided that I should stop being wimpish and watch the rest of Mystery and Imagination. I'd already seen "Dracula", the Ian Holm "Frankenstein" and "The Suicide Club" (the one with David Collings and the cream tarts and the invisible hyenas and Major Geraldyne, because obv. that is the one that David Collings would be in). The Freddie Jones "Sweeney Todd" was out because I Do Not Do Sweeney Todd, which left me with "Uncle Silas" and "The Curse of the Mummy" out of the Thames adaptations, so I watched "The Curse of the Mummy." ( More about 1960s TV Victorian horror ) After that, I thought I'd had more than enough horror for a bit and left "Uncle Silas "unwatched and returned to Doctor Who and E-Space.


7. Warrior's Gate was very weird and also had Clifford Rose being excellent again. It was definitely the good weird, though, in that way only Classic Who is every once in a while. I mean, it looks like the stranger kind of 80s pop video (one that would definitely get nominated for Yuletide), so it wouldn't be for everyone, but still: the good weird/meta, I think, with bonus believably mundane, petty villains and random lion people. (It must be Doctor Who. <3)


8. I recorded Mrs Miniver off the telly, and the main thing I have taken from this is that Julian Fellowes stole the flower show plot for Downton Abbey. And given that I already know that he stole two plotlines/backstories and a minor incident from Duchess of Duke Street (as well as acting in it), I am now wondering with some interest and amusement, where exactly he swiped everything else from. (Anything from Upstairs Downstairs, maybe?) It's kind of engagingly blatant swiping, though. And gives us May Whitty vs Maggie Smith! Oh my. (I did like it, but it was made mid-WWII and so is very patriotic etc. But well done! There were some really good scenes, and Dame May Whitty as well as Greer Garson, and it was very watchable still.)


9. I also recorded the next old series Drama was offering as well, which is When the Boat Comes In. It stars Jack and Esther from New Tricks (James Bolam and Susan Jameson, who are married in rl, and going out in this). It is early 20th C Tyneside and the first episode was grim about shellshocked returning soldiers, the second had a poor orphan shipped off to Australia alone, and then the continuity announcer went, "And next, things get even harder..." It is, as they say, grim oop north. It seems good so far, though. And maybe one day the boat will come in; there are at least 40 eps on my DVR already and they may not all be equally depressing...


* I don't know if this is really a downside, though. It is very funny.

(I found this lurking unposted on my Dreamwidth. I wrote it on April 1st; I don't know why I didn't post it. I suppose a Talking Meme would be no fun if it didn't take me all year to get through it!)

For the Talking Meme, from dimity_blue: What are your favourite Dumas film adaptations?


I thought this was pretty funny for a minute, as I have only ever actually watched one Dumas film adaptation, and then I eventually remembered that I have in fact seen the 2011 Three Musketeers as well. I suppose I could also count the endless 1980s cartoon version, Dogtanian and the Muskehounds, but it's obvious that there's no competition here. Also I've never seen a Dumas film that isn't The Three Musketeers, so it's really not as if I'm an expert.

Anyway, my favouite out of this *cough* wide line-up is clearly the 1970s Richard Lester films. When I saw them first, I'd just read the unabridged English translation instead of the cartoon and the abridged Puffin version and decided it was one of my favourite things ever after all and that I would never watch an adaptation because no adaptation would get the tongue-in-cheek attitude of the book, and then my Dad made me watch this and while it alters some things, it does indeed get the tongue-in-cheek attitude of the book exactly right, and the cast are hard to beat: Michael Yorke, Richard Chamberlain, Faye Dunaway, Oliver Reed, Racquel Welch, Roy Kinnear, Spike Milligan, Christopher Lee and Charlton Heston.

( Cut for graphic )

I have some quibbles about some things, maybe, and obviously it would have been nice if the director had actually paid the actors for two films instead of one, but it still wins easily out of all the three and a bit Three Musketeers adaptations I have seen.

Another of the things I've watched in the period since May, courtesy of the Drama channel, is the 1980s BBC WWII drama Tenko.

I knew that this featured Stephanie Beacham and Louise Jameson, and was largely written by some of the people who were responsible for Wish Me Luck (and some of The House of Eliott), and was about women PoW in Japanese internee camps in Singapore in WWII. And since I like both WML & HoE (both v female-centric 80s & 90s historical dramas) and also things that feature people trapped in relatively small spaces and ensemble casts, I recorded it.

I would write a sensible review, but what I didn't know was that:

Stephanie Cole is in it as a curmudgeonly lesbian atheist doctor who winds up making fast friends with a fearsome Dutch nun, even though she doesn't understand how that is a thing that is a thing. MY HEART.

But, yeah. It's addictive, your mileage will almost certainly vary, has a high death count (something like 14 regulars, mostly in the first season and a half, die, on or off screen), and MY HEART. I think probably I shall be requesting it for Yuletide.

It walks quite an difficult line and mostly, I felt, pretty well, given the subject matter and the fact that the majority of its main characters are privileged and prejudiced, being British (and Dutch) in Singapore, save for one storyline in The Reunion (which isn't bad as such, but they needed a whole series to tackle it properly if they were going to go there; as it is, it leaves a bad taste in the mouth). But YMMV, and I was a bit distracted by all the HEARTS IN MY EYES for most of it.

Anyway, this is why I'm relieved I can watch Secret Army and mostly just think, "Hmm, after this, I have to rewatch 'Allo 'Allo, don't I?" I can't go round casually giving my heart to every problematic old TV show that comes along, or what would be left of me?


I also bought S2 of ITV's 70s anthology series, The Rivals of Sherlock Holmes with my birthday money. As the name implies, this is a set of dramatisations of other late Victorian detectives who aren't Sherlock. I got S2 because it promised me more Douglas Wilmer (BBC 1960s Sherlock), and a guest appearance from Suzanne Neve. I'll talk about the rest sometime, as I've deserted it for Department S for the moment. (Not because it was bad, but because it cries out to be watched in winter, and also I wanted a series to get into as opposed to an anthology.)

Anyway, Suzanne Neve guested in "The Absent-Minded Coterie", featuring Charles Gray as M. Valmont, France's greatest amateur detective (which you can find here at YT if you weren't lucky enough to get it in the Network sale), and I will pause to note it here, because it turned out to be made of all the things I like. I mean, if you combined Inspector Neele/Mary Dove's dynamic with Poirot and Sherlock Holmes and Adam Adamant, this is pretty much what you get, with bonus Suzanne Neve. Anyway, clearly a thing calculated to please me is not going to please everyone else, but I am delighted to inform you that France's premier amateur detective is not up to outwitting Suzanne Neve and that she gets to appear mysteriously out of the fog and commit crimes and then be smug while wearing epic hats. I recced it to john_amend_all because the above things are a lot of where our likes meet, and he informed me that the original story doesn't even have Suzanne Neve's character (Miss Mackail) in it, so sometimes 1970s adaptors take the best liberties with things.

( Have some hats )

(I started writing this post a while ago as I was going to cover more things I've watched over the last couple of months, but a) this bit got overlong and b) liadt told me to post my thoughts on BBC HVIII now, and since doing what Liadt told me worked yesterday, that seemed like a plan.)


( The Six Wives of Henry VIII (BBC 1970) )

1. Peter Sallis has died. He was 96, of course, so he'd had a very good innings, but still. *salutes* Obviously, he was ubiquitous as Clegg and as Wallace, but since I started delving into old telly, he will also forever be The Man Who Didn't Eat Sweets in a Public Eye episode I have watched more than most.


2. fic_corner is running again! It's an exchange for children's & YA lit and is usually good fun. There's a brainstorming post open and nominations will begin soon. (I don't know if I'll be able to do it, because summer, but I think it's relevant to some people's interests.)


3. While I'm talking about comms, I'm not sure I ever gave hidden_passages a quick pimp - it's a general comm for all things Gothic fiction related, run by calliopes_pen. (I think I was pimping my own comms such a lot once I moved them over that I got too exhausted. I meant to mention a few other good Dreamwidth comms, whether new, old, or recently moved, but I forgot.)


4. I have ordered the 1970s TV series Thriller with my b'day voucher. I don't know whether that was the best choice or not, but I will at least now have a proper screencap-able copy of my very own of the episode where James Maxwell and Julian Glover move into together and bury girls in the back garden and that is the important thing. (I think Suzanne Neve and Gemma Jones may be in other episodes, too.) ( Gif )

1. If you discover a plastic-eating virus, don't take it on a plane.

2. Don't breed mutant killer rats or blue moths. It never ends well.

3. Always wear gloves when handling fish.

4. If you're having a paranoid episode, consider moving out of your flat if you live in a tower block. If you're having a paranoid episode and you're an astronaut, don't go up in the rocket.

5. You don't want to be nothing but a brain. No, really.

6. Don't go pot-holing.

7. Always double check that you've told your computer not to kill you today.

8. Take jet-lag seriously and never sit next to a PR guy on the plane.

9. Advertising can kill you. Also, don't take sweets from strangers.

10. Avoid standing in lighthouses when jet planes are flying overhead.

11. Don't judge people by their DNA or any other unproven scientific theory.

12. It's absolutely okay to break into any and all labs/top secret research centres if the people running it won't let you in. They must be up to something, so it doesn't matter that Whitehall and Dr Quist will be cross when you inevitably get caught five minutes later and they have to vouch for you again.

13. Your secretary is not a guinea pig.

14. Don't wear floral shirts and kipper ties when you visit Whitehall. Try something approaching a suit.

15. Scientists are all a lot of weirdies. But don't tell them I told you that.

16. Science and progress are all very well, but human beings are the worst and will ruin everything. Please check your levels of pride, stupidity, arrogance, obsession, corporate greed, and ambition before continuing with your scientific project. Failure to do so will almost certainly be fatal for someone.