Beyond the Roundels

I've been doing this series of gifsets on tumblr for a very long time now. I've been meaning to crosspost them ever since. I'd (ironically) just drafted up one such post shortly before I accidentally deleted my whole tumblr that time in 2018 or whenever it was, and if I'd been faster about it, I wouldn't have completely lost some of them. Anyway, I've been meaning to finally get around to it, and today I went out so am ill and was thinking that I want to magically have a post to post and it should be about James Maxwell in some way and also probably this episode because it is a go to tired-episode. And then, I realised, that that was entirely doable for once.

[These are no longer in the original order, because the whole deletion thing wrecked that anyway. Format = tumblr gifset + original blurb. This, as you can probably tell from the gifs, was one of the earlier ones - originally no. 5/?]

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Original post here on tumblr.


Favourite Episodes of old telly: Enemy at the Door 1.10 "Treason" (London Weekend Television, 1978). (Written by Kenneth Clark; dir. Jonathan Alwyn.)

( We fought, he said, and you were not there; cut for gifs )

Perhaps more a favourite episode rather than best (but then ‘best’ in Enemy at the Door would include all the spoilery, continuity-heavy episodes, so let’s go with my odd choice here, why not). I just appreciate hugely an episode of TV that’s all about people feeling sidelined, bored, trapped, frustrated and despairing to varying degrees. Chiefly, it focuses on Major General Laidlaw (Joss Ackland), his spirit being slowly eaten away by inactivity and small humiliations and the visiting grandee, Generalmajor von Wittke (James Maxwell) - Laidlaw’s brother-in-law - who is, as it turns out, just as trapped as everyone else.

Enemy at the Door s1 on the Internet Archive | Treason at YouTube.

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(I still love this episode. It is a strange one, and the writer's style is circular and repetetive, which I can see would not be everyone else's cup of tea, but it works for me. Jonathan Alwyn's direction is reliably great, and I like the constant understated background sound of the storm that underpins most of the episode. I still appreciate so much an episode of TV which explores the inability to do things, and revolves around something that doesn't and can't happen, and the unspoken implications of what consequences will follow. I wrote fic for this, and there is so much detail in the stated backstories of the two main guest characters that make them inverted mirrors of each other in ways that are fascinating and muddy the morality even further than is immediately apparent in the episode. Also James Maxwell wants to kill Hitler and Richter and Freidel finish up with a knowing Julius Caesar reference. ("He is an honourable man. They are both honourable men!") EatD knows how to make me happy, or certainly cathartically sad in all the right ways.)

(This is not the best one of these sets to begin with, because it's an episode that probably nobody but me would list as a favourite. Except maybe hyarrowen, but idk if that was just because I went on and on about and then wrote fic. But when I'm ill, I just want to talk online about "Treason" and this once, I actually can!)

1. persiflage_1 just linked me to this Dec 1977 London Weekend Television promo pic, and I'm so strangely charmed to see Emily Richard, Bernard Horsfall, and Alfred Burke standing together (they must have started work in some shape on Enemy at the Door,) and yet all smiling and happy and not at all war-worn and sad. (I want that AU, please. :lol:)


2. I finished my epic quest to gif an awful lot of the 1968 Thames TV Dracula over at tumblr and am now (via the queue) posting the final, collected character and ship editions - calliopes_pen, I actually have done a Jonathan one! (Be proud of me. <3)

But if you want to understand why Dr Seward is so hopeless at fighting vampires, here's his photoset, complete with quote that explains that in one sentence. :-D


3. Pers also pointed out that Big Finish were doing Adam Adamant Lives! audios next year, but I looked at the page and got as far as learning that it didn't involve the original actors and the line "And to his rescue comes history enthusiast and would-be novelist Georgina Jones" and ran away. I mean, yes, of course make Georgie more pro-active in a reboot by all means, but if you want an Edwardian Adventurer & Gent culture clash with a with-it 1960s girl, making her a bookish historian instead of a DJ is, er, not the way to do it.

Besides, Georgie would be so horrified at the mere idea of that description! As would Adam, for different reasons. And Simms would never let her live it down. There would be limericks. I'm tempted to write fic. (But not the limericks.) ETA: I'm going to be laughing a lot at that line every time I think of it...

To start at the end, as it were, before I forget everything. The theme for this week in my old telly adventures seems to have mainly been Bad Stuff Happening to Planes.*

( Ransom, Secret Army & Department S )

Some Enemy at the Door fic, written for Hyarrowen, who wanted something to do with the Atlantic Wall and who shares my appreciation of Martel and Richter (and Committee Man!). I don't know if this was what was wanted, as it's mainly Martel & Richter discussing some consequences of the Wall for the Islands, but it's what I came up with:

Waiting For the Sky to Fall (1218 words) by lost_spook
Chapters: 1/1
Fandom: Enemy at the Door (TV)
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Relationships: Philip Martel & Dieter Richter
Characters: Philip Martel, Dieter Richter
Additional Tags: Vignette, World War II, Starvation, Post-Canon, Stealth Friendship
Summary: Autumn 1944, and the situation on Guernsey grows ever more bleak, but there's always some slight consolation to be had, if you look for it hard enough.

I made various icons for NaArMaMo, but halfway through the month, I started on an utterly pointless large set for Enemy at the Door. (NaArMaMo is just for having fun and experimenting, so I did.)

Teaser:



( A lot of people need help - they don't know how to fight or even what to fight sometimes )

I'm sure other Classic DW fans will be sorry to hear that Bernard Horsfall has died (1930-2013). (Gulliver, Taron in Planet of the Daleks, Goth and another Time Lord, or Goth unnamed, who knows?)

:-(

And I'm sad, because, as I said a couple of posts ago, I can't get Enemy at the Door (1978-1980) out of my head and he played the main character among the Islanders, Dr Philip Martel. He was every bit as good and reliable and real as he always seemed in his guest Doctor Who roles and it was great to see him in a major part. And he really was exceptional in the storyline that bridged S1 and S2. (I can't explain properly without spoiling that bit. And Enemy at the Door really is worth watching, and worth watching relatively unspoiled, so I won't do that.) But he was great. It was hard to come back down to episode-of-the-week after watching the way he and Alfred Burke (and others, but particularly those two) played that out between them.

*salutes sadly*