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!)

* First off, no_true_pair is now open for sign-ups! \0/ (I'm still trying to decide who to put on my lists. Only 4 characters in a set!! *runs around in circles*)


* Secondly, Marie-Clare has just started watching sapphire and Steel over on her YouTube channel ("Is this going to be scary?" she asked about halfway through. XD) Anyway, if anyone else would like to see her reaction, there it is!

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And now for a meme! I picked this up via lirazel - List 8 television shows that you would show someone to get to know you.

Which sounded like fun, although with the necessary caveat that I don't think anybody who isn't me should watch ALL of these, which probably tells you all you really need to know about me anyway. This list is 100% true and I would rec all of the things on it to at least somebody round here, but I don't think it'd make the best watchlist! XD


1. Doctor Who - tl;dr - just watch DW. Bits from all of it. Whatever you like. DW has been just about every kind of show in turn. It's been my first and foremost and sometimes only fannish love since I was 11 and I watched the last ten minutes of The Happiness Patrol and found out that sometimes one show can embrace at the same moment killing Bertie Bassett and reflecting that happiness and sadness are two sides of the same coin. (You can't have true happiness without sadness, because you can have neither without love.) And that blue is a great colour.

I learned that the most extraordinary things begin in the most mundane places, that we're all bigger on the inside really. It's about true friendship (found in unlikely people) across space and time, about imagination and stories - all kinds - and facing your fears and the monsters they shape themselves into; the importance of free will (it's not an illusion after all, do i have the right?), that evil must and can be fought; that change is hard but everything must evolve in the end. There's always good in it, too (even if nobody likes it when you redecorate). No matter how serious you are about what you do, you don't necessarily have to be serious about how you do it. There's no point in being grown up if you can't be childish sometimes. It's better to travel hopefully than arrive. Take the long way round. All of time and space, where do you want to start?

And there's at least one episode or serial or audio or comic or book or Doctor or era to please everyone; and nobody is pleased by all of it.

My most formative bits are probably (inevitably) Seven & Ace, and the first season in 1963, and Robots of Death and Vengeance on Varos and the Fifth Doctor's era, but then there's season 7 (old who), and episodes like Hide and Listen and The Day of the Doctor, and The War Games (which I watched rented out from Aberystwyth Library - 3 day loan - in installments in two days, gripped), and honestly, the point is, you should watch whatever till you find your bits, because randomness and choice and freewill and sometimes being quite silly is the order of the day.


2. Enemy at the Door - it represents history like I studied it, it is TV that is shaped around characters, and it shows you what a librarian actually does, when Miss Brown risks her life for a professional code of conduct that I shared, too, and it was a series that gets how it feels to be trapped through circumstances outside your control. I felt like someone had made this specially for me, weirdly, given that I didn't even want to watch it because I didn't think it'd be my thing.


3. Spooks - my first grown up fannish love, with snarky pretty tragic spies and also RUTH EVERSHED. If you're going to understand me, you need to watch Ruth. Also I love tragedy and characters dying when I'm in the right mood. It helps if it's snarky and ironic tragedy because you're damned if you do and damned if you don't. Plus, it's important to know how to kill people with forks and disarm a bomb in your microwave, and the key is in the things that are never said.


4. Shadow of the Tower - because wordy, theatrical historical old time drama that wants to be shakespeare is my thing. also it is the only way anyone can understand my James Maxwell thing. Not that you necessarily will. But SotT does at least make it more explicable than anything else if you can sit through it. Which, tbf, you might not be able to, but. I have. At least ten whole times and probably more. It's awesome really. ;-p


5. Sapphire and Steel. I'm weird, how weird am I? Also you will need to meet Silver and that I think the most perfect relationship is between three mysterious non-human beings who pretty certainly will be doing something that isn't sex when they're together, whatever it might be. I think that's wonderful.


6. Once Upon a Time - for fantasy, my absolute love of fandom crossovers - this whole show is a giant crossover - my ridiculous sense of humour (this show frequently shares it), for a female-led show that also has sword-fighting and dragons and pirates and curses and magic, and for Regina (covering my love of evil ladies who know how to dress + my evident love of grudgingly reformed evil ladies) and also, from s7, Alice, whose story I think resonates with quite a few people, but she's another rare character who genuinely knows what it is to be isolated and trapped.


7. Hinterland (Y Gwyll, but since I watched Hinterland, it has to be that version). Because of Aber. To understand me, Aberystwyth, where I went to uni is important. Hinterland does not necessarily reflect Aber properly because it never goes up Penglais Hill, but it does show a lot of the reasons why I'll always love it. Plus, Wales and Welsh and Mared, and I should have at least one detective show to be representative. (Even if my general taste is more Golden Age/Cosy than this.)


8. Dracula (1968). I couldn't decide at this point, so I went for this because it was the shortest of those vying for the last spot! This has a lot of my favourite old telly people in at once, it is very iddy for me and it taught me where the line lies between the creepy things I do like (often very much) and most horror (which I don't), which is basically that I like a bit of old fashioned (usually historically set) Gothic horror, and Dracula-esque vampires, too. Plus, fainting men, always a plus. You can also experience my sadness at tragic fake hair, which clearly is important.


It is very weird to me that I didn't include B7 and Press Gang in particular, but DW + Spooks = B7 (as I was told when someone who also liked both of those recced it to me) and DW also has Steven Moffat. Even if probably not quite as good as in PG and a list without Lynda Day is probably not quite right.) I did very nearly go for Survivors in the last spot, because even if it also made me wild at times, it was great, and I really really appreciate that it went full steam on asking all the hard questions. EatD doubled for Public Eye and Mr Palfrey. But mainly DW has everything, really. Nothing more is truly needed in this context.

I keep forgetting to get around to reposting my icons from tinypic and photobucket, but kateoftheangels was asking after this Clare one, which reminded me, so this is the first of two old icon reposts, one for Enemy at the Door and a giant one for Public Eye to follow. There are a lot, so forgive me if I don't number them or order them as logically as I would usually try to. Please note: fairly obviously, contains images of WWII German uniforms.

Teaser:


( Why are you so afraid of ideas? )

Skipping about a bit - I've been so tired over the last week or so and where I've had any energy I've tried to put it into my chocolateboxcomm assignment.

Challenge #10: In your own space, talk About A Creator/Someone Who Inspired You.

I rarely know what to say for this one - because it's fannish I think of fanwork creators, and that always seems too difficult. We are many and so many different interactions have inspired me over the years. But auroracloud talked about some of the pro SFF authors who have meant so much to her in being ill. And I thought, there is one creator who's helped me through my illness and inspired me to write quite a few things in the way I have, when I've been able to, but he's an invisible person I know very little about. (I might not like him at all, who knows? Maybe it's better this way.)

Anyway, as plenty of you will know, I have ME/CFS and am home chronically ill and wound up watching a lot of very old TV and among it, the work of writer, script-editor and producer Michael Chapman. I first came across him in Special Branch (1968). (His episode wasn't a standout, but he had written a housewife character with an unexpected side-stepping of stereotyping and sexism in context, and so, I took note of his name, but I didn't know it'd ever be of any more significance.)

However, he also created and script-edited Enemy at the Door, was responsible for the last three seasons of Public Eye, and Mr Palfrey of Westminster. The things that he produced rather than script-edited also show his influence - the importance of small things, quiet continuity and character growth, a sense of compassion and the complexity of humanity in a very understated way, plus impressive historical accuracy in EatD. I've loved a lot of things, but those three touched me probably more than all the rest, and the common link is Michael Chapman. Sometimes you find the right story or creator for the right time, and that was mine.

His individual episodes aren't always my favourites (although some are, especially his S1-2 bridging episodes in EatD, and in Mr Palfrey, where two in particular are just really beautiful), some are a bit dull, even, but while there are lots of things I'd like to see released or found from old TV, Michael Chapman's other TV series that he produced and/or scripted-edited are at the top of my list. I can't imagine I'd be disappointed, because he hasn't let me down yet, from 1960s The Protectors and Undermind to Mr Palfrey. I suppose I'll have to watch his work on The Bill eventually instead (look, there's a lot of The Bill, not much of it edited by him, and I'm dangerously completist, so...), as I'm assured it's also good and he won a much-deserved BAFTA for it.

He's probably therefore entirely to blame for weird origfic canon I use for Runaway Tales & now rainbowfic, because it started out as a Fake 1970s TV show (that was totally script-edited by Michael Chapman in my head). (The Edward/Julia AUs aren't his fault, though. Those are definitely mine. ;-p)

Some quotes, although, as I've said, it's often his overarching influence that's his main strength.

From Mr Palfrey:

On spying: "Our country right or wrong. We leave small matters such as crises of conscience, fastidiousness over the truth to traitors." And: "Who will remember us in a hundred years' time?"

"... a man who restores violins is arguably of more use to mankind than an Air Vice Marshall."


From Public Eye:

Frank: "You can't erase someone on a technicality."
Lawyer: "You're a humanist, Mr Marker."


From Enemy at the Door:

Major Richter: "Would you be happier with a more conventional attitude of hostility, then?"
Olive Martel: "In a way, yes. It would be less confusing. Small kindnesses tend to cloud the issue."
Richter: "Which is what?"
Olive: "That we are at war, and you and I are enemies."
Richter: "And ordinary humanity has no place in it?"
Olive: "As I say, it confuses."

"War must be fought, even if it's only in the mind. You cannot win if you do not fight... but you cannot fight if you do not survive."


Also, his description, in an interview, of The Protectors* as being "about three level-headed people who try to prevent crime from happening." (♥)


* Not that Protectors. Or the other one. The one I'm the only one who's heard of, except liadtbunny because I lent her the disc with John Carson and his hat. Because it's about three level-headed people trying to prevent crime.

As promised/threatened I have now written the square "Killer plants" for tic_tac_woe for Enemy at the Door. I'm not sure what it says that I can only be cheerful in this fandom if I'm doing an apocalyptic AU, but there you go. I had probably too much fun and am a terrible person (but it is only a cardboard 70s show peopled by character actors, after all, no matter how well-researched and sad it may be).

We Plough the Fields and Scatter (3518 words) by lost_spook
Chapters: 1/1
Fandom: Enemy at the Door (TV)
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Characters: Philip Martel, Dieter Richter, Ernst Freidel, Olive Martel, Otto Kluge, Klaus Reinicke, Peter Porteous
Additional Tags: Community: tic_tac_woe, Apocalypse, killer plants, Alien Invasion, Alternate Universe, Season/Series 02, Crack, World War II, Humor
Summary: “Honestly, Colonel, what unholy experimentation have you people been up to? Can’t you try and stick to constructing abominations out of concrete as usual?”


(Also I have no immediate plans to write any more EatD for a bit, so that's something. Or not, as the case may be, for the tiny handful of us that know it.)

I'd like to write an interesting post, but I can't think of anything interesting to write about, which does scupper that plan somewhat.

So:

I started watching the BBC Shakespeare Coriolanus and it had Joss Ackland in and naturally instead I thought about the episode with the two generals in from Enemy at the Door and writing fic and then thought, how dodgy will they be? (very), but then that it would fit the hc_bingo square "atonement" giving me a bingo! (I mean, it is too late for it to count, but it's still silly to have four in a row and then never do the fifth, even in amnesty.) So obviously bingo squares win out over sense and things.

I was going to ask for sensible suggestions for what to call a WWII German aristocratic general (he doesn't have a first name, and I can't get through the fic without giving him one), but if you Google top German names for the 1890s, the internet will provide. (This is why authors have no excuse for the whole Carolyn business. Srsly. GOOGLE before you casually Carolyn your Regency romance.)

I can't do polls over here, but in Random Name Choices, for [Blank] von Wittke, I am considering:

*Paul
*Emil
*Erich
*Bernhard
*Bruno

(I think in the usual way EatD is so layered and details can be teased out on rewatching, so it almost feels as if I ought to be able to find his real name, but other than by somehow obtaining a script, this is not true. But it still feels wrong, so help me with random selection! /totally logical)

(hyarrowen, if you see this, there is no infidelity I promise, but yet some very slight shippage! At least in my notebook, that is, or actually, that bit might not even be in the notebook. So, actually, there is no shippage as usual... I should go type my dodgy WWII fic about DOOMED generals who understand they kind of deserve to be DOOMED, instead of waffling.)


I haven't watched enough of Coriolanus yet to comment on that although it seems at this stage to be a very strong entry (but I won't commit to anything until I'm at least halfway through). It stars Alan Howard, Irene Worth, Joss Ackland and Mike Gwilym. So far Joss Ackland wants Alan Howard to take up public life, but Alan Howard would so much rather be having semi-naked bloody wrestling matches with Mike Gwilym. A valid life choice, I suppose, although Mike Gwilym seems less keen.

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.

First, for executrix who asked (after I bounced up and down and said I would take any excuse to write Enemy at the Door) for Dr Martel, being accused of collaboration, post-Occupation. I'm afraid it isn't very exciting, but I have now wroted it, which is always something:

Points of View (600 words) by lost_spook
Chapters: 1/1
Fandom: Enemy at the Door (TV)
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Characters: Olive Martel, Philip Martel
Additional Tags: Ficlet, Post-Canon
Summary:

The Germans might have gone, but the Martels' troubles haven't ended yet.

In the process, I fished out my Fanfic Writing Notebook (sadly neglected this year, for the Original Fic Writing Notebook (and yes, I really do have separate notebooks for them)) and found finished but untyped things lurking in it! I am on a quest to type them up.

First off is this, which my notes on it say was meant to be for weaselett's fandom_stocking. I think I didn't type it up because I was too tired to know if it was funny, but it could have been because it clashed with a want/do not want, in which case, my apologies!

Illogical Explanations (212 words) by lost_spook
Chapters: 1/1
Fandom: Jonathan Creek (TV)
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Characters: Jonathan Creek, Maddy Magellan
Additional Tags: Apocalypse, Alternate Universe, Zombies, Ficlet
Summary:

The zombie apocalypse wouldn't be so bad, Maddy thinks, if Jonathan weren't so bloody awkward.

30 icons made for the hc_bingo square "hugs". I went back through all my screen caps looking for any iconable & expressive hugs and this was the result. Given the odd things I screen cap, it's a little motley, but on the other hand it covers a whole range of hugs from 1959-2013, which is quite nice in itself, after all. (Even if I may have used a pic to icon before, these are all new for the challenge.)


Teaser:





( Multifandom hugs under here )

I have been a bit AWOL, but for reasons and also now I have a vid! And, all right, so it is a vid of James Maxwell, BUT it is totally a vid containing cute children and animals, paper aeroplanes, stuffed toys, random barometers, wilful destruction of property, Emma Peel kicking ass, vampires, tea and coffee drinking, two Henry VIIs, rocks, Nazis, space ships, and an actual kitchen sink. Also epic hand-holding (but not anything like as much as there could have been).

( Cut for Embed )

And, at some point, I will catch up with other stuff a bit. (♥)

I knew there was something else: and I bought (as a reward for doing hard stuff, including some money-saving/gaining things) the TV tie-in book of Enemy at the Door for 1p on Amazon. I was worried, because TV novelisations do tend to be a special kind of terrible. Anyway, it arrived today! And I will say more some other time (now, I have my parents up here - almost a rl again! Also I should answer comments), because it took a sudden lurch into making me wonder if it was being novelised by Ben Steed (and nobody wants that), but I got my money's worth by about p3 when the author had an go at describing Alfred Burke's face (as Major Richter):

"He [a random Police Inspector] sensed at once that Richter had a capacity to charm that might cloud a man's judgement... Richter was too quiet, too urbane, with a face of that ascetic cast which is acquired by saints, librarians and aristocratic confidence tricksters... Perhaps aware of this himself, Richter had grown a beard, but it did little to hide his saintly expression..."

Alfred Burke grew a beard to spare us all his face, because it was Too Much, trufax, people. Well, there's one mystery of life solved.

(It is very odd about this. It lovingly describes some of the characters as played by the particular actors, down to funny little quirks of how they played a scene and then others not, or he seems to have decided to make up his own version.)

Anyway, "saints, librarians and aristocratic confidence tricksters" :lol: :lol: :lol:. Gosh. I don't know why I went for being a librarian myself, then.

I am only linking this here because a) snowflake_challenge, because maybe icons you made ages ago is cheating a bit and b) this is what I did with the future fic square for trope_bingo. Hence I'm skipping it this time. If I'm going to write unnecessarily long and gloomy fic, at least I can do it for hc_bingo where you'd expect this sort of thing.

Outcomes of War (5430 words) by lost_spook
Chapters: 1/1
Fandom: Enemy at the Door (TV)
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Relationships: Philip Martel & Dieter Richter, Ernst Freidel & Dieter Richter
Characters: Dieter Richter, Ernst Freidel, Philip Martel, Olive Martel
Additional Tags: War, World War II, Suicide, Execution, Starvation, Post-Series, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, 5 Times
Summary: "Whatever may be the abuse of man, that is the use of nature - first survive.” Three things that may have happened to Major Richter and two that definitely didn’t.

(This is what happens when people go and leave a TV show unfinished and I start looking at the history books for answers. I wasn't going to finish this, being far too late for the bingo, but it nagged at me. It's surprisingly unspoilery, but I can't imagine it'd have any appeal to anyone who hasn't seen the series. And limited appeal even then.)

I fear my next fic may only be better by virtue of being shorter, but after that I solemnly vow to try and write things that people might actually want to read. (Or, in short, I have a lot of 500 Prompts left... ;-D)

I said I'd made a post about Enemy at the Door, and here it is. (I'm thinking of doing some more fandom manifesto type posts for old TV I've watched, because they're fun and possibly even useful, if only to inform people of things to avoid. :-D)

So, what is it? Enemy at the Door is a 1978-80 UK drama series about the German Occupation of the (British) Channel Islands in WWII, focusing on Guernsey (and the fictional Martel family). It stars Alfred Burke, Bernard Horsfall and Simon Cadell with Antonia Pemberton, Emily Richard, Simon Lack, John Malcolm, Richard Heffer, Helen Shingler and David Waller. It was created and script-edited by Michael Chapman, produced by Tony Wharmby and written by Michael Chapman, James Doran, NJ Crisp, Kenneth Clark and John Kershaw. There are 2 series of 13x 50 min episodes (26 in all). It is out on DVD (definitely in Regions 1 &2); it is not on YouTube at the moment, though. (It was repeated on Yesterday, a freeview channel here in the UK last year, so it may get another turn.)

If you're not keen on old UK TV, then this obviously isn't for you. If, however, you are, and you are interested in well-written, well-played, low-key drama, WWII generally, or what happened to the Channel Islands in particular, then it may well be. Sadly, it was cancelled before they reached the end of the War, but what there is of it is well worth watching. Also, while it was shown pre-Watershed over 30 years ago (so there's very little they can actually show in terms of blood, violence etc.), it does deal with a lot of difficult subjects (very well generally): execution, imprisonment, depression, multiple suicide attempts, shooting, murder, possible rape, and beatings/interrogations.

Why, you may ask, especially after that cheery list of warnings? Well, it depends. If you want a lot of action and battles and other such fast-moving set-pieces, again, it's not going to deliver. But it explores its historical subject pretty accurately and also takes advantage of that situation to explore the ethical dilemmas of occupation from both sides with subtlety and intelligence and three-dimensional characters, and that's what's so great about it.

( You chaps have commandeered my kitchen! )