A place could not be thinner for such an undertaking

[sovay]

I did not approve of concluding our break-fast to discover that David McCallum had died. I saw him first in The Great Escape (1963), which always seemed to be playing somewhere in my childhood. My brother was almost named Ilya until my father remonstrated with my mother that their children would sound like a Russian vaudeville act. Every headline I've seen mentions The Man from U.N.C.L.E. (1964–68) and NCIS (2003–), but he will always look to me like something even more enigmatic than a slim, blond-mopped Russian agent, because at least Kuryakin was human. In the same way that Sapphire & Steel (1979–82) left its final assignment suspended in stars and narrative, I imagine McCallum like Steel disappearing out of time like a video cut, itself the kind of ghost that would have fit seamlessly into his medium atomic weight's store of exasperation with the human carelessness of time and its traces, our deliberate preservation of lost moments that opens up cracks in the world as flimsy as a filmstrip and as engulfing as centuries, but these deaths twenty-four times a second are the only way I have ever known him, even when he was alive, like every actor trailing roles behind him like freeze-frames. I will find a new one for his memory. I assume the integrity of time is pretty much a dead loss in our TV.

Comments

[sovay]

macI saw this news earlier today, elsewhere on social media, and I'm sadder than I would have expected because I've actually only ever seen him in NCIS (though of course I'm aware of his other well-known shows and always had general intentions of watching them someday).

*hugs*

My mother watched NCIS for a chunk of time in the mid-2000's, so I did have the chance to see him as Ducky. He was delightful and I appreciated the office consensus that he must have been amazing-looking when he was younger, like Illya Kuryakin.

But he had an incredibly long career on popular shows, doing what he enjoyed, and must have worked right up until close to the end.

The most recent season of NCIS, apparently!

We all should be so lucky. Maybe this will get me to finally check out his other projects.

I am sure I have recommended Sapphire & Steel before, but I really love it—I only ever wrote about half the show, but I have written fic for it since.

It is true that he was not an unreasonable age for dying; I just unreasonably object to it.

[asakiyume]

Wakanomori and I have been watching NCIS on Netflix, because I'd never seen it, so I was very sorry to hear this news, yesterday. Patricia Russo (whom you might remember from excellent stories in Not One of Us, among other places, though she hasn't written any recently) was the one who told me, and she mentioned Sapphire and Steel. I in turn told her that although I'd never seen that show, you'd written about it evocatively.

[sovay]

Patricia Russo (whom you might remember from excellent stories in Not One of Us, among other places, though she hasn't written any recently) was the one who told me, and she mentioned Sapphire and Steel. I in turn told her that although I'd never seen that show, you'd written about it evocatively.

Of course I remember her! I miss her stories. I didn't know she watched Sapphire & Steel, but it fits when you tell me. I'm glad you have been enjoying NCIS.