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They always told me when you hit it, you'll know it
I am once again spending the night away from home, since home according to the notice we found on our door this afternoon is due to be visited by the sewer calliope in the morning. It is convenient to one of my doctor's appointments, but I am territorially resentful. Last night I went to bed hours before it was reasonable and obtained some sleep before the advent of construction thereby.
"Rocket Test on Remote Scottish Island Ends in Flames" is exactly the sort of headline I have seen in British science fiction of the '50's and '60's and it feels like a bait-and-switch that the rest of the article was extremely not written by Jimmy Sangster or Nigel Kneale.
Watching Herbert Wilcox's Odette (1950) just a few weeks after ITV's Wish Me Luck (1988–90) produces a slight effect of double vision in that Odette Sansom was one of several female agents of SOE remixed into the fictional protagonists of the television series, but not radically more of one than my knowledge of the Spindle network coming originally from Leo Marks' Between Silk and Cyanide: A Codemaker's War, 1941–1945 (1998), where he devotes considerably less time to the relationship that developed in the field between the married Sansom and her future second husband Peter Churchill and rather more to his perennial suspicions of blown circuits, critical remarks on agents' coding skills, and reliably affectionate mentions of their wireless operator Alec Rabinovitch, whose parting gift of a photograph of Joe Louis vs. Max Schmeling—a callback to the time only the interruption of the head of F section had prevented their mutual enthusiasm for boxing from devolving into a black eye for Marks—became one of the codemaker's few talismans of the war, outlasting its sender whom Odette eulogizes as one of the best and bravest pianists of SOE before turning him over to Peter Ustinov, who shoves all of his scenes up his sleeves for safekeeping and thus despite the admirable efforts of Anna Neagle and Trevor Howard walks off with a decent percentage of the picture. Perpetually disheveled and grousing as profanely as the BBFC will let him, chain-smoking through an evening of checkers with the pistol in his pocket all their secrecy never affords him the chance to use, he registers as instantly as if the audience has spent months in harness with him as the kind of unabashed pain in the ass who will have your back every time and kvetch about it: "Three weeks and not a goddamn message!" He hates mountains, both for transmitting through and sleeping on. He's always misplacing things and he never misses a sked. His last scene at Baker Street sees him out on a note of comedy, but his inflexible insistence on being returned to France is bittersweet when we know from the prologue delivered by no less an unreliable authority than Maurice Buckmaster that the drop will be—shipped to a concentration camp, not shot or hanged as an agent but gassed as a Jew—the death of him. Marius Goring in tinted glasses offers the only comparable color in the supporting cast as an Abwehr spy-catcher who likes to see himself as the good cop instead of the Gestapo, climactically and perhaps ahistorically called on his self-deluding Nuremberg defense. I have now seen Neagle as two national heroines and should perhaps catch one of her romances with Michael Wilding sometime. Sansom's tradecraft in Cannes and Annecy remains more interesting to me than her torture in Ravensbrück, which means I might as well re-read Elizabeth E. Wein's Code Name Verity (2012). I bet Peter Ustinov, like the real Rabinovitch, nom de guerre Arnaud, could swear in four languages.
"Rocket Test on Remote Scottish Island Ends in Flames" is exactly the sort of headline I have seen in British science fiction of the '50's and '60's and it feels like a bait-and-switch that the rest of the article was extremely not written by Jimmy Sangster or Nigel Kneale.
Watching Herbert Wilcox's Odette (1950) just a few weeks after ITV's Wish Me Luck (1988–90) produces a slight effect of double vision in that Odette Sansom was one of several female agents of SOE remixed into the fictional protagonists of the television series, but not radically more of one than my knowledge of the Spindle network coming originally from Leo Marks' Between Silk and Cyanide: A Codemaker's War, 1941–1945 (1998), where he devotes considerably less time to the relationship that developed in the field between the married Sansom and her future second husband Peter Churchill and rather more to his perennial suspicions of blown circuits, critical remarks on agents' coding skills, and reliably affectionate mentions of their wireless operator Alec Rabinovitch, whose parting gift of a photograph of Joe Louis vs. Max Schmeling—a callback to the time only the interruption of the head of F section had prevented their mutual enthusiasm for boxing from devolving into a black eye for Marks—became one of the codemaker's few talismans of the war, outlasting its sender whom Odette eulogizes as one of the best and bravest pianists of SOE before turning him over to Peter Ustinov, who shoves all of his scenes up his sleeves for safekeeping and thus despite the admirable efforts of Anna Neagle and Trevor Howard walks off with a decent percentage of the picture. Perpetually disheveled and grousing as profanely as the BBFC will let him, chain-smoking through an evening of checkers with the pistol in his pocket all their secrecy never affords him the chance to use, he registers as instantly as if the audience has spent months in harness with him as the kind of unabashed pain in the ass who will have your back every time and kvetch about it: "Three weeks and not a goddamn message!" He hates mountains, both for transmitting through and sleeping on. He's always misplacing things and he never misses a sked. His last scene at Baker Street sees him out on a note of comedy, but his inflexible insistence on being returned to France is bittersweet when we know from the prologue delivered by no less an unreliable authority than Maurice Buckmaster that the drop will be—shipped to a concentration camp, not shot or hanged as an agent but gassed as a Jew—the death of him. Marius Goring in tinted glasses offers the only comparable color in the supporting cast as an Abwehr spy-catcher who likes to see himself as the good cop instead of the Gestapo, climactically and perhaps ahistorically called on his self-deluding Nuremberg defense. I have now seen Neagle as two national heroines and should perhaps catch one of her romances with Michael Wilding sometime. Sansom's tradecraft in Cannes and Annecy remains more interesting to me than her torture in Ravensbrück, which means I might as well re-read Elizabeth E. Wein's Code Name Verity (2012). I bet Peter Ustinov, like the real Rabinovitch, nom de guerre Arnaud, could swear in four languages.
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(Suddenly wonders how many languages Donald Swann could swear in, and if he taught any of it to Michael Flanders.)
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(I should also think at least four and it would be so out of stage character that I hope so. I need to copy my favorite picture of him when I am in the same house as the book I found it in. It was taken by John Deakin in 1952 and every other photo I have seen of the time catches some of the famous manic curate look: he's still got the round-rimmed glasses, but he's also got five o'clock shadow and cheekbones and could be a Soho poet. Deakin also took my favorite picture of Dylan Thomas, in which he appears to be an apparition of churchyard ivy. [edit] That one can be found online.)
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Odette sounds neat and this reminds me I really should check out Wish Me Luck.
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Thank you! It was not reproducible this morning, but remains an achievement!
Odette sounds neat and this reminds me I really should check out Wish Me Luck.
The first series of Wish Me Luck is a hands-down, no-holds-barred recommendation. I dock the second series points only because my favorite character does not return for it, although one of my other favorite characters gets a good arc. We have not yet watched the third series partly because it is supposed to be less female-focused and shakes up the main cast yet again and partly because I have just been so strung out, but chances are we will get back to it. Definitely worth your time no matter how the last of it plays out, however. Mysteriously little presence on AO3 considering the SOE fandom on my friendlist alone.
Odette was interesting to me partly because it was made so shortly after the war. Maurice Buckmaster plays himself and introduces the film, claiming that not only is its story true, "the people you'll see on the screen are playing, as accurately as human memory permits, the parts of men and women who are or were then alive," and I am pretty sure the Official Secrets Act also had something to do with the accuracy of the permission. The real Sansom and Churchill served as technical advisors on the production, however, and the title card at the end is signed by her. Under no circumstances had she wanted her wartime experiences to be pictorialized by Hollywood, which is completely fair.
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He's wonderful! He gets to be funny, but in the way of people you have known for so long that for better or worse they are as good as family, exasperations and all. And he's young and looks much better than he has any right to slopping around in a leather-belted mac and a shirt whose plaid even in black and white doesn't go with his tie.
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"Rocket Test at Remote Scottish Island" is a strangely evocative phrase!
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Thank you! I am trying to get my brain back in gear regardless.
"Rocket Test at Remote Scottish Island" is a strangely evocative phrase!
I really think I've seen it in fictitious newspapers!
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Please keep me posted on explosive developments!
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Of course. *hugs* Somewhere quieter to go and some sleep is a good, but it is not on to have to go out of your own house to obtain those things.
"Rocket Test on Remote Scottish Island Ends in Flames" is exactly the sort of headline I have seen in British science fiction of the '50's and '60's
LOL, I feel like it could be the summary of several 60s cult TV episodes I've watched! What was somebody thinking? That kind of thing never ends well! XD (It sounds very like that ep of The Saint where James Maxwell was the most hopeless and inexplicable security guy ever, but that wasn't a rocket. Although they probably had a rocket at the research place as well as the terrible doomsday weapon made out of kitchen implemements.)
just a few weeks after ITV's Wish Me Luck (1988–90)
Ohhh, did you finish it? What did you think of S3? Things have obv been so rotten for you, I just assumed you most likely had not. (I will say no more here, in case you just meant the bit you previously watched.)
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Right? It just seems rude.
*hugs*
LOL, I feel like it could be the summary of several 60s cult TV episodes I've watched! What was somebody thinking? That kind of thing never ends well!
You understand! Next thing you know it'll be radioactive children or someone throwing a bucket of water over David Collings.
(It sounds very like that ep of The Saint where James Maxwell was the most hopeless and inexplicable security guy ever, but that wasn't a rocket. Although they probably had a rocket at the research place as well as the terrible doomsday weapon made out of kitchen implemements.)
Oh, my God, it's on Tubi. Slightly misspelled, which I'm sure shouldn't be blamed on James Maxwell. I am increasingly impressed and bewildered by their catalogue.
(Is the title of that episode meant to be a shout-out to C. S. Lewis or do I just think it should be?)
Ohhh, did you finish it? What did you think of S3? Things have obv been so rotten for you, I just assumed you most likely had not. (I will say no more here, in case you just meant the bit you previously watched.)
We have in fact not watched the third season: I have been too flat. I am sure it will happen eventually, but I will probably want to recover a real ability to write about movies first.
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Or aliens exploding David Collings, could go either way. XD
Oh, my God, it's on Tubi. Slightly misspelled, which I'm sure shouldn't be blamed on James Maxwell. I am increasingly impressed and bewildered by their catalogue.
Ha, although since The Saint is one of the better known ITC serials, it's not that surprising - ITC gets everywhere!
(Is the title of that episode meant to be a shout-out to C. S. Lewis or do I just think it should be?)
I don't know, but I'll tell you what's funny: I just googled it and the original short story from the Charteris books was called "The Unescapable Word" but ITC corrected it to "The Inescapable Word" for TV! (ITC: would not be down with Tubi's misspelling, either. They weren't even down with Charteris's.)
We have in fact not watched the third season: I have been too flat.
*hugs* I am sorry to hear my assumption was correct, but not at all surprised. I very much hope that you do get all the proper rest and therefore writing mojo back soon. ♥
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Now that you mention it, I am surprised that David Collings never exploded on a remote Scottish island.
I don't know, but I'll tell you what's funny: I just googled it and the original short story from the Charteris books was called "The Unescapable Word" but ITC corrected it to "The Inescapable Word" for TV! (ITC: would not be down with Tubi's misspelling, either. They weren't even down with Charteris's.)
For that level of pedantry, I'll have to watch it.
(My mother used to watch The Saint. I don't think Roger Moore was the Simon Templar of her mind's eye and I know she preferred the books—there were a bunch in the house when I was growing up, although I can't remember reading them in the same way as many of her other mystery series—but she did enjoy it. She still thinks of Moore as the Saint rather than Bond.)
I am sorry to hear my assumption was correct, but not at all surprised. I very much hope that you do get all the proper rest and therefore writing mojo back soon.
*hugs*
Thank you. As cryptically noted, I have an actual factual doctor's plan for sleeping more, which as soon as my niece is no longer visiting can be put into practice! (In the meantime, my niece is visiting and I love her very much.)
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I'm not saying that he didn't! I can't be sure! (Although, lol, James Maxwell did explode on a remote island one time, or the remote island exploded with him on it, he's not David Collings, he's not that combustable; but idk if it was Scottish, because the main action was on a submarine, which JM had stolen but not entirely thought out the part where he'd have to actually operate it afterwards, and I was not entirely paying enough attention to the ep to know where they were geographically than Under the Sea. This was another ITC effort, of course. ITC are like that. ITC were the ones who got aliens to explode David Collings.)
For that level of pedantry, I'll have to watch it.
LOL, well, it's not the worst Saint ep to watch. I'm not sure how entertaining it is if you're not spending the whole time asking yourself how and why exactly James Maxwell got this job and why he hasn't resigned or been fired before it came to this, bless him. He's very sensitive for a security chief.
I don't think Roger Moore was the Simon Templar of her mind's eye and I know she preferred the books—
She wouldn't be alone in that!
In the meantime, my niece is visiting and I love her very much.
Awww. I hope your *waves wildly* horrible everything permits you to have a lovely time with her. *hugs*
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They had a specialty and they delivered on it!
I'm not sure how entertaining it is if you're not spending the whole time asking yourself how and why exactly James Maxwell got this job and why he hasn't resigned or been fired before it came to this, bless him. He's very sensitive for a security chief.
Because I have no history whatsoever of attaching myself to hopeless minor characters, yes.
Awww. I hope your *waves wildly* horrible everything permits you to have a lovely time with her.
Thank you! The last two monarchs have hatched!
*hugs*
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Heh, oh, I know, but I'm not so far gone that I imagine you'd necessarily attach yourself to the same minor characters as me, at least not all the time. <3
Thank you! The last two monarchs have hatched!
I just saw your beautiful picture!
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Just saying the chances are good it won't be a chore.
I just saw your beautiful picture!
Thank you!
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Glad you got some sleep.
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I didn't know you had a brother-in-law in the Shetlands! I would love to know if he experienced the science fiction. I also hope he is doing well generally.
Glad you got some sleep.
*hugs*
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That's wonderful. I'm so glad he's been able to do that. May I ask which birds, even if Google is being evil?
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A geo?
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