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In my time on earth, I said too much, but not nearly, not nearly enough
Unless I lost track of one in the phone tree, I have just spent my afternoon calling five different doctor's offices, garnished with one bookstore and one library, and I would still like a refund on selected and considerable tracts of physical existence. In other news, while I have always had an inevitable affection for the mild-mannered character acting of Donald Meek, I have not seen him anywhere near recently enough to explain his appearance in last night's dreams, especially not the one with the used book store crumbling literally on the edge of some awful revelation. Over the last three days, I mainlined a rewatch of the first two seasons of Turn: Washington's Spies (2014–17) and just before bed had started re-reading Paul French's Midnight in Peking (2011), which in the years since I originally read and much later wrote about it has garnered at least one nonfiction rebuttal and more contextually interested explorations, because nothing engages the human instinct for rabbit holes like a cold murder case. No offense to Donald Meek, I'm not sure where he came in.
P.S. Stop the presses, Benny Safdie and Dwayne Johnson will be adapting Daniel Pinkwater's Lizard Music (1976)? They had better get the Surrealism.
P.S. Stop the presses, Benny Safdie and Dwayne Johnson will be adapting Daniel Pinkwater's Lizard Music (1976)? They had better get the Surrealism.
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Thank you! It's an unnecessarily exhausting thing!
Btw, I have now finished The Stone Tape and so now I can say I enjoyed it very much as a whole.
Hooray! After layer on layer of its descendants, I still think it holds up. Here's the review I wrote of it in 2020, which if you like you can now read.
(Randomly also I kept thinking about you telling me that you had first encountered Iain Cuthbertson in Danger UXB and this, & being amused all over again - both very good but also such a misleading introduction to the usual full Iain Cuthbertsonness of the man!
Danger UXB was the decades-ago introduction, but I'm still not going to feel bad about it. (When he came around to my attention again, I saw him in the 1979 ITV Casting the Runes before The Stone Tape.)
(I'm itching to icon Jane Asher in it, but I can't do that without a DVD, so in the middle of typing this I Googled hopefully for usable images, only to discover that they did a radio play version in 2015 with Romola Garai and Julian Rhind-Tutt, and Jane Asher. It was supposed to be a TV remake, but BBC backed out claiming it already had too much SFF (o rly? ha) and left Radio 4 to pick up the pieces a few years later. I'll want a gap before listening, but I snagged it off the Internet Archive here because clearly I am now obligated to listen to it with that cast. Plus, it's very sound-based and claustrophobic, so seems like a good fit for audio).
Yes!
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Thank you! I have to go out again tomorrow, so I may not reply properly for a few days, but I enjoyed reading it (& the poem) and have things to say, if they survive the trip out & the recovery. <3
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Thank you so much! I wish you luck with the trip and its recovery, whether it produces replies or not.
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I am entirely charmed. Keep me posted on their progress.
[edit] "I like playing cantankerous old fools."
(He talks a little about Poldark and his story of landing the audition for Pirates of the Caribbean is gold.)
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Oh, it was only one episode! It was all done and dusted before I even mentioned it. XD (His daughter did it, to make him sell the farm and allow her to be in a relationship with Caroline Quentin's daughter).
(He talks a little about Poldark and his story of landing the audition for Pirates of the Caribbean is gold.)
Aw, that's cool, thanks. And that he had to go back and visit the Poldark location while he was down there! <3
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Right, but I didn't know what happened in it after the premise! I appreciate the infill.
Aw, that's cool, thanks. And that he had to go back and visit the Poldark location while he was down there!
I thought of you.
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As I said before I went out, I did enjoy reading it very much! I was really interested, too, but how deliberate and intelligent the aspect of misogyny is in it, especially since I felt that Year of the Sex Olympics ended in a way that, while it was dictated to by the bleakness of the whole premise, but still, in the way it was done, was also a rather tiresome misogynistic trope that I have seen too many times in 60s & 70s TV not to be very weary when it reappears. The Stone Tape's approach was an fascinating contrast to put beside it, so it will be interesting to rewatch that one sometime. And it was just really engaging and gripping to watch. Reading stuff about Doctor Who all my teenaged years and beyond meant I'd heard of it, amongst many other things that were notable influences, so it was great to finally get to see it and that it didn't disappoint. As I said, Jane Asher was particularly great!
Alas, the internet won't cough up many screencaps re. icons, which is what I'd need - there are publicity shots, but mainly in b&w. I don't know that I'd need my own dvd copy for any other reason, though, and it would no doubt be a more expensive quest than it used to be! But I appreciate that she made me want to do it.
(I was amused seeing my former comments because, lol, yes, it is impossible that somehow you had not seen this sooner! And I would still love to get to see James Maxwell's turn at a Nigel Kneale haunting in The Road; I thought about it again after watching.)
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And your things to say seem to have survived coming back!
I was really interested, too, but how deliberate and intelligent the aspect of misogyny is in it, especially since I felt that Year of the Sex Olympics ended in a way that, while it was dictated to by the bleakness of the whole premise, but still, in the way it was done, was also a rather tiresome misogynistic trope that I have seen too many times in 60s & 70s TV not to be very weary when it reappears.
I haven't seen it for comparison, so my first reaction is that I am sorry Nigel Kneale got lazier with his handling of misogyny later in his career, especially since it's so indispensably acute in The Stone Tape, but as I do not particularly care about spoilers for The Year of the Sex Olympics, I'd be interested to hear further.
I don't know that I'd need my own dvd copy for any other reason, though, and it would no doubt be a more expensive quest than it used to be! But I appreciate that she made me want to do it.
I found a Region 2 DVD at the time which looks to be still in print and at least from my end, not expensive.
(I was amused seeing my former comments because, lol, yes, it is impossible that somehow you had not seen this sooner!
Just another of those temporal paradoxes! Its conceit still feels like something I have always known. I have tried over the years to track down where I might first have encountered it and with uncanny appropriacy I haven't been able to find out.
And I would still love to get to see James Maxwell's turn at a Nigel Kneale haunting in The Road; I thought about it again after watching.)
Fingers still crossed the telerecording turns up in someone's closet.
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Happily, this trip out was much shorter and I am starting to feel much more human again - for at least a few days, I hope.
I haven't seen it for comparison, so my first reaction is that I am sorry Nigel Kneale got lazier with his handling of misogyny later in his career,
No, no, Year of the Sex Olympics was made in 1968, so it's the other way around. Also, I haven't seen anything else of his so I may have been unfair to him. The play winds up with the producers setting a murderer loose on the island to liven things up, who is very much in line with a particularly tiresome 60s/70s trope of the era of a sex serial killer or inevitable devolved brute where the cavemen always beat the astronauts & funnily enough the women almost never devolve into violence themselves - but obv the point here is the lengths they will go to for the viewers, which is indeed horribly prescient. I had also just watched my way through a lot of Thriller eps and got to the point of just skipping the skeevy 70s sex killer eps so I probably had even less patience than usual. (I do not have much patience with it even on a good day, so bad luck there, Nigel Kneale).
Although in counterpoint, of course, Deanie must die, as Jill must die and there is that. (Which means, incidentally, that not satisfied with killing Suzanne Neve horribly, he then went for Jane Asher! XD)
The parts about a visual society devolving with language have been less prescient so far, but it means the whole play is written in a future-speak that is a very admirable experiment, which does require a bit of concentration or rewatching, neither of which I've been able to give it yet. (
Its conceit still feels like something I have always known. I have tried over the years to track down where I might first have encountered it and with uncanny appropriacy I haven't been able to find out.
That does seem quite appropriate really. 7000 years ago, maybe? <3
Fingers still crossed the telerecording turns up in someone's closet.
It is at least the sort of thing they would try and make available if it did! EVen aside from more Nigel Kneale hauntings, obviously I need more of James Maxwell in the absolutely inevitable terrible fake hair. But maybe with a cool 18th C coat!
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May it last longer than you expect!
No, no, Year of the Sex Olympics was made in 1968, so it's the other way around. Also, I haven't seen anything else of his so I may have been unfair to him.
Sorry, for some reason I thought it was late Nigel Kneale! I have seen the 1954 Nineteen Eighty-Four because it starred Peter Cushing, the 1959 BBC Quatermass and the Pit rather than its much later film version because it kept turning up in discussions of indispensable weird fiction, The Abominable Snowman (1957) which he adapted from his own lost teleplay also starring Peter Cushing, and a couple of films I always forget he co-wrote, of which H.M.S. Defiant (1962) was memorable in its own right. And just earlier this year the pilot of Kinvig (1981), not recommended except for Colin Jeavons. I have no ability at this time to collate his handling of female characters except Jill would be miles ahead of any other I can recall.
The play winds up with the producers setting a murderer loose on the island to liven things up, who is very much in line with a particularly tiresome 60s/70s trope of the era of a sex serial killer or inevitable devolved brute where the cavemen always beat the astronauts & funnily enough the women almost never devolve into violence themselves - but obv the point here is the lengths they will go to for the viewers, which is indeed horribly prescient.
I know your resources need to be carefully parceled, but I would love to hear you sometime read this production against Vengeance on Varos.
That does seem quite appropriate really. 7000 years ago, maybe?
It is at least the sort of thing they would try and make available if it did! EVen aside from more Nigel Kneale hauntings, obviously I need more of James Maxwell in the absolutely inevitable terrible fake hair. But maybe with a cool 18th C coat!
One can but hope!
Seriously, I would also love to see it; I read the script years ago. Did you listen to the 2018 BBC Radio 4 version? I missed it completely at the time and then it never came back around while I still had access to BBC Sounds.
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I've only seen YotSO and Stone Tape, so I can comment even less. And, ha, I have had Kinvig very much not recommended to me before! Although Colin Jeavons is an understable draw.
I know your resources need to be carefully parceled, but I would love to hear you sometime read this production against Vengeance on Varos.
I would need to watch YotSO again, which no doubt I will do sometime. It's also difficult, because clearly VoV is in many ways DW's edition of YotSO, which is DW's wont, although it was also in relation to the video nasty scares of the 80s. VoV is very much a SF future colony where things have developed in that way because of its start as a prison colony; YotSO is a jump forward from now to a logical extreme of development & still watching the people taking the final steps during the course of the play. Plus, also, as I said, there's a lot about language and loss of verbal communication in favour of visual.
Btw, I expect I would have linked you this at the time, but one of the 60th anniversary Classic Who Tales of the TARDIS pieces was Six and Peri remembering Varos, bookending a specially edited edition of it. The Six and Peri bits are here if you didn't already see it. And if you can face them again, so soon after The Twin Dilemma, lol.
Did you listen to the 2018 BBC Radio 4 version? I missed it completely at the time and then it never came back around while I still had access to BBC Sounds.
No, or not yet anyway. Sometimes I like to listen to plays my faves have been in so I can do the imagining and sometimes I just can't face Mark Gatiss when I wanted James Maxwell. (I also hope eternally for returned things. I can't watch DW restorations because I am saving myself for the deeply improbable returned videotapes!!)
One day, no doubt, I will!
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I can strongly recommend the Nineteen Eighty-Four, which is impressively still on YouTube fifteen years after I wrote about it, and Quatermass and the Pit, which has been less surprisingly taken down and which now looks to me like his first foray into the kind of weird science folk horror that would produce both The Road and The Stone Tape. H.M.S. Defiant has the slight problem of visibly cribbing from Billy Budd for one of its plots, but since the other is about the Spithead and Nore mutinies, I really enjoyed it. The Abominable Snowman has pacing problems likely to do with its transfer from teleplay to film, but the ending is great and so is Peter Cushing.
Although Colin Jeavons is an understable draw.
He's wonderful. I would have totally watched a show about his encyclopedic ufologist.
I would need to watch YotSO again, which no doubt I will do sometime. It's also difficult, because clearly VoV is in many ways DW's edition of YotSO, which is DW's wont, although it was also in relation to the video nasty scares of the 80s. VoV is very much a SF future colony where things have developed in that way because of its start as a prison colony; YotSO is a jump forward from now to a logical extreme of development & still watching the people taking the final steps during the course of the play. Plus, also, as I said, there's a lot about language and loss of verbal communication in favour of visual.
I can wait patiently. Differences are as illuminating as likenesses.
Sometimes I like to listen to plays my faves have been in so I can do the imagining and sometimes I just can't face Mark Gatiss when I wanted James Maxwell. (I also hope eternally for returned things. I can't watch DW restorations because I am saving myself for the deeply improbable returned videotapes!!)
Understandable! I haven't watched the 1948 film of The Calendar because I'm holding out for the rediscovery of the 1930 version with Herbert Marshall and Edna Best. It is ridiculous that not yet century-old media should disappear at all.
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What's even more impressive is that the BBC have it up on the iPlayer & have done for a while. I keep thinking I should watch it every time I see it there because I am so impressed and curious, but the thing is I kicked off my second year A-Level History (the one where I did totalitarian states) with reading the book and then watching the 1984 Ninety-eighty Four with John Hurt, Suzanna Hamilton & John Cusack and I was so disturbed by the film version and John Cusack in particular that it turns out I'm still not ready to do it again, or at least, not until a very good day. Even though I DO want to see Peter Cushing in a miraculously available BBC iPlayer version. One of these days before it goes maybe!
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Perfect! I hope you feel like watching it before it evaporates again.
(I believe I saw the 1984 Nineteen Eighty-Four in high school when for some godforsaken reason the summer reading was Bradbury, Orwell, and Huxley, and my mother worked to amend the experience by showing me both that film and the 1966 Fahrenheit 451, which I did enjoy as movies and also I have never rewatched that Nineteen Eighty-Four again. I didn't realize until just now that Cyril Cusack was in both of them! I had to check he wasn't in a film of Brave New World, too.)