<3 <3 <3 (I think you should just keep on watching things I like and writing about them and I can just point people to you to explain why I like them. That will inevitably break down at some point, us not being the same person, but certainly as far as 70s stuff involving David Collings goes, we seem to be on the same page.)
I will have more to say later when hopefully less tired, but let me just comment on your footnotes first:
For maximum irony of the sort that comes to pass if a person does enough science fiction, Collings played 51st-century robot detective Daneel in a 1969 BBC adaptation of The Naked Sun (1957)
For maximum irony, enjoy the fact that David Collings's other episode of Out of the Unknown features him being too human to be trapped in an underground bunker, and he swiftly breaks down and has to be lobotomised (his hand won't work! it doesn't want to be here; it doesn't see why any of them should be here! it won't press any more buttons. <3)
I don't know whether it's good news or bad news, given that OOTU is ironically harder to come by without spending £££s since the BFI released the DVD than previously, but his other ep "Level 7" does survive, and the DVD boxset has a reconstruction of The Naked Sun using the publicity photos and the surviving soundtrack - there seems to be a lot more of it than that source suggests. (Level 7 is actually much better and more of a direct link to RoD in terms of David Collings's performance and function in the plot, surprisingly, but interviews with David Collings suggest that he enjoys SFF himself and would very likely have got the connection even if he hadn't already played Daneel. He was in the BBC Radio LotR as Legolas and the adaptor recalls that he was the only member of the cast who had already read the books and knew them well enough to help out the rest of the Fellowship, although some of the others, like Ian Holm, read it in preparation.)
Opinions? Everyone is just lucky I did not see this serial in high school instead of The Pirate Planet, because I wouldn't have written Poul fix-it fic—I didn't start writing fanfiction until I was out of grad school—but I am pretty sure hopelessly derivative original fiction would have been guaranteed.
LOL, Kaldor City! Okay, the thing about Kaldor is that it is actually based more on the BBC Past Doctor Adventures sequel to RoD, Corpse Marker (written by Chris Boucher, though) which is something on which I have mixed feelings, but basically it follows Uvanov, Toos, and Poul back in Kaldor City, where everything has been hushed up and everyone is basically ambitious back-stabbing political whatsits, and there are some Taren Capel fans out there who want to continue his work. Poul unfortunately gets some highly damaging 'therapy' (by people who want to use him for things that I forget because it's been a long time since I read it) and has another terrible experience, although he does come out of it slightly better than RoD, but clearly it doesn't do him any good. The book also throws in one of Chris Boucher's more popular one-off Blake's 7 characters, the psychostrategist (or 'puppetmaster') Carnell. This then makes Kaldor a world somewhere outside the reaches of the Federation in the B7 universe (which fits absolutely; it feels very much as if it could be). This then led to the audio series of Kaldor City, which does sound like something you should avoid with a bargepole, but it actually throughly enjoyable sarcastic crack that all goes bafflingly meta at the end (and possibly destroys the whole universe with it), so its canon is entirely optional because canon is clearly also not sure what's going on.
It combines said character from B7 with the original actor, with other actors from Chris Boucher shows, plus a character who may or may not be a major B7 character (the source of much LOLs, given Paul Darrow's habit of eating the microphone) and basically people are sarcastic while Uvanov hates robots (but is totally not robophobic okay, it's not paranoia when everybody really is out to get you) and I don't even know. (My friend Liadt once wrote a Kaldor ficlet where the Henry Hoovers try to kill Uvanov and it fits in perfectly, so, I mean... *g*)
David Collings describing Poul as a full on loony is just him, though: it's more complicated than that. Poul, following RoD and Corpse Marker has clearly just had way too much and broken with reality in some ways, but he's not running round raving and crying. He's just ending the universe via a weird cult. There's no account of exactly how he got to that point, but it's still interesting.
(The universe ending comes via one of Chris Boucher's other DW serials, Image of the Fendahl, which for various reasons is not as glorious as RoD but still has its various ifluences being brought together in interesting ways, with proper characters and snark, but this is pretty much CB's metier.)
You will probably not be surprised to learn that, this being one of my few DW VHS serials I owned back in the day, that I did write Poul fix-it fic. ;-)
Big Finish audios has a completely different sequel to RoD called Robophobia. It does some rather lovely things and has Nicola Walker in it, but it completely misses several of the points of RoD, which is frustrating. But alternate canon in which Poul may possibly be doing fine and even hanging out with Nicola Walker somewhere is available!
I'm sorry you can't type up about movies, and I hope your hand recovers soon, but nothing nicer could have been posted for me today than this. <3
ETA: if you or anyone else ever write/has written original SF derived from RoD, I NEED TO KNOW. This is what I want my SF to be!
ETA2: These are, as far as I know, the only surviving images of him as Daneel, plus some YT-based screencaps Liadt took from L7 here and here.
no subject
I will have more to say later when hopefully less tired, but let me just comment on your footnotes first:
For maximum irony of the sort that comes to pass if a person does enough science fiction, Collings played 51st-century robot detective Daneel in a 1969 BBC adaptation of The Naked Sun (1957)
For maximum irony, enjoy the fact that David Collings's other episode of Out of the Unknown features him being too human to be trapped in an underground bunker, and he swiftly breaks down and has to be lobotomised (his hand won't work! it doesn't want to be here; it doesn't see why any of them should be here! it won't press any more buttons. <3)
I don't know whether it's good news or bad news, given that OOTU is ironically harder to come by without spending £££s since the BFI released the DVD than previously, but his other ep "Level 7" does survive, and the DVD boxset has a reconstruction of The Naked Sun using the publicity photos and the surviving soundtrack - there seems to be a lot more of it than that source suggests. (Level 7 is actually much better and more of a direct link to RoD in terms of David Collings's performance and function in the plot, surprisingly, but interviews with David Collings suggest that he enjoys SFF himself and would very likely have got the connection even if he hadn't already played Daneel. He was in the BBC Radio LotR as Legolas and the adaptor recalls that he was the only member of the cast who had already read the books and knew them well enough to help out the rest of the Fellowship, although some of the others, like Ian Holm, read it in preparation.)
Opinions? Everyone is just lucky I did not see this serial in high school instead of The Pirate Planet, because I wouldn't have written Poul fix-it fic—I didn't start writing fanfiction until I was out of grad school—but I am pretty sure hopelessly derivative original fiction would have been guaranteed.
LOL, Kaldor City! Okay, the thing about Kaldor is that it is actually based more on the BBC Past Doctor Adventures sequel to RoD, Corpse Marker (written by Chris Boucher, though) which is something on which I have mixed feelings, but basically it follows Uvanov, Toos, and Poul back in Kaldor City, where everything has been hushed up and everyone is basically ambitious back-stabbing political whatsits, and there are some Taren Capel fans out there who want to continue his work. Poul unfortunately gets some highly damaging 'therapy' (by people who want to use him for things that I forget because it's been a long time since I read it) and has another terrible experience, although he does come out of it slightly better than RoD, but clearly it doesn't do him any good. The book also throws in one of Chris Boucher's more popular one-off Blake's 7 characters, the psychostrategist (or 'puppetmaster') Carnell. This then makes Kaldor a world somewhere outside the reaches of the Federation in the B7 universe (which fits absolutely; it feels very much as if it could be). This then led to the audio series of Kaldor City, which does sound like something you should avoid with a bargepole, but it actually throughly enjoyable sarcastic crack that all goes bafflingly meta at the end (and possibly destroys the whole universe with it), so its canon is entirely optional because canon is clearly also not sure what's going on.
It combines said character from B7 with the original actor, with other actors from Chris Boucher shows, plus a character who may or may not be a major B7 character (the source of much LOLs, given Paul Darrow's habit of eating the microphone) and basically people are sarcastic while Uvanov hates robots (but is totally not robophobic okay, it's not paranoia when everybody really is out to get you) and I don't even know. (My friend Liadt once wrote a Kaldor ficlet where the Henry Hoovers try to kill Uvanov and it fits in perfectly, so, I mean... *g*)
David Collings describing Poul as a full on loony is just him, though: it's more complicated than that. Poul, following RoD and Corpse Marker has clearly just had way too much and broken with reality in some ways, but he's not running round raving and crying. He's just ending the universe via a weird cult. There's no account of exactly how he got to that point, but it's still interesting.
(The universe ending comes via one of Chris Boucher's other DW serials, Image of the Fendahl, which for various reasons is not as glorious as RoD but still has its various ifluences being brought together in interesting ways, with proper characters and snark, but this is pretty much CB's metier.)
You will probably not be surprised to learn that, this being one of my few DW VHS serials I owned back in the day, that I did write Poul fix-it fic. ;-)
Big Finish audios has a completely different sequel to RoD called Robophobia. It does some rather lovely things and has Nicola Walker in it, but it completely misses several of the points of RoD, which is frustrating. But alternate canon in which Poul may possibly be doing fine and even hanging out with Nicola Walker somewhere is available!
I'm sorry you can't type up about movies, and I hope your hand recovers soon, but nothing nicer could have been posted for me today than this. <3
ETA: if you or anyone else ever write/has written original SF derived from RoD, I NEED TO KNOW. This is what I want my SF to be!
ETA2: These are, as far as I know, the only surviving images of him as Daneel, plus some YT-based screencaps Liadt took from L7 here and here.