Tuesday, February 02, 2010
Pretty Pictures – and Pretty Intelligent
Welcome to February, a little belatedly as I was utterly shattered yesterday, and to ease you into the new month I’ve prepared a selection of links to sites with pretty pictures – each of which will also insidiously get your brain working. Well, I hope they’ll do so for me, anyway, as I’m still knackered and have a great many things I want to write. Marvel, then, at Jodrell Bank’s pick of the night sky for February, a fabulous Douglas Adams pastiche, several comic strips and something not at all safe for work. Hope it cheers and wakes you up. And, in at least one case, gets you up (not the Pope, then). I might do this again – it’s more fun than reorganising my entire sidebar of outdated links, isn’t it?
Jodrell Bank’s monthly astronomy update for what to look out for in the night sky. February’s particularly good for Mars and Italian scooters, apparently. Just such a shame President Obama’s decided we’re only going to look at it all from down here. Meanwhile, Douglas Adams famously imagined a Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy while lying back in a field in Innsbruck and looking at the stars…
The absurdly gifted Andrew Orton used to have a website full of ‘movie posters’ for Doctor Who stories, some of them very eye-catching and several still saved on my hard drive long after he abandoned them. These days, rather than manipulating simple images in Photoshop (or whatever), he builds CGI Doctor Who and other models to do marvellous things with them. I particularly enjoyed his pastiche of The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, mixed in with the first Doctor Who story on which Douglas Adams was credited as script editor. My suspicion is that, unlike the ‘real’ computer graphics of the fabulous 1981 TV series, Andrew has used real computer graphics.
And now onto the pictures that don’t move about a lot, but which might bear some relation to Oolon Coluphid. There were these two blokes down the pub… And they probably shouldn’t be viewed by those of a religiously sensitive disposition. I’m with the barmaid (hi, Jennie!).
More blasphemy. Tut. And more on the Unspeakable Pope later (who’s not a pretty picture). A century ago, writer HP Lovecraft decided that horror had become too familiar and, thus, not frightening. He created an unnameable, unspeakable, sometimes unreadable new universe of cosmic horror, stories where the scary things were only glimpsed, weren’t explained, and crushed the investigator like a bug to finish – in the more reassuring tales. Today, what’s new has become old, and many-tentacled, unpronounceable Lovecraftian abominations have become as much a cliché as Dracula was to him. The cuddly cartoon mass-mutilation of the Unspeakable Vault (Of Doom) would, then, have been a pain in the neck to Mr Lovecraft, as the more recognisably “Lovecraftian” something is, the less it is like anything Mr Lovecraft was trying to do. It does, however, make me laugh very improperly.
Adam and Andy are a middle-aged gay couple who’ve been together for ever, where one works terribly hard and the other’s lazy, and where neither is as svelte as they used to be. It’s just like another sci-fi link, as obviously they’re in a completely different world to my life. They have a dog, not an elephant! Thanks to the very gorgeous Alex Foster for putting me on to their strip some time ago, too.
This one does what it says on the disclaimer page. Yes, the artist of these cartoons started off wanting to make fantasy porn, but found it all too funny. As a result, she goes where the mood takes her and some of the strips, regretfully, are safe for work. Don’t worry – there’ll be more cock jokes along very soon. A tip: if, like me, you start reading and then want to read the whole thing, while each of the strips is funny on its own, many of them build up to punchlines – one might call them climaxes – over several instalments. If you like the first few you read and want to carry on, you really are best off clicking on the “START” page and going on from there, as reading a joke backwards is noticeably less funny.
This one also started off as porn and is often funny, but it’s not a cartoon, it’s a porn star’s very engaging blog about his life in the recession. His headline pic on his Big Shoe Diaries is naked, partially obscured by a “Will Fuck For Food” sign; the background to his Twitter account, on which at present he’s fully clothed, is him surrounded by his books. Come on, you like him already, don’t you? Some pages are indeed safe for work, but you’re probably safer assuming they’re not: though he frequently discusses his visits to art galleries and museums, ‘I went there for the art’ may not stand up to close examination when it doesn’t go down well with your system administrator. Look out, too, for mentions of his friend Conner Habib, who is funny, an academic and another very hot films chap. Do you get many of those? Anyway, Colby was recommended to me by a friend in one of those late-night wide-ranging Doctor Who, food and porn online discussions one has, as someone who’s funny, intelligent, and also very sexy, not plucked to within an inch of his life, and looking like he’s enjoying himself. And after a few days of looking at the pictures, you might start reading what he has to say, too.
This particular recommendation is dedicated to Tower Hamlets Council.
In much less wholesome porn news, the Australian legislature are officially a bunch of wankers. They’ve based a new law on mainstream pornography’s somewhat inflated view of breasts, and decided that all pictures of women with relatively small breasts are akin to child pornography. Were all their campaigns funded by the cosmetic surgery industry? ‘Women – buy those implants now or you aren’t a real woman’ isn’t the sort of message you expect an actual law to be sneering, is it? Strangely, they don’t appear to have banned pictures of men with small penises. That sort of porn’s absolutely fine, too, but presumably the Australian Parliament were too busy watching the big boobs to keep their minds on lower matters… Oh, but I’m wrong! It seems female ejaculation is “abhorrent”, too. That’s a law that sounds like it was made by HP Lovecraft, and about as in touch with the real world.
By now, you’ve probably heard about Pope Rottweiler’s latest medieval threats. So I’ll just comment through the medium of Twitter…
I tweeted last night:
Ex-Nazi to visit UK, demand special rights, charge taxpayers £20m for privilege & make gays 2nd class. It’s political incorrectness gone mad!
Then added my simple Liberal message, with a link to the National Secular Society’s petition against paying for him – he’s not in any sense a pretty picture, but he does make a good poster when you click to see all the signatories:
Don’t ban Pope but don’t keep quiet & don’t pay for his tour of hate (sign here)
I joined Twitter less than a week ago, and an evil old bigot telling us how to live our lives and demanding money and laws in his favour has had by far the biggest Twitterbag amongst the people I’m following. Who knew?
Update: Gosh. Thanks, Colby!
February By Night
Jodrell Bank’s monthly astronomy update for what to look out for in the night sky. February’s particularly good for Mars and Italian scooters, apparently. Just such a shame President Obama’s decided we’re only going to look at it all from down here. Meanwhile, Douglas Adams famously imagined a Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy while lying back in a field in Innsbruck and looking at the stars…
The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Daleks
The absurdly gifted Andrew Orton used to have a website full of ‘movie posters’ for Doctor Who stories, some of them very eye-catching and several still saved on my hard drive long after he abandoned them. These days, rather than manipulating simple images in Photoshop (or whatever), he builds CGI Doctor Who and other models to do marvellous things with them. I particularly enjoyed his pastiche of The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, mixed in with the first Doctor Who story on which Douglas Adams was credited as script editor. My suspicion is that, unlike the ‘real’ computer graphics of the fabulous 1981 TV series, Andrew has used real computer graphics.
Jesus and Mo
And now onto the pictures that don’t move about a lot, but which might bear some relation to Oolon Coluphid. There were these two blokes down the pub… And they probably shouldn’t be viewed by those of a religiously sensitive disposition. I’m with the barmaid (hi, Jennie!).
Unspeakable Vault (Of Doom)
More blasphemy. Tut. And more on the Unspeakable Pope later (who’s not a pretty picture). A century ago, writer HP Lovecraft decided that horror had become too familiar and, thus, not frightening. He created an unnameable, unspeakable, sometimes unreadable new universe of cosmic horror, stories where the scary things were only glimpsed, weren’t explained, and crushed the investigator like a bug to finish – in the more reassuring tales. Today, what’s new has become old, and many-tentacled, unpronounceable Lovecraftian abominations have become as much a cliché as Dracula was to him. The cuddly cartoon mass-mutilation of the Unspeakable Vault (Of Doom) would, then, have been a pain in the neck to Mr Lovecraft, as the more recognisably “Lovecraftian” something is, the less it is like anything Mr Lovecraft was trying to do. It does, however, make me laugh very improperly.
Adam and Andy
Adam and Andy are a middle-aged gay couple who’ve been together for ever, where one works terribly hard and the other’s lazy, and where neither is as svelte as they used to be. It’s just like another sci-fi link, as obviously they’re in a completely different world to my life. They have a dog, not an elephant! Thanks to the very gorgeous Alex Foster for putting me on to their strip some time ago, too.
Oglaf.com
This one does what it says on the disclaimer page. Yes, the artist of these cartoons started off wanting to make fantasy porn, but found it all too funny. As a result, she goes where the mood takes her and some of the strips, regretfully, are safe for work. Don’t worry – there’ll be more cock jokes along very soon. A tip: if, like me, you start reading and then want to read the whole thing, while each of the strips is funny on its own, many of them build up to punchlines – one might call them climaxes – over several instalments. If you like the first few you read and want to carry on, you really are best off clicking on the “START” page and going on from there, as reading a joke backwards is noticeably less funny.
The Internet is for Porn (and I’m for Colby Keller)
This one also started off as porn and is often funny, but it’s not a cartoon, it’s a porn star’s very engaging blog about his life in the recession. His headline pic on his Big Shoe Diaries is naked, partially obscured by a “Will Fuck For Food” sign; the background to his Twitter account, on which at present he’s fully clothed, is him surrounded by his books. Come on, you like him already, don’t you? Some pages are indeed safe for work, but you’re probably safer assuming they’re not: though he frequently discusses his visits to art galleries and museums, ‘I went there for the art’ may not stand up to close examination when it doesn’t go down well with your system administrator. Look out, too, for mentions of his friend Conner Habib, who is funny, an academic and another very hot films chap. Do you get many of those? Anyway, Colby was recommended to me by a friend in one of those late-night wide-ranging Doctor Who, food and porn online discussions one has, as someone who’s funny, intelligent, and also very sexy, not plucked to within an inch of his life, and looking like he’s enjoying himself. And after a few days of looking at the pictures, you might start reading what he has to say, too.
This particular recommendation is dedicated to Tower Hamlets Council.
In much less wholesome porn news, the Australian legislature are officially a bunch of wankers. They’ve based a new law on mainstream pornography’s somewhat inflated view of breasts, and decided that all pictures of women with relatively small breasts are akin to child pornography. Were all their campaigns funded by the cosmetic surgery industry? ‘Women – buy those implants now or you aren’t a real woman’ isn’t the sort of message you expect an actual law to be sneering, is it? Strangely, they don’t appear to have banned pictures of men with small penises. That sort of porn’s absolutely fine, too, but presumably the Australian Parliament were too busy watching the big boobs to keep their minds on lower matters… Oh, but I’m wrong! It seems female ejaculation is “abhorrent”, too. That’s a law that sounds like it was made by HP Lovecraft, and about as in touch with the real world.
Pay For Pope? Nope
By now, you’ve probably heard about Pope Rottweiler’s latest medieval threats. So I’ll just comment through the medium of Twitter…
I tweeted last night:
Ex-Nazi to visit UK, demand special rights, charge taxpayers £20m for privilege & make gays 2nd class. It’s political incorrectness gone mad!
Then added my simple Liberal message, with a link to the National Secular Society’s petition against paying for him – he’s not in any sense a pretty picture, but he does make a good poster when you click to see all the signatories:
Don’t ban Pope but don’t keep quiet & don’t pay for his tour of hate (sign here)
I joined Twitter less than a week ago, and an evil old bigot telling us how to live our lives and demanding money and laws in his favour has had by far the biggest Twitterbag amongst the people I’m following. Who knew?
- The talented Paul Cornell is religious
- The lovely Owen Blacker is sweary
- The cheery James Moran works for the tourist board
- The handsome David Ames is subtle
- And the gorgeous Will Howells was where I spotted the news and still spot-on.
Update: Gosh. Thanks, Colby!
Labels: Bigotry, Blogs, Comedy, Comics, Cthulhu, Daleks, Doctor Who, Douglas Adams, Gay, Jodrell Bank, Meddling In Things That Are Nobody's Business But Your Own, Pictures, Religion, Sex, Twitter
Thursday, December 31, 2009
Dip Me in Gaiety and Throw Me To the Creationists
As the year closes, it seems appropriate to give a last hurrah to two great figures whose bicentennials have been celebrated in 2009: Charles Darwin, who changed the way we think about ourselves and opened the world to the wonders of evolution (and whose On the Origin of Species had its own one hundred and fiftieth anniversary); and William Ewart Gladstone, the Grand Old Man of British Liberalism, probably Britain’s greatest ever Prime Minister as well as perhaps the greatest polymath and possibly even the most insufferable human being – though with far greater competition – to hold that office.
People have written an enormous amount this year about Darwin and his work, and I’m not going to replicate it all. Not least because, like many other days this year, I’m tired, ill and grumpy, and I want to be nice to Richard before it turns midnight.
But I will say this. The theory of evolution is one of the greatest discoveries in human history. It’s sad that increasingly vociferous nutters still do their best to disbelieve all the evidence, but shocking that they pour money into teaching kids to stick their fingers in their ears and stop thinking. I’m aghast that these theocratic maniacs who think they know everything – and that everything was already known thousands of years ago – have been allowed by the Labour Government to peddle their lies in schools. And David Cameron’s wish to peddle out public services to dodgy “faith-based” clubs fills me with no more confidence. Schools should be places of enquiry; teaching the scientific method is teaching to question, and to look for evidence. Though polling evidence on how much the British public trust the evidence splits, as everything does, on how you ask the question (oh no! It’s a disaster! Oh, phew! It’s quite promising, except in the USA!), I know whose arguments I find more convincing: David Attenborough, or Sarah Palin?
I’ll leave you with the above poster via Paul Belford, and many wise words from a certain elephant with a much better grasp of the science than I have.
When the rather fabulous Victorian werewolf story Tooth and Claw first aired as part of Doctor Who’s 2006 season, one of the many reasons I enjoyed it was that, contrary to my fears, Queen Victoria turned out to be a complete git. I’d recently read Roy Jenkins’ superb and startlingly readable biography of Mr Gladstone, and had strongly come to that conclusion about her myself; she didn’t like Mr Gladstone, understandably, but went to great lengths to frustrate him, undemocratically. She wasn’t a great one for listening to the People’s Will.
Finally, I thought you might be intrigued to learn that, despite going to a state-funded Catholic primary school, secondary school and sixth-form college, and attending two different churches – Catholic and Baptist – every Sunday until I was eighteen, and knowing much of the Bible very well indeed, picturebook-friendly Genesis more than most, I grew up not doubting for a moment that, with so much evidence in front of me, the theory of evolution was simply factual.
In part, I’m sure this was because I had two very religious and highly intelligent parents (my Dad in particular with an interest in science, having been a librarian back then and today working at Jodrell Bank). In part, it was that evolution was certainly presented as scientific fact even as early as primary school. And in part, of course, I learned to read on all those marvellous Target Doctor Who books, and Doctor Who and the Cave-Monsters in particular made it very clear that the Earth had been around for a while, and humanity considerably less so. Later evolutionary fables Full Circle and Ghost Light were even clearer: there might have been old religious authorities that were blind to the truth back in the past sometime, but like any species that couldn’t adapt, they’d long since died out.
Now, bear in mind that at the time I was less familiar with US politics than I am now, and that the religious right was both less powerful and less barking mad – and that the idea of theocratic millionaire ideologues being able to take state funding to indoctrinate children in any old shit was something not even Mrs Thatcher was backing.
So how was it that I came by the revelation that creationists were still going in the UK?
Hilariously, it was only when I went for a university interview that this ever came up. Being quite some way away, they’d put me up for the night with three other young men come for interview, and in the dorm room that night the four of us got talking. I can’t remember how the subject came up, but it turned out that not one but two of the others – all four of us from very different places – were of the creationist view. You wait eighteen years for a loony, then two of them come along at once. You may not be surprised to learn that we didn’t exactly get on. You may be more surprised to find out just what I did that really, really wound them up.
I laughed.
I roared. I pissed myself. Given all my life history thus far, I immediately leapt to the only plausible conclusion: it was a practical joke. They’d met up earlier that day and decided on a prank together, like university students are expected to do. And, of course, the longer I treated them as if they were trying to pull my leg in the most absurd way, the more furious they became, because they thought I was mocking their most deeply held beliefs. Which I was, of course, but only because I didn’t realise anyone could possibly still be that stupid in the late Twentieth Century, and that it must be a wind-up.
As I was a little over a year into being quite politically motivated and out, too, I then mentioned that I was gay at an appropriate point in the conversation. Of course, they immediately assumed that I was now pulling their legs, as they’d never (cough – bollocks) met any who was gay before and, obviously, it was exactly what I’d be expected to do on thinking they’d been taking the piss. It didn’t help my credibility that I laughed all the more at their reactions to my latest challenge to their worldview, but once they started believing me, the real arguments started. Ahhh, to this day it’s still my second-favourite coming out in bed.
The fourth guy in the dorm literally just kept his head down. Under his pillow, in fact, by the end of it. Or maybe he wanted to get some sleep before his interview for some bizarre reason.
Once I got back up north to my parents, I remember relating this story in tones of sheer incredulity, and being told in an embarrassed way by my Dad that there were a handful of people at Church he thought were probably creationists, but they didn’t talk about it. Oh well. Look, they hadn’t done any damage to me, so that was all right.
Of course, Stockport Baptist Church then turned out to have a pretty major problem with my sexuality too, but that’s another story…
Darwin
People have written an enormous amount this year about Darwin and his work, and I’m not going to replicate it all. Not least because, like many other days this year, I’m tired, ill and grumpy, and I want to be nice to Richard before it turns midnight.
But I will say this. The theory of evolution is one of the greatest discoveries in human history. It’s sad that increasingly vociferous nutters still do their best to disbelieve all the evidence, but shocking that they pour money into teaching kids to stick their fingers in their ears and stop thinking. I’m aghast that these theocratic maniacs who think they know everything – and that everything was already known thousands of years ago – have been allowed by the Labour Government to peddle their lies in schools. And David Cameron’s wish to peddle out public services to dodgy “faith-based” clubs fills me with no more confidence. Schools should be places of enquiry; teaching the scientific method is teaching to question, and to look for evidence. Though polling evidence on how much the British public trust the evidence splits, as everything does, on how you ask the question (oh no! It’s a disaster! Oh, phew! It’s quite promising, except in the USA!), I know whose arguments I find more convincing: David Attenborough, or Sarah Palin?
I’ll leave you with the above poster via Paul Belford, and many wise words from a certain elephant with a much better grasp of the science than I have.
Gladstone
When the rather fabulous Victorian werewolf story Tooth and Claw first aired as part of Doctor Who’s 2006 season, one of the many reasons I enjoyed it was that, contrary to my fears, Queen Victoria turned out to be a complete git. I’d recently read Roy Jenkins’ superb and startlingly readable biography of Mr Gladstone, and had strongly come to that conclusion about her myself; she didn’t like Mr Gladstone, understandably, but went to great lengths to frustrate him, undemocratically. She wasn’t a great one for listening to the People’s Will.
“The principle of Liberalism is trust in the people, qualified by prudence:That’s probably Mr Gladstone’s best-known quotation, which I’ve seen recorded in several slightly different forms (for example, via the lovely Stephen Glenn) – I suspect the answer is that he uttered it several times. Despite Mr Gladstone being famous for his six-hour Budget speeches, I used the above version as one of a series of potential Tweets on what the Liberal Democrats stand for. Appropriately enough, I took it from the 1885 publication Why I Am A Liberal, via 1996’s Why I Am A Liberal Democrat. Perhaps more endearing is his account of his own personal evolution:
The principle of conservatism is mistrust of the people, qualified by fear.”
“I was brought up to hate and fear liberty. I came to love it. That is the secret of my whole career.”I suspect that, were he Liberal Democrat Leader today, I’d be in constant conflict with him – though you never can tell, as not only did he believe in all his points of view with a zealous passion, he frequently changed them. It’s a sign of thinking about things that I can’t help admiring, though sometimes he’d think about them in public at such length that it makes me seem like I only ever communicate in txt spk. As his wife Catherine once put it:
“Oh, William dear, if you weren’t such a great man you would be a terrible bore.”Mr Gladstone was born two hundred years ago this week, so here are a few of the best commemorations. Stephen Glenn refers us to several of his H2G2 articles; the marvellous Helen Duffett brings us the tail-end of the great man’s voice; and the Guardian an unusually to the point “In Praise of…” and a special comment piece. The most startling paeans, however, were found by Paul Walter in those most deeply Conservative periodicals, the Daily Mail – the paper that spits on dead people and refuses to apologise – and the Daily Torygraph. Like so many churches now shyly acceding to Darwin’s discoveries, it seems it takes a hundred years for Tory newspapers to recognise that Liberalism was the right choice after all.
My Night With Creationists (With Hilarious Results)
Finally, I thought you might be intrigued to learn that, despite going to a state-funded Catholic primary school, secondary school and sixth-form college, and attending two different churches – Catholic and Baptist – every Sunday until I was eighteen, and knowing much of the Bible very well indeed, picturebook-friendly Genesis more than most, I grew up not doubting for a moment that, with so much evidence in front of me, the theory of evolution was simply factual.
In part, I’m sure this was because I had two very religious and highly intelligent parents (my Dad in particular with an interest in science, having been a librarian back then and today working at Jodrell Bank). In part, it was that evolution was certainly presented as scientific fact even as early as primary school. And in part, of course, I learned to read on all those marvellous Target Doctor Who books, and Doctor Who and the Cave-Monsters in particular made it very clear that the Earth had been around for a while, and humanity considerably less so. Later evolutionary fables Full Circle and Ghost Light were even clearer: there might have been old religious authorities that were blind to the truth back in the past sometime, but like any species that couldn’t adapt, they’d long since died out.
Now, bear in mind that at the time I was less familiar with US politics than I am now, and that the religious right was both less powerful and less barking mad – and that the idea of theocratic millionaire ideologues being able to take state funding to indoctrinate children in any old shit was something not even Mrs Thatcher was backing.
So how was it that I came by the revelation that creationists were still going in the UK?
Hilariously, it was only when I went for a university interview that this ever came up. Being quite some way away, they’d put me up for the night with three other young men come for interview, and in the dorm room that night the four of us got talking. I can’t remember how the subject came up, but it turned out that not one but two of the others – all four of us from very different places – were of the creationist view. You wait eighteen years for a loony, then two of them come along at once. You may not be surprised to learn that we didn’t exactly get on. You may be more surprised to find out just what I did that really, really wound them up.
I laughed.
I roared. I pissed myself. Given all my life history thus far, I immediately leapt to the only plausible conclusion: it was a practical joke. They’d met up earlier that day and decided on a prank together, like university students are expected to do. And, of course, the longer I treated them as if they were trying to pull my leg in the most absurd way, the more furious they became, because they thought I was mocking their most deeply held beliefs. Which I was, of course, but only because I didn’t realise anyone could possibly still be that stupid in the late Twentieth Century, and that it must be a wind-up.
As I was a little over a year into being quite politically motivated and out, too, I then mentioned that I was gay at an appropriate point in the conversation. Of course, they immediately assumed that I was now pulling their legs, as they’d never (cough – bollocks) met any who was gay before and, obviously, it was exactly what I’d be expected to do on thinking they’d been taking the piss. It didn’t help my credibility that I laughed all the more at their reactions to my latest challenge to their worldview, but once they started believing me, the real arguments started. Ahhh, to this day it’s still my second-favourite coming out in bed.
The fourth guy in the dorm literally just kept his head down. Under his pillow, in fact, by the end of it. Or maybe he wanted to get some sleep before his interview for some bizarre reason.
Once I got back up north to my parents, I remember relating this story in tones of sheer incredulity, and being told in an embarrassed way by my Dad that there were a handful of people at Church he thought were probably creationists, but they didn’t talk about it. Oh well. Look, they hadn’t done any damage to me, so that was all right.
Of course, Stockport Baptist Church then turned out to have a pretty major problem with my sexuality too, but that’s another story…
Labels: Books, Doctor Who, Education, Gay, History, Ideas, Jodrell Bank, Liberalism, Newspapers, Personal, Religion
Thursday, February 08, 2007
The Avengers – From Venus With Love
Tonight at 7.10 (and tomorrow at 11.30) The Avengers come to BBC4 in color, along with several other changes from the black and white style. If you’re thinking, ‘But surely British television wasn’t transmitting in colour in 1967, so why make it like that?’ then the clue to the funding’s in the spelling! In a less dramatic change, this is my first New Blogger post, so if anyone knows how to make a heart symbol appear in a title…? Tonight’s episode is particularly silly, but dear to my heart purely because this week’s pile of murder victims are all astronomers.
Steed is shot full of holes – Emma sees stars!
…And one of the first changes you’ll notice is that those little ‘introduction’ lines above now appear on screen, just after the title (the ones in my reviews of the black and white Mrs Peel episodes were used in publicity for the show). Before then, though, you’ll already have spotted an absolutely smashing title sequence – guns, gold and roses – accompanied by an extended and more percussive version of the famous theme. Well, the main body of it’s the same and that great fanfare’s still there (an extra time, now), so I’m still happy. Another change comes straight after the obligatory opening murder and the title: each episode now starts off with Steed finding increasingly outlandish ways to tell Mrs Peel ‘You’re needed’. As we first see her – now in brightly-coloured catsuit rather than the white outfits of which I was so fond, and in a starkly red and white flat – practicing her fencing, just as we first caught sight of her back in The Town of No Return, it’s appropriate that Steed first proffers an invitation impaled on his umbrella. There’s also going to be a change to the regular pattern at the end, as Steed and Mrs Peel no longer find an eccentric vehicle on which to make their exit but chat instead, and the type of plots change, too: brighter in tone as well as film stock; clearly in an ‘Avengerland’ of Britain that never was rather than anything like the real world; and a significant recurring plot device that I’ll only mention a little later, once I start giving away spoilers for this episode…
It’s not unusual in The Avengers to have some select society whose members are being bumped off one by one, and this time it’s that well-known band of exceedingly rich amateur astronomers, the British Venusian Society – a group who believe in life on Venus, and wish to make contact with it. Blazing white lights are bleaching their hair and blasting them into another world entirely… Could the Venusians be a form of fiery, gaseous life that have struck Earth first? Is the Society’s head, Venus Brown, responsible for the deaths to cover up her misuse of all those wealthy donations? Or is there some other explanation to be found by Steed and Mrs Peel, investigating in the somewhat predictable guises of playboy and journalist?
Well, before I spoil the answer for you, while this isn’t among the best of The Avengers’ colour episodes, it introduces a lot of the elements that you’ll be seeing in later weeks. There’s a remarkable set of guest stars playing an extraordinary assortment of eccentrics. Hammer starlet Barbara Shelley is Venus Brown, in a selection of ludicrous outfits – horrible red and orange stripes, a barmy black wimple and red gloves… Jeremy Lloyd, later to write Are You Being Served? and ’Allo ’Allo, is impeccably dressed charming chimney sweep Bert Smith, full name Bertram Fortescue Wynthrop-Smythe (but he doesn’t get trade with his full name; sheer class prejudice)… Philip Locke is Dr Primble, the old gag of a nearly-blind optician with huge goggles, contact lenses, and glasses in his pocket, giving Steed a fabulous eye test that consists of having to identify a series of hats (mine wasn’t like that last week, but then I wouldn’t have been able to name them all anyway)… Derek Newark, who you may recall spent Inferno being either angry or on heat has the simpler role of playing nothing but angry… And, to confuse viewers of that particular Doctor Who period, moustache-wearing Jon Pertwee plays the Brigadier.
Should you have snapped up the DVD release of this episode before it was deleted, incidentally, even the subtitles are eccentric. Originally mastered by a French company, it had both subtitles and a soundtrack in both English and French. Confusingly, the dubbing and subtitles each used different translations; more confusingly still, the English subtitles were not a transcript of the original English dialogue, but, er, a re-translation from the French subtitles. The most striking idiosyncrasy for me was that astronomer Venus Brown had worked at “Dudrud Bank” instead of the spoken “Jodrell”. I’ve always appreciated astronomy in itself, but with my Dad working at Jodrell Bank, I made sure I told him to watch out for a stack of dead astronomers when he does the next planetarium show. But before you look at all those lovely star charts, back to the episode.
It’s all highly stylised, though not quite as colourful yet as it will be – most of the colour is in the outfits, and they’re not all good (I don’t like Mrs Peel’s pale lilac dress, nor Steed’s shiny maroon dinner jacket, though his deep grey suit is rather nice). The bizarre deaths don’t get much more bizarre than these, though; the music’s rather nice from the Holst-styled opening to the lovely new closing tag theme; someone’s killed with his own weapon; there are plenty of red herrings. They’re not drinking champagne in every episode yet, but we do see Emma sip a Pimm’s and accept a brandy from Steed (who drinks bottled beer), while the first astronomer killed has a drink to hand and Lord Mansford drinks whisky in his vault. Most importantly, there are lashings of playful wit. Particularly enjoyable scenes include Dr Primble’s eccentric eye test and way of making an appointment, and Brigadier Whitehead’s way of recording his memoirs for LP, dashing between sound effects gramophones – both Steed and Emma literally fall for his machine gun sounds. And Mrs Peel inevitably – there’s a spoiler coming; I’m getting near the end here, so watch out if you’ve read this far and not watched it yet – and Mrs Peel inevitably ends up strapped into a chair with a deadly laser pointed at her. “Excellent!” exclaims the villain. “Not from where I’m sitting,” she says, finding this mildly trying.
Ah, the villain, and the method of murder. There are three things to notice here, and the first (and apparently most obvious) is that it’s not Venusians. In the black and white Mrs Peel episodes, it might not have been that obvious, though – with robots, a man-eating alien plant and telepathic spies, this could have been a real alien at work too. But though this colour Mrs Peel season seems more ‘fantastic’ and less part of the real world, these ‘Avengerland’ episodes are in fact much more likely to boil down to a more ordinarily extraordinary explanation than the previous year’s occasional willingness to experiment with wild science fiction ideas. This is the year of hoaxes.
As you may have spotted a few lines ago, the ‘glowing white light’ that floats about is, it turns out, a laser. On a car. Well, I say a ‘laser,’ and so do they, but other than being a form of projected light (and, curiously, after we know it’s a laser it’s suddenly a cool blue beam rather than a huge round blaze), it seems to boast a remarkable array of superpowers that other lasers strangely lack. Marvel as, instead of burning, it bleaches your hair and anything you’re standing next to, as if someone has chucked a bucket of sinister white paint in your general direction; wonder as it makes everything in your vicinity get very warm, but only before the light actually shines; scratch your head as characters announce they recognise it by its uniquely distinctive sound (a clue: no). Despite the amusing eccentrics, the direction is rather flat, the story seems a bit slapdash, and I have to admit this use of technology is a bit of a sticking point. I’d much rather they did what they usually do and just made something up that doesn’t really exist; it’s much more distracting to be told something that does exist works entirely differently. Ah well. Rather bizarrely, they correctly predict that lasers will be used for eye surgery (just like Mrs Peel’s futuristic phone in her car. No, really, this was like jetpacks in the ’60s).
Hang on a minute… Eye surgery? Gasp! Then this week’s diabolical master mind was Dr Primble all along! And here’s the other thing to notice. Philip Locke is enormous fun to watch and is at the heart of the funniest scenes as well as giving us ‘demented villain’ – he gives a delightful beam as he trains his laser on Mrs Peel – but this all disguises his drearily prosaic motive. It’s the argument used too often about public spending on art, science or anything not universally popular: ‘You shouldn’t be interested in space, because we should spend all our money on schools and hospitals’. In this case, he’s been wiping out the British Venusian Society because one of their sponsors switched funding from him to them. However wildly the actor goggles to try and stop you noticing, his villainy is at heart Daily Mail-sensible. On the other hand, I may just be a bit wary of opticians wanting cash at the moment. It’s been more than a week since they took my money – not enough to fund a space programme – but my new glasses still aren’t ready…
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Steed is shot full of holes – Emma sees stars!
…And one of the first changes you’ll notice is that those little ‘introduction’ lines above now appear on screen, just after the title (the ones in my reviews of the black and white Mrs Peel episodes were used in publicity for the show). Before then, though, you’ll already have spotted an absolutely smashing title sequence – guns, gold and roses – accompanied by an extended and more percussive version of the famous theme. Well, the main body of it’s the same and that great fanfare’s still there (an extra time, now), so I’m still happy. Another change comes straight after the obligatory opening murder and the title: each episode now starts off with Steed finding increasingly outlandish ways to tell Mrs Peel ‘You’re needed’. As we first see her – now in brightly-coloured catsuit rather than the white outfits of which I was so fond, and in a starkly red and white flat – practicing her fencing, just as we first caught sight of her back in The Town of No Return, it’s appropriate that Steed first proffers an invitation impaled on his umbrella. There’s also going to be a change to the regular pattern at the end, as Steed and Mrs Peel no longer find an eccentric vehicle on which to make their exit but chat instead, and the type of plots change, too: brighter in tone as well as film stock; clearly in an ‘Avengerland’ of Britain that never was rather than anything like the real world; and a significant recurring plot device that I’ll only mention a little later, once I start giving away spoilers for this episode…
It’s not unusual in The Avengers to have some select society whose members are being bumped off one by one, and this time it’s that well-known band of exceedingly rich amateur astronomers, the British Venusian Society – a group who believe in life on Venus, and wish to make contact with it. Blazing white lights are bleaching their hair and blasting them into another world entirely… Could the Venusians be a form of fiery, gaseous life that have struck Earth first? Is the Society’s head, Venus Brown, responsible for the deaths to cover up her misuse of all those wealthy donations? Or is there some other explanation to be found by Steed and Mrs Peel, investigating in the somewhat predictable guises of playboy and journalist?
Well, before I spoil the answer for you, while this isn’t among the best of The Avengers’ colour episodes, it introduces a lot of the elements that you’ll be seeing in later weeks. There’s a remarkable set of guest stars playing an extraordinary assortment of eccentrics. Hammer starlet Barbara Shelley is Venus Brown, in a selection of ludicrous outfits – horrible red and orange stripes, a barmy black wimple and red gloves… Jeremy Lloyd, later to write Are You Being Served? and ’Allo ’Allo, is impeccably dressed charming chimney sweep Bert Smith, full name Bertram Fortescue Wynthrop-Smythe (but he doesn’t get trade with his full name; sheer class prejudice)… Philip Locke is Dr Primble, the old gag of a nearly-blind optician with huge goggles, contact lenses, and glasses in his pocket, giving Steed a fabulous eye test that consists of having to identify a series of hats (mine wasn’t like that last week, but then I wouldn’t have been able to name them all anyway)… Derek Newark, who you may recall spent Inferno being either angry or on heat has the simpler role of playing nothing but angry… And, to confuse viewers of that particular Doctor Who period, moustache-wearing Jon Pertwee plays the Brigadier.
Should you have snapped up the DVD release of this episode before it was deleted, incidentally, even the subtitles are eccentric. Originally mastered by a French company, it had both subtitles and a soundtrack in both English and French. Confusingly, the dubbing and subtitles each used different translations; more confusingly still, the English subtitles were not a transcript of the original English dialogue, but, er, a re-translation from the French subtitles. The most striking idiosyncrasy for me was that astronomer Venus Brown had worked at “Dudrud Bank” instead of the spoken “Jodrell”. I’ve always appreciated astronomy in itself, but with my Dad working at Jodrell Bank, I made sure I told him to watch out for a stack of dead astronomers when he does the next planetarium show. But before you look at all those lovely star charts, back to the episode.
It’s all highly stylised, though not quite as colourful yet as it will be – most of the colour is in the outfits, and they’re not all good (I don’t like Mrs Peel’s pale lilac dress, nor Steed’s shiny maroon dinner jacket, though his deep grey suit is rather nice). The bizarre deaths don’t get much more bizarre than these, though; the music’s rather nice from the Holst-styled opening to the lovely new closing tag theme; someone’s killed with his own weapon; there are plenty of red herrings. They’re not drinking champagne in every episode yet, but we do see Emma sip a Pimm’s and accept a brandy from Steed (who drinks bottled beer), while the first astronomer killed has a drink to hand and Lord Mansford drinks whisky in his vault. Most importantly, there are lashings of playful wit. Particularly enjoyable scenes include Dr Primble’s eccentric eye test and way of making an appointment, and Brigadier Whitehead’s way of recording his memoirs for LP, dashing between sound effects gramophones – both Steed and Emma literally fall for his machine gun sounds. And Mrs Peel inevitably – there’s a spoiler coming; I’m getting near the end here, so watch out if you’ve read this far and not watched it yet – and Mrs Peel inevitably ends up strapped into a chair with a deadly laser pointed at her. “Excellent!” exclaims the villain. “Not from where I’m sitting,” she says, finding this mildly trying.
Ah, the villain, and the method of murder. There are three things to notice here, and the first (and apparently most obvious) is that it’s not Venusians. In the black and white Mrs Peel episodes, it might not have been that obvious, though – with robots, a man-eating alien plant and telepathic spies, this could have been a real alien at work too. But though this colour Mrs Peel season seems more ‘fantastic’ and less part of the real world, these ‘Avengerland’ episodes are in fact much more likely to boil down to a more ordinarily extraordinary explanation than the previous year’s occasional willingness to experiment with wild science fiction ideas. This is the year of hoaxes.
As you may have spotted a few lines ago, the ‘glowing white light’ that floats about is, it turns out, a laser. On a car. Well, I say a ‘laser,’ and so do they, but other than being a form of projected light (and, curiously, after we know it’s a laser it’s suddenly a cool blue beam rather than a huge round blaze), it seems to boast a remarkable array of superpowers that other lasers strangely lack. Marvel as, instead of burning, it bleaches your hair and anything you’re standing next to, as if someone has chucked a bucket of sinister white paint in your general direction; wonder as it makes everything in your vicinity get very warm, but only before the light actually shines; scratch your head as characters announce they recognise it by its uniquely distinctive sound (a clue: no). Despite the amusing eccentrics, the direction is rather flat, the story seems a bit slapdash, and I have to admit this use of technology is a bit of a sticking point. I’d much rather they did what they usually do and just made something up that doesn’t really exist; it’s much more distracting to be told something that does exist works entirely differently. Ah well. Rather bizarrely, they correctly predict that lasers will be used for eye surgery (just like Mrs Peel’s futuristic phone in her car. No, really, this was like jetpacks in the ’60s).
Hang on a minute… Eye surgery? Gasp! Then this week’s diabolical master mind was Dr Primble all along! And here’s the other thing to notice. Philip Locke is enormous fun to watch and is at the heart of the funniest scenes as well as giving us ‘demented villain’ – he gives a delightful beam as he trains his laser on Mrs Peel – but this all disguises his drearily prosaic motive. It’s the argument used too often about public spending on art, science or anything not universally popular: ‘You shouldn’t be interested in space, because we should spend all our money on schools and hospitals’. In this case, he’s been wiping out the British Venusian Society because one of their sponsors switched funding from him to them. However wildly the actor goggles to try and stop you noticing, his villainy is at heart Daily Mail-sensible. On the other hand, I may just be a bit wary of opticians wanting cash at the moment. It’s been more than a week since they took my money – not enough to fund a space programme – but my new glasses still aren’t ready…
Labels: Jodrell Bank, Reviews, Style, The Avengers, The Avengers Season 5
