Saturday, June 20, 2020.
My Weblog continues into a further incarnation. Previous incarnations of Kevin McCorry's Weblog are April 16, 2007-to-September 19, 2015, October 4, 2015-to-May 4, 2018, and May 5, 2018-to-June 19, 2020.
Today's galling (as usual) sorties begin with this. An assault upon the Season 2 Space: 1999 episode, "The Lambda Factor". With focus on its fourth and final act.
"a caterpillar in a jam jar surely doesn't suffocate in only about 10 minutes? so another goof re the maya transformations."
Is there something wrong with the shift key on this person's keyboard, or is he averse to expending the finger energy required to press the shift key to capitalise letters?
Okay, genius. In how much time exactly does a caterpillar suffocate under such conditions? I do not know. Scriptwriter Terrance Dicks probably did not know, either. Nor Fred Freiberger. Do we know that it is ten minutes in the episode? Where is it said that it is ten minutes? It could be twenty, or thirty. All that we do know is that it is less than an hour because that is how long that Maya can hold the form of the caterpillar. And Maya has not suffocated. She is gasping for air but still alive after Koenig defeats "super-psychic" Carolyn Powell and the container (it is not a jam jar; any rational person with eyes can see that) covering Maya in her caterpillar form is blown off of her by the wind. Air was becoming scarce under the container, but it had not completely gone. And the precise time factor for all of this is unknown.
Someone also says that Maya could change back to herself at any time during Carolyn's besieging of Command Centre, and the container would fall away from her in the transformation. No, this is not the case. It is quite evident that Carolyn is in full control of Maya's mind and that she forced Maya's transformations into the monkey and the caterpillar. And she will not permit Maya to retransform while Maya is under the container. I intuited this when I first saw the episode at the age of eleven.
As usual, no one corrects these people. So, the attack is considered successful, another episode of Season 2 is "thrown under the bus", and the herd smugly proclaims Season 2 to be excrement once again.
Not a single person will come to the defence of Season 2 in that group of more than 15,000 people. Not even when the attacks are easily refuted. They are all too far gone, evidently. But I cannot abide the accursed fact that their attitude is considered to be just as canonical as "the show" and that because of them and the dissemenation of their antipathy, nobody will ever come to Season 2 with the same un-clouded perspective that I had.
More sorties.
"Who are these people who like 'A Matter of Balance'? Or do they exist largely in theory?"
Oh, funny. Not! There are people who like "A Matter of Balance". They have been purged, or compelled to depart by choice, from the fan movement. But they exist. I am one of the people who like the episode. Dean is another. But continue the smug proclamations that no such people exist, and if enough people say so, then it must be true, right? We are garbage. Human trash that deserve to be miserable in having to read in perpetuity the invalidations of our favourite works.
On and on and on it goes.
With reference to "Brian the Brain", here is a series of postings.
"You'll hate Brian. I hate Brian. All should hate Brian."
"Yeah, that episode made me hate anyone named Brian. Haha!"
"Jim, you are wight, I hate Bwian. (I"m Bwian, no I'm Bwian). I wish nobody was."
How old are these people? Their banter is that of boys on a school playground. Is this not indicative of a lack of sophistication? Is it not contrary to the high-mindedness that they tout themselves as having? Again, no one "takes them to task". The quislings in that oh, so vaunted group of 15,000 are all sitting on their hands.
First of all. Brian the robot is not meant to be a likable character. He is the antagonist. He went mad and murdered his creator and the Star Mission crew. Dave Reilly in "All That Glisters" is also meant to be an antagonist and unlikable. This is the nature of drama. One is supposed to "root for" the hero and to not favour the antagonist. The unlikability of an antagonist character should not equate with damnation of the particular work in which that character exists. But, apparently, these people "have it in" for "Brian the Brain" because they do not like the voice or the design of the robot. Regard for the design, whether positive or negative, is subjective. I think that it works in the modular future aesthetic that is Space: 1999. And as for the voice, it is indicative of creator Captain Michael's eccentricity and is an ironic, comical affectation for a mass-murdering robot. It functions in the story to entice Koenig and Russell onto the Swift on the mistaken belief that Brian is harmless.
And as for the slurs on the name of Brian. I declare them an offence, whatever their intent. There are thousands of Brians in the world. It is a beautiful name. It is the name of one of my best friends, and I also have a cousin named Brian. These people, the bullies that they are, are trying to stigmatise that name in their smug ridicule of what should be at least an okay episode of the best work of science fiction/fantasy to come out of 1970s television. And I deplore them for this.
Such disgraceful behaviour is the boorish manifestation of an overweening confidence of these people that they represent the only legitimate point of view on Space: 1999 and that no people of any number other than one at a time (if even that) will pose a challenge to them. And through their force of numbers, their vaunted "consensus" ("consensus" is code for conformity, from where I am standing), ad hominem attacks, and spin-doctoring, they will invalidate the challenger, ultimately with dismissals of him being a "crank", of being mentally incompetent and human garbage. All that Season 2 needs, all that it has ever really needed, for a "fair shake" in this fan movement is a group of people, four or five at least, who will defend it in unison, all of them "having the back" of each of them. A handful of defenders, articulate and incisive in their counter-criticism, always ready to refute or put into fair-minded perspective any and all animus directed at the second season, would most certainly give to the louts pause for thought before launching into another anti-Season 2 tirade. I "took those people on" by myself, and I was trounced. I was provoked, deliberately misconstrued, outright demonised in my reactions, and ridiculed. If four or five others had immediately entered the fray and said, "Kevin is right," or, "Kevin has a point," and then cogently provided their defenses of Season 2 with rational argument, I would have fared so much better. Of course, I would have. It would not have been quite as easy to dismiss me outright and then "carry on" with their sorties as though I had not even been "on the scene". With me defending Season 2, other people who like Season 2 had an opportunity to "chime in" and to buttress my position. They did not.
It is not an implausible argument to make. Rationally. Intelligently. It is patently irrational to declare Season 2 Space: 1999 thoroughly awful and worthless and deserving of forty-four years of venom as the worst science fiction/fantasy television ever made. On production values and imagination alone, it had other 1970s science fiction/fantasy television vanquished. I love Planet of the Apes, but it was set on Earth and limited in where it went, and there was not much in the way of visual effects or futuristic sets. Planet of the Apes was The Fugitive, essentially. As was Logan's Run, which, too, was set on Earth, did not go very far, and did not have much in the way of production design. Outside of the movie whose sets and scenes it cannibalised. Battlestar Galactica had potential but became awash in Western "storylines" and war movie tropes, and most of its impressive sets and visual effects were carried-over or recycled from its three-hour pilot episode. Buck Rogers went to far-flung places and was fun, but its production values were very limited and its visual effects rather perfunctory. Space: 1999 in both of its seasons visited alien worlds, encountered space phenomena, and profferred bizarre life-forms, and had production values in excess of those of all of its television contemporaries. It did not choose to vastly limit itself in its imaginative range. It was not simply about life in a Moonbase. It did not restrict itself to border disputes with aliens. Or space skirmishes with the same enemy, episode after episode. Or James Bond in space. This is a fact. Not an opinion.
All for today.
Saturday, June 27, 2020.
My Gunsmoke complete television series DVD set arrived at my door this past Monday. Outwardly, it is a most impressive piece of art. Inwardly, it is a problematical construction. Having experienced the Star Trek fiftieth anniversary Blu-Ray set, I was expecting cases identical to what was in that, and most of them are so. Not ideal but manageable. But the powers-that-be really ought to have given to Seasons Sixteen to Twenty two "brick" cases instead of squeezing them into one. Said squeezing has been done by stacking DVD discs in threes, with an inflexible and downright despicable hub that requires flexing and bending and jostling of the discs to pry them loose. And the inner circle of each disc is dragged along the ring of the hub, risking chipping or cracking the disc as it is both released and put back into the case. Inevitably, I am going to need to buy individual cases for all 143 DVDs in this set. That is going to cost me a small fortune, as and when it will be doable in this pandemic situation. I am not comfortable going to any store, and the postage costs for a mail order of so many DVD cases would be exorbitant. But I am rambling unnecessarily. I feel certain that most of my readers are not interested in the technicalities of my collecting of digital videodisc of a television programme that is not of the most imaginative genres. I agree. It is not. But it is quality television, nevertheless. And just about every Hollywood actor and actress of the 1950s, 1960s, and 1970s was in it at least once. Martin Landau. William Shatner. Leonard Nimoy. Ricardo Montalban. Robert Culp. Ed Asner. Darren McGavin. Kim Hunter. Tom Skerritt. Bette Davis. Lois Nettleton. Michael Ansara. John Saxon. James Daly. Robert Lansing. Even Alan Hale. I think that Morgan Woodward probably receives the trophy for most Gunsmoke guest star appearances. Star Trek aficionados know him as Dr. Simon Van Gelder and Captain Ron Tracey.
Even if I watched an episode each day, to go through this DVD box set would be a two-year undertaking. And much as I do like Gunsmoke, I am not going to watch it every day. Time will tell when, or if, I completely watch the contents of GUNSMOKE- THE COMPLETE SERIES. I could go to my grave with dozens of episodes not watched.
Moving onward.
The situation is static as regards those restored Bugs Bunny cartoons. Warner Brothers has announced a DVD set of Looney Tunes television specials. Oh, joy! "Thrillsville." It is known that the fifteen cartoons have already had the work done to them, but still no official announcement of a Blu-Ray release of those cartoons, either by themselves or in a larger, more comprehensive celebration of the cartoons of Bugs Bunny. People continue to say that it is coming, and this year would the ideal year for it, from a marketing perspective. As I so often say, time will tell. There are excerpts from some of the restored cartoons at, of all places, the YouTube channel of the Self-Appointed Looney Tunes Critic. I am loathe to advertise for him. Not any more than I have to. I have mentioned some of the restored cartoons being viewable in part there at said YouTube channel. That is enough. I will provide no URL. But the video can be found on YouTube with some searching. The colours in the cartoons look "flat", un-vibrant, and there is a minimising of contrast. They do look rather less than eye-poppingly fantastic. Of course, there is a possibility of a "re-grading" of the colour and an adjusting of contrast. The cartoons do look sharp and pristine, even with the video compression of YouTube. They do still have a potential for a most resplendent video display. Ah, but for that to come about, people do have to care. And, alas, I fear that most people do not. Still, it would be something to which to look forward in a "plague year", and a year when all of North America has embraced collectivism and the centralised and all-intrusive control of big government, that comes with the enforcing of a mandatory, insufficiently tested injection, to say nothing of the enforcement of policies to "stamp out" individual rights and private property. I am very, very pessimistic about the future.
The last thing that I want to do today is to address the animus toward Season 2 of Space: 1999. I still do it occasionally (as I did last Saturday) just to reassure myself that I can still write an appreciable (at least to me) effort to contest the attacks. But I really do not want to spend my time sitting at my keyboard typewriting defences against massed attacks while a summer "passes me by". Enough of that. I have done more than enough of that. And I need to avoid a succumbing to irascibility that could be problematic for my relationships, including and most especially my rapport with my new friend.
Yes, it is there on Facebook every day in all groups, this animus. Does anyone in the groups "push back" against it? No. Just more and more of the same one-sided "group-think" posturing, ever more acrimoniously and vulgarly expressed. There is not a split. There is not a debate. All that there is, is a steamroller. There is no discernible balance of opinions. And the incessant sorties are, I say again, not constructive criticism. They are propaganda to make fancying of Season 2 an unthinkable thing, to "stamp out" Season 2's appeal in past, present, and future. It is not merely a "venting" over a feeling of loss, warranted or no in the laying of blame. That would have been acceptable, I suppose, thirty to forty years ago. It has gone way, way beyond that. That it is still "going on" in 2020 even worse than ever, is just obscene. Indeed, when I look at it this way, I can scarcely believe it. It has been twenty years since my final tussle on the Internet with the fans in all of their "'Year 1'-great-and-'Year 2'-crap" refrain. Twenty years! That is a generation. People have been born and grown to adulthood in the twenty years since 2000, and still nothing has improved in the annals of Space: 1999 appreciation, or lack thereof. Rather, it is worse than ever. Unreal. Just unreal.
This is all that I have to say for today. For whatever that it may be worth.
Sunday, July 5, 2020.
I have written a new paragraph for my Era 2 memoirs. It is amongst the spring of 1977 remembrances and tells of my experiences that spring with The Muppet Show and Welcome Back, Kotter with them airing on CHSJ-TV after Space: 1999 on Saturdays. I also address the subject of the ITC Entertainment logo at the start of both Space: 1999 and The Muppet Show. The new text for Era 1 is spread amongst the paragraphs of its sections for my Rivers, Manitoba experiences, and those in Newcastle, New Brunswick.
I have so many memories of that final year in Douglastown in Era 2. Not only does that year still feel like yesterday, I, in a very real sense, never really left that time of my life, though I am assuredly more mature than I was then (I cannot help but be). It forms so much of my personality, that year with more friends than I have ever had at any time since, everyone liking what I liked, and so many definitive experiences with television shows and my friends of that time. Anyway, I am sure that people are tired of my longings for a time to which I cannot possibly return.
My vacation is planned for the final two weeks of July and the first week of August. Already, I am moving to eliminate from my life as many of the sources of stress, aggravation, and grief as possible. I fully intend to "switch off" the "noise" of Space: 1999 fandom and that of the manipulative, inflammatory news cycles of this increasingly crazy world. And as far as the Space: 1999 fans go, I have wanted them out of my life since 2000. I wish that they were never in my life. Yet, I keep encountering them in the avenues of the Internet on which I tread. Yes, even ones not directly connected to Space: 1999. And by force of habit, I keep clicking my computer mouse to the Hyperlinks to the main Space: 1999 Facebook group. It is right there near the top of my browser history. In fact, my primary shortcut to Facebook, selected by my computer, is the Space: 1999 one. Even though I do look at my Facebook Timeline and the main Facebook News Feed much more often, my computer keeps emphasising the Hyperlink to that hornet's nest. I wish that I could purge it from my computer. Ah, but inside me is this foolish, strangely resolute, now quite faint hope that someone would finally step forward and tell these boors obsessed with "bashing" "Year 2" to find something more constructive to do, appreciate Season 1 and stop trying to sully and invalidate people's fondness for or appreciation of Season 2, and throw their subsequent invective back at them decisively. It is patently ridiculous for this still to be going on in 2020, and such should be noted by that person. And with a hearty round of approval for that person among rank-and-file members of the group. But of course it does not happen, and the haters are ever more emboldened to increase their smugness as an ever-so-right force-of-numbers collective and to express more and more vitriol- along with their obsession with faultfinding of story structure in a forty-four-year-old television series whose episodes were produced at something of a lightning speed.
I do not care about story structure being perfectly rendered, every element of "plotting" perfectly consistent with all others and with those of other stories in the same universe, every technicality, even the most minute ones, explained most elaborately. I am so damned sick and tired of fans' obsession with story faultfinding. Find me a perfect story, a story with not even the remotest possibility of quibble, in the science fiction/fantasy genre, especially the film and television division of that genre. It would be a rare thing. And I dare say that it would be a bore. A colossal bore. Laden throughout it with tedious exposition and encumbered with heaps and heaps of technobabble. Probably staid very much in imagination, "playing it safe". And doubtless too clever by half. Very conspicuously and recognisably so. I am not looking for that in an entertainment to capture my imagination. Period.
To try to bring some balance to the matter, I have done some faultfinding of my own with some of the most acclaimed works of the genre, i.e. UFO- "A Question of Priorities", Star Trek- "City On the Edge of Forever", Star Trek II- The Wrath of Khan, and The Empire Strikes Back, plus numerous first season Space: 1999 episodes, to show that fixations on "air-tight" storytelling evidently do not exist with regard to those works among the selectively critical, self-styled "experts", and only seem to matter where Season 2 Space: 1999 is concerned. To fuel a "ramping up" of damning indictments against that latter half of that "singled-out" 1970s television programme, by fans of said television programme and the people at large who parrot "general" fan opinion as being gospel.
My interest, my keen interest, has always been in the beauty of ideas, concepts, depictions, artistic correspondences between episodes, fascinating patterning in "storyline", and the potential meaning in all of such. And in an opus that is viscerally thrilling, pacey, and expressive without heaps and heaps of expositional dialogue. One with likeable characters, impressive hardware, and admirable production values. I do not care if every t is crossed and every i is dotted in the story. As Dean once said to me, "We're not on Moonbase Alpha. We're not privy to every detail." Yes, that is right. There should be some amount of dramatic licence allowed to a writer. And "economy of detail". As long as a story can be followed from start to finish in one viewing by a somewhat intuitive viewer having an open mind and good will for the production, that should be sufficent. And if years, decades, of concentrated attention by persons of hostile bearing do "ferret out" strands of the story elements that may be challenged as being somehow inadequate, then dramatic (and maybe also artistic) writer's licence and "economy of detail" should be sufficient to counter the grousing. Furthermore, science fiction/fantasy should not be required to be consistent with reality on present-day Earth. Especially a television series in which it is said that, "... we're a long way from home, and we're going to have to start thinking differently if we're going to come to terms with space." And, "Just because we haven't experienced something doesn't mean it doesn't exist." And, "If we think we know everything that goes on out there, we're making a terrible mistake." These, by the way, are all quotations from first season Space: 1999.
Most of the sniping being done these days consists of "cheap shots" by people smugly convinced, through the validation of numbers of like-minded persons, of their superiority over the ever so wretched adherent to Season 2. And the sorties are Pavlovian in their relentless predictability. Any mention of a second season episode, any picture posted, any upcoming broadcast announced, and out comes the pack of wolves, howling with derision at the episode for its concept, or elements of its story, or just nothing but avowed hatred for the most superficial appearances or sounds of the episode, together with the cliched Freiberger-phobia and the usual rancid drivel over him being an inveterate "show-killer".
Everyone knows how I deplore this, and I am so damned sick and tired of writing about it. But these people will never, ever be sick and tired of driving the dagger into the heart of Season 2 and persons who happen to think that Season 2 is beautiful and has merit in all of its episodes. It is how they "get their jollies". They live each day for it. They hate Season 2, and expressing that hatred to resounding approval gives to them their daily validation, while "dishing out" daily invalidation to people having a different point of view about second season. What can I say? It makes me inclined to write a reaction. For my own self-respect, at least. There is one member of the group, of first name begining with P, who is obsessed with slurring Season 2 at every opportunity and with liking other people doing so. This is all that he does. Attack Season 2 and express keen approval of others' attacks. New people join the group and promptly "dash off" a sortie against some Season 2 episode, being oh, so apologetic about doing so (sure!), even musing about it being an unpopular opinion (sure sure, sure!), and giving birth to a long "thread" in which person after person smears the episode, often also invoking the usual disdain for the entire season and its producer, maybe also weaponising Martin Landau or Barry Morse. And not a single contrary word is to be seen. On and on and on it goes, as broadcasters for some reason that I cannot fathom continue to air the episodes. Yes, even twenty-one years after 1999, they are still being telecast. If Season 2 is as incontrovertibly "bad" as it is said every single day by numerous people to be, why is it still being shown on television? It confounds the cognition. It "does not compute". At this stage in my long life, I would be happy if Space: 1999 were gone from television. It would at least reduce the "noise" on "social media". Somewhat.
I would add that all of this "snark" that mercilessly bombards the Internet and my long-suffering eyes is coming from people who went to college in the mid-1980s. Yes. They are Generation Xers. Despicable people who assert their importance and perch their purported sophistication by "dissing" the work of older generations, of people who were better human beings than are they, in every way. People who fought in a war for freedom. People who lived through the Great Depression. People who were part of the pioneering years of television. And anyone who would "make fun of" or slur a dead man, a dead war veteran, knowing full well that his family might read the derogatory remarks, is devoid of class, of couth, of decency. Period.
I am loathe to spend my time defending the same episodes over and over again. And I have defended them all, I think, at some point in time in the past five years. But I will say this. In Season 1's episode, "Force of Life", intelligence and purpose exists in a ball of blue light. There is no anatomical brain in that light. Nothing that by Earth standards would be a vessel for intelligence. And yet, there is intelligence. An intelligence that wants something from Alpha and that outright chooses which Alphan that it wishes to use as its catalyst. It gains possession of that Alphan's body to do its bidding. It has the power to draw something into itself. It can even animate a corpse. And it suspends the movement and speech of some 300 people, stops them in mid-motion and in the middle of spoken sentences while it "zeroes in" on the Alphan that it has chosen to utilise. How in blazes is it able to do that? The viewer does not know. Yet, fandom loves "Force of Life" (so do I, but then, I love Season 2, also) but scathingly lambastes "All That Glisters" for its premise, that of an alien planet's rock not having an anatomical brain but possessing intelligence and purpose, selecting an Alphan to do its bidding and animating that Alphan's body thought to be dead from cardiac arrest, siphoning something into itself, and being able, somehow, to paralyse people. As far as I am concerned, and as far as most people should be concerned, if a person can accept "Force of Life", and also the "living rock" concept in "End of Eternity", then "All That Glisters" should not be much more of a "stretch" for the imagination, or for one's suspension of disbelief. The vitriol that is heaped by these fans onto "All That Glisters" for its premise, is patently unfair. And irrational. And, by the way, I no longer give a damn what Martin Landau thought of the episode. That fact cannot be used by someone to upset me anymore. The man was not infallible. He misjudged his performance as General Adlon in Meteor for instance and went completely "over-the-top" as the narrow-minded martinet. He made mistakes sometimes, and he was mistaken about "All That Glisters".
Indeed, many things in Season 1 being accepted, from a mist being able to turn Alphans into troglodytes and to do who-knows-what with their electronic gadgetry ("The Full Circle"), to a celestial body the size of the Moon being able to hold an atmosphere of density and pressure identical to Earth's ("The Last Sunset"), to Koenig's party all forgetting to fasten seat belts and assume crash positions prior to their Eagle crash-landing on the Lunar surface ("Missing Link"), to a black sun having different gravitational effects on two Eagles ("Black Sun"), to Koenig leaving Helena alone in Medical Centre with the possessed-by-lethal-alien-force Anton Zoref, and with but one Security man posted outside ("Force of Life"), and almost nothing in Season 2 being accepted, is confounding to any person of reasoned sensibilities. If one is willing to "cut slack" for one season and not the other, he or she can do that if he or she wishes. If that is his or her preference. But to make sweeping denunciations about the other season being comparable to excrement because it has some questionable aspects, and to try to declare persons who happen to like the other season as being less than sane, is contrary to standards of fairness and decency. In fact, it is loathsome. Despicable.
I desperately need a vacation from these people, and I mean to have one. This summer. I of course need a vacation also from my own compulsion to concede to a faint and unrealistic hope that there are good people who will "stand up" against vitriolic bullies and defend a beautiful television show that, although not perfect, captured imaginations and is of aesthetic interest in addition to being of nostalgic value. There will not ever be a cavalry charge in defence of Season 2. I need to totally purge any hope of that. The fans of Space: 1999, all of them, it seems, are committed to maintaining this injustice permanently. It is an unfair world, and Season 2 and people like me, are victims of a particular unfairness.
God knows, I am used to being in unfair circumstances. I went through Grade 6 at school in Fredericton having to endure full class detentions, and the constant threat of them, because of the misbehaviour a few. That is one example.
Moving onward.
There is still no news about those restored Bugs Bunny cartoons being released on Blu-Ray. If a release to Blu-Ray for those cartoons were imminent later this year, would it not have been announced by now? As I keep saying with regard to this supposed Blu-Ray release, time will tell.
All for today. In my next Weblog entry, I will be writing about Flash Gordon. I was going to do so today, but I am rather tired.
I promised to address Flash Gordon in this Weblog entry and will do so. I really do not have very much to say on that subject, but I thought that I should explain why I excluded Flash Gordon from my list of "camp" productions a few Weblog entries ago.
First, though, I want to expand upon some of what I said in my last Weblog entry. I said that I am not concerned with "plot holes", that I do not care if an imaginative production has some ostensibly or plainly questionable technicalities in its story. Oh, I know how contrary people can be and how quick that they are to stretch something that one says to extremes. I did not then and do not now mean to say that a production can just "have at it" with unlimited "plot holes", to the extent that it becomes utterly incoherent to the rational, intuitive viewer. The Empire Strikes Back's challengeable items do not appear to harm it in the eyes and minds of the public. Nor do those of Star Trek II- The Wrath of Khan. So, evidently there can be some. Within reason. There can be a few, maybe three or four, per movie or per episode, I would say. Mind, I think that Star Trek II- The Wrath of Khan has rather more than three or four dubious particulars to its storytelling tapestry. But three or four is a number that I think would be permissible to a sensible viewer with good will for the production. I do not think that any Season 2 Space: 1999 episode has more than that. But of course, good will for it is to be found in very few places. Good will. Open-mindedness. Fairness.
I will not lump unexplained phenomena extraneous to essential story development into the definition of "plot hole". What the Overseers in "The Metamorph" are, where they came from, is a detail extraneous to the progression of the episode through its mounting action and tension to its climax and denouement. It is a detail that need not be elaborated in the story. The imagination of the viewer can furnish explanations of its own. Further, for dramatic necessity, for an imaginative concept or a synthesis of two or more imaginative concepts to be rendered as an exciting story, sometimes there has to be a story detail that needs to just be accepted. Accepted as being part of "writer's licence". The Alphans do not notice the reversal in their Commander's hair because the episode, "Seed of Destruction", would not unfold in its story as it does with its tense situations, and with all of its aesthetics, all of its intriguing nuances, if the impostor was discovered immediately, or if the mirror image idea was not utilised at all. I am prepared to accept the non-discovery of the hair parting difference as a function of the human mind when a leader has proved to be right time and time again. The eye can be biased by that. There is no reason to suspect that an usurping mirror-image has returned to Alpha in Koenig's stead, and everyone is conditioned from past experiences to believe everything about Koenig to be genuine. Yes, even the Alphans closest to him. Most Alphans, I would emphasise, are only seeing Koenig on a video monitor screen without the best resolution. And they all are concerned first and foremost with what their seeming Commander is saying about the threat posed to Alpha by the asteroid and what he is saying about what is to be done. Also, when one is accustomed to receiving a leader's orders, one looks at the mouth, and the eyes, and not the hair. That is true. Unless a supervisor is a woman who had a complete restyle of her hair. That is an ostentatious change. I can "buy" that the Alphans are so concerned with a survival situation that their eyes do not focus upon the hair on Koenig's head. And Helena is so concerned about the behaviour of what she thinks is John that she is not looking at the hair on its head. I can "buy" this. As I say, the episode as it is would not have been made if the mirror image idea was not utilised. And I love that it was utilised, and that anti-matter, the "image in the mirror", would be the nature of the alien quantity in the next chronologically consecutive episode, "A Matter of Balance".
The Alphans not asking visiting aliens for a ride back to Earth does not impair the development of episodes like "The Mark of Archanon" and "Dorzak". It is reasonable to suppose that they did so in an un-shown conversation, and the answer was negative. But whether they did or not, the episode proceeded to its conclusion and was not muddled in its building action by such an omission. I have in the years of my Weblog's history refuted a number of "plot hole" claims by the fans of Space: 1999 as being misconstrued facts or jaundiced observations or failures to intuit likely explanations using the provided information. And unwillingness to accept a premise like intelligent rocks and plants on an alien planet or an anti-matter universe in its own dimension, is not necessarily representative of "plot hole".
And "Economy of detail" is a principle that can and should be invoked to counter most of the carping of fans about items having insufficient explanation. And this should also apply to Season 1, of course.
One may ask, what do I consider to be bad writing for science fiction/fantasy. I imagine that this is a question that would arise in people's minds while reading my defences of the supposedly undefendable work of Fred Freiberger and the other writers of Season 2 Space: 1999. Oh such damnable work, is it not? Johnny Byrne (All Creatures Great and Small, Doctor Who, Tales of the Unexpected), Donald James (The Avengers, The Saint, Mission: Impossible, UFO, Journey to the Far Side of the Sun), Tony Barwick (UFO, The Persuaders!), Terence Feely (The Avengers, The Prisoner, UFO), Jack Ronder (Survivors), John Goldsmith (The New Avengers, Return of the Saint, The Professionals), and Terrance Dicks (Doctor Who) all had to have been horrible writers, yes? Or all at once, these esteemed writers' talents failed them. As did the talents, also, of directors, production designer, special effects staff, et cetera. All at once or in rapid succession. Or everyone decided to be unprofessional and to deliberately not do their best work. So the haters of Season 2 Space: 1999 must necessarily maintain in their 44-year-old vendetta. Nonsense! They were highly imaginative and stalwartly competent writers, consummate professionals, and definite assets to the genres for which they wrote.
From where I stand, the poorest science fiction/fantasy is unimaginative. It limits itself to human and human interactions on a spaceship, with no otherworldly quantity. Or it coopts events of present time and puts them into a future setting just to make some preachy statement, and with no really fantastic elements to the story. Or it coopts a trope from another genre and reuses it wholesale. It does not synthesise one reused trope with another for the first time ever (that is imaginative); it just reuses one. Buck Rogers shamelessly plucked a Gunsmoke story out of television history and just set it on an alien planet boringly depicted on the Universal back lot. This would be an example of unimaginative writing. And then there are the likes of Galactica 1980, with fish-out-of-water scenarios on present-day Earth. No other planets. No alien encounters for the heroes.
A story is unsatisfying in my opinion if it tries at length to "set up" some conflict or some menace and then completely abandons it before it can be resolved and moves to some other matter of contention, some other dispute, orchestrated affront, et cetera, and failing to refer back to the first matter and to cogently "tie it in" with what transpires later. Or there is a failure to advance the story in a satisfying way, i.e. a failure to follow the rules of dramatic story development (rising action, climax, denouement). Or there are sudden jumps in "narrative" time that disorient the viewer or reader (Casino Royale (2006), this one is for you!). Or the story begins with a situation for a hero that is at once not totally clear as to its import and continues to be unclear for some time (Casino Royale (2006), again). I am far less forgiving of questionable technicalities if they are detectable by a reasonable viewer in a story lacking in imagination. Aesthetically interesting depiction might compensate somewhat for an imagination deficit. But such has, for me, been so rare as to be without any memorable example.
Another wretched alley of scriptwriting from my perspective is a "flipping" of a character from villain to hero with no justice, administrative or poetic, meted out to him or her for the evil acts, and no valid cause for redemption, if indeed redemption is credibly possible. A character does something heinous. And the writer chooses to have that character suddenly be "the good person" without sufficient basis for his or her character to reform, or for a reforming to be believable and acceptable. Soap operas are guilty of this. I am unable to provide an example for this from the science fiction/fantasy genre.
All right. Have I clarified my position on the matter of fan obsession with story structure? If not, I can make another attempt to do so later. Right now, I am tired, very, very tired, of the subject and propose to "move on".
Before I leave aside the subject of Space: 1999, however, I would like to provide some enhancement, or clarification, of something that I said in last Weblog entry. This was what I said.
"But to make sweeping denunciations about the other season being comparable to excrement because it has some questionable aspects, and to try to declare persons who happen to like the other season as being less than sane, is contrary to standards of fairness and decency. In fact, it is loathsome. Despicable."
I imagine that, in response to this, people are citing my statements in the past about half-maturity and a possible pathology on the part of members of the Season 1 "camp", to argue that I am being hypocritical to call them loathsome for their aspersions cast upon the mental fitness of people who happen to like Season 2. I must be clearly understood. I have no issue with people who happen to like and also prefer Season 1. I myself like it, and I did prefer it many years ago. All of my issues with the Season 1 pundits are with their everlasting closed-mindedness and constant rancour. I do not question their mental well-being on the basis of their simply happening to like "Year 1". It is their forty-four-year-old hostility toward Season 2, and their unending compulsion to attack everything about it every single day, and them often using the most offencive wording possible in doing so, that informs my "hard line" on them and my ruminations about their lack of maturity and potential pathology. I find loathsome the delight that they have in reading other people's attacks upon it and therefore, by logical extension, upon people who like it. And the fact that, based on their ignorance of the beauty of Season 2 and their all-too-evident superiority in numbers, they cockily affirm mental deficiency in people who like it, and "make fun" of it, its producer, and, either directly or indirectly, its adherents. It is galling to me that they are touted as being right in their behaviour because they hold the majority viewpoint. And I judge this to be despicable. Am I now clear?
Now, then. Flash Gordon. "Flash! Ah-Aa-a-ah!!!"
First, I have to admit that in my commentary on "camp" some Weblog entries ago and in my listing of productions that I regard as "camp", I did not mention Flash Gordon solely because of oversight. I forgot about it. But there may be a justifiable reason for my memory lapse, for I regard Flash Gordon to be a blending of the "camp" with the serious. It is not "camp" through and through. And the serious aspects of the movie make the "camp" in it more digestible, for people like me who are not aficionados of science fiction/fantasy satire. Doubtless, the "camp" in the movie is the handiwork of scriptwriter Lorenzo Semple Jr., who famously wrote for Batman. I suspect that the director, Mike Hodges, was the antithesis to Mr. Semple in rendering the movie in a serious vein in numerous capacities. The threat of annihilation facing the Earth at the hands of Ming, "comes across" to the viewer very seriously. Ming is portrayed as an exceedingly dangerous psychopathic despot. There is a palpable feeling of menace when he appears on screen. He does not laugh in an exaggeratedly effervescent way or twirl a moustache. He cold-bloodedly kills a man in full view of an audience of his subjects, and Flash and his companions' reaction to this is very realistically enacted. Yes, Flash using his football strategies to confound Ming's troops, is quite absurd and easily classified as "camp", and the music and some of the actors' performances do signal it as such. But then, the execution scene is done solemnly, and Sam J. Jones' acting in that scene is perhaps his best work in the movie. Brian Blessed goes wildly "over-the-top" as Prince Vultan, clearly delighting in the romp of an ostentatious, effusive "bird-man" portrayal that he is permitted to proffer, and several of his lines of dialogue have entered the annals of exaggerated wording and elocution in works of the cinema. Conversely, Timothy Dalton gives a restrained, dignified, almost Shakespearian performance as Prince Barin. Definitely compensating for Blessed's extravagance. The visualisation of the rocket launch from Dr. Zarkov's headquarters is difficult to fault. For a 1980 movie, it is quite dazzling, albeit not matching N.A.S.A. standards for rocket design and propulsion. Indeed, production values and production design of the movie are of an admirable calibre, even when the script is verging on the absurd. I love the special effect of the rocket going through the "worm hole" vortex, and the accompanying music does much to convey the sense of wonder and impending danger in the scene. The scene wherein Zarkov is forced to go backward in memories all of the way to birth, is quite poignant in places, and Topol is magnificent therein. And overall, there is clearly a concerted effort to render Mongo and its many moons as a believable, if surrealistic, alien society. Surrealistic and beautiful. The "camp" elements are acceptable for me because of the serious aspects of the movie, along with its lavish, gorgeous production design.
I do have to admit that when I first saw Flash Gordon, at the Nashwaaksis Cinema 2 on a matinee on an overcast early-winter Saturday in 1980 with my friend, Tony, and his brother, Steven, I did not thoroughly warm to it like I did to other productions of the time. I felt somewhat detached from it but could not explain precisely why. At the time, when I was fourteen, I did not recognise "camp" as a concept or in its practice. Now, of course, I can and do. And I acknowledge that it was the "camp" of the movie that I was having difficulty appreciating. It clashed with the sensibilities that I had become accustomed-to with, say, Star Wars. I still liked Flash Gordon, though. I bought the novelisation of it and the vinyl record of its music. I could not help but like it. There were imaginative worlds in it. It was gorgeous to behold. And it had Brian Blessed in it. And Peter Duncan. Both of them were Space 1999 actors, and if Space: 1999 actors were in something, the attraction factor for me was much enhanced. As my appreciation for the ultramodern culture and futuristic power play motifs in Space: 1999 became more and more lucid, my regard for Flash Gordon prospered. Today, it is in my collection and does receive a viewing once a year or so. I judge it to be an amalgam of the "camp" and the serious, the latter making the former easier to digest than, say, the "camp" in Batman or Lost in Space.
I detest Lost in Space for its deliberately lampooning attitude toward its subject matter. As regards Batman, I have always been ambivalent. There have been times when I have been favourable to it and times when I have rejected it. I guess that I do have to be in the right mindset for digesting its wilful absurdity. I like the look of some of it. The Batmobile. The Batcave. The red telephones. The vibrant colours of the costumes of heroes and villains. There is plenty of purple in Batman, a colour that I like very much and that is all too sparingly used on television. And it is a part of my personal history. I watched it in my pre-school years and later on Sunday morning on CBC Switchback in the 1980s. It was a good fit for the earnest yet droll, cheerful manner of Switchback and its magnificent host, Stan "The Man" Johnson. The Switchback produced at CBC Halifax and airing throughout Atlantic Canada, was the best Switchback in the country. By far. I have seen video of the others, and they just did not "measure up" to the vim, the wit, and the lovably "dry" geniality that the charismatic Stan Johnson instilled in his Switchback.
I cannot say that the CBC of today has any of those qualities.
One more thing before I close my Weblog entry for today, Sunday, July 12, 2020. Word is that there will be some announcements at Comic-Con this year by Warner Brothers about Blu-Ray releases, and there is some expectation on the part of some people that the rumoured Blu-Ray release of recently restored Bugs Bunny cartoons will be announced there. Comic-Con is going to be an on-the-Internet event this year. No in-person attendance. It is on July 26. I will have something to say on this subject on July 27.
It appears that time is starting to tell with regard to the Bugs Bunny cartoons newly restored. This has surfaced.
https://www.fnac.com/a14954234/Collection-Bugs-Bunny-s-Edition-Deluxe-Blu-ray-Mel-Blanc-Blu-ray
Speculation on some discussion forums is that this is the Bugs Bunny Blu-Ray release that has been rumoured for some time now, in its manifestation for the European Blu-Ray market, with a North American release coming simultaneous to it, or earlier or later than it. The price would suggest something rather definitive. But it is not a given that it is a release of any new-to-digital-videodisc cartoons. It could be a repackaging of LOONEY TUNES: THE PLATINUM COLLECTION. It is a hopeful sign, though. I will gladly accept it as such, for now. Until reports from Comic-Con are available on July 26.
Thursday, July 16, 2020.
I am going to begin today's Weblog entry with a Hyperlink to something that I have discovered. An imagined alternate reality in which Spiderman was so popular that it spawned a line of action figures. And very handsome renderings of the packaging that such action figures would sport. It does rather cause one to drool with the intense wish to possess these exceedingly impressive items. And I would opine that the Infinata action figure would put Kenner's Darth Vader to shame. And all of the Creature Cantina action figures, too.
What more can I say? The characters of Spiderman were the perfect subjects for stylish and desirable action figures, and it is such a pity that such a product line never came to be in this universe.
For this world in which one is forced to live, the one marred with pandemic, nuclear reactor disaster fallout, and growing strife in societies collapsing under a media-imposed culture of Godlessness, licentiousness, vulgarity, subversion, division, and horrible national and international leadership, one is so very grateful for whatever good news may be upcoming. Good news with regard to twentieth century entertainment of an imaginative nature. I refer to the possible (I will still say, possible, for the time being) Blu-Ray box set of Bugs Bunny cartoons. There has been no confirmation of truth in the rumours, and no denial either. I am being cautiously optimistic and am entertaining some hopes. Tentative hopes. It has been so long since I last was hopeful where Looney Tunes and Merrie Melodies on home video is concerned. And it does feel somewhat pleasant to have hopes.
What I am hoping for in this possible box set, in addition to the fifteen cartoons newly restored, is, of course, "Hyde and Hare" in High Definition, looking even more colourful than it did on DVD, without any untoward tinkering of its colour palette and contrast ratios, and with minimal DNR. And the correct 4X3 aspect ratios for every cartoon released on DVD in widescreen only in the LOONEY TUNES SUPER STARS DVD range. "Lumber Jack-Rabbit", "This is a Life?", "Napoleon Bunny-Part", "Lighter Than Hare", "The Million Hare", et cetera. And all other Bugs cartoons that were on DVD. On the premise that the Blu-Ray box set will be a reality, I may not see my wish fulfilled on some or all of these counts. Discussion now on forums has moved from the possibility of this Blu-Ray release happening to what it will include. And it is not expected to be fully comprehensive. The latest discourse is that Warner Brothers probably will withhold several released-on-DVD cartoons because the sensibilities of 2020 would make releasing those cartoons, even with a disclaimer, very inadvisable. Of course, I would not expect to see "All This and Rabbit Stew", "Bugs Bunny Nips the Nips", or "Fresh Hare". Those did not reach DVD, and rightly so. But there are several other cartoons that, due to their entire story or just a particular scene, probably will be absent from this upcoming Blu-Ray set. I would not expect for "Horse Hare" to see light of day again, and, because of one scene, "Wild and Woolly Hare" probably will join it in perpetual cartoon limbo ("Wild and Woolly Hare" is not among the fifteen cartoons in the newly remastered category). "Hare Brush", for its gags about mental illness, may never again see release to home video. In addition to these cartoons, I would put in the unlikely-to-be-in-this-release column, "Mississippi Hare", "Frigid Hare", "Bushy Hare", "Southern Fried Rabbit", "8 Ball Bunny", "Wideo Wabbit", "Bewitched Bunny" (for Bugs' line of dialogue before its end), and maybe even "People Are Bunny". "Yankee Doodle Bugs" did not receive a restoration and will probably not appear in the box set, due to a scene in it. So, the DVDs that have some of these cartoons on them will have to be retained by the collector.
What I do not want to see in this set is any of the latter-day, i.e. post-1990, cartoons. Especially the Larry Doyle cartoons of the 2000s. I am so tired of having those cluttering my digital media platters. And how many of my DVDs have "Little Go Beep" on them? I have lost count. I know that it is a Road Runner cartoon and highly unlikely to be in a Bugs Bunny set. I am just mentoning it in passing. I do not want to see "Hare and Loathing in Las Vegas" in this set. Period. I would be okay with the cartoons from Bugs Bunny's Looney Christmas Tales and maybe also those from Bugs Bunny's Bustin' Out All Over. Those were directed by Freleng and Jones and had the voice of Mel Blanc, though the latter of these made-for-television productions I have always judged to be rather ugly and quite un-funny. None of the cut-and-paste television specials, please. Please put How Bugs Bunny Won the West back on the vault shelf. And Chuck Jones, rest his soul, really was way, way past his prime in the 1990s. So, please. None of those cartoons. Keep almost entirely to the vintage era. To the cartoons produced until 1964. With the only later cartoons being the cartoon shorts of Freleng and Jones made for television when Mel Blanc was alive. There will be several dozen pre-1948 cartoons in this set, and I am amenable to that. As long as the post-1948s have their opportunity to shine in the High Definition limelight in all of their magnificent colour and stylish visualisation.
And it would be pleasing to see some Bugs Bunny Show material as bonus features. With Jerry Beck supposedly involved in the project, this would be a likely prospect. If the box set is as mammoth as the price of the possible French version of it would suggest, there probably would be some bonus features. Maybe Bugs Bunny: Superstar. Maybe the celebratory television specials of 1986 and 1990. Perhaps The Bugs Bunny/Road Runner Movie. I would think that at the very least the excerpts from The Bugs Bunny Show already on DVD would be "ported over".
In six more days, the world will know for sure about this Blu-Ray box set. Its existence and maybe also all of its contents.
All for today, Monday, July 20, 2020.
July 20, 2020. Supplemental.
The Bugs Bunny Blu-Ray box set has now passed from the possible or the theoretical to the certain with the availability today of an image of said Blu-Ray box set. It looks impressive in size and should "pack a wallop" of vintage cartoon goodness- provided that its contents are solely Blu-Ray discs and not mostly a bunch of supplemental trinkets. Here is the image.
I will, of course, have more to say on the subject of this Blu-Ray release as particulars and more visuals of it become available.
July 22, 2020.
More news about the Bugs Bunny Blu-Ray box set continues to "trickle in" during discussions about said box set at various Websites. I am afraid that I have to report that hopes and expectations for ths box set, including the guarded hopes of mine, have been revealed to have been exaggerated. Naturally. This has been par for the course for Warner Brothers ever since the first GOLDEN COLLECTION. It being Bugs Bunny's eightieth birthday has done nothing, it seems, to divert Warner Brothers from going the same, tired old route in the compiling of vintage Warner Brothers cartoons for releases to digital videodisc.
I may as well end the preamble and just say it. There will be only 60 cartoons in this box set. That is it. The bunny whose cartoon career spanned decades and whose filmography is in excess of 160 cartoons, is only being graced with 60 cartoons. Yes, Warner Brothers, always ready to underwhelm the cartoon aficionado, is "sticking" to its 60-cartoons-per-release formula of the GOLDEN COLLECTIONs. And in case someone is positing that this may be first of two or three volumes of Bugs' cartoons on Blu-Ray, I must emphasise that nowhere on the box for this set does it say, VOLUME 1.
I have lost hope that "Hyde and Hare" will be in this box set. Probably very few, if any, of the cartoons on HARE EXTRAORDINAIRE needing a release in their proper aspect ratio will appear in the set. There may not be a complete complement of the newly restored cartoons, either. It would not surprise me if some of them were "left out". The sixty cartoons will no doubt consist of the same ones that always see release. Most of them pre-1948, of course. And also the more celebrated Chuck Jones ones of the 1950s. Them, too, of course, to "round out" the set. I need not list them. Everyone who reads this Weblog will know which ones they are. Many of them already having been on Blu-Ray in THE PLATINUM COLLECTION. And the bulk of them on DVD before that. "Triple-dips"? "Quadruple-dips"? "Quintruple-dips"? I have lost count.
There is no itemised list yet of what will be in the box set. But I am no longer expecting much from it besides the newly restored cartoons, and maybe not even all of those. I am not going to finger-point at individuals who may be responsible for the disappointing number of cartoons. I cannot be bothered doing so anymore. It is a committee decision of executives who have scant faith in the bunny's marketing potential. Why make a deluxe Blu-Ray set that may not sell enough units to recoup the expense of manufacturing six or seven "loaded" Blu-Ray discs? Just "slap" 60 cartoons on the set, have a few of them be new to DVD and Blu-Ray, and enough units will presumably sell to recoup the investment in a couple of Blu-Ray disc masters. The Flintstones can receive a complete release on Blu-Ray but not Bugs Bunny. Not even half complete. This is where the world is at right now. High Definition masters exist for way more than sixty of Bugs' cartoons, but the physical media consumer cannot have more than sixty.
It was nice to entertain the hopes while it lasted. All of a few days. Now, my focus is solely on adding as many Bugs cartoons to my DVD and Blu-Ray collection as possible, and on seeing never-before-on-home-video cartoons in High Definition. I pray that Warner Brothers will not disappoint me in this respect.
I look at my shelves and see complete collections of Pink Panther, Inspector, Ant and the Aardvark, Tijuana Toads, and Misterjaw cartoons on Blu-Ray. And a full set of vintage Peanuts television specials of the 1960s and 1970s on DVD. In a nice concise grouping of media. And I look at my collection of Warner Brothers cartoons and the incomplete jumble that it is. DVD-Rs. GOLDEN COLLECTIONs. PLATINUM COLLECTIONs. LOONEY TUNES SUPERSTARS DVDs. SATURDAY MORNING CARTOONS DVDs. MOUSE CHRONICLES Blu-Ray. Japanese Tweety DVDs. Daffy Duck's Quackbusters. Bugs Bunny's Easter Special. STARS OF SPACEJAM DVDs. THE PARODIES COLLECTION DVD. PORKY PIG 101. It is a hodge podge of most unusual proportions. And it is a testimonial to the slipshod treatment of Bugs Bunny and the Looney Tunes gang in the twenty-first century.
Anyway. The box set will be what it will be. It will be a "one-off". And the cartoons never released on DVD or Blu-Ray will not have another chance for High Definition glory.
July 23, 2020.
A listing of forty of the sixty cartoons in the Bugs Bunny Blu-Ray box set has come to light. Word is that it is still not accurate for itemising a portion of the final assemblage of sixty cartoons for the box set. But here is what the list comprises.
"Elmer's Candid Camera" (PLATINUM COLLECTION 2)
"A Wild Hare" (PLATINUM COLLECTION 2)
"Hold the Lion, Please" (new to Blu-Ray)
"Bugs Bunny Gets the Boid" (PLATINUM COLLECTION 2)
"Super-Rabbit" (new to Blu-Ray)
"Jack-Wabbit and the Beanstalk" (new to Blu-Ray)
"What's Cookin', Doc?" (new to Blu-Ray)
"Bugs Bunny and the Three Bears" (new to Blu-Ray)
"Hare Ribbin'" (new to Blu-Ray)
"The Old Grey Hare" (PLATINUM COLLECTION 2)
"Baseball Bugs" (PLATINUM COLLECTION 2)
"Hair-Raising Hare" (PLATINUM COLLECTION 3)
"Racketeer Rabbit" (new to Blu-Ray)
"Bugs Bunny Rides Again" (new to Blu-Ray)
"Haredevil Hare" (PLATINUM COLLECTION 1)
"Hot Cross Bunny" (new to Blu-Ray)
"Hare Splitter" (new to Blu-Ray)
"Knights Must Fall" (new to Blu-Ray)
"What's Up, Doc?" (new to Blu-Ray)
"8 Ball Bunny" (PLATINUM COLLECTION 1)
"Rabbit of Seville" (PLATINUM COLLECTION 1)
"Rabbit Every Monday" (new to Blu-Ray)
"The Fair Haired Hare" (new to Blu-Ray)
"Rabbit Fire" (PLATINUM COLLECTION 2)
"His Hare-Raising Tale" (new to Blu-Ray)
"Hare Lift" (new to Blu-Ray)
"Upswept Hare" (new to Blu-Ray)
"Robot Rabbit" (new to Blu-Ray)
"Captain Hareblower" (new to Blu-Ray)
"No Parking Hare" (new to Blu-Ray)
"Yankee Doodle Bugs" (new to Blu-Ray)
"Lumber Jack-Rabbit" (new to Blu-Ray; should be original, uncropped aspect ratio)
"Baby Buggy Bunny" (new to Blu-Ray)
"Hare Brush" (new to Blu-Ray)
"This is a Life?" (new to Blu-Ray; should be original, uncropped aspect ratio)
"Rabbitson Crusoe" (new to Blu-Ray)
"Napoleon Bunny-Part" (new to Blu-Ray; should be original, uncropped aspect ratio)
"Half-Fare Hare" (new to Blu-Ray)
"Piker's Peak" (new to Blu-Ray)
"What's Opera, Doc?" (PLATINUM COLLECTION 1)
I owe Jerry Beck an apology. It appears that he is making the most of this Blu-Ray release to finally give to the vast majority of Bugs cartoons previously unreleased to digital media, their due showcase on home video. There are still twenty cartoons not mentioned (probably most previously-not-on-DVD-or-Blu-Ray Bugs cartoons post-"What's Opera, Doc?" going to "False Hare"). I could lament about "Hyde and Hare" not being in High Definition, and I will do so for years to come. But this Blu-Ray release is, on the whole, an impressive product, and I will endorse it and buy it. I am happy to see that "Rabbitson Crusoe" is in this box set. If "Hare-Abian Nights" is in it, also, then I can dispense with that awful PARODIES COLLECTION DVD. It pleases me further to see HARE EXTRAORDINAIRE cartoons finally being released on shiny digital videodisc in their correct aspect ratio. I pray that none of the new-to-Blu-Ray cartoons are dropped for the final list.
"Blooper Bunny" is said to be included in the box set. Hopefully not in one of the sixty slots for the vintage cartoons.
All for now. I will comment further when the final list is revealed.
July 24, 2020.
I have done yet more updates to my Era 2 memoirs. Some further images of Pink Panther and Inspector cartoons and a paragraph about comic books and a mention of reruns of Adventures in Rainbow Country.
I had some difficulty saving the latest updated file for Era 2. It was not being saved fully. It could be that my Website's data is now of such high volume that problems will be with me from now on with the saving of updates.
I propose to finally stop adding to Era 2, in any case, and to concentrate my attention on other parts of my Website.
The information flow has now slowed with regard to the Bugs Bunny Blu-Ray box set. A full, final listing of the cartoons on it, is still pending. "False Hare" has been confirmed by Jerry Beck as being in the box set. This is about all of the new information that I have. Plus the fact that a Comic-Con video has been made available of the announcement of the Blu-Ray box set with participants in the video including Jerry Beck, George Feltenstein, and Leonard Maltin, and a few people associated with recent productions of cartoons. Naturally, it was a Bob Clampett "love-in", with references to the Chuck Jones classics being a matter of course. The only cartoon seen at length in the video was "What's Cookin', Doc?". Freleng merited scant mention at all. Even though a large (perhaps the largest) number of the new-to-Blu-Ray cartoons are his. It does give to me cause to roll my eyes and moan.
I would say again that the list that I posted here yesterday is not final, but it does appear that, once again, "Beanstalk Bunny" is nowhere to be found. It, like "Hyde and Go Tweet", seems to have some enduring disfavour with someone rather "high up the chain" in the planning of home video releases of the cartoons. And it looks like "A-Lad-in His Lamp" is now in the taboo category for home video. I could quibble with some of the choices for "cartoon repeats" in this list. Why "8 Ball Bunny"? It is already on Blu-Ray and is not an especially outstanding cartoon. I would like to see "Hyde and Hare" swapped with it. Why "Baseball Bugs" again? Why not "Rhapsody Rabbit"? And why "Elmer's Candid Camera"? It is not even Bugs Bunny in it. Bugs Bunny is not established as a character until "A Wild Hare".
As to the remaining twenty cartoons. I hope to see "Hare-Less Wolf", "Bugsy and Mugsy", "Backwoods Bunny", "Wild and Woolly Hare", "Bonanza Bunny", "Rabbit's Feat", "Compressed Hare", and maybe even "Hare-Breadth Hurry". With regard to "cartoon repeats", no doubt there will be an appearance of "Knighty Knight Bugs", for its historical significance. It would not surprise me to see "Show Biz Bugs" (one of the few Freleng cartoons of the 1950s that Jerry Beck likes very much), "Baton Bunny", and maybe "The Abominable Snow Rabbit" and "Transylvania 6-5000". I have a hunch that when the cartoons selected enter the 1960s, there will be fewer new-to-DVD-or-Blu-Ray titles listed. I do not expect to see "Wet Hare", "Devil's Feud Cake" or "Dumb Patrol". But I might be surprised.
It should not be much longer before the final list is made available.
So far, the bonus features announced have been underwheming. Most of them tired GOLDEN COLLECTION and PLATINUM COLLECTION oldies.
All for today, so far.
July 24, 2020. Supplemental.
Here is the list of Bugs Bunny cartoons on the third Blu-Ray disc in the upcoming Bugs Bunny Blu-Ray box set.
"Bugsy and Mugsy" (new to Blu-Ray)
"Show Biz Bugs" (PLATINUM COLLECTION 2)
"Hare-Less Wolf" (new to Blu-Ray)
"Now, Hare This" (new to Blu-Ray)
"Knighty Knight Bugs" (PLATINUM COLLECTION 3)
"Hare-Abian Nights" (new to Blu-Ray)
"Backwoods Bunny" (new to Blu-Ray)
"Wild and Woolly Hare" (new to Blu-Ray)
"Bonanza Bunny" (new to Blu-Ray)
"People Are Bunny" (new to Blu-Ray; should be original, uncropped aspect ratio)
"Person to Bunny" (new to Blu-Ray; should be original, uncropped aspect ratio)
"Rabbit's Feat" (new to Blu-Ray)
"From Hare to Heir" (new to Blu-Ray; should be original, uncropped aspect ratio)
"Compressed Hare" (new to Blu-Ray)
"Prince Violent" (new to Blu-Ray)
"Shishkabugs" (new to Blu-Ray)
"The Million Hare" (new to Blu-Ray; should be original, uncropped aspect ratio)
"The Unmentionables" (new to Blu-Ray)
"False Hare" (new to Blu-Ray; should be original, uncropped aspect ratio)
"Blooper Bunny" (new to Blu-Ray)
Impressive! I must say that I like it. All of these titles bring a smile to my face. Well, except for "Blooper Bunny". Why is it forestalling a vintage cartoon from a coveted spot amongst the sixty cartoons offered? A spot that could have gone to "Lighter Than Hare" (which will remain available only in an incorrect aspect ratio). Or "Hare-Breadth Hurry". Or "Dumb Patrol".
With this release also including "Hare-Abian Nights", it is bye-bye to THE PARODIES COLLECTION. And do not think that it has been a slice of heaven, oh, PARODIES COLLECTION. Because it has not. I can also now dispense with STARS OF SPACEJAM: BUGS BUNNY and The Bugs Bunny Easter Special.
I was right about "Show Biz Bugs" and "Knighty Knight Bugs". Fancy that!
Here is the Bugs Bunny Eightieth Anniversary Blu-Ray box set in its finalised appearance. And, yes, that is a Funko Bugs Bunny toy figure in the package. I am not against toy figures, per se. As a matter of fact, I paid a hefty sum of money in 2018 for a Bugs Bunny and Mr. Hyde set of toy figures. And a few Weblog entries ago, I was marvelling at some imagined action figures for the characters of Spiderman. But I do not believe that a Blu-Ray box set is the place for them. I would much rather have had two or three more Blu-Ray discs in the box set. And then bought a Funko figure of Bugs Bunny separately if I felt so-inclined.
The Bugs Bunny Blu-Ray box set's bonuses have been announced, and I must note the existence in the box set of several of the new Looney Tunes cartoon shorts made for HBO Max. Not something that particularly pleases me, this. I would much rather have excerpts from The Bugs Bunny Show. These new cartoons are, in my estimation, a completely illegal attempt to forsake the refinements to the character and look of Bugs that came in the late 1940s, and to go back to Bob Clampett.
But this for another time. I have no wish today to tackle the prevailing attitude of the cartoon fans of the past twenty years. I am on my vacation.
July 27, 2020.
Thursday, August 6, 2020.
Thirty-seven years ago this morning, I was at my friend Tony's place with my videocassette recorder combined with his, to make a burnished copy of Space: 1999- "Dragon's Domain", which had come my way the day previous on the first videotape of CBHT broadcasts of Space: 1999 sent to me by my benefactor in Dartmouth. I remember those days so vividly, so fondly. In every detail. There was a magic to them, for sure. Before my untrammelled, unjaded love for Space: 1999 became contaminated by the quasi-intellectual, schoolyard-bully louts of the fan movement.
I watched "Dragon's Domain" yesterday in commemoration of my receiving a videotape of it on August 5, 1983. It still "packs a wallop" as an opus of science fiction/horror, even as Blu-Ray has made its lapses in visual effects all the more apparent. Obvious multiple exposures of models, or models passing in front of and visually mixing with stars instead of obscuring them. Docking sequences not "thought out" as to their matching of interior perspectives. The Eagle nose cone abruptly disappears from its docking position on the Ultra Probeship as the Eagle with Koenig's party is shown leaving the "graveyard" and returning to Alpha. Then there is the incorrect date of the "Space News" report. And Helena's incorrect use of the word, galaxies. And all of the other questionable aspects of the episode that I have elucidated before. I acknowledge its shortcomings while still hailing it as being very, very effective at instilling terror and yielding impressions of a disturbing nature.
Onward I go to a different subject. Jerry Beck was interviewed last night and revealed that Warner Brothers has no plans to release any more new-to-Blu-Ray, or new-to-digital-videodisc, cartoons of the Looney Tunes and Merrie Melodies stable. Further, the Bugs Bunny Blu-Ray box set was originally conceived by Warner Brothers Home Entertainment to be comprised of nothing but cartoons already available on DVD and Blu-Ray, and that Jerry Beck said, in Warner Brothers' consultation with him, that in his opinion such a box set would not sell and that Warner Brothers should restore more cartoons. Warner Brothers conceded to this, and the Bugs Bunny Blu-Ray box set became what it is going to be. So, yes, Jerry Beck does deserve the fullest amount of kudos for bringing to the collectors a box set nearly completing Bugs' filmography on shiny digital videodisc (i.e. DVD and Blu-Ray). It is a pity that certain cartoons did not "make it" to digital videodisc media while others are being needlessly repeated. If indeed this will be the "Last Chance Saloon" for Bugs on physical media. "A-Lad-in His Lamp". "Beanstalk Bunny". The unjustly maligned "Pre-Hysterical Hare". "Devil's Feud Cake". "Hare-Breadth Hurry". "Dumb Patrol". And "Lighter Than Hare" remaining available only in a cropped 16X9 format. "Finishing the rabbit" could have been much closer to reality.
Of course, it is possible that if sales of this box set are impressive, Warner Brothers might have a positive decision for the future of the vintage Warner Brothers cartoons on physical media. But so many people are already complaining about the price and the unwanted trinket in the box and saying that they will wait for discounts and a scaled-down box before making a purchase. It does not appear likely that sales will "go through the roof" and that Warner Brothers will be encouraged to delve further into its vaults of not-yet-restored cartoons for more physcal media releases.
I have done updating of my Era 3 memoirs, with several new paragraphs added. Some of them remember more of my sixth grade experience, the full-class detentions and their impact on my morale, and Mrs. O'Hara's deficiencies as a teacher. Others refer to my viewing of the Space: 1999 episodes, "War Games", and "Death's Other Dominion", in March of 1978, an expedition in late 1980 to a library to make a photocopy of a book with a Space: 1999- "Dragon's Domain" picture, my first viewing of Journey to the Far Side of the Sun, and Barry Morse's portrayal of Scrooge in Theatre New Brunswick's adaptation of A Christmas Carol. Many new images have been added. Images of the Space: 1999 episodes, "Earthbound", "Guardian of Piri", "War Games", and "Death's Other Dominion". Images of The Little Rascals- "Hide and Shriek". And images of Journey to the Far Side of the Sun.
I remember noting back in 1978 a scene in The Little Rascals- "Hide and Shriek" of a monster on the other side of a doorway with its arms extended terrorising Alfalfa, Porky, and Buckwheat and the three children eventually passing through an open portal underneath the monster, to be something of an apt companion to the monster scenes in Space: 1999- "Dragon's Domain". I noted this to myself with no mention of it to friends, many of whom would just lambaste me, as they were wont to do, for my invoking of Space: 1999 at all too many opportunities for so-doing.
Another summer vacation is coming close to its end. Another summer vacation in which I have failed to make any progress with completing my Era 6 and Era 7 memoirs. It is unusual for me to lack motivation to such a extent for completing something that I started. But I cannot generate enthusiasm for Era 6 to dedicate my time to writing it. I would have problems with supplying images for the two eras, in any case. There are no longer any kiosks with functional picture scanning equipment at any local stores, and even if there were, this pandemic would prevent me from going to those stores and spending substantial amounts of time in them. And, really, there is not very much more to say about those eras than I have said here. Era 6 was one of stagnation and "false starts". Many "dead-end" endeavours. Friendships that were impractical and short-lived. The only really notable experience of Era 6 was my trek to Los Angeles in 1995, and I go into that in far more detail and with much more astute and satisfying analysis in entries here in my Weblog than was originally the case in my memoirs for Era 6. As for Era 7, what distinguished it from Era 6 was my finding of a career and steady employment and my building of my Website and my trials and tribulations on the Internet. In many respects, I am still in Era 7 today. Still working the same job. Still single. Still dealing with all of the "aggro" of certain parties and trying to maintain morale while in a beleaguered state for being true to myself. The deaths of my parents was a major changer of life condition for me, to be sure, but the overall circumstances of my life, such as it is, stayed the same. Friends have come and gone over the years. So many temporary, situational friends (i.e. the friends at work). Nostalgia is still my solace in my lonesome times. I have found a new best friend in the past couple of years who experienced the school scene in Fredericton in much the same way that I did after he arrived in Fredericton as a newcomer. And who has helped me to overcome the morale-straining effects of what is happening in the world today. Without him, I would probably have succumbed to an abyss of depression accompanying this pandemic year. I am so very grateful that he and I found each other. He is not a friend I met at work, and that is encouraging. Very much so. Work friends are so transitory.
My approach to handling the daily invalidations of the loutish pundits of Space: 1999 has improved. I am not scrambling to my keyboard to "dash off" indignant responses to the sorties of these hateful humans. Not as much as I used to do so. And hopefully not anymore. Those people are ignorant and proud of their ignorance. They are obnoxious and do not care that they are recognised as being so. They lack maturity, class, and decency, as their anti-Freiberger posturing so obviously indicates. And they are wrong about Season 2. I know that they are. And I have shown them to be so. Many times. Their opinion should not be of interest because they are not in possession of all of the facts. The facts of the beauteous qualities of the second season in its fascinating chronology. Anyway, I am not going to "go on" about this now. Life is short, and my life is past its middle phase.
Friday, August 14, 2020.
I continue onward with my Website work. I am finally, finally making progress with my Era 6 memoirs, and I am committed now to seeing that progress continue to those memoirs' completion. Hopefully by mid-autumn, at the latest. I am doing my best to be consistent with the 2005 mindset that I had in the writing of most of my autobiography. This is one of the challenging things about doing all of my updating to all eras of my memoirs. I think that I am staying true to that mindset, regardless of how I feel now about the whole of my Fredericton experience.
Before moving onward to completing Era 6, I added some more text and images to Era 3. Images of Earthquake. An image of It Happened at Lakewood Manor. Another image of Space: 1999. And a photograph of Nashwaaksis Junior High School after end of an average school day in 1980. I remember, in my text updates, CHSJ-TV's airing of Earthquake in 1978, and CHSJ's showing of "bug movies" like It Happened at Lakewood Manor.
An item of news before I end today's Weblog entry. More Warner Brothers cartoons have been restored for HBO Max. "Dr. Jerkyl's Hide" is among them. Here is the full list of these latest restorations.
"Moonlight For Two"
"The Country Boy"
"My Green Fedora"
"Into Your Dance"
"Goopy Geer"
"The Queen Was in the Parlor"
"I Wish I Had Wings"
"A Great Big Bunch of You"
"The Organ Grinder"
"I Like Mountain Music"
"Beauty and the Beast"
"Mr. and Mrs. is the Name"
"Billboard Frolics"
"The Cat Came Back"
"Let it Be Me"
"Bingo Crosbyana"
"Boulevardier From the Bronx"
"I Only Have Eyes For You"
"Ain't We Got Fun"
"Egghead Rides Again"
"Dog Daze"
"The Lyin' Mouse"
"The Penguin Parade"
"Cinderella Meets Fella"
"The Mice Will Play"
"Hamateur Night"
"Robin Hood Makes Good"
"The Dangerous Dan McFoo"
"The Curious Puppy"
"Busy Bakers"
"Ceiling Hero"
"Good Night, Elmer"
"Elmer's Pet Rabbit"
"The Crackpot Quail"
"Showtime For Comedy"
"The Bug Parade"
"Saddle Silly"
"The Cagey Canary"
"Hop, Skip, and a Chump"
"The Bird Came C.O.D."
"Dog Tired"
"Ding Dog Daddy"
"From Hand to Mouse"
"Behind the Meatball"
"The Gay Anties"
"The Goofy Gophers"
"Cracked Quack"
"Easy Peckins"
"Dr. Jerkyl's Hide"
"Double or Mutton"
"A Bird in a Bonnet"
"Don't Axe Me"
"Fastest With the Mostest"
"D' Fightin' Ones"
"Devil's Feud Cake"
"Fistic Mystic"
"Bugged By a Bee"
They are mostly pre-1948 cartoons, but it is nice to know that the work in restoring cartoons is ongoing. Yes, that is nice to know. It is even more gratifying to know that Warner Brothers is now working on restoring everything. All cartoon shorts. And all television shows, also. This is the news from Jerry Beck. Alas, word also from Jerry Beck is that Warner Brothers has no plans to make any more restored cartoons available to the public for purchase. And that most of this restoration work might never meet the public eye at all. Words cannot begin to express the degree of my disappointment and frustration in this regard. It is possible, of course, that a high volume of sales of the Bugs Bunny Blu-Ray set might prompt Warner Brothers to have a change of mind, and to begin releasing sets of the newly restored cartoons regularly to the home video market. That high volume would have to be considerable indeed, I think, for such a development to occur, and, unfortunately, it seems that all too many people are going to eschew the box set until it reaches its discount phase of availability.
One more item. I have received a request for a broadcast history for Space: 1999 on YTV. I do have the information to produce such a broadcast history, and I may do so after I have completed my autobiography. I may post it here to this Weblog and not on my main Space: 1999 Page. I am not sure that I want to have my Space: 1999 Page "weighted down" with broadcast histories, though I do still have plans to add one or two more sets of 1976-8 broadcast information for CBC Television stations.
All for today.
Wednesday, August 19, 2020. Forty-three years ago today was the lamented move from Douglastown to Fredericton. Forty-three years. My, how time "flies". I can assure my readers that the consequences of that move are very much with me today, and will be so until my dying day. In all probability, my last words will be, "We should have stayed in the Miramichi". Maybe I will have that printed on my tombstone.
I continue to work on my Era 6 memoirs. I have made more progress on them in recent weeks than I did at any time in the past ten years. I cannot say that it has been a labour of love. I like that era even less now than before I undertook this work to complete my remembrances of it form the same perspective as in my remembrances of the other life eras. A perspective that I had in 2005 but have no longer. It is an awkward exercise, and I have on more than one occasion in these past several days lost my initiative for a short time. But I am committed to finishing the work. It will be finished.
Will wonders never cease! Word is that Warner Home Video will be releasing MARVIN MARTIAN'S SPACE TUNES on DVD. That cartoon compilation of the late 1990s contained not only the cartoons of Marvin Martian, but some other Warner Brothers cartoons about the Space Age or space aliens and... and... "Hyde and Go Tweet". Yes, if there is no alteration to the listing of cartoons to be included in this DVD release, this development will mark the coming of "Hyde and Go Tweet" as a cartoon short with all of its original titles (not as an excerpt in Daffy Duck's Quackbusters or in The Bugs Bunny Howl-Oween Special) to shiny digital videodisc. Will it be in a restored form? Probably not. One can hope that it will be among the next batch of restored cartoons for HBO Max and that the people at Warner Brothers will use that restoration for this DVD. But realistically, given the Warner Home Video track record for going to old, off-the-shelf video transfers of not-previously-on-DVD cartoons for its DVD releases of old VHS videocassette cartoon compilations, it is probably going to be an old, faded, blurry transfer of "Hyde and Go Tweet" that will be used. At this juncture, after waiting for two decades for "Hyde and Go Tweet" to touch DVD in its entirety, I will accept this DVD into my collection, even though all of the Marvin cartoons on it are on Blu-Ray in superior quality. And the other space-themed cartoons on it are redundant, too, them having been released on DVD years and years ago in the time of the GOLDEN COLLECTIONs.
I am celebrating this news as I am continuing to rejoice in the upcoming Bugs Bunny Blu-Ray box set.
All for today. Back to work I go on my Era 6 memoirs.
Sunday, August 30, 2020.
A brief Weblog entry for today.
I have been quite busy with my Era 6 memoirs in the past several days. Progress is being made. New paragraphs are being added, new image assemblages are being made, and I am doing all that I can do to try to fuse everything together coherently. But it is not easy, and I must say that it is mostly not pleasant. Remembering that trans-North-American trek of 1995 does not exactly warm my heart. I do not like the dredging-up of all of the detrimental experiences of that journey, and the effects of the journey as regards my associations then in the Space: 1999 fan movement. That was 25 years ago, and I can still see it all in my mind's eye and feel everything that I felt. It generates the antipathy in me for those people and a cynicism for the world in general that I have been trying to purge from my psyche. And at a time of depressing isolation like the one that I am experiencing today, this is definitely not good for my morale.
I think that I am going to have to "leave it aside" again for awhile. I will return to it and finish it. It is now present in full HTML coding on my Website with numerous images. The work is so close to being done. A few more weeks of synthesising the current adjustments to it with what had been in there before, and a comprehensive effort at tying it in thoroughly with previous eras, and it will be done. For the time being, I need a "break" from it and all of the memory of what transpired in it. Said journey. The "dead-end" friendships around home and the hurt of being snubbed in those friendships. Negative experiences with supply teaching. Temporary friendships in university film courses. Nightmare productions with community television and accidents at those productions. And more. I need on reflect back on happier times of previous eras. Not those.
News has been practically non-existent on the Bugs Bunny Blu-Ray box set and on Warner Brothers' restoration work of the full Looney Tunes and Merrie Melodies cartoon catalogue. There has been nothing from anyone in the way of news or even conversation. Cartoon discussion forums have been dead of late. I presume that the work of restoration is continuing and the more batches of cartoons will reach HBO Max at some point in time in the near future. Maybe September will bring more news post-Labour Day, when people are finished with summer vacations.
I noted to myself on Thursday that "Hyde and Hare" is now sixty-five years-old. It was first released to theatres on August 27, 1955. It would have been so nice to have it announced as coming to Blu-Ray in the box set, but, no. So much better to release "Elmer's Candid Camera" again. And "Bugs Bunny Gets the Boid". And "The Old Grey Hare".
I have nothing more to say today.
Sunday, September 6, 2020.
A brief Weblog entry today. Again, there is very little in the way of news to report and on which to comment.
There are no discussions of late that I can see about the Bugs Bunny Blu-Ray box set or the presumably ongoing work on Warner Brothers cartoon restoration. The TTTP in Exile discussion forum (which, yes, I do occasionally visit- but only as a lurker) has been dead for some time now. There is scant discussion at Facebook groups oriented around the vintage cartoons of Warner Brothers and their presence on home video. Maybe things will "pick up" after Labour Day.
Of course, it is "business as usual" in Space: 1999 fandom. It, Space: 1999 fandom, has "done its work" on me. I no longer enjoy watching "the show" and rarely pull a Blu-Ray disc of it off of my shelf. If I do watch it, all I can think about is the attitude of the fans and what story element of a Season 2 episode will they question, disparage, and use as a brickbat against the season as a whole in the next comparison of it to foul substances and implicit denigration of the oh, so unsophisticated and immature people of an ever-diminishing minority, who fancy Season 2. Space: 1999 is now forty-five years-old. I say it, and I can scarcely believe it. It must be the only forty-five-year-old television show to have a fandom dedicated to besmirching half of its episodes on a daily basis.
I cannot be bothered anymore coming to a defence of something that not a single other living soul will champion. Not even Dean, apparently. But I am not going to go down that rabbit hole today.
Martin Landau is dead. Gerry Anderson is dead. Sylvia Anderson is dead. Fred Freiberger is dead. Keith Wilson is dead. Barry Morse, Tony Anholt, and Zienia Merton are dead. Johnny Byrne is dead. Most of the writers and directors are dead. Space: 1999 is a forty-five-years-old television show with a projected future that is more than twenty years out-of-date. There is no mainstream following of it, and its fandom has become increasingly entrenched in one tired, disagreeable mindset. It amazingly did receive a Blu-Ray release, and that is the end of its history on home video media. I will always love it, mainly because of nostalgia for those old times in Douglastown and some of my better Fredericton years in which it had a significant part. I am connected through it to many fond memories of my parents and old friends. None of this will change, no matter how much that the fans' slighting of it and, by extension, me, will intensify. But I just cannot enjoy the experience of watching it anymore. With no friends present with whom to share it. Sitting by myself and trying to enjoy it in isolation, with the invalidations of the fans spinning about in my mind. Knowing as I do that I will never "fit in", and nor can I ever now meet Martin Landau.
I have made some more progress on my Era 6 memoirs. Although it is, by far, my least favourite life era, I have managed to generate ideas for images to give to it rather an appealing look. For my trans-North-America journey of 1995, I am using stock images on the Internet, to represent places that I visited, and not the photographs snapshot at the time by my hosts and others. I do not have safe occasion to scan those photographs into digital files, and, in any case, I would rather not use them. It is best, I think, to limit use of what my erstwhile, or false from the start, friends did. I am loath to have any of what they did, present on my Website. There are, on my Home Page, a couple of photographs snapshot by one of them. I propose to have those be the only ones used for my Website. They have been in use now on my Website for more than twenty-three years. When I first used them, I was not quite so resentful of those people as I later became, over the years of seeing their point of view validated by legions of caustic fans, and after further tussles with fans in corners of the Internet. I may as well just keep the photographs where they are located. And not add to them. The work on Era 6 continues. I do not have a timetable for its completion. It will be done when it is done.
Sunday, September 20, 2020.
The last weekend of the summer of 2020. I find that with each year of age that I accumulate, I am even more mournful at the passing of summer.
I have a very brief Weblog entry today with some items of news.
Progress continues to be made on my Era 6 memoirs. I am close to completing them. Just a few more paragraphs and about ten images. It will be a relief to have this work behind me. I wish that I could say that I am optimistic about working on Era 7 being less disagreeable an undertaking. There was plenty about that era that I am not looking forward to revisiting. I am not going to plunge myself into that work immediately after completing Era 6.
The Bugs Bunny Blu-Ray box set's release date has changed. There is nearly a month's delay in that highly anticipated Blu-Ray release. The new release date is December 1. No explanation has been stated for the delay. Why do I have the feeling that it is due to that Funko statuette of Bugs Bunny having unexpected manufacturing and/or shipping problems? It is just a feeling that I have. A month's delay in seeing those gorgeously restored cartoons on account of that thing? How very galling! If true.
Kino Lorber is releasing Buck Rogers in the 25th Century to the North American Blu-Ray market. There will be some bonus features unique to the Kino Lorber Blu-Rays, and this release will bring the theatrical motion picture version of the pilot episode to high definition video for the first time. But I will be "passing" on this. I have the Australian Blu-Ray box set of Buck Rogers after having bought the U.K. DVDs, the dual-sided North American DVDs, and the single-sided North American DVDs of same television show. I will not spend any more money on Buck. I am not really so very much of a fan. Its first season aired during the worst year of school for me, and probably the worst year of my childhood. And these days, the nostalgia factor is key to my enjoyment of repeated viewing of something. I have not watched every episode on the Australian Blu-Rays yet. I just cannot motivate myself to watch plodding episodes like "Planet of the Amazon Women", "Flight of the War Witch", "Time of the Hawk", and "Journey to Oasis". And besides, I cannot say that I have confidence in Kino Lorber for a faultless release.
I directed television coverage of the New Brunswick General Election this past Monday. And I voted with a mask on my face. I cannot say what political party for which I marked my ballot. My job embargoes me from commenting directly on New Brunswick provincial politics of the present day. But where I stand on federal politics was not insignificant in my decision on which provincial party would receive my vote. Suffice that to say.
All for today.
October 1, 2020.
My Era 6 memoirs are almost completed. I am hoping to have them ready to introduce them to my readers on the coming weekend, or shortly thereafter. After that, I intend to have a rest for awhile from Website work, and to enjoy the autumn. I will probably work on Era 7 over the long, dark winter. Most of the work on Era 6 has been on images. Finding them. Forming assemblages of them. Doing digital "clean-up" on some of them. Writing descriptions of them. It was very surprising and frustrating to find far fewer usable images of videotape covers than were existent on the Internet for earlier years of my memoirs as I added images to these a few years ago. And I had to search and search for the images that I did find. But I have enough.
MARVIN THE MARTIAN'S SPACE TUNES DVD is to be released next Tuesday. I have no information on what "Hyde and Go Tweet" looks like on it, or indeed if "Hyde and Go Tweet" will be on it at all. It is just assumed that it will be on the DVD, as it was on the VHS of MARVIN THE MARTIAN'S SPACE TUNES in the late 1990s.
Discussion on the upcoming Bugs Bunny Blu-Ray box set and on restored cartoons on HBO Max has continued to be absent from Facebook groups and the TTTP in Exile discussion forum. There has been no banter about the change of release date for the Bugs Bunny box set.
Nothing more to say today.
October 2, 2020.
All right. I am coming out of my retirement as a defender of Season 2 Space: 1999 and putting aside my work on my Era 6 memoirs, to give to the Space: 1999 fans another deserved upbraiding.
Yesterday, at the Facebook group for Space: 1999 an image of Gerry Sundquist as Malic in "The Dorcons", Season 2's final episode, was met with a barrage of derisive comments about his performance in the episode, saying that his was the worst Space: 1999 guest star performance ever, calling it "camp", et cetera. Of course these people hate Gary Sundquist's performance. They hate everything about Season 2, from the opening title sequence of "The Metamorph" to the final visualisation of the end credits of "The Dorcons". Why would they not hate Gerry Sundquist's acting too? The fact that these people observe everything in Season 2 in a negative, caustic manner, and will go on doing so until their final breaths, means that they never, ever, ever will see in Season 2 what I do, and what Dean sees. What any reasonable, open-minded person ought to be able to see once it is revealed to him or her.
That they are doing this in a series of smug, "drive-by" smears once again shows their lack of class, their lack of couth, their lack of empathy and humanity. Gerry Sundquist is dead. He is not present in the world today to defend himself. Moreover, he died tragically. By suicide. His family could see these disparaging comments. Comments which, I hasten to add, are in no way constructive criticism. They serve no purpose other than to besmirch Season 2 and Gerry Sundquist's role in it. As yet another expression of hatred for Season 2 as a whole. As if there has not been enough of that for the past forty-four years.
I deplore these people more and more with each passing day. They have ruined my enjoyment of Space: 1999. And they did not care that they were doing that. Of course not. Ruining people's enjoyment of Season 2 is something that they delight in doing. It is a large part of why they persist in their sorties. It plus the gratification in receiving a hearty approval of their hatred in a group of like-minded persons. No one, no one at all, can appreciate Season 2 and be regarded as a respectable human being. But I digress. Gerry Sundquist's work on Space: 1999 is being attacked, and it should be defended. His acting in the scene wherein Malic murders Archon is chilling. He speaks of his motivation for the heinous act that he is undertaking, as one who was "cheated out" of an inherited position of power that was his by right. As a young noble motivated to kill to attain that which he had been promised all through his upbringing. The dialogue is eloquently delivered in a Shakespearian manner. Gerry Sundquist's performance as Malic throughout the episode is theatrical, with Shakesperian flavour. I believe that this was what Johnny Byrne had in mind when he wrote the dialogue. A theatrical performance is not by necessity a "camp" performance. Camp implies deliberate "sending-up" of a role, and I do not believe that to have been Gerry Sundquist's intention. Or that of director Tom Clegg. Gerry Sundquist spoke the dialogue as Byrne had written it. There is a sly, brooding menace to him for most of the episode as he plots his nefarious actions and then uses Koenig as a decoy. Once he has appeared to succeed and is removing the Archon's symbol of power from around the murdered Archon's neck, his feeling of triumph in attaining that which he has yearned-for for all of his life is unrestrained. Sundquist delivers the lines as those of a not-quite-ripe character already very intoxicated by the control that he is about to wield upon his people. It is here that rather reticent menace turns into exuberant villainy. Until Consul Varda realises, with Koenig's help, what Malic has done and declares him unfit to live. The only time that Sundquist may perhaps be said to misjudge his performance was when he shouts, "The shields!" Perhaps that should have been redone. But I doubt that it was meant to "send up" the proceedings. And Malic had become quite unhinged by then. Absolute power was now in his grasp, and Varda was denying him that, after everything that he had done, after his evil plans had appeared to have succeeded. I can accept it as the reaction of a megalomaniacal individual losing that which he sought, without relent, to attain. And yet, he still believes, in his madness, that he, as Archon, can prevent the destruction of the Dorcon spaceship once the anti-matter shielding has been eliminated by the dying Varda's energy weapon.
What these fans often fail to acknowledge is that madness can manifest itself in "shouty" behaviour. Either they fail to acknowledge it, or they choose not to. Whatever. I wonder what they would say about Davros in Doctor Who.
And when it comes to theatrical or exaggeratedly portentous dialogue delivery, there is some of that in Season 1. It is odd that they have no issue at all with how Luke Ferro in Season 1's "The Testament of Arkadia" says his lines. It is mystifying to me why, as his voice was "dubbed" for most of the episode, he was not simply "dubbed" in English without an affected Italian accent. When he says, "Be warned. Any attempt to stop us will fail, and bring down upon you the terrible forces of chaos and destruction," the line delivery is quite theatrical, especially in that accent. My father laughed at it one day as he heard it.
But as I so often say, for these people, Season 1 is unassailable, and Season 2 is undefendable. Everything is absolute. There are people saying with the most insufferable arrogance, that there is no redeeming quality whatsoever about Season 2. That a person like me is some wretched "apologist" (oh, how I despise that word!) to be ignored or laughed-at if I choose not to quietly retreat, ever beleaguered and defeated, to my home theatre room to watch Space: 1999 by my lonesome as some "guilty pleasure" (I despise that expression too; oh, how I despise it!).
Well, they managed to do it. They pulled me off out of a retirement and into having another "go" at them, in indignation over their treatment of the late Gerry Sundquist whose tragic life had included a guest star performance in one science fiction/fantasy opus that, for its time, was a production judged to be of sufficient quality to air on Canada's number one broadcaster, CBC Television, at a late-afternoon or early-evening airtime. Whatever my opinion may be of the CBC today, I cannot deny that in the 1970s it was the creme-de-la-creme of television broadcasting, offering only the very best American fare, and many a highly acclaimed British production. Nobody at CBC at any time in Season 2's run on CBC in 1976-7, declared its episodes to be unworthy of transmission. All episodes were run. And all episodes but one were rerun. Right up to mid-September in 1977, at which time ratings were deemed to be sufficient for the CBC to allocate to Space: 1999 another year of Saturday broadcasts, showing first season for people who had missed it in 1975-6, when Space: 1999 was not a full-CBC-English-television-network offering.
All right. I have spent my Internet time for today writing this instead of working on my memoirs. It had to be done. I do not regret the time spent in doing so. Even though I know that almost no one is going to listen to what I have to say on the subject of Space: 1999, somebody had to "call out" these people for their despicable behaviour. Even if it must be that inconsequential nobody, that "delusional" "flake", name of Kevin McCorry.
All for today.
October 8, 2020.
I have received notification this morning that my DVD of MARVIN THE MARTIAN'S SPACE TUNES is now en route to me. I do not expect its arrival until after Thanksgiving, unfortunately. Any news that I will have to report on it, on whether "Hyde and Go Tweet" is on the DVD and what it looks like, will likely be old by then. If "Hyde and Go Tweet" is not on the DVD, then the DVD will be of no value to me. Useless. A waste of money. All of the other cartoons on the disc are redundant. Especially all of the Marvin cartoons, which were in the first PLATINUM COLLECTION Blu-Ray set and could not possibly look better on a mere DVD. I am loath to buy DVD at all these days. It is an outmoded format. But to finally have "Hyde and Go Tweet" on a pressed DVD, even if it is unrestored, is worth the expense of a purchase. I just hope that Warner DVDs are better made these days than they were in the 2000s. Reports are that many, many of those are "rotters". Including LOONEY TUNES GOLDEN COLLECTIONS 4, 5, and 6. My DVDs of those sets continue to play without problems, but for how much longer?
This week, I finally, finally put my Era 6 memoirs onto my Website. It is the first time that they have been available since Geocities went non-operational, cancelling my Website, in 2009. And they have been much expanded, and with a bulk of new images to bring them to par with the five previous eras. Some of the images are still in need of some digital "touch-ups" to remove unwanted artifacts. It is still a work in progress, and will be so for some time. I still seek quality images of a number of videotape covers (most notably those of ELMER FUDD'S SCHOOL OF HARD KNOCKS and MGM/UA Home Video's release of Bugs Bunny: Superstar), and I may someday have access to a scanner to digitise photographs of me from 1995 (of me in Regina, in the Rockies, and in Los Angeles). There is room for some additional images at various places in the memoirs. I do not expect that I will be revisiting them to add more text (other than descriptions of new images). I think that I have said all that needs to be said about the era. I am glad to be finished with the writing of it. Going back to Eras 2 and 4 and even 1 and 3 generates powerful feelings of nostalgia. For Era 6, not so much. It was a frustrating and ultimately mainly fruitless five years. The only nostalgia that I feel for it is for being with members of my family, all of whom are deceased. And I have more abundant happy memories of them in previous eras.
All for today.
Sunday, October 11, 2020. Thanksgiving Sunday. Turkey dinner today. For me and my cat, Nero.
My DVD of MARVIN MARTIAN'S SPACE TUNES arrived on Friday afternoon. "Hyde and Go Tweet" is indeed on the DVD in complete form. And is not restored. None of the cartoons on the shiny disc are restored. Yes, not even the ones that were restored in High Definition for Blu-Ray. All of them are on this DVD as they were when MARVIN MARTIAN'S SPACE TUNES was a VHS videotape release. 1998, I believe. It would appear that Warner Home Video pulled the 1998 videotape master of MARVIN MARTIAN'S SPACE TUNES, the full compilation of twelve cartoons, off of a vault shelf and transferred it as is to DVD. I am not sure what that videotape master was. Betacam-SP. Digi-Beta, perhaps. I am sure that it was state-of-the-art for its time, but the transfers of the cartoons to video were done with VHS resolution in mind. On DVD, they naturally exhibit signs of a film-to-video transfer not to the standard of even early DVD. Of course, they look better than they did on VHS. Laser videodisc, too, probably. DVD picture quality would have "pulled out" every detail that was there on the videotape master. How does "Hyde and Go Tweet" look? Serviceable. Provided that one does not sit very close to one's High Definition television. The colours do not bleed into one another as they did on VHS. No colour banding as was on the laser videodisc. But still not optimal DVD quality. Not even optimal quality for DVD in 1998. Daffy Duck's Quackbusters will still be my go-to DVD for watching "Hyde and Go Tweet". But it is satisfying to know that "Hyde and Go Tweet" in its original form is in my collection on a pressed DVD. This will "do" for me until hell freezes over and Warner Home Video releases "Hyde and Go Tweet" on Blu-Ray, fully restored.
Work continues on digital "clean-up" of the images to my Era 6 memoirs. And I continue to proofread them to try to "ferret out" errors in the text. Grammar and spelling errors. Also, the memoirs are a hodge podge of writings of 2005 and writings of this year. I continue to look for inconsistencies and render the text changes needed to eliminate any inconsistency or contradiction.
Lately, I have been receiving correspondence from some readers asking me questions for which an affirmative answer is not possible. I do not have broadcast information for any seasons of The Bugs Bunny/Road Runner Hour other than the first. Anything that is lacking information on the Televised Looney Tunes section of my Website, is lacking that information because I do not have it. Would I like to have fully comprehensive episode guides for every television series? Absolutely. If I had the information, it would definitely be there on the Web pages. I do not trade or sell copies of anything on DVD-R, BD-R, et cetera. For reasons of respecting copyright. And because I no longer possess the means of "burning" DVDs. My television listings project is the result of researching with old newspapers, and some personal memories. My memories of procedures of New Brunswick and eastern Maritime Canada broadcasters in the 1970s are just that. Memories. I have no associations with people who worked then in the television industry. I have no sources for "insider" information on the broadcasting and production of vintage television programming in Atlantic Canada. I do not have objection to my interview with Fred Freiberger being referenced or quoted for mass-market books about the television productions on which he worked. As long as I and my Website are credited. I do balk, however, at use of the interview for publications intended for Space: 1999 fan consumption. Because no reference to Mr. Freiberger can go without a venomous thrashing of him by legions of Space: 1999 fans. Some of my least favourite people on planet Earth. I cannot injunct people from using the interview, provided that I am credited. I just do not like the fans, and they do not like me. I would prefer not to have my name and the interview paraded in front of them and incurring a Pavlovian reaction from them, for a renewed round of slurring of Mr. Freiberger and a berating of me as being "fanboyish", et cetera.
I am terrible at replying to e-mail these days. I have been for some time. The time that I have for activity on the Internet, I tend to reserve for Website work. And Facebook. Close friends on Facebook. I do read every correspondence that I receive. I often do mean to spend some time answering e-mail, but time goes past me so fast these days. With my job and tasks of day-to-day living, I have reduced time for Internet activity, and it passes so very fast while I am doing Website work. I do not like being discourteous, but I cannot promptly answer all e-mail and do the work on my Website and Weblog. I am wondering whether a Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ) might be an apt addition to my Website. It is something that I will ponder in the coming days.
I have done some preliminary work on my Era 7 memoirs. It is looking like images are going to be as difficult to find for them as they were for Era 6. I had not looked at those memoirs for a long time. They are refreshing memories of years that, by and large, I had let sleep in my mind since 2005. Looking at them, I realise that in no way was 2002 a definitive end to that era. A fitting end point for the era might have been 2009 or 2010. 2009, as that was when my Website at Geocities was terminated. 2010, as that was the year of my mother's death and the start of a time of my life when mortality and loss was a constant consideration in my daily life. And my Website had a resurrection in 2011, as I was honouring my mother's wish that I "make something of (my) life". Anyway. I will do what I can with them. Without making them any longer than my writings on earlier eras. There may be fewer images, though.
I should start work on today's turkey. All for now.
Thursday, October 22, 2020.
Work continues on improving the quality of images in my Era 6 memoirs. I have also done some preliminary work on text and images for Era 7. I am not feeling motivated now to do much work on Era 7. Reading, however, through what I had written on it up to and including 2005, has surprised me for how negative my outlook was on my Internet presence in the latter half of that era. I had forgotten just how bitter and cynical that I was. Mostly due to my differences with the herd at the Termite Terrace Trading Post and other places on the World Wide Web for discussion about cartoons, coming on the heels of my final, most aggravating tussles with the Internet-based fans of Space: 1999. A campaign for the release of Spiderman to DVD had appeared to have failed. And I was irked at the lack of interest in my overall Website on the part of comers to my Littlest Hobo Page; people just looked at it and nothing else, doubtless only because they were looking for an audio file of the song. I was not a happy fellow in those years, though looking back at them now, I wish that I could have them back.
I have updated my Space: 1999 Page to add Caroline Mortimer to the In Memoriam section, and there have been some minor updates to my Era 4 memoirs and Era 6 memoirs.
All for now.
Friday, October 23, 2020. A bleak day in a long run of bleak days. And snow is in the forecast for next Friday.
Bad news on the home video front. Network Distributing, believed to have been working on restoration of The New Avengers for a Blu-Ray release, has said that it is now merely on a wish list for the company. I was so looking forward to a Blu-Ray release of the twenty-six New Avengers episodes. My DVDs of The New Avengers are very probably the worst commercially released digital videodiscs in my collection. Some of the second season episodes look absolutely horrible. And now hopes have "dried up" here, too. As they have for the Blu-Ray releases of vintage seasons of Doctor Who.
From the lack of New Avengers Blu-Rays, I propose to progress to mention of a Blu-Ray release of The Flintstones this month. My only interest in The Flintstones these days is nostalgic. Television programmes about married life, even married life in a spoof of the Stone Age, just do not hold my attention. But The Flintstones does have a special significance to me in that so very many memories of Douglastown and Era 2 are connected with it. Its music has a very, very potent nostalgic punch to it. Especially that of the later seasons of the television series. Warner Home Video's Blu-Ray release is reportedly problematic, for one episode of Season 1 having missing music and sound effects and the whole of the final season (the one with Gazoo) being of a markedly inferior quality of restoration. As many as seventeen or eighteen episodes are crammed onto each Blu-Ray disc. That would be the equivalent of nine, or nearly nine, hour-long episodes of television programming. Plus bonus features. I fail to see how this will not adversely affect picture quality.
Sunday, November 1, 2020.
I begin my Weblog entry on this bleak November day with sad, sad news. Sean Connery has died. He lived to be ninety, which is a good, long life by any realistic standard. But I wished so much that he could live to be 100. He was a man of such charisma, such confidence, such strength, that reaching his century ought to have been quite possible. His presence on screen was always electric. One's eyes were always drawn to him and fixed upon him. And he always, always delivered a compelling performance as the leading man. As Bond, certainly. And as O'Niel in Outland. And as Dr. Paul Bradley in Meteor (I could be wrong, but I think that, apart from Sybil Danning, every member of the cast of that movie is now sadly dead). And as the Brutal, Zed, in Zardoz. His supporting roles were outstanding, also. As Indiana Jones' father. As King Agamemnon in Time Bandits (it was such a thrill hearing him say my first name in that movie). Even his cameo as King Richard in Robin Hood- Prince of Thieves. His portrayal of Roald Amundsen in The Red Tent (1968) was captivating also. Sean Connery had a reluctant quality as an actor. He was not clearly relishing his work. I think that this "came through" in his portrayal of Bond and was what made that portrayal seem so genuine, as Bond himself would be reluctant to go on missions on which he would probably have to kill. It was a job that he did as a matter of responsibility to Queen and country, but it was not one that he enjoyed (well, except for his obligatory romantic conquest- and even some of those were acts of duty with which he was not particularly pleased to have to perform).
I remember a Larry King interview with Mr. Connery, and my being enthralled with all that he said. He spoke of Meteor as the one movie that he did that he wished had been better written and produced to its full potential. Meteor was, by the way, the first Sean Connery movie that I saw. And I pronounced his first name as rhyming with the word, seen. Not long after that, my father corrected me- when he was telling me of pre-Roger Moore James Bond. He and my mother had together seen Dr. No and Goldfinger when he was posted in Germany before I was born. Roger Moore was my first James Bond, by way of Moonraker and The Spy Who Loved Me. But not long after that, I saw a television broadcast of From Russia With Love and then movie theatre matinee showings of Thunderball and Diamonds Are Forever, and I warmed to his more gritty portrayal of 007 very quickly. By the time that I had seen Diamonds Are Forever, he was my preferred Bond. And my later viewings of Goldfinger, You Only Live Twice, and Dr. No reinforced that preference. Connery, in my estimation at least, never faltered in the role of Bond. Of course, I still have a fondness for Moore. And like many a Bond aficionado, I think On Her Majesty's Secret Service (with George Lazenby) to be the best Bond movie. But Sean Connery for me is the definitive Bond, whatever the tone may have been in a particular Bond movie, serious or tongue-in-cheek. And he was the consummate action hero of the twentieth century. One of my heroes. And also that of a number of my friends. I will never forget my television room filled with youngsters watching and delighting in Goldfinger on New Year's Day in 1982.
Rest in peace, Sir Sean. I have every certainty that you are with M, Q, and Moneypenny now. And Sir Roger Moore.
I mourn the loss of Sean Connery not only for his acting work. He was an "Alpha Male", and they are needed so much in the world today. Sean Connery is the John Wayne of my generation. He was a man who would always bravely be on the side of integrity and responsibility. I remember saying to my mother once that Sean Connery would not flee a scene where someone was being savagely attacked with a knife. He would "step in" and disarm the attacker.
But that was a generation that is now almost lost to the world. The generation of Sean Connery and the generation of my parents. A generation of adults who fought against totalitarianism in World War II and in the Cold War. Who genuinely believed in the freedom and the autonomy of the individual while at the same time advocating for responsible, conscientious, civic-minded individualism. That people would contribute to the betterment of society not through government coercion but through personal character and a proper sense of right and wrong. There was a moral compass back then. Today, that moral compass is broken, and I fear the repercussions of this. There is so much wrong with the world today, and I think that a large part of the problem is that people no longer have a clear and unyielding sense of right and wrong. So, they elect leaders who promise to them legal recreational drug use or right to abortion absolving the promiscuous from responsibility, and all the while saying that this is "progressive".
Enough for today.
November 5, 2020.
Another large batch of newly restored Warner Brothers cartoons have appeared on HBO Max. The following is a list of all of the newly restored cartoons. Yes, "Hyde and Go Tweet" is on the list. Why, why, why was its new restoration not on the MARVIN MARTIAN'S SPACE TUNES DVD?!!! There is just no excuse for this missed opportunity to have "Hyde and Go Tweet" in fully restored condition on physical media.
"Young and Healthy"
"The Girl at the Ironing Board"
"Pettin' in the Park"
"The Merry Old Soul"
"Little Dutch Plate"
"Flowers for Madame"
"Porky the Rain-Maker"
"The Village Smithy"
"The Fire Alarm"
"Plane Dippy"
"I'd Love to Take Orders From You"
"Fish Tales"
"When I Yoo Hoo"
"Porky and Gabby"
"Porky's Building"
"Porky's Super Service"
"Streamlined Greta Green"
"Plenty of Money and You"
"Sunbonnet Blue"
"Rover's Rival"
"Porky the Gob"
"Porky's Naughty Nephew"
"Porky's Spring Planting"
"The Sneezing Weasel"
"Porky's Five and Ten"
"Count Me Out"
"Pied Piper Porky"
"Porky's Tire Trouble"
"Dog Gone Modern"
"Snowman's Land"
"Naughty Neighbours"
"Fresh Fish"
"Porky the Giant Killer"
"Stage Fright"
"Wacky Wildlife"
"The Haunted Mouse"
"Porky's Snooze Reel"
"The Cat's Tale"
"Hobby Horse Laffs"
"The Impatient Patient"
"Porky's Pastry Pirates"
"Gopher Goofy"
"The Squawkin' Hawk"
"Fox Pop"
"Greetings, Bait"
"Fit 'N Catty"
"Meatless Flyday"
"The Unruly Hare"
"Fair and Wormer"
"Along Came Daffy"
"Little Orphan Airedale"
"Two Gophers From Texas"
"What's Brewin' Bruin?"
"Bone, Sweet Bone"
"The Rattled Rooster"
"The Shell-Shocked Egg"
"My Bunny Lies Over the Sea"
"The Ducksters"
"The Leghorn Blows at Midnight"
"All a Bir-r-r-d"
"A Fractured Leghorn"
"Bunker Hill Bunny"
"Two's a Crowd"
"A Fox in a Fix"
"A Hound For Trouble"
"Room and Bird"
"Sleepy-Time Possum"
"The Wearing of the Grin"
"Putty Tat Trouble"
"A Bone For a Bone"
"Tweety's S.O.S."
"Tweet Tweet Tweety"
"Rabbit's Kin"
"Water, Water Every Hare"
"Sock a Doodle Do"
"Ain't She Tweet"
"Mouse-Warming"
"Terrier-Stricken"
"Fowl Weather"
"Muscle Tussle"
"Plop Goes the Weasel!"
"Don't Give Up the Sheep"
"Snow Business"
"Ant Pasted"
"I Gopher You"
"Quack Shot"
"Sheep Ahoy"
"Pests For Guests"
"Tweety's Circus"
"Rabbit Rampage"
"Lumber Jerks"
"A Kiddie's Kitty"
"Tree Cornered Tweety"
"Tugboat Granny"
"Tweet and Sour"
"Tweet Zoo"
"Greedy For Tweety"
"A Pizza Tweety-Pie"
"A Waggily Tale"
"To Itch His Own"
"Pre-Hysterical Hare"
"Hip Hip- Hurry!"
"Hot-Rod and Reel!"
"Trick or Tweet"
"Tweet and Lovely"
"Tweet Dreams"
"Wild About Hurry"
"Wild Wild World"
"Hyde and Go Tweet"
"Hopalong Casualty"
"Ready, Woolen, and Able"
"Mice Follies"
"Zip 'n Snort"
"Lickety-Splat"
"The Jet Cage"
"Mother Was a Rooster"
"Wet Hare"
"A Sheep in the Deep"
"Quackodile Tears"
"Hare Breadth Hurry"
"Woolen Under Where"
"Hawaiian Aye Aye"
"Tease for Two"
"Zip Zip Hooray!"
"Rushing Roulette"
"Tired and Feathered"
"Just Plane Beep"
"Merlin the Magic Mouse"
"Cool Cat"
"Big Game Haunt"
"Hippydrome Tiger"
"Feud With a Dude"
"Three Ring Wing Ding"
"Chimp and Zee"
"Rabbit Stew and Rabbits Too"
"Shamrock and Roll"
"Portrait of the Artist as a Young Bunny"
"Spaced-Out Bunny"
"Duck Dodgers and the Return of the 24 1/2th Century"
"Box Office Bunny"
"Invasion of the Bunny Snatchers"
"From Hare to Eternity"
I do like seeing so many Tweety cartoons in this list. It is gratifying to know that they have been restored. But the chances are slim to nil that these restorations will ever be available on Blu-Ray or DVD. They will more than likely only ever be available for people to watch on the Internet or what remains of broadcast television. Not available to own.
Monday, November 9, 2020.
I have been labouring with what free time I have from work at my place of employment, on my Era 7 memoirs. They are now available. It is still a work in progress. I am toiling away at some paragraphs regarding my "falling out" with the regulars of the Termite Terrace Trading Post in 2009. I am enjoying this as little as I have enjoyed chronicling my involvement in the fandom of Space: 1999, but the work will be done. The Era 7 memoirs are lacking in images, and I will be putting some of my time into assembling some image collages to give to the Era 7 memoirs as much visual content as the previous six eras have.
The Bugs Bunny Blu-Ray box set is now in my possession. I am so pleased to have it, although at the back of my mind I suspect I will not be allowed to own it, or anything else, for very long. Is it perfect? No. There are some peculiarities in the movement of Bugs Bunny in the cartoon title sequences. It seems that some digital doctoring was done to it. Some of the syllables in Bugs' song about Nero in "Upswept Hare" are strangely missing. The cartoons, though looking in many instances far better than I had ever seen them before, somehow still did not "pack a visual wallop" in their sharpness and contrast ratio. Word on the Internet is that Warner Brothers used a bitrate that did not use all of the Blu-Ray disc space. Why, I do not know. I must say that I do quite like the Funko figure. It has a glittery quality to it that I find aesthetically pleasing. It goes quite nicely with my Funko set of Bugs Bunny and Mr. Hyde that I bought in 2018. And it will be a collector's item, as the Bugs and Mr. Hyde set now is. The other non-Blu-Ray content of the box set, specifically an enveloped certificate with a lovingly written article of congratulation of Bugs by Jerry Beck, is slick and impressive. The new documentary on Bugs is quite enjoyable, though not particularly innovative in its style of approach to its subject matter, or in what in Bugs' history that it chooses to reference. As usual, it chooses to "gloss over" most of Bugs' post-1948 years. "Hyde and Hare" is not seen at all in the documentary. Not a single clip of it. No opportunity to see how it looks in high definition. There is no mention of Bugs not always winning. No mention of complexities to his psychology. Just that he "always" wins. I listened to some of the new audio commentaries. Greg Ford's commentary for "Rabbit Every Monday" brought smiles to my face. It was nice, very, very nice, for a change to hear a Friz Freleng cartoon being praised in an audio commentary. The sheer number of Friz Freleng and Robert McKimson cartoons in this box set's Blu-Rays, particularly discs two and three, is cogently indicative of how poorly served that Freleng and McKimson's cartoons of the 1950s had been in the GOLDEN COLLECTION and the PLATINUM COLLECTION. The bulk of cartoons in this new box set that is dedicated to the availabilty for the first time on shiny digital videodisc of Bugs Bunny cartoons hitherto unheralded on post-2000 home video media, are those of Freleng and McKimson.
Wanting some more Bugs Bunny digital videodiscs to span alongside the Bugs Bunny Blu-Ray box set's discs on my shelf, I decided to buy the BUGS BUNNY GOLDEN CARROT COLLECTION DVD set. My old GOLDEN COLLECTION Bugs Bunny DVDs are now many years-old. Now, they have new replacements. Also, it is a good idea to support as many of the Bugs Bunny and Looney Tunes DVD and Blu-Ray releases this year as possible. It may help to convince Warner Brothers that there is a market for more Looney Tunes Blu-Rays.
I see that Doctor Who- Season 8 and The Bad News Bears are coming to Blu-Ray in February, in the U.K. and Australia respectively.
All for today, December 12, 2020.
A brief Weblog entry this morning.
I continue to work on my Era 7 memoirs. More text and images have been added to them in the past couple of days.
It was a pleasant Christmas for me. I roasted a turkey, and had with it Stove Top Stuffing, homemade gravy, potatoes, and carrots. I watched some Blu-Rays and DVDs when I was not busy in the kitchen. I chatted on Facebook with my young Vietnamese friend. He is enjoying some time for relaxation after a very busy semester at college in Scarborough. Spending time with my friend on Facebook Messenger brings brightness to my days.
Is the Shout! Factory Space: 1999 Blu-Ray box set already out of print? It is being sold by Amazon Marketplace sellers at costs of $150 U.S. dollars and above. Similar prices are being set for it by eBay sellers. I honestly do not know what is happening in this regard. I do not recall the Shout! Factory Space: 1999 box sets minus the snow globe being branded a limited edition. It could be that sales were so poor that Shout! did not opt for a second manufacturing run of the Blu-Rays. That would not surprise me.
All for today, December 29, 2020.
January 9, 2021.
I typewrite the year, 2021, and I can scarcely believe it. Where is the time going? Where is my life going? The twentieth century is now receding far into the "rearview".
I had to buy a new television at a cost of nearly $1300. My old one of nearly thirteen years is now a non-operational piece of junk. The new television, a SONY sixty-five-inch LED, will be delivered on Saturday the 23. Until then, I cannot watch any Blu-Rays or DVDs.
My Era 7 memoirs have been updated again with more images. I have about a half-dozen more images to add, and then I propose to "call it a day" on my autobiography and work on some additions to the rest of my Website. I have not forgotten my promise to do a YTV broadcast history for Space: 1999. It is coming.
All for now.
January 10, 2021.
I have done the broadcast history for Space: 1999 on YTV. Here it is.
YTV Canada Broadcasts (1990-2) Saturdays Date Episode Airtime Sept. 8, 1990 "Voyager's Return" 5:30 P.M. Sept. 15, 1990 "Dragon's Domain" 5:30 P.M. Sept. 22, 1990 "Mission of the Darians" 5:30 P.M. Sept. 29, 1990 "Guardian of Piri" 5:30 P.M. Oct. 6, 1990 "Matter of Life and Death" 5:30 P.M. Oct. 13, 1990 "The Full Circle" 5:30 P.M. Oct. 20, 1990 "Another Time, Another Place" 5:30 P.M. Oct. 27, 1990 "Ring Around the Moon" 5:30 P.M. Nov. 3, 1990 "Missing Link" 5:30 P.M. Nov. 10, 1990 "The Last Sunset" 5:30 P.M. Nov. 17, 1990 "Space Brain" 5:30 P.M. Nov. 24, 1990 "The Troubled Spirit" 5:30 P.M. Dec. 1, 1990 "The Testament of Arkadia" 5:30 P.M. Dec. 8, 1990 "Death's Other Dominion" 5:30 P.M. Dec. 15, 1990 "The Exiles" 5:30 P.M. Dec. 22, 1990 "One Moment of Humanity" 5:30 P.M. Dec. 29, 1990 "All That Glisters" 5:30 P.M. Jan. 5, 1991 "Journey to Where" 5:30 P.M. Jan. 12, 1991 "The Taybor" 5:30 P.M. Jan. 19, 1991 "The Rules of Luton" 5:30 P.M. Jan. 26, 1991 "The Mark of Archanon" 5:30 P.M. Feb. 2, 1991 "Brian the Brain" 5:30 P.M. Feb. 9, 1991 "New Adam New Eve" 5:30 P.M. Feb. 16, 1991 "The AB Chrysalis" 5:30 P.M. Feb. 23, 1991 "Seed of Destruction" 5:30 P.M. Mar. 2, 1991 "A Matter of Balance" 5:30 P.M. Mar. 9, 1991 "The Lambda Factor" 5:30 P.M. Mar. 16, 1991 "The Seance Spectre" 5:30 P.M. Mar. 23, 1991 "Dorzak" 5:30 P.M. Mar. 30, 1991 "Devil's Planet" 5:30 P.M. Apr. 6, 1991 "The Immunity Syndrome" 5:30 P.M. Apr. 13, 1991 "The Dorcons" 5:30 P.M. Apr. 20, 1991 "Force of Life" 5:30 P.M. Apr. 27, 1991 "Collision Course" 5:30 P.M. May 4, 1991 "Alpha Child" 5:30 P.M. May 11, 1991 "Black Sun" 5:30 P.M. May 18, 1991 "End of Eternity" 5:30 P.M. May 25, 1991 "Earthbound" 5:30 P.M. Jun. 1, 1991 "The Infernal Machine" 5:30 P.M. Jun. 8, 1991 "The Last Enemy" 5:30 P.M. Jun. 15, 1991 "Catacombs of the Moon" 5:30 P.M. Jun. 22, 1991 "The Beta Cloud" 5:30 P.M. Jun. 29, 1991 Preemption Jul. 6, 1991 Preemption Jul. 13, 1991 Preemption Jul. 20, 1991 Preemption Jul. 26, 1991 Preemption Aug. 3, 1991 Preemption Aug. 10, 1991 Preemption Aug. 17, 1991 Preemption Aug. 24, 1991 Preemption Aug. 31, 1991 Preemption Sept. 7, 1991 Preemption Sept. 14, 1991 Preemption Sept. 21, 1991 "Death's Other Dominion" 5:30 P.M. Sept. 28, 1991 "Force of Life" 5:30 P.M. Oct. 5, 1991 "Collision Course" 5:30 P.M. Oct. 12, 1991 "Voyager's Return" 5:30 P.M. Oct. 19, 1991 "Alpha Child" 5:30 P.M. Oct. 26, 1991 "Dragon's Domain" 5:30 P.M. Nov. 2, 1991 "Mission of the Darians" 5:30 P.M. Nov. 9, 1991 "Black Sun" 5:30 P.M. Nov. 16, 1991 "Guardian of Piri" 5:30 P.M. Nov. 23, 1991 "End of Eternity" 5:30 P.M. Nov. 30, 1991 "Matter of Life and Death" 5:30 P.M. Dec. 7, 1991 "Earthbound" 5:30 P.M. Dec. 14, 1991 "The Full Circle" 5:30 P.M. Dec. 21, 1991 "Another Time, Another Place" 5:30 P.M. Jun. 28, 1991 "The Infernal Machine" 5:30 P.M. Jan. 4, 1992 "Ring Around the Moon" 5:30 P.M. Jan. 11, 1992 "Missing Link" 5:30 P.M. Jan. 18, 1992 "The Last Sunset" 5:30 P.M. Jan. 25, 1992 "Space Brain" 5:30 P.M. Feb. 1, 1992 "The Troubled Spirit" 5:30 P.M. Feb. 8, 1992 "The Testament of Arkadia" 5:30 P.M. Feb. 15, 1992 "The Last Enemy" 5:30 P.M. Feb. 22, 1992 "The Exiles" 5:30 P.M. Feb. 29, 1992 "One Moment of Humanity" 5:30 P.M. Mar. 7, 1992 "All That Glisters" 5:30 P.M. Mar. 14, 1992 "Journey to Where" 5:30 P.M. Mar. 21, 1992 "The Taybor" 5:30 P.M. Mar. 28, 1992 "The Rules of Luton" 5:30 P.M. Apr. 4, 1992 "The Mark of Archanon" 5:30 P.M. Apr. 11, 1992 "Brian the Brain" 5:30 P.M. Apr. 18, 1992 "New Adam New Eve" 5:30 P.M. Apr. 25, 1992 "Catacombs of the Moon" 5:30 P.M. May 2, 1992 "The AB Chrysalis" 5:30 P.M. May 9, 1992 "Seed of Destruction" 5:30 P.M. May 16, 1992 "The Beta Cloud" 5:30 P.M. May 23, 1992 "A Matter of Balance" 5:30 P.M. May 30, 1992 "The Lambda Factor" 5:30 P.M. Jun. 6, 1992 "The Seance Spectre" 5:30 P.M. Jun. 13, 1992 "Dorzak" 5:30 P.M. Jun. 20, 1992 "Devil's Planet" 5:30 P.M. Jun. 27, 1992 "The Immunity Syndrome" 5:30 P.M. Jul. 4, 1992 "The Dorcons" 5:30 P.M.
January 13, 2021.
My Era 7 memoirs are now completed. I have added sufficient images for them to resemble all of the preceding eras in their layout. This is not to say that revisions will not occur in weeks and months to come. For all intents and purposes, my Era 6 and Era 7 memoirs are now done. Never let it be said that I do not complete what I undertake to do.
I plan on writing an addendum to my overall autobiography that will segue into my Weblog, for which I will post-add some new entries for key dates in my life between late 2009 and the resumption of the Weblog in 2012.
For as long as I can, I will keep this Website going. The nostalgia in it may become its most valuable aspect for comers to it in years to come, and my autobiographical Web pages, especially. I wish to God that I had more pictures of my life's Era 2. Oh, how I miss the stability and sanity of life back then! When my parents and their generation were in charge of things. They were wise people. Were they perfect? No. Of course not. But the generations influencing the Zeitgeist today are a far cry from the people of character that my parents and their contemporaries were. "Ain't it the truth!" as Bugs Bunny would say.
For the time being, I am anticipating quite keenly my new television being delivered on the twenty-third.
Saturday, January 23, 2021.
I have a new television. It is a sixty-five-inch SONY 4K LED. Yesterday, I watched some episodes of The Flintstones (from the recently released Blu-Ray box set of such that I purchased late last year) and the extended television cut of Superman, calibrating my new television's colours, contrast, black levels as I viewed those, arriving at a most splendid video display system. The best that I have had in my possession over the course of my lifetime. I am going to enjoy my Blu-Rays on my new television. I will watch some Space: 1999 today.
I added some more images to my Era 7 memoirs in the past few days. And a couple of Miramichi images to my Era 2 memoirs. Now, I am leaving aside my work on my autobiography. My attention will go to this Weblog and my adjusting of political commentary in it, and some additions of entries for 2009 to 2012 for days of significance within that time frame.
Everything is normal in the fandoms of my favourite entertainments. There was a round of accosting of episodes of Season 2 Space: 1999 this week at the very Facebook group dedicated to the second season of Space: 1999. Attack, attack, attack. Scarcely any complaint from the purported fans of Season 2 in the group. If I was in charge of it, I would tell to the people berating episodes of Season 2 to either "change their tune" or leave. Go to a group more suited to their hostile attitude. God knows, there are plenty of those. And unlike the presidency of the fan club of my 1990s experience, those groups of hostile bearing vis-a-vis Season 2 do not try to "pass themselves off" as being respectful of both seasons in order to gain support of the Season 2 booster like myself, during their formation. They are quite "up-front" from the "get-go" in their bias against the second season. I would direct the anti-Season-2 crowd there, and to stop scourging the Season 2 group with their contempt. Yes, I would. But then, I am not the quisling that those alleged aficionados of Season 2 at its Facebook group seem always to be. They actually approve the slurring of Season 2 in a group supposedly formed to honour it. Anyway, just more of the same garbage. These days, I have more important things to be concerned about than those loutish half-adults and their particular brand of blinkered intransigence. There are way too many brands of such in the world today.
Thursday, February 4, 2021.
I have been enjoying watching Blu-Rays on my new television. I have an additional (over my old television) fifteen inches of television screen that vastly increase the scale and perceptible detail of whatever I am watching. Space: 1999 looks better than ever, and it feels like I am watching episodes of it for the first time. The second season episodes look better than those of the first due to their being from more recent film-to-video transfers. "Journey to Where" was a revelation. And "All That Glisters". The colour and the detail defy satisfactory description with words. The cartoons on the recently released Bugs Bunny Blu-Ray sparkle with clarity and variety and depth of colour. They look so much better on my new television than on the old.
Alas, I am rather less than impressed with the audio quality of my new television. Main titles sequences of numerous television series lack dynamism. I have tried all of the calibration options for the television and cannot render any improvement.
After a mild January, New Brunswick is now very much in the grip of winter. A major snowstorm struck the province on groundhog day. But the groundhog did not see his shadow. That is a positive morsel of news. If one believes in the prognostication power of a certain marmot.
The BBC has announced a Doctor Who Blu-Ray box set for Season 24 (Sylvester McCoy's first season). I do not dislike it as much as most fans of Doctor Who do but Season 24 is hardly a season that merits release before most of those of Doctors One to Five, and especially so soon after McCoy's third season (Season 26) was released last year. I have a hunch that it will be a long, long wait before my favourite season, Season 13, comes to Blu-Ray.
All for today.
I continue to watch television series episodes and movies on my new television. This past week, I watched Where Eagles Dare and, in commemoration of the career of the recently deceased Christopher Plummer, The Return of the Pink Panther. And also the Space: 1999 episodes, "Force of Life", "One Moment of Humanity", and "The Bringers of Wonder". I am loving all that I am seeing. The detail and the scope of the visuals is nothing short of spectacular.
Today, I propose to ruminate on my autiobiography now that it is completed up to 2009. It is very much adherent to how I was feeling in 2005 about my social existence in the places in which I had lived. Today, I am inclined, again, to say that my parents and I ought to have stayed in Douglastown and that my upbringing's Fredericton years should not have come to pass. But what is done is done- in more ways than one. I have no wish to do a rewrite on my autobiogaphy to bring it into accordance with my outlook now. It will remain oriented as it now is, around my 2005 mindset. There is always the possibility that I might go back to that at some time in the future. It does not seem likely, but who knows?
I have wrestled with my conscience at times in recent years over how critical that I am of some people in the memoirs. Specifically, friends that I had in Fredericton. Erstwhile friends in my earlier Fredericton years. Some friends of later years in my long tenure as a Fredericton resident. I say nothing clearly critical of my Douglastown friends, and I never will. Even if there was the occasional quarrel with them back in the day. Even if my best friend and I "fell out" when last we were together, i.e. Michael and I back in 1980. Even if one of them "un-friended" me on Facebook a few years ago for some undisclosed reason. Those people, all of them, were part, cherished part, of my life's five best years. I do not know for certain what destiny we would have had as friends had I stayed in Douglastown. But the fact was that we were still friends up to and including the day, August 19, 1977, that my parents, my cat, her kittens, and I boarded our automobile for our move to Fredericton. I did not experience with them the decline leading to eventual ending of rapport that happened with certain of my friends in Fredericton. Fredericton is a problematical place for me. Always has been, and probably always will be. From the first days of my residing in our new home through my largely lonely year of Grade 6 through the short-lived friendship with such people as David B., Eric, and Mike J. to the ebbing and flowing of rather more long-lived connections with Tony, Joey, and others, it was so. The reluctance of most people in my social life to be openly appreciative and affectionate. My feelings of dejection or desolation at times when I was not in those friends' favour and how I felt about such being apparently of no concern to them. And so on. Finding and retaining good friends of a steadfast, agreeable, and supportive quality that I needed just was not "my oyster" in Fredericton. The impact of that upon me has to be understood as regards how it affected my loyalities to entertainments, how I managed friendships in later years, and so forth. I cannot refrain from stating the circumstances of my sometimes tumultous relationships with friends of my later community. Not if I want to be coherent in my life's story. And those circumstances would often stem from incompatibilities on a personality level or a mode of comportment on their part that would not be in tandem with me and the sort of companionship that I needed. So yes, I will say that one of them was cloying and cavalier, that another was berating me for my conversation subjects, that another, although likable, was hyperactive, and that another was fastidiously building what he called a "queer list" of undesirables and was disinclined to be affectionate as my friend. Of course, as I have said, all of us back then were children. Our personalities were still in development. Some of their less amenable qualities may have been "grown out of" as they reached adulthood.
If it is the case that they are changed people in their adult years, as tends to be a reality for most people, then my recounting of how they were as youngsters should be something that they can accept without any resentment of me for simply saying what was true. Yes, it is true. All of it. I prefer, as an adult of some years of life experience, to deal in the truth. And I am not sugar-coating it. Some of these people's words or actions were "off-putting" or hurtful to me and my sense of self-worth, or contributed to a time of my being alone and brooding. That has to be acknowledged. Some of my friends' mannerisms, tastes, or ways I do look back upon fondly, and I hope that such does come across to readers as I intended for it to do. And I do hope also that my old friends are able to un-self-consciously laugh a bit and say, "Yeah, that's how I was back then." A well-adjusted adult ought to be able to do so. They may be able to say the same of biting, disagreeable qualities that they had in their juvenile or adolescent personalities. And to not condemn me for mentioning that they were like that at some time in their past. The important thing to them now, to them and also to the people with them, is that they are different. That they improved as they settled into the work force, married, had children, et cetera. This is of course assuming that they did change, that they did become different. Maybe not. Maybe they are still the same. If they are, then criticism such as mine would be warranted. Criticism not of them as they used to be (as I say, that needs to be put in the context of development in childhood), but as they are now. In any case, the fact that I am more critical of myself ought to help to remove much of the possible sting from seeing me remembering some unpleasant circumstances involving them. This plus the additional fact that the only people besides them and me who could possibly know that I am referring to them in my memoirs, would be people who knew them (and possibly me also) back then, as I only use first names, or first name and last name initial, in remembering of old friends in my memoirs, and statements or images of where they lived. There are not likely to be many such people reading my Website. Possibly none at all.
At the end of the proverbial day, I cannot contradict the truth that they had traits that made us incompatible with each other, or made me feel of lesser value to them, or whatever. And these were among my experiences in my own development, that shaped me. Those and my earlier experiences in the more congenial Douglastown. However they did gain such traits, from parents, siblings, other friends, the effect of those traits upon me has has to be stated. I do not propose to hand-wring over this much longer. How interactions with friends affected me and contributed to my love of imaginative entertainment is fair territory to broach, in a telling of my life's story. And I would add that they are not my friends today, now. No, they are not. They ceased to be my friends. They chose a long, long time ago to no longer include me in their lives, and this continues today to be the reality of my life. Such being the case, I am not beholden to them now. Though I do have a fondness for some, maybe several, maybe a lion's share, of memories of old times with them, I am not obliged now to walk on eggshells for their sake. They either "fell out" with me forty-some years ago, and/or chose some coarse "jock" over me. To the best of my knowledge today, they do not have any regrets on such score. Or they opted to abandon me some thirty years ago, toward the end of Era 4. Abandoned me because I was upset over being in a slump in baseball, and rather than be supportive they chose to "rub my nose" in my defeats. Or stand back and say nothing as others were doing that. And let me leave the game alone with jeers of "crybaby" or whatever flung at my back. Or they decided that having an older friend was no longer "cool". Or I made a mistake or two that they, after many years of being friends with me, were suddenly not willing to forgive. Because I was no longer of sufficient value for them to be forgiving. They renounced me. All of this considered, I do not owe to them anything beyond some fond recall of past time. And, yes, I do such recall in my memoirs. Bottom line is that I am probably never going to see them again. Or if I do it will be by random chance somewhere in town and they would be unlikely to speak to me in such an event.
Still, it is sad that we cannot be together today. But I cannot hope for that. Sad it is that they are the only living connection that I now have to vast swaths of my youth, the only people to have the same memories that I have of those old times, and they are not in my life per some decision of theirs three or more decades ago. It is not solely or mainly because of a pandemic virus that we cannot be together today. It is an unwillingness to be unconditionally accepting. And that is fair enough, I suppose. I was, myself, not unconditionally accepting of the friends of early Era 3, ultimately, as we did diverge on the basis of incompatibility. And what was done was done.
I now propose to leave my completed autobiography as is and to go back to writing for this Weblog and do the occasonal update to my Web page.
But how much updating should I do henceforth? I received my bill for a renewal of my Website for another year. More than $800. It was staggering to discover that high a cost for my Website. I can only surmise that it is due to the amount of new content added to the Website this past year, my almost daily use of File Manager for FTP, and possibly increased bandwidth use. I have learned so much about the Internet over the past twenty years. In my early days, I did not know anything about FTP or bandwidth. My Website provider of the time was offering the Website service gratis; so, charges for bandwidth use were outside of my experience and knowledge. I had people level accustions of deliberate bandwidth theft at me because I was using some of their images. Of course, they argued that I am a piece of garbage for doing that, not stopping to consider that I may have just been inexperienced and not fully cognizant of protocol. And yes, they were among my ever so favourite people, the fans of Space: 1999. Naturally, right?
But anyway. I am rambling. My Website is expensive. It has been an expensive year. First, a new television, and now this. As regards my new television, I continue to marvel at the detail and scope of visuals of Space: 1999 episodes that I am watching on my new screen. "The Seance Spectre" that I watched this past week, was a revelation. I was seeing details on the uniforms and facial expressions of background Alphans and the guest star Alphans for the first time. The Eagles were more impressive than ever. It was like having another first-time viewing of the episode, and I felt a connection with eleven-year-old me in the living room of our Douglastown house in February, 1977, my parents with me then, more than ever before. I do credit my new television for refreshing my love for Space: 1999 after the decades-long assault upon that love by fans of the television programme. This said, I continue to be frustrated with deficient audio quality. I watched "The Infernal Machine" on Friday night and found the music to be feeble during the first battle with Gwent. Footstep sounds through much of the episode were faint, as too were the electronic sounds inside Gwent. I am not only watching Space: 1999. This past week, I also watched The Empire Strikes Back, From Russia With Love, and Quatermass and the Pit. They looked glorious. Though, again, I had quibbles with audio- in the case of From Russia With Love. The music lacked intensity and seemed at times to "drop out".
"War Games" and "Dragon's Domain" were other Space: 1999 episodes that I watched this past week. Even now, after all of the years that I have clocked, it amazes me afresh and with much additional import, how much that "War Games" did accord with how I was feeling after my first full week of school in Grade 6 in Fredericton, September, 1977. Besieged. Attacked. Unwelcome. Rejected by the ever so perfect aliens, told that there is no place in space for one at all. Most aptly coinciding with how I was feeling were the monologues of Professor Bergman and Commander Koenig. The good-bye-to-Alpha speech (good-bye-to-Douglastown-and-a-happy-childhood). The ninety-seven-minutes-of-oxygen speech, about poison and pain and yet more pain and then nothing (which was how matters were looking for me in the place where I now was). The sadness, the solemnness, the birth of a cynical sense of being woefully at odds with my surroundings. Me saying the words to myself as I lonesomely and gloomily meandered around the Park Street School yard completely unnoticed by everyone there. "War Games" was the first Season 1 Space: 1999 episode that I saw in English after the move from Douglastown (in which I was introduced to Space: 1999 through Season 2 and the warmly sociable Alphans of that) to cold and ostracising Fredericton. It is an astounding coincidence, me seeing "War Games" at that point in time. It speaks to how much my life circumstances were adhering to the change of tone from Season 2 to Season 1 Space: 1999 on CBC Television's nationwide run of my favourite television series.
I also thought very much of my first viewing of "Dragon's Domain", with my best friend Michael at his place in Douglastown during a weekend's stay there with him three months after I moved to Fredericton, as I was watching it on my new television.
All for today, February 21, 2021.
February 28, 2021.
February is almost done, and it is clear that that groundhog was wrong. Fredericton now has a snow cover that is one intense snowstorm away from matching that of a couple of years ago. There have been no mild days of sunshine and substantially above-zero temperatures to melt the snow, unlike a couple of years ago. And there are no such days in the forecast for early March.
I continue to watch Space: 1999 on my new 65-inch television. Yesterday, I watched "Dorzak" and "Black Sun". "Dorzak" looked amazing! I had never before seen it look so vivid, so detailed. The female guest stars' eyes were especially striking in their deepness and intensity. The patterns on the screens in the Croton spaceship had never before been as sharp and gorgeous. And the often-maligned disco-style lighting is stunning. Who cares that disco is an aesthetic rooted in the 1970s? It is still a beautiful look. An inspired motif for futuristic or otherworldly technology. It lends an organic quality to the hardware. Like technological blood vessels with energy pulses flowing through them. Again, the Season 2 episode looked so much more defined, and far more colourful, than the Season 1. But even so, "Black Sun" had never looked lovelier. And in both cases, I was reminded very, very much of my initial viewings of those episodes back in 1977, and the circumstances of my life back then on the day. "Dorzak", I saw on March 5, 1977 in Douglatown. "Black Sun", was viewed by me and my parents in our new home in Fredericton on October 29, 1977. I definitely prefer the warm feelings of nostalgia connected with my final year in Douglastown. But, then, I would, would I not?
And I noticed the Ellendorff Brain Impulse Machine (of "The Bringers of Wonder") off to the side in Medical Centre in "Dorzak", as something of a reminder of Commander Koenig in an episode that he does not appear in, not even in flashback. One might be even of the impression that off to the side of frame, he is still there, connected to the machine. It is curious that the Medical Centre seen in "Dorzak" is so very different to that of every other Season 2 episode. Such does have something of a disorienting effect. Lending to a viewer a feeling of a somewhat askew scenario. I had better stop, as I am verging on encroaching into Dean's territory. The fans all regard peculiarities like Koenig's total absence in "Dorzak" and him being the only principal cast member in "Devil's Planet" as something to fault. I do not. I regard it as fascinating. Oh, I do know the production details, that the two episodes were filmed simultaneously but are meant to transpire hundreds of days apart, but it is interesting that no effort was made to place some token scene of John in "Dorzak" and one of Helena, Maya, Tony, and Alan in "Devil's Planet". There would have been an opportunity to do so, while scenes were being filmed of Lee Montague as Dorzak and Jill Townsend as Maya/Sahala and of Hildegard Neil as Elizia is talking to length with Roy Marsden as Crael. There was clearly time to film a scene of Helena, Maya, Tony, and Alan for "Devil's Planet" and one of Koenig for "Dorzak". But it was not done. And I find that fascinating. It adds to a skewed sense of things in the episodes. I do not regard such to be of no import. Dean had a most compelling hypothesis for explaining it. It and the discrepant dating of parts one and two of "The Bringers of Wonder" and the chronological bunching together of other episodes of the latter approximate third of Season 2. Such fit his interpretation of what he called the Third Province of second season episodes. I can say no more. Dearly as I wish that I could. With Dean's subtle hints, I deduced a certain aspect of the interpretation, during one of our meetings in the late 1980s. I cannot elaborate, sadly. It is not my place to do so. Not even now. More than thirty years after Dean swore me to secrecy. But I can say that it is "hinted-at" in the novelisation of "The Bringers of Wonder" by Michael Butterworth, possibly from his reading of the original scripts. Even to this day, forty-five years after the production of Season 2, such things still continue to captivate me.
Moving onward.
Two episodes of CBC Television's The Beachcombers have come to light on YouTube. One of them from 1979, the other from 1983. 1970s episodes of The Beachcombers are very rare indeed with regard to availability for viewing by the public. Those are the episodes for which many a Canadian has the most fondness, when Bruno Gerussi and Robert Clothier were in their prime as characters Nick Adonidas and Relic. The CBC seems to be deliberately keeping them buried in the deepest vaults. The only episodes of The Beachcombers to be circulated in syndication over the past twenty to thirty years have been post-1985, when the television series was far, far past its creative zenith. Although still produced on film, it did not look the same as it did in the 1970s. Different film stock and different cameras. And definitely older actors. Flanked by new, unfamiliar characters in whom I had no investment. I remember still watching The Beachcombers in 1979. Yes, even though we had cable television in our home by then and I had several other television channels in the offering. There was never anything worth watching on any of the American television stations on Sundays at 7 P.M.. Football, usually. Or golf. Newscasts. Country music. That sort of thing. For me, it was a dead zone for stimulating entertainment. Beyond what was on the CBC television network. And The Beachcombers was in 1979 still recognisably the same as the Sunday evening television attraction that it had been in my Douglastown years. But once I had my RCA VideoDisc player in late 1981 and my videocassette recorder in spring of 1982, my television viewing habits changed drastically. I no longer watched scheduled television broadcasts for most of the week, and Sundays at 7 P.M., I was watching something in my collection. Or doing homework. Or, in the summers, I was outdoors. Playing baseball or something. I have scarcely any recall of watching 1980s Beachcombers episodes. And none after 1985. Somehow, I think the same was true of most of my fellow countrymen. The CBC kept on making it to justify government hand-outs for "Can-Con" programming production or, as the CBC was increasingly wont to do, to make sledgehammer statements of political activism. The CBC consistently refused to release the early seasons of The Beachcombers on DVD, or to have them available for "streaming" on the Internet.
Here is the Hyperlink to those two episodes of The Beachcombers.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zoTqVQ7XDIo.
All for today.
Sunday, March 7, 2021.
Website updates. The "Cats A-Weigh" cartoon title card for The Bugs Bunny/Road Runner Show now looks so much better. I was able to remove most of the colour banding and television transmission ghosting on it. I have added some new images of "The Million Hare", "Daffy Dilly", "The Rebel Without Claws", "Scent-imental Romeo", and "Half-Fare Hare" to The Bugs Bunny/Road Runner Hour Page. And my Era 2 memoirs have had some new paragraphs and some new images added for spring of 1977, telling of my after-school visits with my friends David F. and Sandy in Millbank. There is a new picture of Moorefield Road where they lived and two newly added images of The Flintstones- "Fred's New Job" and The Little Rascals- "Little Papa", pertaining to what David and I saw on his television on my second visit with him. On a sunny late-spring school day in June of 1977.
I so love to look back upon the first eight months of 1977. My Miramichi portion of that watershed of a year in my life, arguably the most significant one of all. The effects of that year will continue to be with me for the rest of my days. I have no doubt that I will feel motivated to add still more memories of those last eight months of my habitation of Douglastown to my life's story. My Era 2 memoirs are now "closing in" on those of Era 4 in terms of length. My Era 4 memoirs have always been the longest, and that may eventually no longer be the case.
A couple of Weblog entries ago, I was saying that I prefer, as an adult of some years of life experience, to deal in the truth. Yes. And to be consistent with that preference, some disclosure on my imperfection is required. Over the course of my life, I have not always been a truth-teller. In my youth, in my teenage years mostly, I did occasionally veer off of the path of truthfulness. I would "fib". But I did not lie maliciously. I did not tell lies to put people in trouble, or to cause friction or discord between people and undermine people's friendships. My "fibs" were about my having seen something in entertainment, or about the existence of non-existant scenes or episodes in works of entertainment, or about my having had past experiences that I did not have. I did so, I think, because I was trying to be clever and daring, and to impress myself in those ways. And also, I think, because my respect for my friends was lacking in some way, some capacity. It was almost exclusively a Fredericton phenomenon, my "fibbing". I only remember doing it a couple of times in my Douglastown years, and both times I was caught in my lie and scolded for it by adults. One of those lies was to an adult, my father. The other was to a group of friends because I was trying to impress them. I respected my friends there, and was the lion's share of the time on the straight and narrow with them. In Fredericton, it was another story. Friends here with their inconsistent bearing toward me, their sometimes "sniping" tone or "snarky" rejoinder, or their coy nonchalance and withholding of friendship affection, I think diminished my compunctions about occasionally "making up stories". I think, after some considerable soul-searching, that this is true. In my adulthood, I found my way back to adherence to the truth. I think that it is the same for most people.
I value friends who are open and truthful about their esteem and their love for me. Friends who will not be so, or who do in fact lack said esteem and love, I do not feel particularly obliged-to to the fullest degree. But even so, today, as a wise man of fifty-five years, I strive always to tell the truth. Truth about the past. Truth about the present. And the truth is that I was no more perfect than my friends. Less so, I would say, due to my deficits of empathy and of being able to see myself and situations through the eyes of others. But I was in the process of development in childhood as were they, with some "catching up" to do after a sheltered early life as an only-child. I do not wish to be judged for all time for my errs back then, and nor should they be. That is not my intention in certain of my mentions of them in my memoirs. If as adults they have continued to be as they were as children, "sniping", cuttingly critical of one's favorite subjects, on-again-off-again as a friend, coyly or cavalierly deficient in expressions of esteem, not at one's side during difficult circumstances, and so on, or gloaters when winning a game, then now, today, judgement of actions today would be warranted. Unfortunately, a great many Genration Xers (not, I must emphasise, only the fans of Space: 1999) are as "snarky" and as ignorant of the sensibilities of others, vulgar, even, in this regard, now as then. Or even more so. Self-awareness would seem to be a rare thing nowadays. There is, it would seem, a higher probability that my old friends of my Fredericton years have retained their problematical qualities.
This week, on my new television, I watched the Space: 1999 episodes, "Space Warp", "Catacombs of the Moon", and "The Troubled Spirit". Again, I saw details in the picture more than ever before, and the episodes came alive for me like never before. One again, I find that the second season episodes are more visually satisfying. The clarity in the image. And especially the depth of the colours. The first season episodes' muted colour palette is less and less appealing to me as time goes by. That and the visually and conceptually dark aspects of their episodes. As I grow older, I seem more and more to back away from those.
I have no more to say today.
Saturday, March 13, 2021.
After a few days of mild temperatures hovering around plus-10 degrees Celsius, New Brunswick is now going back into the deep freeze, even with the first calendar day of spring within sight. I have been exceedingly busy at work and usually drained of energy by the time that I am at home for the evening. And the older that I become, the more draining of me is multi-tasking at work. And I find that I am becoming like my father, falling asleep as I watch something on my television screen in the evening. Lapsing into micro-sleep, would be a more accurate description of the phenomenon. The optimum time to watch television series and movies would seem to be the morning and early afternoon, when I am more wakeful.
I watched The Black Hole last night on Blu-Ray, when I was not "dozing off". It looked nothing short of lovely on my new television, but although I had the audio "cranked up" to one-hundred, the movie was mostly very quiet. Only when the music reached some crescendo did the audio level rise to impress. This week, I also watched Space: 1999's episodes, "End of Eternity", "Space Brain", and "The AB Chrysalis". I can now see the name on the astronaut's helmet at start of "End of Eternity". It is Hayes. It used to look like Mateo. Hm-m-m-m. Maybe there was indeed a Simon Hayes on Moonbase Alpha. Simon Hayes was the abandoned name first given to the Tony Verdeschi character of Season 2 of Space: 1999. Michael Butterworth's original 1976 novelisations of "The Metamorph" and "The Exiles" had the Simon Hayes character in them in lieu of Verdeschi for the most part.
I will begin this Weblog entry with the usual report on Website updates. I have adjusted some of the images of cartoon titling for The Bugs Bunny and Tweety Show on the Web page of same to make the copyright details level and not verging toward the bottom of the image frame. I added a small amount of additional sharpness to the titles, also. My Era 2 memoirs have been updated yet again, with some added text about "Hyde and Go Tweet" and an endeavouring to explain what it was about it that unsettled and fascinated me. That is in one of the paragraphs in my 1974 reminiscences. And an image montage of the Mattel Space: 1999 toys now accompanies my memories of visiting with David F. and Sandy in spring of 1977. And adjacent to that is a new paragraph about my search in the Chatham Zellers in spring, 1977 for the Mattel Eagle 1 Spaceship and Commander Koenig doll. It brings the spring of 1977 even more to life in my memoirs. Oh, how I wish I had more pictures of that time! Pictures of me and places I went. A picture of the Zellers/Sobeys shopping centre in Chatham as it looked in the 1970s has eluded me on the Internet over the past twenty-some years and continues to do so.
My Doctor Who Season 8 Blu-Ray box set came yesterday to my mailbox. I had to buy it from an eBay seller, with some price mark-up, as Amazon.co.uk still is not shipping to Canada. It feels very gratifying to have it, for it is already out of print, and was so before its release date last Tuesday. I have every one of the releases in DOCTOR WHO- THE COLLECTION, and although I am not much of a fan of Season 24, I will buy it as well, from eBay if needs be. I have watched the three first serials in the Season 8 box set, "Terror of the Autons", "The Mind of Evil", and "The Claws of Axos". Blu-Ray is a less forgiving format than DVD when it comes to rather less than pristine archival video, and Season 8 Doctor Who only has PAL master videotape remaining for three of its episodes. The others are blending of black-and-white film copies with off-air videotape-recording colour or with NTSC broadcast videotape colour (usually with banding) or a process called Colour Recovery extracting colour from chroma dots on the black-and-white film. The black-and-white film copies are a far cry from original PAL videotape, and the colour is only as good as the home videotape recording or the NTSC masters did allow back in the 1970s and 1980s. And even the PAL videotape masters look somewhat ropey. If I sit a couple of meters from the television, the image quality is more bearable than it is in close-up with my new television. Alas, another problem is my television's eccentric frame refresh rate for PAL video upscaled to high definition. Movement is juddery. I have tried to find a fix for this in my television's settings but the result so far has been negative.
Even with the popularity of Doctor Who, manual colourisation of problematic Pertwee episodes continues to be ruled out of the question as being cost-prohibitive. I therefore believe that these episodes will not look ever any better than they do now.
Nothing new on the subject of Warner Brothers cartoon restoration. Word is that all work is "on hold" due to the pandemic. I guess that people cannot do restoration work while masked and social distancing. One would think that they could, but maybe there are union rules that prohibit it.
I was watching my Blu-Ray of Star Trek's first pilot episode, "The Cage", recently. It looks amazing on my new television. "The Cage", although rejected by NBC in 1965 as being "too cerebral", is highly acclaimed and revered by Star Trek fans. No one to the best of my knowledge has stated a single quibble with it. Ah, but there is one. Quite a big one.
The Vina character was found by the Talosians in the wreckage of a crashed spaceship. They repaired her injuries as best they could with no guide for putting her back together. Although they can read minds clearly enough to project life-like images, they did not read hers enough to fully repair her outward appearance based on her memories. I can accept that, I suppose. But the Vina on the spaceship was an adult crewman, Number One says. And highly unlikely to be a woman younger than twenty-five years-old having a science specialisation plus sufficient training for a space flight. I would reckon that she would have to have been at least twenty-five years-old at time of the crash. Adding eighteen years (the time since the crash) to her age then would make her what? Forty-something? Older than that? Near menopausal, very probably. Or at the very least highly unlikely to carry a healthy baby to term. Much less several. And yet the Talosians believe that Vina could, with Captain Pike, be progenitor of a new race of humans to populate Talos IV's surface. That is as straining on one's credulity as two people having enough genetic diversity to spawn a new human population. See? The unassailable "The Cage" is not without fault in its premise. Has anyone noticed any of this? It does not appear so. At least, if anyone has, it has not affected the amount of esteem given to "The Cage", even though it is a major "plot point" that the Talosians are motivated to capture Pike (the essential conflict-causing action of the episode) and pair him with Vina based on the supposition that she could be "Eve" to his "Adam".
Granted, it may be possible that future technology is able to extend a woman's child-bearing years. That would explain away the quibble. But is there any mention of it in Star Trek's known canon? Not that I know of. It can be "chalked up" to "economy of detail", I suppose, but it is a detail that the antagonist's action of the episode rests upon. Should such a detail be economised? Maybe. Maybe not. But Season 2 Space: 1999 is lambasted for its economised details, unexplained "plot points", and supposed lapses in story logic, while some of the more acclaimed works of television science fiction/fantasy seem to have licence to have questionable details key to the development of their stories. And on and on and on it goes.
This past week saw the passing of actor Yaphet Kotto, known to aficionados of science fiction/fantasy and science fiction/horror as the "space trucker" character Parker in Alien. Interesting that the actors are dying in the same sequence as their characters in the movie (the Director's Cut, at least). First John Hurt (Kane), then Harry Dean Stanton (Brett), then Ian Holm (Ash), and then Yaphet Kotto (Parker). As one knows, Tom Skerritt (Dallas) is still alive in the Director's Cut and in an alien cocoon begging for Ripley (Sigourney Weaver) to kill him, which she does prior to boarding the shuttle and escaping the destruction of the Nostromo. Mr. Kotto was also an alumnus of the world of James Bond, having played the villain Dr. Kananga in Live and Let Die. With his death, every James Bond villain actor of the 1960s and 1970s is no longer with us. Julian Glover of For Your Eyes Only is now the Bond villain actor with the longest tenure with that designation. In fact, he and Christopher Walken are the only Roger Moore era Bond villains still with us. Mr. Kotto played a charismatic Bond villain in Live and Let Die, having a dual identity is the suave Kananga and the tough-as-nails gangster, Mr. Big. He also had memorable parts in episodes of Gunsmoke and Hawaii Five-O. As Parker in Alien he played, I think, the most likable character in that movie. May Mr. Yaphet Kotto rest in peace.
It has been a rough, rough past twelve months for the world of 007, it having lost Sir Sean Connery and Dame Diana Rigg, Honor Blackman, Tanya Roberts, and now Yaphet Kotto.
Moving on to another subject. There is controversy of late surrounding Pepe Le Pew. I do not believe that I wish to say very much about it. I am not much of a fan of womanising or Lothario characters. James Bond I tend to depart from on his womanising. Pepe has been a character I tolerate in small doses. I enjoy his cartoons more for their French scenery and the reactions of characters to the appearance of a skunk than I do for their yarns of aggressively pursued, unrequited romance. But at the same time, I am not in favour of "cancel culture". If people do not like Pepe, they do not need to watch him. There are far more concerning things happening in the world now, in any case, than how a cartoon skunk may be perceived by some persons.
Friday, March 19, 2021.
There are some springtime temperatures in the high teens forecast this week. It's looking like, for the first time in years, April will be a month of green grass and showers, and not slowly melting snow cover and persistent snowfall. A traditional April of my twentieth-century youth.
Jerry Beck participated in an Internet audio programme this past week. There is some Blu-Ray release in the works at Warner Archive. Speculation is that it is a Blu-Ray set of Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Tex Avery cartoons. I doubt that it will involve any Warner Brothers cartoons, pre- or post-1948. No word of any possible follow-up for the Bugs Bunny Blu-Ray box set. The word seems to be that those Blu-Ray box sets did not sell to the expectations of the bean counters at Warner Brothers. And if so, then that would appear to be that. Those gorgeous cartoon restorations seen on HBO Max will not have an opportunity to dazzle viewers of Blu-Ray.
I have nothing more to say today, Sunday, March 21, 2021.
Saturday, March 27, 2021. After a lovely week of temperatures in the high teens and plenty of sunshine, New Brunswick is once more in the deep freeze. It is snowing. Spring is going to be fickle yet again another year. A pity, as it was looking like there might be a spring arriving on time this year after a somewhat mild winter.
My Website traffic is experiencing another slump, most especially the traffic to this Weblog and my autobiographical Web pages and most others outside of my Televised Looney Tunes section and The Littlest Hobo Page. I can speculate as to why this is. Pleasant spring weather and people opting to be outdoors and away from their computers? Maybe.
I am tired of "letting off steam" over the treatment of Season 2 of Space: 1999, biases against Warner Brothers cartoons, et cetera. My readers may be weary of that now, too. Oh, there is plenty in the Facebook groups for Space: 1999 these days about which I could lament or that I could work to refute. But I just cannot motivate myself to spend the time and the energy to do so. It is just more of the same, anyway, stated with ever more smart-alecky smugness. The same episodes being sullied again and again and again. I am not defending "All That Glisters" again. Have I not done that enough?
This was a busy week for me at my job, and I have been outdoors for portions of the evenings. I did, however, work this week on some of the images on my Website. I sharpened some of the copyrights on cartoon titling on the supplemental image gallery for The Bugs Bunny/Road Runner Hour, and improved on the titling to the cartoon, "Sandy Claws", removing much of the ghosting in the image. The work will continue. I am constantly striving to improve the look of my Website. For as long as my Website continues to exist, this will be the case.
I am afraid that a casualty of this dedication has been my responses to people's e-mails. I am horrible at answering e-mail. Once upon a time, I answered practically every electronic mail communique that I received. Now, I almost never do. The time just is not there for me to do so with the amount of attention and eloquence that I tend to strive for, me having a full-time job, household tasks to perform, meals to prepare, my closest friends on social media with whom I chat, time allocated to exercise, and my ongoing Website work. Answering e-mail comes after all of this. And most of the correspondence that I do receive is requests for things that I cannot provide. I do not make DVD copies for people, for a fee or for free. I no longer have a DVD burner in my computer, and it is illegal in any case for me to dissemenate DVD copies of any copyrighted material. I have no information to provide that is not on my Website. If I had it, it would be there. I would like to have episode guides for every Bugs Bunny/Road Runner and Bugs Bunny and Tweety season, but I lack the information. As readers of my autobiography know, I only saw the first Bugs Bunny/Road Runner season on CBC Television, and only became aware of CBS' Bugs Bunny/Road Runner broadcasts in 1975, at which time I had access to cable television at my grandparents' place on those occasional weekends when we visited them. And that my interest in CBS' Bugs Bunny/Road Runner Show did "flag" in the early 1980s, as did that in Bugs Bunny and Tweety in some of its seasons.
I have been toying with the idea of adding my chronology for Spiderman to the Web page for same. But I lack the time and, I must say, the initiative, to screen-capture new images to accompany the dating in the chronology. And I paid a whopping amount of money to renew my Website fees this year, probably a result of all of the images I added to it over the past year.
All for today, I think.
March 31, 2021.
March is nearly done, and the weather has improved again. The snow is now almost gone, and it looks and feels like a good, old-fashioned, twentieth century, 1970s and 1980s spring. The springs wherein baseball games were played in a vacant lot, or on my street, through most of April, with not a trace of snow to be seen, wherein I was mowing grass by April's final week, and wherein showers of April fostered the growth of flowers in May.
While I am on the subject of the playing of baseball, this week I am expecting the delivery in my mailbox of a new Blu-Ray of The Bad News Bears. I have had a fond regard for The Bad News Bears since I first saw it in the autumn of 1978 through a Friday night telecast of it, and then after I audiotape-recorded it from a further televising of it, on Saturday, March 31, 1979, via CTV's prime-time Academy Performance and subsequently offered audio-only showings of it in my Cine-Audio in 1979's summer. I have a paucity of nostalgic sentiment for 1979, to be sure, but I am not totally, utterly devoid of it. I can feel that nostalgia, and much greater nostalgia for early 1982, when my friend, Joey, discovered The Bad News Bears by way of a showing of it by me on RCA VideoDisc. And the movie does recall me to baseball games of my neighbourhood, the good ones, the bad ones, and the ugly ones. The good ones provide some pleasant memories to picture in my mind's eye. It is nice to win, and to have people wanting to be on my team. Fickle though that reality did eventually prove to be.
It is Good Friday, 2021. Easter. One of those traditional holidays when one can thankfully still look away from all of the craziness of the present world and find some solace in the goodness of people in one's memory, memory of times when the grown-ups were still "in the building" and things, though imperfect, were stable, when there was a reasonable expectation that come the following year one's world will not have changed very much. And with Easter, one bids adieu to the darkness and coldness of winter, with spring beckoning and the brightness, the warmth, the fertility and bloom of high summer certain to come "down the pike".
I believe that I will watch the Space: 1999 episodes, "Earthbound" and "The Mark of Archanon", today. Why them? They are, by my reckoning, Easter episodes of Space: 1999. Why do I think that? I will leave it to my readers to come to this enlightenment on their own. I also believe that I will watch It's the Easter Beagle, Charlie Brown! today also. Oh, I know what Space: 1999 fans would say to this. That one cartoon, Season 2 Space: 1999, belongs with the others. Oh, yes. Of course. Cartoons are such artistically vacuous works, are they not?
Easter Sunday, and the turkey roasts today.
I watched Space: 1999's "Earthbound" and "The Mark of Archanon" on my new television as planned. I have to report that I was actually falling asleep as I watched "Earthbound". The episode could definitely do with some adrenalin-pumping action. It is a very talky episode with bland colours. Not very exciting music either. Naturally, the fans all love it. As I become older and more like my father, I find that I can lapse into micro-sleep as I sit passively in a chair watching something, and I need some exciting action and pulse-pounding music to keep me from slipping into micro-sleep mode. More and more, I am in the Season 2 "camp". A lonely "camp" it is, to be sure. But there it is.
As for "The Mark of Archanon". I have never before seen it so vivid. And its vividness made me more conscious than ever of its concept, depictions, and characters. It will never be a favourite of mine, though I do acknowledge the artistry in its "killing sickness" concept. The stunning clarity of Blu-Ray on a huge screen does highlight the stark strangeness of the costumes and make-up of the aliens as they move about Alpha. I can see how some people can regard it as being a tad too much a contrast. Those costumes amid the clinical Alpha surroundings. And I found myself recoiling in revulsion at the scene of Etrec attempting to strangle the cooing dove, brandishing a knife at Alan with intent to kill, and cutting his own forehead, drawing blood. It is a very, very disturbing scene. Definitely not the "kiddie fare", e.g. that of Space Academy, that Space: 1999's second season is every day accused of being. It may have been meant to disturb, but it may be altogether too effective in that regard. And then there is Alan's cosiness with Etrec. Standards and practices were different in 1976 from what they are now, but still, Alan does move in too quick to nudge Pasc aside and assume the dominent male role for Etrec. He picks Etrec up and carries him to Medical Centre without asking Pasc's permission or allowing Pasc to "step in" to perform his fatherly duty. Of course, it is possible that Alan sensed an aloofness in Pasc toward his own son. But still, he ought to have asked Pasc's permission. Likewise in Medical Centre when Alan invites Etrec to join him for hamburgers. He does so while Pasc is there in the background. The whole thing plays strangely, even for 1976, I would think. And Alan's cosiness with Etrec did need to be reduced a notch or two. I can accept that Alan is avuncular and platonic in his enjoyment of the company of children and after having not experienced such company, apart from Jackie Crawford in "Alpha Child", for several years, he is in delight at being able to enjoy the company once again of a youngster, albeit an alien one. I believe that such was the intention by everyone involved, and I can understand that Alan's enthusiasm might be quite effusive, but the cosiness is a bit too much. Even though Alan is clearly established in other episodes as very much a heterosexual male. It may have been the writing, the acting, or the directing, or a combination of all three. But the portrayal is somewhat "off". And along with the exceptionally raw, close-up, in one's face violence, or threat of violence, in the episode it can leave a viewer feeling distinctly "off-put". My initial quibbles over the absence of John and Maya and the medical rather than spatial focus of the episode, do remain, also. And I cannot avoid being aware of such embarrassing lapses as the convenient patching of the Archanon video playback into Alpha's communication system for Pasc to see Lyra's recorded message on the Eagle video monitor, or Tony knowing that Helena is contacting him before he could have seen her and recognised her face on his monitor, or Eagle One being in two places at once. But I did it. I watched "The Mark of Archanon", and now have watched every second season Space: 1999 episode on my new television. There remains a handful of first season episodes to watch on my new screen. I hope to be able to stay awake as I watch those. It may be a tall order, as they include "Ring Around the Moon", "Missing Link", "The Last Sunset", and "Voyager's Return". But one will see.
Soon be time to work on preparing the turkey for oven. This is all that remains of the traditional McCorry Easter. I pray that the turkey roast is a problem-free process today.
Saturday, April 10, 2021.
Of late, my Website's visitors have been overwhelmingly comers to my Televised Looney Tunes Web pages, and to The Bugs Bunny and Tweety Show Page. It could be that the controversy over Pepe Le Pew has had something to do with that. I do not know. Or maybe it is that the majority of my image additions and upgrades this year have been to those of the Warner Brothers cartoons. I am still considering adding my chronology to Spiderman to my Web page for same. My work on screen-capturing images for that could be gradual over the spring and summer seasons. I do not wish to be toiling away too much of my time on Website labours this year. It may be my last one.
Well, well, well. Season 2 Space: 1999 has a defender at the Facebook groups. I wish him joy of it. Already, I find the reaction to his defences to be amusing in their dismissive, off-handed, condesending, hypocritical manner. Telling him, a younger person discovering Space: 1999, to be an adult about the whole thing and to just let the vulgar slurring of all things Season 2 pass without comment. Yeah, right. Like they let positive comments about Season 2 pass without comment. Not even after forty-five years are they willing to "let it go". There is also the freedom of speech argument thrown at the defender, the premise being that it is against freedom of speech to ask for people to be mature and respectful toward Season 2 and the people to whom it appeals. Balderdash! I am as much an advocate for free speech as anyone not of the "woke" crowd these days, but appreciation of art is not politics. There ought to be an environment of mutual respect and a willingness to see what one another regards as merit in favourite productions and a coopting of one another's views in veneration of "the show" as a whole. I was willing, very much so, to coopt the adulation over "Black Sun" and the "Mysterious Unknown Force" into my appreciation of Space: 1999. But these people were unwilling to appreciate what I saw in the "the show" and just augmented, intensified their bellicose, rancourus slant and closed ranks against me when I protested their attitude. And as a result, I have backed myself away from integrating their views into mine. I say again, it is not a free speech/anti-free-speech dichotomy. It is a matter of respect and open-mindedness. Concepts to which these people, totally lacking in humility and self-awareness, are evidently oblivious for all time. But anyway. It will ultimately not matter in the end, with the direction in which things are going. A Fahrenheit 451-style fate may be awaiting Space: 1999 and virtually everything else on which my Website focuses, them being ruled subversive to a new order.
Saturday, April 17, 2021.
I watched the Space: 1999 first season episodes, "Another Time, Another Place" and "The Last Sunset", this week. I was able to stay awake during them. I was not wowed by the detail in them on my new television, though I was definitely seeing more detail in the visuals. I guess that the dearth of wow was due to there being an economy of colour in the episodes, especially "Another Time, Another Place", which has always been for me a white and yellow episode. White lighting on Alpha. The white of the time-space warp. The yellow sky and decor of the Alphan Earth settlement.
Friday, April 30, 2021.
The lawns are green, the daytime high temperature is around plus twenty degrees, and spring this year is more reminiscent of springtime of the 1970s and 1980s.
Jerry Beck generated quite a furore on Internet discussion forums when he said something to the effect that Warner Brothers is planning to stop producing physical media sometime in the next couple of years. I have not seen his original statement, only the reactions to it. The contention of numerous persons is that he "let slip" something that executives at Warner Brothers did not want revealed, and that he subsequently had to backtrack on it. One's mileage may vary on this. It would, I have to say, fit the abolition of personal property believed by some people to be coming as early as late this year, per a supposedly leaked document last autumn in Canada. In a dystopian state where the common man will own nothing and be happy (oh, sure!), entertainment on physical media would have no place except in a landfill. I will add one more item to this, for whatever it may be worth. No Doctor Who Blu-Ray release announced for the balance of this year has had a release date given. Which is odd. Very odd. It is as though someone is expecting a lowering of a boom and is reluctant to commit to a firm date for any release. A cancellation of manufacture of all physical media, "going forward", may be looming. I will feel better, somewhat better, when I do start seeing release dates for the Doctor Who titles. But as to what may be happening at Warner Brothers, it is looking like some dire news is coming. Not that I was or am feeling confident of any more Blu-Rays, or DVDs, of the Warner Brothers cartoons. But this potential abolition of physical media has implications far beyond the cartoons of Bugs Bunny and the gang.
I have added some text to my Era 3 and Era 4 memoirs to correct some ambiguities in a few places.
And this is all for now.
Saturday, May 8, 2021.
Word is that there will be an animation done of the partially lost Doctor Who story, "Galaxy 4", from 1965. That is good news. "Even better news is that the animation is in aid of a Blu-Ray release of the Galaxy 4 serial late in 2021. Galaxy 4" is a Doctor Who story with a, for me, appealing concept. I have always wished for it to be fully recovered. An animation of it on a dedicated Blu-Ray release with bonus features will more than suffice.
There is, by the way, still no release date for any of the Doctor Who Blu-Rays announced for the balance of this year.
I am tired of responding to the constant besmirching of Season 2 Space: 1999. I do not want to do it anymore. There was a barrage of attacks upon Season 2 in recent days at the Facebook groups. Nothing new, really. Just the same old garbage. People comparing Season 2 Space: 1999 to Galactica 1980. That kind of garbage. Or declaring Season 2 a "fairy tale". Or Helena's Moonbase Alpha Status Reports being a "rip-off" of the Star Trek Captain's Logs, as if they cannot have merit in their own right. They constitute a "narrative" device as old as storytelling, effective at establishing the conditions of a story or episode for the viewer, listener, or reader and dispensing with a heap of tedious "set-up" scenes. The Swiss Family Robinson (1974-5) used it, also, to elucidate the context of some new occurrence for the Robinsons as regards its effect on their predicament. That is a memorable example of its use outside of science fiction/fantasy (apart from the episode or two of The Swiss Family Robinson that delved into science fiction/fantasy). I think that Season 2 Space: 1999 definitely benefitted from the use of this device in the form of the Moonbase Alpha Status Reports, them helping to orient viewers with what is about to transpire, and the dates given by Helena do give rise to the chronological "patterning" that Dean so astutely and eloquently recognised. Ah, but I am hopelessly outnumbered. Why bother saying any more? Let these people have their fun. They are rearranging deck chairs on a certain sinking ocean liner, or fiddling while Rome burned. They are not going to stop, whatever I say. And almost no one is looking at this Weblog today, in any case. I have not made a difference so far on how people view Space: 1999, or anything else for that matter. This is scarcely likely to change now.
Saturday, May 15, 2021. Nearly half of the way through May already. Today, at least, it is sunny with a high temperature of at least twenty degrees. Whilst Frederictonians still have liberty to move about outdoors, I am going to avail myself of the opportunity to enjoy a day in the sunshine.
In a visit to the Space: 1999 Facebook group for some invalidation to go with my apprehension over the pandemic (because I am such a glutton for punishment, are not I?), I came upon a discussion "thread" with more than a hundred comments.
The discussion began with someone asking, "Am I the only one who loves Season 2 more than Season 1?" "Oh, boys," I said to myself with a deep sigh. "Here we go."
"Quite possibly," said someone, with two thumbs-up icons beside his comment.
Says another person, "You would be the only one if your existence was scientifically proven. Personally - I don't believe it."
And another, "Yup. You are it." One thumb-up.
And some more.
"Yes, but it's a guilty secret, like enjoying ABBA music."
"Yes. You're the only one." (five thumbs-up and three laughter icons to this one)
"I don't think this needs to be answered." (with laughter icon by the person making the comment)
"Yes you are!" (with grinning icon by the commenter)
"I will not debate that which you know so well."
"Have a lie down in a dark room, you're delirious..." (two laughter icons and one thumb-up icon)
"It's a distinct possibility."
"Yep."
"Yes, deal with it." (with a wink icon from the commenter, as though that is meant to make someone feel better)
I would note that several of these comments were made after (yes, after) some other people contributed to the discussion with statements of they themselves preferring Season 2 (though several of the comments defending Season 2 did come from people saying that they only preferred Season 2 in childhood, and patronisingly using the "to each his own" mantra). They were made after there was clear evidence that the person starting the discussion was not the only one to love Season 2 more. Not that it matters to the preeminent ones, in any case. They are in the majority, and that is all-important. Right? To be in the minority is to be wrong. But oh, there is nothing damningly wrong with that, as long as a person knows his or her wretched place and kowtows with apologies for ever being so gauche as to "speak out" in favour of the oh, so abominable second season.
The smugness of these people channelled into a laboured effort to appear at once clever, funny, pithy, and avant-garde, is matched by their evidently total un-self-aware lack of empathy, their utter inability to see things from another point of view. They really are insufferable jerks. So, they recognised the unsubtle, obvious philosophical "thrust" of Season 1 and the "Mysterious Unknown Force" story arc therein after it was "pointed out" to them by David Hirsch in Starlog. Big deal! Oh, that makes them ever so superior, ever so much more mature than the youngster who was "touched" aesthetically by the subject matter of Season 2 and carried that aesthetic fascination into adulthood and wishes there to be some kindred spirits for him or her. Well, there is ample evidence of deficiencies in the maturity of a number of these people, as I have highlighted numerous times.
Something else I found yesterday. A "fan edit" of "The Bringers of Wonder: Pt. 1" eliminating some of Derek Wadsworth's expressive music, superimposing visuals of a roller coaster ride over Koenig's "joy ride" in Eagle Ten (why a roller coaster? I always thought Koenig was envisioning himself at the controls of an aeroplane in his young adulthood, while the aliens were controlling him), deleting Maya's monster transformation in the Records Lab, and removing Tony saying, "Take a couple of nuclear physicists with you. Just in case." (I have never had a problem with that line of dialogue; it is a natural thing to say, under the circumstances) Also, the main opening of the episode was transformed into Season 1 opening format.
Why do fans feel the need to do this? Trying to George Lucas-ise the episodes? Embellishing them. Remolding them so as to accord with their peculiar standards of what science fiction/fantasy should be? I am in favour of some minor tweaks to remove boom microphones, clapperboards, and hands of production crew. Maybe even wires. Things that the original makers of the show meant to not be seen with the overscan on a CRT television, and some of which would not have been seen if the film editor was not in a rush. But inserting images of a roller coaster or eliminating a scene with a monster or excising music or dialogue just because such things are not to a fan's taste, is the folly of a person with too much time and sortware on his or her hands. Either accept Space: 1999 for what it is as a concept rendered in two different ways, or just leave it alone and embrace something else. For what it is worth, the new insertions in my estimation jar horribly with the film stock and the aesthetic of the episode. The "fan edit" has the grace and the charm of a grotesque Frankenstein monster lumbering about some dark, dank, and seedy laboratory.
Further. In the episode as originally exists, the audience does not see the visions that Koenig is having that are the cause of his erratic behaviour as he is piloting Eagle Ten. This builds a sense of mystery, as regards Koenig's state of mind, that permeates the first few acts of the first part of the episode. Is he aware of his true surroundings and mentally unbalanced in his reaction to them, or was he hallucinating while at the Eagle controls? Showing what he thought he was seeing undermines this mystery as it is very evident that he was having a hallucination.
Victoria Day, 2021.
Sunday, May 30, 2021.
I am saddened to learn of the death of Paul Soles, the voice of Peter Parker and Spiderman. I will write a tribute to the remarkable man who was an icon of Canadian television in addition to giving vocal life to the web-swinging super-hero, when I have the time to give to it all of the attention and time that it very, very much deserves.
Website updates this past week. I found an image of the cover to the VHS videotape of Dr. Jekyll & Mr. Hyde (1932) that is far superior to the one that I had in an image montage commemorating my travel with my parents to Bangor, Maine in 1991 (whereby that videotape was purchased by me from the Bangor Mall Suncoast store), and have included the newly discovered image in said montage. The montage is in my Era 5 memoirs.
My quest for improved images is ongoing. Of late, I have been successful at finding highest quality images, especially those of videotape or DVD covers, that had hitherto been elusive. And my autobiography continues to improve, as a result. I also have corrected some textual errors in my Era 2 memoirs.
I was thinking last night of that 1991 visit to Bangor with my parents. Era 5 was not a consistently gratifying section of my life's story, to be sure, but that stay in Bangor was a highlight, definitely. I remember my videocassette machine connected to our hotel room television so that I could watch my preecorded videocassette purchases including Dr. Jekyll & Mr. Hyde (1932), Cosmos- "Heaven and Hell", one of the J2 Communications Space: 1999 videotapes (what a shambles those were!), and some Bugs Bunny MGM/UA Home Video videocassettes, and so that I could videotape-record Looney Tunes On Nickelodeon (the cartoons, "Rabbit Every Monday", "The Three Little Bops", "Backwoods Bunny", and "The Spy Swatter", were acquired then for my collection- and with picture quality outstanding for the time). I so miss the presence of my parents and my old pre-Coronavirus, pre-my-parents'-deaths, pre-Fukushima, pre-twenty-first-century life! Even that in the less socially gratifying eras. I am also starting to experience nostalgia for Era 3. And even that for Eras 6 and 7.
Saturday, June 5, 2021.
I am still mourning the death of Paul Soles. I knew the day would eventually come, as it did for Martin Landau, Roger Moore, Sean Connery, Patrick Macnee, Christopher Lee, Richard Anderson, and numerous others who seemed to be everlasting forces of nature. But somehow, I am not ever really ready for seeing the obituary when that day comes.
As the voice of Spiderman/Peter Parker, Paul Soles was second only to the great Mel Blanc in significance as vocal talent for cartoon voices of my youth. Spiderman, although an animated cartoon figure, was a hero for me in every way that John Koenig, James Bond, and Captain Kirk, to name a few, were. And for me. Mr. Soles' Spiderman was the definitive incarnation of the character, battling and overcoming maniacal villains, many of them with green complexion, and journeying alone and introspectively to some of the wildest locales imaginable.
I did not set eyes on the flesh of Mr. Soles until I saw him as the Lawbreaker on CBC Television's This is the Law in the mid-1970s. I had before then seen many a credit sequence of Spiderman, and Mr. Soles was a name familiar to me as topping the list of voice artists contributing to the cartoon television programme. And ergo his had to be the voice of the leading character. So, when I saw him credited as the Lawbreaker, I proclaimed effusively to my parents that his was the voice of Spiderman. The Lawbreaker on This is the Law was mute; so, Mr. Soles' distinctive cadences were not to be recognised in his appearances on that clever panel television show about obscure laws in parts of Canada, but I would later see- and hear- him occasionally on the CBC's Take 30 weekday afternoon current affairs television series, and his voice therein was instantly recognisable. On the other hand, I did not detect him in the voice of Hermie the Elf in Rankin-Bass' Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer which I saw for the first time in, I think, 1978 (it was after we had cable television installed in our home in Fredericton, giving to me access to CBS, the television network that had exclusive broadcast rights to that Rankin-Bass television special). His work at raising the octave of his voice to mimic that of an elf was so effective that I had no inkling that I was hearing the utterances of the same man who was the deep and resonant voice of Spiderman.
Mr. Soles was also the voice of the eccentric and somewhat wizened Professor Kitzel. That voice, too, was so very different from that of Spiderman. However, the narration of the history in every cartoon short of The Wonderful Stories of Professor Kitzel was very distinctly that of Mr. Soles in the effervescent and hardy cadence that he gave to Spiderman. Mr. Soles also voiced Max the two-millennia-old mouse in cartoon shorts of Max the 2000-Year-Old Mouse. I did not know that for many, many years.
Another substantial contribution by Mr. Soles to my young life was his stint as the host of CBC Television's Beyond Reason in 1980 and 1981. That television show wherein persons of the occult (an astrologer, a graphologist, and a clairvoyant) would try to guess the profession or the identity of a guest unseen by them, was always a pleasure for me to watch (I always rooted for the astrologer, by the way). The guests were almost always very interesting, and it was amazing and fascinating how the occult panelists were able to determine so many facts about a guest using the materials and abilities that they had at their disposal. Mr. Soles was always genial and capturing of the ear and the eye's keen attention as his impressive voice and gesticulations prepared the viewers for the next round of occultist work and as he interviewed the guests after their identity was revealed. The most memorable guests on Beyond Reason were Barry Morse, Stan Lee, and Betty Hill. The panelists were amazingly accurate in some of their determinations in those cases.
The Stan Lee appearance on Beyond Reason was particularly notable for Mr. Lee stating that Mr. Soles had used to voice Spiderman, prompting Mr. Soles to go back into character as Spidey and say, "Wallopin' websnappers. I cannot deny it. My Spidey-sense is telling me you're right, Mr. Lee." It always brings a smile to my face and makes me laugh with amusement and utmost appreciation when I see and hear that. It is available on YouTube, hopefully for all posterity.
Interestingly, that broadcast of Beyond Reason on CBC and CHSJ-TV was on a weekday afternoon after school in either late 1980 or early 1981. And less than a year later, CHSJ brought Spiderman to a television renaissance in New Brunswick as an after-school attraction. I do tend to wonder if someone at CHSJ saw the Stan Lee interview on Beyond Reason and decided that it might be a good idea to air Spiderman and sought out the then distributor of the Spidey television series for a broadcasting contract lasting several years. Or perhaps someone, some viewer at his home, saw the interview and wrote a letter to CHSJ requesting Spiderman, and after-school airtime was thought by the CHSJ programme manager to be optimal for the web-swinger.
Mr. Soles dropped off of my radar for several years until I saw him in a supporting role in a CBC Television hour-long drama special, Beethoven Lives Upstairs. He had aged considerably by then and was playing a distinguished older gentlemen with much panache.
In 2004, to coincide with the release of Spiderman on DVD, Mr. Soles created his own Website called Wallopin' Websnappers in which he reminisced about his work on that television programme. It was a visually very stylish effort, that Website, and Mr. Soles' Spidey intonations were still very distinct. The visage of Mr. Soles became recognisable to people outside of Canada as a result of his Website, and with resurgent interest of the public in the Spider-Man character as a result of the Sam Raimi Spider-Man movies, Mr. Soles would eventually be incorporated into the Marvel Cinematic Universe in some capacity, it being as the pizzeria owner, Stanley, in The Incredible Hulk (2008). Generations younger than mine and outside of Canada, would probably know Mr. Soles best for his role in that movie.
More recently, Mr. Soles did some video interviews with some YouTube personalities in the world of comic book fandom, remembering his work in Spiderman and his colleagues in such, stating his personal favourite among the episodes, and responding to questions from video viewers. His voice had lost its deep tones, but he was keen to give to Spidey and Peter Parker another reprise. The interviews brought unto me close to three pleasing hours in my latter days, and I salute him for doing this for the fans of which I am most definitely one. I like to think that he was aware of my Spiderman Web page. He probably was. He seemed to be very much interested in revisiting Spiderman and reading or hearing what fans had to say, and my Spidey Web page has been quite conspicuous on the Internet these past twenty-four years. But alas, I had no contact with him.
Another contributor to my sense of wonder in my most impressionable years has passed on to the heavens above. Surely Spidey voiced by Paul Soles is now web-swinging somewhere up there. And as in the television series, the webbing is keeping him suspended in the firmament above the ground- even if no buildings or structures of any kind are within view. Spidey is now really an ethereal being.
I have added an assemblage of images of cartoons in the eighteenth episode of The Bugs Bunny/Road Runner Hour to my Era 2 memoirs, amongst my remembrances of early 1974. And I corrected some text in my Era 7 memoirs. Some additions have also been made to the In Memoriam sections of my Littlest Hobo and Space: 1999 Web pages.
Some news of Blu-Ray. Shout! Factory will be releasing the three Oh, God! movies to Blu-Ray this August. I have long been something of an enthusiast for the first of those movies (since I first saw it in 1980), and I also quite like the second one. The third, I have never quite warmed-to, though I am willing to give to it a reappraisal. The curious thing about this development is that the Oh, God! movies are Warner Brothers properties. Warner has licenced them to Shout! for Blu-Ray. I could be wrong, but this does appear to be a first for Warner Brothers. Up to now, Warner has been loathe to licence titles to small distributors. With this, it looks like Warner might be willing to "farm out" a number of its propeties to companies like Shout! and to have them assume the risk of possibly low sales. What might this bode for, say, the Looney Tunes and Merrie Melodies cartoons, Bugs Bunny and the gang? It is far, far too early to tell with any confidence, but it is a step in the right direction, I think. The cartoons are remastered in High Definition and just waiting to be released onto Blu-Ray by some company willing to "take a chance" on their saleability. One will see how things go.
Wednesday, June 9, 2021.
Sunday, June 13, 2021.
My job's workload will be easing in the next couple of weeks, and my summer vacation beckons. A vacation from all of the craziness in the world this decade. Some respite from the pandemic, to relax my mind, to recharge my batteries. And to mentally prepare myself for what may be coming. It may be a complete "stay-cation". If so, then so be it. I will vacation mentally through my past. The twentieth century. The 1970s and 1980s. When I was young and un-jaded. When my parents were alive.
This week, I found some text needing correction in my Era 6 memoirs and updated those memoirs accordingly. I have another deceased thespian to add to my Space: 1999 Page's In Memoriam section, and that I will do this weekend.
I have recently been in communication with Littlest Hobo producer Simon Christopher Dew. He has written a novel, a novel following an odyssey of another canine on the move. This canine is an Arctic sled dog fleeing from a facility in California performing heinous experimentation upon captured dogs, and endeavoring to return to his home in the north, encountering many a challenging circumstance along the way and pursued by a vainglorious and evil polymath determined to recapture him. The novel's title is Ulysses, with the dog as the eponymous hero whose Classical Greek mythological reference is compellingly apt. When next I make some book and Blu-Ray purchases, Ulysses will be in that order. My reading of it will provide a much-needed escape from the wilder-yet craziness of the world in the latter half of 2021.
Ulysses is available at the following URL. It can also be purchased through the on-the-Internet retailer with the same name as a South American river. I recommend it whole-heartedly! To fans of The Littlest Hobo and to all others who love an epic adventure story, especially one with a canine protagonist.
https://books.friesenpress.com/store/title/119734000180039576
Here are the front and back covers of the novel.
While I am on the subject of The Littlest Hobo, I wish to acknowledge and commend Hobo fan Brad Moore for his Littlest Hobo Fan Page at Facebook. He has done a most exceptional job in researching the locations for the episodes of the television series and in gathering enthusiastic appreciators of everything Hobo. Here is the Hyperlink to that.
https://www.facebook.com/groups/492651141531949
All for today.
Wednesday, June 16, 2021.
"The Rules of Luton" of Season 2 Space: 1999 has had a routine accosting by the denizens of the Space: 1999 Facebook group. It is a lazy morning for me today. I thought I would flex some of my argumentative muscles that have been atrophying somewhat of late, by responding to some of the venom. Here goes.
"Sorry if this has come up before, but in 'The Rules of Luton', if plants and animals fight and one annihilates the other, wouldn't the survivors soon die too anyway due to a lack of Oxygen or CO2? So wouldn't the winning side have to take large numbers of prisoners? (or is enough produced by volcanoes and bacteria etc?) the episode doesn't cover the issue anyway - a silly episode all round."
Does it have to cover it? Ever heard of "economy of detail"?
There might be a source of carbon on the planet. An underground spring or a geyser or something routinely emitting it. Or maybe there is a "greenhouse effect". Maybe there are machines that operate on fossil fuels, thereby discharging carbon into the atmosphere. Or maybe there are carbon-based life forms on the planet kept there by the Judges to attend to the planet and make it viable for plant life to thrive on it. The three aliens, Alien Strong, Alien Transporter, and Alien Invisible, must have been in a holding area somewhere. Their very existence on Luton serves to indicate that are beings other than plants currently on the planet. Beings that exhale carbon dioxide. Besides, who is to say that all of the animals native to the planet were annihilated? Some of them may indeed have been captured and imprisoned. John and Maya are only seeing the remains of the animals that died in battle. And the plants did not have those remains buried as they serve as a most visually striking indicator of what happens to animal life that resists the hegemony of the plant.
"I saw no mouths on them trees so how could they speak?"
I could have a field day criticising the grammar of these supposed intellectuals. But anyway, to the question. These are not, I say again, not, trees on Earth. They evidently have acquired consciousness, sentience, intelligence by some evolutionary process unknown to Earthman. They may emit electrical waves and by commandeering Koenig's commlock convert those waves to human speech patterns. There may be a ton of sophisticated equipment, shielded from Alpha's sensors, somewhere underground that somehow enables the communication by the trees into Koenig's commlock. That is sufficient reasoning for me to accept the idea of communicative trees in "The Rules of Luton", but for the episode as it stands as fifty-one-to-fifty-two minutes of entertainment, it is a case of "economy of detail". And intelligent plant life is done in other opuses, and in some acclaimed stories thereof. "The Seeds of Doom" in Doctor Who being one.
"They used telepathy... Hang on they didn't have brains either."
Does the alien force in "Force of Life" have a brain? Or Jarak's people in the spaceships in "Alpha Child"? The brain in "Space Brain" does not have a human or animal brain anatomy. It is a glowing mass of particles. These people who love to laud Space: 1999's first season for its religious, or pseudo-religious, qualities, seem to be all too inclined to reject or overlook the concept of the soul as the source of consciousness when it is in their less beloved, less exalted season. In most religions' precepts, souls exist without brains. If Season 1 can have alien quantities with intelligence transcendent from the existence of a human or animal anatomical brain, why cannot Season 2 employ that notion also?
Should all of this have been addressed through dialogue in the episode? It might have helped to "sell" the episode to the intellectually posturing fans. Or maybe not. At the end of the day, the episode did not do so and stands as is. I love the imagination in its concept, the comraderie between John and Maya in their struggle to survive, the conversation between John and Maya on the hilltop, and the sight of the green vegetation and blue sky and vibrant sunshine combined with John's colourful anorak. And "Arena" by Fredric Brown was employable quality material for opuses besides Star Trek. As Blake's 7 had its own "go" with the "Arena" story, in its episode, "Duel", so Space: 1999 had its own rendering of "Arena" with "The Rules of Luton". And I will say this. I prefer "The Rules of Luton" to Star Trek- "Arena" and the "Duel" episode of Blake's 7. Hands-down. It looks more fetching to the eye with its miniature work and its lush surroundings for its action, and has much more informative and tender character moments. The music is sublime. And as I have said before, the etymology for the use of the name, Luton, is fascinating. Is "The Rules of Luton" perfect? No. It could have done with some polish. As it and "The Mark of Archanon" were Space: 1999's first attempt at simultaneously lensed pairings of episodes, there was bound to be some teething troubles with the process of "doubling-up", and some unseemly rushing to meet deadlines. And director Val Guest was a newcomer to Space: 1999 production. This has to be considered also. Val Guest was a feature film director. He may not have been accustomed to the breakneck pace of television series episode production and may have fallen behind schedule and then raced to "catch up" and finish production on the day specified.
"it is a mere rip-off of 'the great vegetable rebellion' - which is the silliest episode of lost in space (season 2 episodes were copies of a lot of stuff)."
Yawn, yawn, yawn! Yawn, yawn, yawn, yawn, yawn!!! That old chestnut again. It used the same concept but treated it differently, as did "The Seeds of Doom". I say again, treated it differently. Fred Freiberger had not seen Lost in Space and did not know of the existence of "The Great Vegetable Rebellion" (note that I capitalise the first letters of words in titles, which is standard practice for people who are neither lazy nor disrespectful of protocols for identifying material). So, it is not a "rip-off", mere or otherwise, of "The Great Vegetable Rebellion". Something cannot be a "rip-off" of a prior work if the writer of it does not know of the existence of that prior work. And the fact is, "The Rules of Luton" coopts "Arena" to be the basis of its mortal combat story, which dominates most of its proceedings. The intelligent plant life notion and an inadvertent murder of the intelligent plant was used for its "hook", and from there the adaptation of "Arena" unfolded. It was a fusion of two ideas, one or them (unwitting murder of the intelligent plant) not known by Freiberger to have been previously used.
So Season 2 episodes were "copies of a lot of stuff", were they? Were they exact copies, "plot point" by "plot point"? No. Did they combine coopted ideas in new ways? Yes. Did Season 1 do the same? Yes, it did.
I am not sure that "The Great Vegetable Rebellion" was the silliest episode of Lost in Space. I remember seeing several of them that were quite ridiculous. It has been quite awhile since I last subjected myself to a watching of an episode of Lost in Space, and I have no desire to waste any of my time now on viewing Lost in Space episodes. In any case, the intended silliness of "The Great Vegetable Rebellion", rotund man in carrot costume and all, should be immaterial to a reasoned and considered appraisal of the respectful treatment of intelligent plants in "The Rules of Luton" and that episode's effective coopting of Fredric Brown's "Arena".
All right. I have had enough of this for today.
I came upon a CBS card for The Bugs Bunny/Road Runner Hour that will be of interest to readers of my Televised Looney Tunes Web pages. Here it is.
I have also found a gorgeous rendering of Bugs, the Road Runner, and the Warner Brothers crest from the end of the closing credits to The Bugs Bunny/Road Runner Show in 1984 and 1985. It will be added to my Bugs Bunny/Road Runner Hour Web page's supplemental image gallery.
And this is all for today.
Saturday, June 19, 2021.
The weather is gorgeous as the northern hemisphere approaches high summer. I love this time of year. I always have. This year, with all of the worrying developments occurring day after day, the summer weather offers something in which to delight, to luxuriate. And I intend to derive the full benefit from the respite that summer this year offers. For as long as I can.
I have found some time this week to do some Website updates. The recently deceased Godfrey James has been added to the In Memoriam section of The Space: 1999 Page. Bugs Bunny and Road Runner art for the closing credits to The Bugs Bunny/Road Runner Show in its 1984-5 season, is now included in my Bugs Bunny/Road Runner Hour supplemental image gallery. And a new paragraph has been added to my Era 2 memoirs. It tells of my viewing of the final episode of The Mary Tyler Moore Show on Friday, March 18, 1977, by way of CBC Television broadcast. Accompanying that new paragraph is a new image collage consisting of images of The Mary Tyler Moore Show, Rhoda, and Phyllis.
I started thinking of my viewing of the last episode of The Mary Tyler Moore Show after watching a videotape-recording of it on YouTube, from its CBS telecast on Saturday, March 19, 1977, all commercials and CBS programming promotions intact. For a 44-year-old videotape-recording made on a domestic videocassette recorder, the picture quality is phenomenal! Here is the Hyperlink to that The Mary Tyler Moore Show episode on YouTube.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ep_xRkeFHF4
All for today.
Saturday, June 26, 2021.
I actually have some Space: 1999 news today. Rather substantial news. It has been an interesting week of product announcements. It is astonishing that a television series as old and as out of date as Space: 1999 is, continues to see new release on physical media.
The Australian Blu-Ray company, Imprint, and its parent, ViaVision, has announced a Space: 1999 Blu-Ray box set for this coming September, and the amount of extras on it surpasses that of either the Network or the Shout! Factory releases. It incorporates the bonus features commissioned by Shout!, most of the Network value-added content, and even audio commentaries from the A & E DVDs. Here is an image of this Blu-Ray box set's packaging and Blu-Ray discs.
I cannot say that I am captivated by the look of the packaging. The photography on the first and second season covers is correctly representative of the two seasons, which is more than I can say for Shout!, but the covers could be so much better. Landau and Bain should be on the covers for both seasons. Schell and Anholt could still be somewhere on the Season 2 sleeve. And Morse on the sleeve for Season 1. I do not like that picture of Koenig and Russell in spacesuits, visors up, with the Lunar surface behind them. Never have.
But enough about the packaging. What of the bonus content? Here is all that is listed for the box set.
1080p high definition presentation from the original 35-millimetre elements
Newly remixed DTS HD 5.1 and original "as broadcast" LPCM 2.0 Mono tracks
48-page booklet featuring articles on the television series from Fanderson- the official Gerry and Sylvia Anderson Appreciation Society
Audio commentary on "Breakaway" and "Dragon’s Domain" by television series co-creator Gerry Anderson
Audio commentary on "Ring Around The Moon" and "Death's Other Dominion" by television series expert Scott Michael Bosco
Audio commentary on "Dragon’s Domain" by writer Johnny Byrne and story consultant Christopher Penfold
Audio commentary on "The Testament of Arkadia" by television series co-creator Sylvia Anderson
Audio commentary on "Dragon's Domain" and "The Metamorph" by film writer Anthony Taylor
Text commentaries on "The Last Sunset" and "Space Brain"
"These Episodes" documentary
Extensive episode and behind-the-scenes image galleries
Isolated score tracks on 46 episodes
"'Guardian of Piri' Remembered"
"Memories of Space" featurette
"Sylvia Anderson on 'Live Action'"
Clapperboard One vintage documentary
Lyons Maid Ice Lolly advertisement
Textless titles and episode material
Unfinished opening titles for "Breakaway" and "Missing Link"
Alternate opening and closing titles
Advertisement interval "bumpers"
Martin Landau and Barbara Bain U.S. premiere introduction
Vintage Season 1 promotions
Barry Gray's theme demo
"Model Shop" with Brian Johnson commentary
"Seed of Destruction" first season version
"Mission to Moonbase Alpha" interview with Barbara Bain
French Martin Landau interview
"Into the Uncertain Future" interview with Nick Tate
"Brain Behind the Destruction" interview and director Kevin Connor
"Moonbase Merch" tour of Space: 1999 ephemera with author John Muir
"Outtake" from "The Bringers of Wonder: Pt. 2"
Cosmos 1999 featurette
Blackpool "Space City" Exhibition advertisement
"Unexposed: Behind-the-Scenes of Series 2" 1976 vintage documentary
Season 2 archive interviews
Season 2 promotions and trailers
Season 2 textless footage
Original production audio
Destination: Moonbase Alpha in high definition
Alien Attack, Journey Through The Black Sun, and Cosmic Princess in standard definition
Trailers for Destination: Moonbase Alpha, Alien Attack, Journey Through The Black Sun, and Cosmic Princess
English subtitles
Whew! Almost everything but "Message From Moonbase Alpha", Fanderson Space: 1999 Documentary extracts, and the proverbial kitchen sink. Although maybe even the kitchen sink is included somewhere. But not the snow globe. That bauble will remain a Shout! Factory-only item of interest, or dubious interest.
If one wishes to have a near fully comprehesive collection of Space: 1999 episodes and value-added material, this would appear to be the Blu-Ray box set to have. But as yet it is not known which masters of the episodes will be used. Network's original masters or the adjusted, in my opinion inferior, ones on the Shout! Factory Blu-Rays. Will the 5.1 be the Network tracks or Shout!'s? If they are direct port from the Shout! release, then no, thanks. While I would love to have near all of the value-added material, some of which I have not experienced since disposing of the A & E DVDs, in one package, the quality of the episodes is the main "selling point". It would clinch the deal for me and then some, if the audio were improved over the Network releases, with warble eliminated from several of the episodes, no muffling or reduction in the music, and all sound effects clearly heard. One cannot know for sure until the Blu-Ray discs are in the hands of discerning fans (how many of them are there in the world?). I would probably not be able to know for sure unless I had them myself.
Anyway, I will follow this Blu-Ray release in all of its news updates as September approaches.
And I will say it, in case anyone is wondering if my not having said it above indicates that I have "mellowed". I could do without the Anthony Taylor commentary on "The Metamorph". That is an abomination that will be most difficult for me to absorb into any item in my possession.
Also, vinyl records and CDs of the music to both seasons of Space: 1999 will be released in the U.K. this year by a company called Silva Screen and by the current Gerry Anderson production company. I am afraid that vinyl records carry no value for me these days. I might be inclined to purchase the CDs if the collection of music is exhaustive. If I can justify the spending, that is. The vinyl records and CDs are scheduled for release sometime in early August.
This is all for today.
Sunday, June 27, 2021.
A flyer, and possibly the back cover, for the Imprint Space: 1999 Blu-Ray box set has come to light. It is at Blu-Ray.com's forum for Australian Blu-Ray releases. Nowhere on it is there seen any representation of Season 2. All pictures are Season 1. This is distinct deja-vu. The Shout! Factory Blu-Ray box set was similarly deficient in second season still photography. And of course in that forum "thread" of discussion is the requisite put-down of the second season. With no one coming to its defence, of course. That never happens in such discussion "threads". Everyone is of the same viewpoint. All seven billion people on Earth apart from me, Dean, and maybe a few others. Oh, yes. Of course.
And as expected, glib remarks disparaging Season 2 are proliferating at the Facebook groups. Of course. So relentlessly predictable. Every time that Space: 1999 is given a nod for a further release on home video media, every time that a U.K. broadcaster chooses to put it on air and the second season episodes are shown, every time that a mainstream, or semi-mainstream, published media article is written about Space: 1999, the barrage of hate for Season 2 and Mr. Freiberger and the invalidation of persons carrying affection for Season 2, rears an ugly head again, with gusto. It makes me wish that Space: 1999 would just stay obscure or hidden in the public consciousness. That people will just put it behind them and "move on", leaving me and a few others in peace for our solitary carrying of the candle for it in its two seasons and our fond memories of our experiences with it, as we move through the darkness of this increasingly dystopian world.
I love summer. So far, the weather on the days on which I do not have to work, has been less than ideal. It has been grey and rainy in New Brunswick since Friday, which was my last day of broadcasting work for awhile. I usually have that old feeling of a last day of school on the final day of a Legislature session having to be broadcast. This year's last day of school was a rainy one. Rainy, or even overcast, last days of school were not usual in my upbringing. All five of my years of school in Douglastown ended with a sunny day. And my seven years of schooling in Fredericton almost all came to an end with sunshine, the one exception being Grade 7. That day was overcast, with no rain. Life today is so very different from yesteryear, and yesteryear usually wins in the comparisons. I much prefer sunny days for the start of summer. Who does not? There are people out there in the world who do not. Including an industrialist I will not name who wants to blot out the sun. I wish that I could say that this is "made up". Fantasy. Nothing more than Rocket Robin Hood villain material. But it is not. It is real.
Readership of my Weblog and autobiographical Web pages has very much cratered of late. It usually declines at this time of year. As usual, all that I can do is to hope that it will improve sometime later in the year.
Wednesday, June 30, 2021.
Stuart Damon has died. In Space: 1999, he was a pilot named Parks in Season 1's "Matter of Life and Death" and Tony Verdeschi's older brother, or rather an illusion of him, in the Season 2 two-parter, "The Bringers of Wonder". His other television apparances include episodes of UFO, The New Avengers, The Saint, and The Adventures of Black Beauty. And he is, of course, best known for his portrayal of Dr. Alan Quartermaine on the U.S. daytime drama, General Hospital, from 1977 to 2007. He was also one of the leading actors in ITC's The Champions television series of the late 1960s and was cast as a regular character in ITC's The Adventurer television series with Space: 1999's Barry Morse and Catherine Schell before that television series' American star, Gene Barry, had him sidelined and eventually dismissed for his rather tall height. Mr. Barry had Catherine Schell eventually removed from The Adventurer for the same dubious reason. I always enjoyed seeing Mr. Damon in his appearances on The $25,000 Pyramid as a celebrity player.
May he rest in peace.
I have added him to the In Memoriam section of The Space: 1999 Page. A sad sign of the times is the seemingly weekly growth of that section of the Web page. Everyone involved in Space: 1999 is nearing or has surpassed British or American life expectancy.
It has mystified me why Mr. Damon was, to the best of my knowledge, never invited to an American Space: 1999 convention. He lived in the United States post-his-hiring-for-General Hospital.
This is all for today. Weblog entries will probably be more frequent when I am on vacation from work starting July 9.
Sunday, July 4, 2021.
So far, with regard to weather, July of 2021 has been a dud. Dreary grey sky, rain or drizzle, and unseasonably cool temperatures ever since the morning of July 1. High temperatures of thirteen degrees. I have even had to turn on the heat in the house.
Website updates for the past week. Some more improvement to text in places in my Era 3 memoirs, as I found some things stated that could have been better written, and a new paragraph about the possibility of receiving CBCT Charlottetown, and the Space: 1999 episodes, "Death's Other Dominion" and "Force of Life", in autumn of 1977 if I had stayed in Douglastown. If. One of the most powerful words in the English language, a Doctor Who character once said. I am not sure about that, but if certainly is a word that gives rise to many an alternative timeline in one's thoughts. Other updates are to The Space: 1999 Page. Stuart Damon is added to In Memoriam. And I removed from my chronology for Space: 1999 all references extraneous to episodes-proper, to Dorzak, Sanderson, characters of "Devil's Planet", "The Lambda Factor", and "The Immunity Syndrome", and the Dorcons. And now, there is, in the chronology, no mention outside of the episodes themselves, of any of the phenomena of "Dorzak" to "The Dorcons", no proposed "backstory" for any of such. Why did I do this? I did it so as for the chronology to be in accordance with my current thinking about the last third of the Season 2 timeline. As to what that thinking is, I am not at liberty to say. Because of Dean again. Because I am reluctant to reveal anything that forestalls any revelations from him. I will just say that the removal of "backstory" for the episodes aforemetioned is in line with how these episodes may be perceived if one hews to a certain theory regarding their peculiar nature. And it is so frustrating that I cannot say more. But as I say, the novelisation of "The Bringers of Wonder" does hold a clue to this peculiar nature- if one is motivated to look for it.
There is good news. The release dates for several Doctor Who Blu-Ray releases this year finally have been announced. One of those Blu-Ray releases is Season 24 (the first season of Sylvester McCoy as the Doctor), and that Blu-Ray set is en route to me now. Season 24 is certainly not a favourite of mine, but I do not hold it in as low esteem as many Doctor Who fans do. It is not my least favourite Doctor Who season as it is for them. That dubious honour goes to Season 26, with Season 25 almost in a deadlock with it for nadir status. I quite like two of the stories in Season 24, dislike one, and am okay with the other. I only like one story in Season 25 and in Season 26. And I am not a fan of Sylvester McCoy's Doctor. Although McCoy did give an effective performance as Lieutenant Bowers in The Last Place On Earth, his acting in Doctor Who is dreadful at times and passable at others. And most of the concepts in the stories do not interest me. They just do not. Season 24 is, for me, the least "off-putting" of the three McCoy seasons. Pip and Jane Baker of Space: 1999 wrote one of the serials. And another one has some nifty sets and a James Bond sort of villain and is an enjoyable romp. When Doctor Who post-Season-24 tried going with a dark and brooding and craftily calculating and manipulative Doctor, and thinking itself too clever by half in this regard, it lost me. The acting and the directing failed to make such interesting in my initial viewing of the two seasons back in 1989 and 1990, and it is, for me at least, a "tough sell" no matter what the talent before and behind the cameras. I much prefer the tried and true concept of the Doctor as an exploring, always reactive force for good in situations he comes upon. The Doctor as the viewer had come to know him through six of his incarnations. And, again, the concepts in the Season 25 and Season 26 serials mostly did not grab my imagination. Nor did the depictions.
All for today.
Wednesday, July 7, 2021.
Richard Donner has died. He was the director of the first Superman movie starring Christopher Reeve, and a large percentage of its sequel, Superman II. And credit where credit is due. The only rendition of the Superman concept to grab my imagination is the one that is sometimes called "the Donnerverse". It was how Superman was envisioned and put to celluloid by Mr. Donner and his team of production designers and visual effects artists, and enacted by the group of thespians assembled by Mr. Donner and given direction by him, that pulled me into the universe of the Superman character. No other production has been able to do that. Not the twenty-first century Superman movies. Not the Lois and Clark television series of the 1990s. Not the old 1940s cartoons. Not the 1970s and 1980s cartoon television shows. And definitely not the movies and television series of the 1940s and 1950s. No. The only Superman for which I have time, is that run of movies starring Christopher Reeve, although the final one is a misfire in just about every capacity.
I used to think Superman to be corny. "Up, up, and away!" and all of that. I did have a reprint of the Action Comic that launched the Superman concept and character. The one with a cover showing Superman lifting a Volkswagen. Yes, that one. I had it in my garage in Douglastown. Though I do not remember how I came to have it. Where I bought it and what it was about it that made it a desirable item. But that was the limit to which I had "bought into" the mythology of Superman before I set eyes on some images of the 1978 Richard Donner Superman movie on some bubble gum cards that my friend, Tony, had, and on a vinyl record album of the music of the movie, it also possessed by Tony. The visualisations appealed to me. They looked like something that might be seen in Space: 1999. Indeed, Superman was made at Pinewood Studios, the home of the production of both seasons of Space: 1999. The aesthetic of Krypton as a world in a firmament rather close to that of Biblical heaven did seem like something belonging in Space: 1999, and its breaking apart was very reminiscent to me of planets meeting their doom in Space: 1999. I was intrigued. And resolved to see Superman at the earliest opportunity, soon doing so with my parents at a Fredericton drive-in theatre in the summer of 1979. The movie under Donner's direction and with all of the contributions of everyone working with him, including a bravura effort by famed movie music composer John Williams, was nothing short of awesome. And I was very much reminded of Space: 1999 with the look of the film. Not just Krypton and the Fortress of Solitude but also the depictions of the earthquake in California. Somehow, what I was seeing in many parts of the film looked like things that I might see in Space: 1999. And sounded so, also. I heard many sound effects from Space: 1999 in Superman. The ambient sounds of Krypton and the Fortress. Some of Luthor's electronics. And especially the sound of cables flailing about. The last of these was unmistakably the noise made by the Entran warder whips in Space: 1999- "Devil's Planet". The associations in my mind with Space: 1999 gave to the movie a certain "kick" to compel my affection for it and its super-heroic personage. And I came to love Superman as rendered by Donner, and with the Superman characters portrayed by so many talented actors and actresses, all of them bringing to the Superman story material what Mr. Donner called verisimilitude, and with a storyline encompassing several stages of character development, with plenty of super-heroic action. Aside from reminders of Space: 1999, all of the needed ingredients were there for Superman to be a "buyable" concept. Exciting and emotionally absorbing, uplifting, and satisfying. And not corny.
And Richard Lester delivered a most enjoyable sequel using a sizable amount of Donner's work. At the time of Superman II's circulation in theatres, I thought it to be the better of the then-two Superman blockbusters. I no longer think that to be the case. But what I enjoy about Superman II is mainly to Donner's credit. He did cast the three Kryptonian villains whose menacing presence and battles with Superman made Superman II as riveting an experience as it was. Lester did some fine work, too, certainly. But many of his scenes are not as satisfying visually. Visual effects corners do appear to have been cut in various places in the film. Superman II in its theatrically released version does, however, remain my go-to cut of the movie. It is more satisfying as a movie experience than The Donner Cut in having more action and in not going with the time-reversal contrivance to "wipe out" everything that had happened. Still, I do applaud Mr. Donner for doing his own cut of the movie.
Mr. Donner also directed the chilling first Omen movie and was a producer of the third. And he directed Ladyhawke, one of the few sword-and-sorcery genre movies with which I have enjoyment and for which I have affection. He was a major contributor to my childhood and early adulthood delight in imaginative opuses, and I whole-heartedly salute him. Rest in peace, Mr. Donner.
Saturday, July 17, 2021. Another cloudy and rainy weekend begins. Sigh.
I have been on vacation for a week and am finally starting to not have my thoughts dominated by on-the-job concerns. And I also need to pull myself away from pandemic news. So that I can derive the maximum relaxing and regenerative effect of vacation time. And to be at my most receptive to flashbacks to the past and impressions in those flashbacks.
The year to which I keep "flashing back" the most is, as one would expect from a reading of my autobiography, 1977. What remains and likely always will remain the most pivotal year of the course of my life. The year that my parents and I left Douglastown and the Miramichi region and moved to Fredericton. Fredericton with the allure of cable television. And with a larger amount of shopping options, especially for merchandise, i.e. books, toys, et cetera, associated with my then primary entertainment interest, one Space: 1999. And with fast food restaurants McDonald's and A & W. But first and foremost, it was cable television that was the alluring quantity. And with it, access to CBS via WAGM-TV and to The Bugs Bunny/Road Runner Hour and The Sylvester and Tweety Show. Fredericton, where I would not need to ride a bus to go to school in Grades 6, 7, 8, and 9.
I have said in my memoirs that 1977 was the best possible time to leave Douglastown, when my social life there was at a peak. But would it have plateaued and then declined if I had stayed there? Maybe. Maybe. As I view things today, I cannot be certain. Going to school in Newcastle from Grade 6 onward, with long bus rides in morning and afternoon and with having to "brown bag" my lunch (I had come to very much dislike doing that) to eat at school, no going home for lunch to "break up" the day, would have been quite a trying new condition for me. But at least my home life would have been the same as before. For awhile. And maybe I would have found new social contacts at the schools in Newcastle to compensate for Michael's departure from Douglastown in early 1979 and for reduced associations in the school months with other younger friends in Douglastown. If I did encounter snobbery in Newcastle combined with reductions in time with friends still at the Douglastown school, it would have been preferable by far to what awaited me in Fredericton. There were considerations that should have entered my head on that fateful evening in spring of 1977 when my mother and father approached me with talk of moving to Fredericton. Consideration that there was no guarantee of social success for me in a larger community, especially that of a political city. Consideration that I might encounter unkindly proclaiming snobs, loneliness, and even ridicule. Consideration that the approval of schoolmates and neighbourhood friends for my interests may not be a given. Consideration that I and the friends I had in Douglastown may grow apart. That visiting old friends was not going to be regularly facilitated by my parents. I was dazzled with the prospect of being able to see The Bugs Bunny/Road Runner Hour and The Sylvester and Tweety Show every week. My mother wanted to make the move to her home city, and to a promotion and raise in salary. And my father was probably aware that living in the same city as my grandparents would save on the costs of routinely travelling to and from that city, i.e. Fredericton. They both wanted for me to agree, and they counted upon my yearning to see all of the hitherto-unseen-by-me cartoons that I was missing on each of the Saturdays that I could not see The Bugs Bunny/Road Runner Hour and The Sylvester and Tweety Show on CBS, as a formidable force for compelling my agreement. I was only eleven years-old, quite naive, and deficient in the capacity for spontaneously seeing all considerations at the same time. They did not present to me both the pros and the cons of moving. They did not say that I might not fit into my new environment, that I might not find the acceptance that I had in Douglastown. They did not say that I should not expect to be chauffered to Douglastown once or twice a month to visit my old friends there. That I would lose those friends. Eventually if not immediately. Only that I might be able to continue walking to school, and that cable television and more shopping and dining options would be available for me. These and the challenge of making a new place for myself, a challenge which I should seize and to which I should rise.
It was the turning point in my life. And my weakness for having full ability to watch favourite entertainments, and to possess them on audiotape, did "get the better of me". My weakness for wanting access to and ownership of the Warner Brothers cartoons "got the better of me". I guess that it is only fitting that I not be permitted to have a collection of all of those cartoons, as continues to be the case today, and likely always will be. Yes, my not wanting to go to school in Newcastle, riding school buses for an hour or more each day, being at a school miles away from home, et cetera, was a major factor in my opting to support the move. I should have had more faith. Faith in myself and the progress that I had made as a person. Faith in the resiliency of my social connections with everyone then in my life. Faith in the people of Newcastle; surely not everyone there was standoffish. But it would appear that my yearning for cable television kept faith in all of the above from being manifest at the time of that critical conversation with my parents. When they asked me what I thought of moving to Fredericton.
Oh, we probably still would have moved whether I acquiesced to doing so or not. But my support of the move was nonetheless my Karmic downfall. The results were swift. Our new home was a major disappointment after the lovely property we had in Douglastown. It, its narrow yard, its lack of lawn, and the unpaved street that it was on were definitely not of appeal to me. And then our going in early September to the Fredericton Exhibition, at which I was told by someone in a kiosk in the main exhibition building that cable television would not be available on our side of our street for more than a year. And then that awful first day in Grade 6 at Park Street School. A strict disciplinarian teacher who believed in collective guilt and collective punishment. And coarse and unruly classmates. Full-class detentions. Being cackled-at for liking Space: 1999. Episodes of Space: 1999 being preempted by CHSJ, episodes that I might have been able to see on CBCT if I was still in Douglastown. And the awareness on that first day of school in Fredericton and days thereafter that my life had been ruined. And that returning to the Miramichi region to live, was not on the cards. The contrary tides that I would face through most of my life, including the daily denials of the legitimacy of my existence by the ever so venerable fans of Space: 1999, I now think are part and parcel of my Karmic curse for that move.
To this day, the consequences of that move are with me. Not only in my suffering the slings and arrows of the blinkered fans of that television programme, including the condemnations of its second season that have assaulted my eyes in recent days on Facebook (and matters are only going to worsen now that Season 2 is running on The Horror Channel; oh, why, why, why is it being run?!). I have gone through this pandemic as a solitary being. At home and at work. My aloneness has helped me immensely, of course, in avoiding infection. But I have no one physically present with me to talk with, to be with, to hear the voice of, to whom to have a social connection. And as was said eloquently in a Space: 1999 episode of some esteem, "None of us exists except in relation to others." This is the punishment that I incurred in saying yes to moving all those years ago. 44 years ago. If the only changes in my life in 1977 had been going to a different school with peers of my prior Douglastown school years in the same proverbial boat as I, I do not think that I would have "ended up" as alone as I am today. And we would still have had that gorgeous house in that lovely village all through my schooling, and beyond.
Now, having said all of this, I must say that my nostalgic fondness for my Era 4 Fredericton years has been seeing a resurgence of late. I do miss the old days, the baseball games, the days and evenings with Joey on my steps or in my basement, the videotape shows, the videotape copying sessions at Tony's house, and my parents being alive. I miss the good times of those years. No worries about catching a deadly sniffle or being injected with a concoction that could ruin my health or end my life, or inhaling a lethal isotope from a melted-down nuclear reactor on the other side of the planet, or the government "coming for me". During this pandemic and with my fears of what may be coming, every past era of my life has gained additional bucket-loads of cachet. However, with those friendships of Era 4 nothing everlasting came of those old times, it has to be acknowledged and said. The friendships and the good times were ephemeral. And often with ebbing and flowing allegience to me, before that allegience fizzled away into nothingness and and my Karmic curse from the 1977 move did reassert itself. I did not help my cause, it is true, with my deficient ability to see things from other people's perspectives and my tendency to withdraw and broodily lament when socially frustrated. But if I had stayed in the Miramichi region and continued to improve my social condition there, I might, I probably would have, improved my capacity for understanding others' responses to me much sooner than I did.
Anyway. After one week of vacation, this is my outlook on my current situation and all of the past experiences leading to it.
I continue to update my autobiography, improving on the text and/or adding new images or bettering images that I already had. My Era 2 memoirs and my Era 3 memoirs have had further updates this past week.
Heaven Can Wait (1978) has been announced as coming to Blu-Ray in November. It is curious that the three Oh, God! movies and Heaven Can Wait are coming to Blu-Ray in the latter half of this year. From two different companies. I doubt that there was any coordination in this on the part of the two companies. It is just one of those things that happen that may be total coincidence or that may have some rooting in the unconscious. God knows, we need solace with spiritual guidance right now with all that is happening in the world. Some Hollywood comedy-dramas about the divine or the heavenly are a most welcome experience as there is so much crisis and entropy happening on the soils of Earth. If I am still able to make purchases and own things, these Blu-Rays will be in my possession not long after their release.
What else is coming? A Special Edition of the Doctor Who story, "The Web of Fear", with animated third episode of the serial (the episode that is missing after the film recordings of the story were found in Africa early in the 2010s). An as yet unannounced further season of vintage Doctor Who. The Kolchak: The Night Stalker television series. And the Imprint Space: 1999 Blu-Ray set. I still have not decided yet if I will "take the plunge" and buy that Space: 1999 Blu-Ray set. I watched the episodes, "Missing Link" and "Dragon's Domain", in recent days in commemoration of a weekend in July of 1978 when those episodes aired, the latter of them completely by surprise (in lieu of Walt Disney) on CHSJ-TV. And I watched them from the Network Blu-Rays originally released in 2010. And they looked very, very sharp and vivid, with the very best of contrast ratios. To this day, the episodes of those Network Blu-Rays look better than they do in all of the other Blu-Rays of Space: 1999 to be released, i.e. those of A & E and Shout! Factory. I am very doubtful that the episodes on the Imprint release will look better or even equally as detailed as they do on the Network Blu-Rays. I am not going to part with nearly two hundred dollars until I know for certain that the Imprint release's episodes are a match to, or an improvement over, the episodes as they are on Network's Blu-Rays.
All for today, I think.
Tuesday, July 20, 2021.
Three days in a row now of grey skies and occasional rain. I am now in week two of my four-week vacation and am growing impatient for a day of sunny weather for me to go to the Miramichi region and be on my old stomping grounds again.
The defender of late of Season 2 Space: 1999 at the Space: 1999 Facebook group has ventured into the fray of the latest barrage fired at the second production block of Space: 1999. I applaud him and will quote him for truth.
"The divide of the two seasons is just ignornace and rudeness. The shows were only a year apart."
Right on all counts. The fans of Season 1 who hate Season 2 are ignorant and rude. And, yes, Season 2 of Space: 1999 aired one year after Season 1. And it was produced in 1976 a year after production of Season 1 "wrapped".
"I now come to the forum with the expecation that a good amount of people who don't like Season 2 just cannot control themselves."
Yes. It is Pavlovian. Post a picture of Barry Morse or Fred Freiberger or any episode of Season 2, and on comes the onslaught of invective.
"And instead of just being a cool fan and supporting the show, they have to trash it, be dividers, and continue this entire charade that one season must simply be superior to the other, and for those that don't agree with their views, those who disagree are somehow not intelligent, seeing the show as a child, are wrong, et cetera."
Exactly.
"And for whatever reason, the Season 1 Onlies insist that you: a) like one season more than the other; and b) must agree that Season 1 was 'better'. Freedom of speech is one thing, being a 'Space: 1999 Season 1 Karen' is entirely something else."
The Karen metaphor is hilarious. And he is right to distinguish the ugly, inglorious mess of fandom from the lofty political principle of freedom of speech.
"It's freakin' ridiculous."
Yes. This is what my mature mother and father would say to all of this.
"And most of these people are older than me and either kicking close to... or are into retirement. Yet, they still want to argue about something that isn't an argument, but has to become one, about a show we all loved that was on television over forty years ago. It's like taking, 'Keep off my grass, you kids!' to a whole, new unabashed level."
Touche.
The person does delve into politics, and I choose to sidestep that.
And here are two of the responses to him.
"If commenting about a television show hurts you, seek help, really. Something is up... that's not normal."
"Actually I think most of it is just good natured teasing. Some see Season 1 as more intellectual but some of us couldn't really get into that at our ages. It's all fun banter."
The defender of Season 2 has, disappointingly, not written anything in response to these. I, however, am going to do so. They demand a repudiation, damn it. They cannot go unanswered.
Season 1 is demonstrably intellectual. Victor runs his hand through his hair and says something philosophical, John looks ponderously into the camera, the frame freezes. Okay. It is waving its hands and saying, "Look at me. I am intellectual." But concepts may be in and of themselves sophisticated, without need for a character to direct intellectual consideration to them through dialogue. It does not require much sophistication in a viewer to acknowledge a clearly intellectual comment. It certainly does not merit a highfallutin snobbery. The first season is slow and talky and presents itself as intellectual in having those qualities, but is it essential for a sophisticated television show to be slow and talky? No. I say, no. If evidence is presented to these people of there being sophistication in Season 2, they will reject the evidence outright, with an ad hominem attack upon the presenter, or say, "I'm not into that kind of fandom." Sophistication, indeed. Pah!
Now, as to the teasing. No teasing can be good-natured if it is on the part of someone in a majority against an outlier. It is meant to belittle that person's tastes or beliefs as those of someone alone with no significance or consequence, and as those of someone with an illegitimate point of view. Someone to be laughed-at by the group. It is to demoralise him or her. And to make the majority and all of its members feel superior. And where the "'Year 1' camp" of Space: 1999 fans are concerned, good-naturedness does not exist. It "left the building" long, long, long ago. These people are driven by hatred for Fred Freiberger and Season 2. And some of them hate Catherine Schell. And some of them hate Tony Anholt. They will not allow Fred Freiberger to rest in peace and daily revile him and his work in discussion forums viewable by the public, including his family. The venom is some of the worst of such that I have seen in my fifty-five years of experience. And if anyone criticises their favourite season, they react with the preciousness which they love to assert to wretchedly exist in the outlier Season 2 aficionados. They were erupting with indignant offence when Kevin Smith denounced Season 1 Space: 1999 some time ago. And utterly lacking in self-awareness, they could not recognise their hypocrisy. For what it is worth, I share their objection to Mr. Smith's disrespectful commentary, but I cannot say that I feel sympathy for them in their umbrage and their upset, after all of the hate-filled bile that they have flung for decades at Season 2 and people who happen to like or love it.
And of course, the Season 2 detractors are again alleging mental illness in a person championing Season 2. Championing Season 2 and not conceding to concentrated, daily invalidations of his favourite episodes, characters, et cetera, and by extension his taste in entertainment and art, by people smugly and comfortably basking in approval of the movers and shakers and the hoi polloi. All that this person wants is a respectful discourse, everybody acknowledging what one regards as merit in one's favourite opus of the imagination. That is all that I have wanted from these people lo, these thirty and more years. It was for that that I joined the Calgarian's fan club back in 1990. On his assurances that I would have it. Pah! What a fool I was then! They say that being hurt or upset over barrages, one person after another, of contempt and hostility, is not normal, is a sign of some mental problem. No. It is normal to be sensitive to slurring of one's favourite entertainments, the experiencing of which having been of integral import to one's personal development, and to insist on a more respectful refrain. It is sensible. Sensible. Human. It is not normal to be expressing daily a grudge against a producer and a season of a television show made forty-five years ago. And to bully people who do not subscribe to that position, into being silent, or self-flagellating to the ever so sacrosanct superiority of the herd. And to be proclaiming like adolescents in the endlessly reiterated disdain for anything and everything in the season that they do not like. People like that who tease are not teasing good-naturedly.
Would teasing be acceptable if it came from someone I considered to be a friend? Most particularly teasing of me over something that I like? No. It is not acceptable even coming from a friend. Good-natured, my foot. Balderdash. Friends do not tease each other over tastes in entertainment or art. Certainly not in front of others. If affinity is present, some gentle teasing of a person for habits or ways, might be good-natured and acceptable. Maybe even constructive. It would depend on what specific tendencies are being cited. But affinity has to be there. And trust me, the "Year 1" pundits do not have affinity for proponents of Season 2. They hate Season 2 and they hate people who challenge that hatred. I was in the company of one of those "Year 1" pundits for days back in 1995. There was no affinity there. Zero. The "Year 1" pundits are not my friends, and nor are they friends of the latest defender of Season 2. These fifty-somethings calling a younger person (the Season 2 defender of the hour is in his twenties) abnormal and suggesting that he is mentally unhinged, are a disgrace to the more senior persons of society everywhere. They lost their humanity, if they ever really had it, four and a half decades ago. And empathy is a foreign trait to them. No one of any decency would throw the poison dart of an assertion that a person is abnormal just because he or she wishes to be respected for what he or she sees in something and protests not being respected. Definitely no one who could possibly fit the most basic definition of the word, friend.
This addressing of the matter of friendship segues me into some further discussion on my friends of my third and fourth life eras. I am assembling my thoughts on the subject today and will do a further Weblog entry this week. I continue to admomish myself on my commenting critically about friends of yesteryear in my memoirs. Is it wrong to write critically of someone who was at one time but is no longer, and has not been for a long time, a presence in my life- by his choice? Even if what I am saying is truth? Could my life's experience still be understood by "glossing over" the differences with me or repudiations of me by people I considered to be friends? These are questions upon which I will ruminate.
Saturday, July 24, 2021.
Yesterday, I had a day's excursion to Miramichi City, the amalgamation of the former towns, Newcastle and Chatham, and the villages of Douglastown, Nordin, Nelson-Miramichi, et cetera. I strive every summer to return one or more times to my childhood home communities, those of Newcastle and Douglastown, and the greater Miramichi area in general. Oh, the forty-four years since I moved out of Douglastown have brought a multitude of changes to the Miramichi. So much of what was part of my world back then has been lost. Most of it in the past twenty years. My old school. My sitter's place. The home of one of my friends. House after house after house along Douglastown's main road. Businesses in downtown Newcastle and downtown Chatham (the Vogue Theatre in Chatham burned to the ground just this past year). Some buildings are still standing but radically altered. Including the old Miramichi Hospital where my mother's Victorian Order of Nurses office was situated. However, there is enough, more than enough, of the place still standing for the Miramichi to be recognisably the home to me that it was and for past impressions and flashback memories to pour floodingly into my consciousness as I stroll the streets and sidewalks and gaze outward at the towns and the river from scenic vantage points.
Even after forty-four years and more, I can feel what it was like to have lived back in the 1970s in that beautiful area of New Brunswick. The two approximate years (1970-2) that I lived in Newcastle and the five approximate years (1972-7) I was a Douglastownian were by far my most formative years, most integral to the formation of my personality and my outlook on the universe around me. There, in those places, I learned to spell, to read, to count, to add, subtract, multiply, and divide, to read a map or globe and to recognise and understand the geographical and climatological peculiarities of places on Earth, to gaze outward to the stars with a sense of untrammelled awe, to appreciate the beauty in vividly imaginative entertainment, and to be someone's friend while being as true as I can be to myself. By the time that I departed Douglastown in 1977, all of my seminal impressions of my lifetime most favourite works had been set. Nurtured in a life that had brought to me generally gratifying social connections with other children. And a bond with my parents rarely matched in our many years in Fredericton. In Douglastown, my parents and I were a family, together every evening and every weekend, and for large chunks of the summertime. In Fredericton, we were not much more than co-habitants of the same house, from Monday to Friday coming and going often with very little overlap in our time there. And even on the weekends we did not spend much time together as a threesome. Most of the meaningful experiences with my parents during my upbringing were in our years in the Miramichi. We were happy there. So much happier than we ever were in Fredericton. If my parents were here with me now, I feel sure that they would agree. We had some very memorable experiences on travels to Toronto and Ottawa post-our-move-to-Fredericton. Those were awesome! But for day-to-day life in home region, Miramichi, Douglastown was our place.
After my father started working for Fredericton Transit in night shift, going to work around 5:45 P.M., with my mother coming home from work shortly after 6 (when she did not have evening meetings), our family structure changed very much from what it had been in the Miramichi. My father started his tenure at Fredericton Transit in October, 1978. And even before then, all through my Grade 6 school year (1977-8), the McCorry family was a shadow of its former self. I was alone at home before going to school, through my lunch hour, and after school until around 6 P.M.. My mother was away at meetings on some Saturdays. I spent portions of numerous Saturdays at my grandparents' place to watch cable television there. Our family life was already one of separation that year, and on the weekdays I was the typical "latchkey kid" of the 1970s. I was such in Douglastown, too, in Grade 4 and Grade 5, but it felt different in Fredericton, where I was rather more alone at school and in my after-school hours. Also, in Douglastown on may a day in my Grade 4 and Grade 5 years, my father had come home to make and serve my lunch. The "latchkey" phenomenon was had not been total for me yet.
The Douglastown years were undeniably the best years that my life, as decisions made in it would affect it, would ever allow me to have. And it was in Doouglastown where I was in love with the worlds of Bugs Bunny and the Looney Tunes and Merrie Melodies gang, the Pink Panther and the Inspector, Rocket Robin Hood, Spiderman, and, eventually, Space: 1999. I think of my initial viewings of Bugs Bunny/Road Runner and Space: 1999 episodes whenever I look at our old house, our old yard, my old friends' dwellings, the church hall behind our place, and structures in Newcastle and Chatham. So much has been torn down or has burned down in these many years since the 1970s, and filling several of the gaps are new buildings, ugly things, aesthetic abortions at the most stark variance with the gorgeous old-fashioned Victorian structures of the Miramichi that I knew and which had coincided with impressions that I was having from the cartoons of Warner Brothers. But still, there is enough of old Miramichi still standing for my memory to be stimulated and for flashbacks and renewed impressions to gush through my mind. Unless the powers-that-be raze the whole region to the ground and rebuild everything (and I would not put beyond them the possibility of that), there is always going to be a "trip down Memory Lane" for me on my returns to the Miramichi.
In my memoirs of Era 2, I am almost never critical of anyone I considered my friends, and when I am, it is usually with mitigation very carefully worded. Yes, the rememberings of my Fredericton years are where the bulk of my critical assessments of people of my social life and less than fond memories of problematical people in my surroundings, are. I cannot sugarcoat this, and I really should not have to do so. The effects of my interactions with those people were what they were, and are what they are. My life today is what it is because of those interactions and the decision to move that brought me into a less nurturing situation. But I would hasten to add that everyone around me was a product of his or her environs and existing relationships, and suburbia has an ethos about it that is different from that of a village stretching along the banks of the gorgeous Miramichi River. I was "at odds" with that suburban ethos almost from day one. My first day of school in it, certainly. My younger friends met by me in late 1977 and early 1978 were not profane and not as boorish and demeaning as the peers I had at Park Street School, but they could be imperial in their allowances of conversation or ill-tempered with me in what I chose to verbalise fancy. And with such an attitude on their part, unconditionally accepting their particular idiosyncracies could, for me, be rather difficult. But as I have said, all of us were children, and as I say, there were environmental factors in people's less agreeable character traits. And Nashwaaksis, Fredericton, was an environment where people were conversant in f-words and always looking to group acceptance for self-esteem, group acceptance that often required aggressions, verbal or physical, toward outliers. And outliers perceived to be more sophisticated than they, had to be "knocked down several pegs" for them to feel comfortable about their own development. And sometimes even after doing so, they cannot reach a state of true happiness and always have a frown or scowl as they use f-words as adjectives and interjections in their abrasive proclamations. I came onto "the scene" as a short, thin, "nerdy" type of person, riding a wave of largely positive social connections in my former community and rather happy in my own skin yet still quite sensitive. I either had to be broken and remade, or rejected and ridiculed as a "freak". My younger friends were not as cruelly affronting as my peers, and even quite respectful much of the time, but there was always that other shoe that would drop if I was not in perfect accordance with their day's provisions for permissible conversation, or their preference for leadership in conversation or playtime fun. And they could sometimes do the "putting down" of me to assuage their ego, by speaking of others not judging me favourably. Or just by not speaking in my defence when I was being "cut down". Like by Eric for my talking too much about Space: 1999 or Earthquake. One might use strict definition of friend to disqualify them from being so-called. Maybe it would be better to just brand them playmates or associates with whom I used to "hang out". My life since Douglastown has been replete with supposed friends "letting me down" when I needed them verbally at my side. Even my 1978-82 best friend, Tony, would shrink from speaking in my defence. I gravitated from him to Joey, and I was right to do so. Period. Joey was a better friend than Tony in this and other ways- even if he was not the science fiction/fantasy aficionado that Tony was. Even if he was much younger. Alas, I was not the presence in Joey's life that his peers were, and there was interference from others in my association with Joey combined with some of my failings.
Yes, I have failings. There is a quotation in my Era 3 memoirs that says that only weak people are cruel and that gentleness can only be expected from strong people. I agree with it. And that is why I chose to put it in my memoirs. But I am not on some ivory tower in doing the quoting. Nor do I criticise people such as my Era 3 friends from an ivory tower. I have my weaknesses. I have the self-awareness to know them and to recognise the times when they were and are manifest. Many people lack self-awareness. Utterly. And that is in and of itself a weakness. I had an empathy deficit and I think still have one to some extent. It is a cross that I must bear for my sheltered existence in early life and for growing to adulthood as an only-child. But I recognise it and work to counter it. In my younger years, I was not as cognizant of it and experienced social frustrations that invoked the sullenness and petulance of the stereotypical only-child used to "getting his way". I could sometimes be cruel as a result. I am ashamed to admit it. But there it is. When I say sometimes, I do not mean that it was several times a month or several times a year every year. But I was definitely not angelic-white. However, I was not cruel as a way of everyday life, as some people are, as all too many Frederictonians whom I have encountered have been. I did not have the f-word and certain other foul words in my lexicon. And I regret my cruelty. Can the same be said of these people? Even as late as high school, there was no contrition in people for their antagonistic words and actions toward me as I walked my lonely path through the school system. There was an incident one afternoon on the school bus going from Fredericton High School to Fulton Heights, Nashwaaksis. Many of my detractors from as far back as Grade 6 were present on that bus, which was routinely overcrowded, three people to a seat with some people having to stand. Bus 101, it was. I was assaulted in my rear end by a geometry set's compass point as I was seated closest to the aisle. The perpetrator was someone I had not known before I was in Grade 10, but people with him and delighting in what he was doing to me were stalwarts in my disappreciation society of my Grade 6 and junior high tenure. My father, God rest his soul, handled the situation with the firmest hand possible after I told to him what had happened. But people present during the assault had for years been against me and all that I favoured. I honestly cannot see contrition existing in them now. They were cruel people as a way of life, and I will wager that they still are. If they wanted to do so, they could have reached out to me at any time these past many years since we all graduated. There is only one McCorry, and only one Kevin McCorry, in the Fredericton telephone directory. No, they are not sorry. And I am not sorry either for criticising them and anyone else in Fredericton who had a less than accepting, or less than abiding, bearing toward me and out of that bearing chose to make my time in this place anything less than congenial. I resent them and will go to my grave doing so.
As to the friends who administered verbal "slap-downs" for my choices of topics of conversation or who denounced a work that I esteemed with not a care in the world about how I might feel about their doing so, I am not beholden today to those people, whatever fun was had all in all in the period of time that we were together. They could have reached out to me at any time in my autobiography's long existence on the World Wide Web and said how sorry that they are that they "let me down" at times in the long ago. They have not done so. They may very well lack the self-awareness to look at themselves critically and to see that my criticism of them has basis in fact, is not just the frivolous verbal meanderings of a socially ineffectual, idiot of an only-child deserving nothing but scorn, ridicule, and hermitage to dying day. They chose of their own free will to disengage from me and no longer be inclusive of me. And therefore, I do owe them nothing. Not even fond reminiscence of the fun times. But I do my best to assess them as friends based on all of the facts before me as I look back upon my life. If they are to be honest, their assessment of me was not always positive, and three of them chose to join with my enemy in denouncing me. An enemy who laughed with his friends as I fell to the pavement during a street baseball game in 1982. I no more expect contrition from him than I do from that compass-wielding bully on the school bus. And the friends who criticised me for wanting to communicate my esteem for a favourite entertainment were not the sort of people I could confide-in about such an incident. Even today, they might say that I deserved it- for just being me.
By the way, in the days after my father responded to the situation, I rode a different school bus, arriving at home in the afternoons later than before. Spring of 1982, that was. Just a week or two later, the school bus drivers walked off the job in a labour dispute with the Province of New Brunswick. I then had to ride Fredericton Transit buses to go to school and return to home. The bus drivers stayed off the job for the remainder of the 1981-2 school year. In the following autumn, the school buses were running again, and there were new routes. Bus 101 no longer served my area of Fulton Heights. Some of the louts who had been my disappreciators were on the buses that I rode in 1982-3 and 1983-4, but they did not trouble me again. In those years, I was finally gaining stature, and with me being taller they seemed less bold in expressing their disliking of me.
My autobiography has to include my memories of less gratiying experiences with erstwhile friends, their antagonism with me for my liking the things that I like and my wishing to be converant about those things, and their betrayal of me in going with my enemy, in order for my bond with those things and my experience with them over the many years of my life to be fully understood.
What of my friends in the 1980s? I still blame myself first and foremost for losing them. Myself and my deficient ability to see things from other points of view. My not saying things that should have been said. Letting frustration in baseball "get the better of me". All of the errs I mention in my Era 4 memoirs. But could they, my friends then, have been more patient with me, more understanding, more forgiving? Yes. Yes. And yes. They could have perceived that I was an only-child who was different from most people in how I responded in social situations. And been more willing to make allowances for me. All of this is true. These people did opt out of having further connection with me as we went deeper into the 1990s, or were not willing to themselves do any reaching out to make possible some quality time together. I do not say much that is critical of them in my memoirs. But they did abandon me. That being the case, I am very fair, I think, in my descriptions of friends and friendship experiences in my fourth life era.
I did say that I would discuss some more the friendships of my Fredericton years, and I have done so. Now, to enjoy the weekend. Alone, of course.
Monday, July 26, 2021.
The Imprint Blu-Ray box set of Space: 1999 is now available for ordering at Amazon.com. Price is $219.99. That is in American dollars. In Canadian dollars, once shipping and import duties are added, it would be upwards of $300. Possibly as high as $350 or $375. As much as I love Space: 1999, do I love it enough to spend that much money on a Blu-Ray set just to have some of the bonuses of the A & E DVDs on Blu-Ray, and the "movies"? No. And unless there has been improvement to the episodes over how they look and sound on the Network Blu-Rays, value-added content is really the only incentive for buying this Imprint Blu-Ray set. I cannot say that the value-added content in this case compels me to click my computer mouse over the pre-order button. If there was an all-new featurette or two, or even just one all-new audio commentary, or "Message From Moonbase Alpha", the purchase of the set would be more tempting. But still I would resist the temptation if the episodes themselves look and sound like they do on the Shout! Factory Blu-Rays.
As to the "movies". What are they but relics from a time when practices for distribution of cancelled television programmes went from exhaustive to selective, from being true to original intent to expedient modification? Oh, I have fond memory of seeing Destination: Moonbase Alpha as a late-night Friday movie on ATV in 1980. Seeing it and audiotape-recording it that night. Listening to it many a time. And acquiring it on videotape in October, 1983. But each of those times then, as now, I would much rather just watch the original "Bringers of Wonder" two-part Space: 1999 episode. I have had Destination: Moonbase Alpha on Blu-Ray since 2014, and have not watched it from its beginning to its end via that Blu-Ray. Aside from the main introduction and closing credits, there is no reason to do so. The episodes-proper remastered from their original camera elements, have far superior picture. I cannot expect the standard definition Cosmic Princess and Journey Through the Black Sun to look any better than awful, being as they were only ever available on videotape, with its limited resolution. Invasion: UFO's original version is an eyesore on Blu-Ray. And I have not watched it yet on my new and less forgiving sixty-five-inch television screen. I do not think that I wish to subject myself to that ordeal. Nor would I want to watch Cosmic Princess and Journey Through the Black Sun in similar quality. If I had interest in watching them at all. Maybe for their opening titles. Just that.
What I would do is this. Offer the Lunar Commission scenes of Alien Attack (which was on film and capable of yielding decent high definition picture quality) inside the episode, "Breakaway", at all of the appropriate places, as an alternate viewing option for that episode through seamless branching. Maybe omitting the reference by the Chairman to Commissioner Simmonds having died, to stay in continuity with the television series-proper, in which Simmonds meets a demise, or probable demise, in a later episode. And the main introduction and closing credits of Alien Attack and of the other three "movies", along with any instances in the "movies" of dialogue different from what is spoken in the episodes in their original construction, could be incorporated into a featurette on the "movies", on why and how they came to exist and on how they diverge in their content from Space: 1999 episodes-proper. Maybe with interviews with David Hirsch and ITC executives involved with their making. This is what I would do. But, then, I am me, and people do not like me and will not listen to me. Never has a good idea ever sprung from my noggin, has one?
But back to the box set as it is. Here is the Amazon.com listing for it. I will continue to keep my readers updated on developments on this matter, including the appearance on the Internet of any reviews of it. I am not anticipating buying it and reviewing it myself. But who knows? Reviews to the effect that audio problems in certain episodes have been resolved may sway me towards ordering for myself a box set. I would still search for a lower price than what is being charged by Amazon.com.
All for today.
Wednesday, July 28, 2021.
Well, the Horror Channel run of Space: 1999 has reached "The Rules of Luton", and the slings and arrows are as massed as ever in the postings of comment at the Space: 1999 Facebook group. Every time, every damned time, that a broadcaster for some reason confounding to me decides to air Space: 1999 and the second season that no one of consequence loves, someone at the Facebook group has to post announcements of the airing of each episode, inviting a deluge of comments. And in the case of "The Rules of Luton", every comment is predictable. So relentlessly predictable. Every cliche was invoked again in this latest discussion of the episode about the "talking trees", including Stanley Adams in a carrot costume, people bemoaning "plot hole" after "plot hole" and Mr. Freiberger's decision to use Luton as the name of the episode's alien planet, and even some criticism of the conversation between John and Maya on the hilltop (now that someone has poked holes, or, I should say, purported holes, in that).
And of course some loutish oaf offers this drivel.
"Fred Freiberger had a reputation for destroying every series he was involved with."
It is low-hanging fruit. So low that it is far, far beneath me to respond to it. As any viewing of the entry at the Internet Movie Database for Mr. Freiberger will show, he did not wreak the amount of destruction that is alleged here.
But I will respond. Briefly. Something for me to do this morning before breakfast. No one else is going to do it. May as well be me.
Destroys every television series with which he was involved. Oh, really? He destroyed The Wild Wild West, did he? The facts tell otherwise. For how many other television series did he provide scripts long before final season? Many. He wrote scripts for the first season of Superboy. And the first season of Starsky and Hutch (oh, I do realise that it is not exactly haute couture imaginative science fiction/fantasy, but it was a successful television show of its day). His Saturday morning project, Korg: 70,000 B.C., did not last beyond a first season, but that is a norm for Saturday morning. Most especially with regard to live-action television shows. Did Ark II and Space Academy last longer than a season? No. And I have numerous times called into question the assertions that Mr. Freiberger "killed" Star Trek and The Six Million Dollar Man. And as for Space: 1999, my contention with the Season 2 haters goes back a long, long way.
I cannot really be bothered wasting my vacation time answering more to such tripe. Of course, it has gone unchallenged in the group. Everyone there is a party to the dissemenating of falsehoods. I have already shown this to be the case. Whenever something clearly wrong and refutable goes unrefuted, everyone in that group declining to "set the record straight", is a liar. A passive liar as opposed to an active one. But a liar nonetheless.
Monday, August 2, 2021.
My final week of vacation begins. More than in any other year preceding this one, including all of my Fredericton school years, I am dreading the end of vacation, knowing what is in all probability coming. It is going to be a very, very, very rough time for me in the months to come. I am doing the best that I can to prepare myself for it mentally, but one can only do so much where such preparation is concerned.
The mainstream media are doing precisely what I expected it would do. Demonising people who made a certain informed decision. The road down which that goes, is very, very dark indeed.
I will endeavour to say no more about that today. Or about the pandemic in general.
I continue to made updates to my Website. I am correcting errors that had eluded my detection in the past. Expanding portions of my autobiography. Continuing to comment on developments as regards my favourite entertainments. My Era 3 memoirs have been updated yet again. This time, I have expanded further on my experiences with Cosmos 1999 in 1979 and also extended my remembering of them into 1980, I mention CHSJ's airing of the Spiderman episode, "Up From Nowhere", on November 17, 1981 and the problematic condition of film elements of that episode, and I have added a paragraph to offer some positive assessment of my earliest Fredericton friends as I am aware that my remembering of them does tend toward the negative in numerous places in my memoirs. I admit to another failing of mine as I commend my earliest Fredericton friends for their not using profanity during the period of time that we were friends. In Fredericton, not using profanity was very rare indeed. I confess to my tendency to reflexively invoke in vain the Lord Our God or the Son of God whenever I am physically hurt or whenever I fall. Definitely a failing of mine, that is.
I also added a montage of images of Star Wars to accompany my description of my friend, Tony, Star Wars being his favourite opus of science fiction/fantasy. And I remember further how Tony's enthusiasm for Star Wars spread to me, particularly in 1979 and on the evening that I saw Star Wars with him and his brother at Fredericton's Plaza Cinemas. Images of Star Wars had been sparse in Era 3. The Empire Strikes Back had been better represented in the image department. Also, some people at a Nashwaaksis Facebook group were criticising me some little time ago for an over-emphasis on Space: 1999 in my Era 3 memoirs (some things never change- not even after some forty years). Maybe the inclusion of more Star Wars in my memoirs will make them more palatable to my critics. I know. Why should I care either way? I was not inclined to change myself to please the people of Nashwaaksis back in the day of my sixth grade, junior high school, and high school experiences? Why should I care now what people of the Fredericton North area in which I have resided post-1977 think of me? Well, it may have something to do with my feeling more vulnerable to the opinions of others with what is happening now. And if I am going to "check out" in months to come, I at least want to be remembered as pleasantly as possible, by people who may be influenced by my detractors' less than favourable opinion of me. I do not know. Maybe it is not rational of me to be thinking this way. Time will tell. Maybe suffice it to say that I feel more comfortable with my memoirs now that I have moderated somewhat my remembering of certain erstwhile friends and made my Era 3 memoirs a tad less myopic (so people claim) on Space: 1999.
Jerry Beck will be appearing on a popular Internet broadcast this week. I am not anticipating any news of interest to anyone seeking a fully comprehensive collection of Warner Brothers cartoons on physical media. More and more cartoons are being restored, but for broadcasting only, evidently. I expect that the furore months ago over Warner intending to discontinue physical media as alluded-to by Mr. Beck, will be in the minds of people posing questions to him this week.
On the subject of the Warner Brothers cartoons, I recommend a YouTube video on the history of Looney Tunes on American television, and on Nickelodeon most especially. The person who made it did his research and wrote a cogent, very thoroughly informative narration to the video. I would quibble only with his statement of there being a shuffling of the distributed cartoons to broadcasters in 1995. That shuffling was in autumn of 1994, when cartoons new to Bugs Bunny and Tweety in the 1994-5 season thereof, started appearing.
Here is the video.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xxxqg0XHxTw
I have nothing more to say today. I am planning for this to be a fallow week for Website work and Weblog entries, as I intend to enjoy outdoors what vacation time I have left.
Thursday, August 12, 2021.
My Era 3 memoirs now have a paragraph regarding CHSJ-TV's showing of Rocket Robin Hood, beneath a newly added picture from the "Dementia Five" episode of same television show. "Dementia Five". Oh, if only I could close my eyes and be out of the nightmare in which I am living. To be back in 2019.
I have also added images of Space: 1999- "The Bringers of Wonder", "The Fair Haired Hare", and Spiderman- "Farewell Performance" to my Era 5 memoirs close to their beginning, together with a couple of new paragraphs that reference my awakening to the nostalgic component to my entertainment fancies, and my nostalgia in particular for my final twelve months in Douglastown no longer having my appreciation of Space: 1999 as a proxy.
On the subject of Space: 1999, and "The Bringers of Wonder", there was some discussion of late at the Space: 1999 Facebook group about the second of the two parts of that episode. People lambasting it for it allegedly devolving into "rubber monster silliness". I am not going to bother responding to that rot. A pointed criticism from someone who says that he appreciates "The Bringers of Wonder", involves the fight on the Lunar surface between Commander Koenig and the alien-controlled Alan Carter and Joe Ehrlich. He says that the fight is ridiculous and unnecessary. Why, he asks, does Koenig just not fire a stun ray at Carter and Ehrlich, thereby eliminating a spacesuited altercation and thwarting the aliens right there, making the remainder of the episode unneccesary? Well, the episode would have ended far short of its running time. The exciting climax at the Waste Dome would not happen, of course. Carter and Ehrlich would not have delivered the atomic fuel to Bartlett at the Nuclear Waste Domes, and the aliens there would have died quietly.
All right. I admit that I never gave thought to any of this. I have never before seen this particular contention with the episode. Forty-four years, and now, finally, it comes to light. Fans have had forty-four years to detect this particular "bone" to "pick". Fred Freiberger had a few months, while also having to juggle in his mind many, many other considerations during the hectic production schedule. But I can dispel it. Yes, I can. I can dispel it in the context of Dean's framework for looking at the final third of the Season 2 episodes (but, alas, I am unable to eleborate very much on this). The episode, like the others of that "Province", has an idiosyncratic and surrealistic quality to its subject matter and depictions. This is all that I can say without usurping Dean's priority. Whatever value that priority has now. But the gripe can be also refuted by simply looking closely at the scene in question. Koenig is lowered to the Lunar surface from Eagle Five, and his gun is clearly in his holster. But after he is struck by Carter and Ehrlich's Moonbuggy, the gun is no longer in his holster, and is not there as the episode proceeds henceforth. The impact of the Moonbuggy must have sent the gun flying out of the holster, and Koenig is unable to promptly find and retrieve it as its grey colour is difficult to discern from grey of the Lunar surface in the semi-darkness, and he must endeavour to stop Carter and Ehrlich through words and, if need be, direct physical contact. Evidently, Koenig wanted at the outset of this scene to try first to free the two men from their illusions through conversation, with stunning them as a last resort. It could be dangerous to stun a man in a spacesuit, because the man could fall on the glass of his visor, a Lunar rock possibly causing the glass to break. There would be insufficient time to replace the helmet before the man succumbs to the vacuum of space. Helmet glass breakage does indeed happen to Nordstrom in the first season opener, "Breakaway". It is a danger should an astronaut fall face-down onto the Moon's surface. Bingo! There it is, then. A refutation of this particular quibble. Not that anyone in that group is going to care what I say or look at this Weblog entry. I have done this for myself and my very small contingent of readers.
As to the purported ridiculousness of the fight, that is a matter of opinion. I quite like how the fight is choreographed both on the Moon and in the illusory Earth setting that Carter and Ehrlich are seeing. The aliens had to improvise quickly to project the illusion of some bandit or thug attacking Carter and Ehrlich and their two lady friends in their dune buggy. It is part of the "off-kilter" nature of the events of the episode. And effective. The juxtaposition of the glipses of Earth as experienced by Carter and Ehrlich with the Lunar surface that they are actually on, contributes to the sense of surrealism of the episode and of the others of late Season 2.
Oh, one could, I suppose, contend that the Maya creature's violent actions to stop the two men from killing Koenig are much more risky with regard to the integrity of their spacesuits. But Maya's first priority was preventing Koenig's murder, and it was a spur of the moment decision on her part to remove the two men from Koenig through brute force. And, from the look of the situation, with the two men in a close huddle with Koenig in semi-darkness, she could not be sure of distinct targets for a directed stun beam.
By the way, Steiner does not try to subdue Nordstrom with the use of a gun during their Lunar surface altercation in "Breakaway". So, there is that.
As I expected, there were no new Looney Tunes and Merrie Melodies DVD or Blu-Ray releases announced or hinted-at by Jerry Beck in his appearance on that Webcast. There is nothing more coming on this particular subject. Not this year.
All for today.
Sunday, August 15, 2021.
Almost half of the way through August already. To invoke a cliche, where is the time going?
I had the grim task yesterday of updating again the In Memoriam section of The Space: 1999 Page. This time to add Ken Hutchinson to the list of deceased talent on the television show. He was Greg Sanderson in the late second season episode, "The Seance Spectre". The outspoken, excitable, formidable mutineer who was convinced that there was a habitable planet inside a space phenomenon called Taura and who tried to kill Commander Koenig. I have seen him in two other productions, All Quiet On the Western Front (1979) and Ladyhawke (1985). He died at the age of 72. He was twenty-eight when he played Sanderson. His performance as Sanderson has been routinely derided by Space: 1999 fans as being silly, cartoonish, "over-the-top". My Calgarian antagonist in 1995 used assertions of Sanderson being silly in an effort to spark a dispute with me at the Reginan's place. Oh, I will never forget that experience. Of course, everything in Season 2 is regarded as silly, cartoonish, "over-the-top", by the fans of the beleaguered television programme. And even though "The Seance Spectre" is a exciting episode befitting the Space: 1999 premise of a community adrift in space and seeking a new planetary home, and has plenty of impressive visuals in its favour, the Sanderson character provides a convenient brickbat for the naysayers to reject "The Seance Spectre" along with the other twenty-three "Year 2" episodes. And to posture themselves against "flakes" who admire the second season. I do acknowledge that Sanderson is played as becoming increasingly unhinged by his "green sickness" and does alternate between frustrated whinging and quite loud yelling. A lot of yelling. But that sort of thing is natural for someone in the throes of maddening delusions, as his friends begin to question his veracity. I never did have issues with the portrayal of Sanderson. Hutchinson played Sanderson as a daunting foe for Koenig, in physique and behaviour. He might be second only to Season 1's Balor as a Space: 1999 villain. The character was originally called Sandor Knox. That is the name that he has in Michael Butterworth's novelisation of the episode. I do not know why it was changed to Sanderson. Knox is a more aesthetically apropos name for one of an imposingly beefy physique (as Sanderson has) and a disposition of a stubborn ox. Knox. Ox. "Get it"? The fact that the name, Taura, references the Zodiac bull, Taurus, a bull being a bovine creature like an ox, would give to the Sanderson character and the space phenomenon of his habitable planet obsession more of an aesthetic connection.
Sanderson is for me and for any reasonable Space: 1999 viewer a memorable character, and this is to Ken Hutchinson's credit as an actor of some not insignificant presence. Rest in peace, Mr. Hutchinson.
It is another sunny day today, and I intend now to venture forth into the world and to enjoy it. This is all for my today's Weblog entry.
I have the Shout! Factory Oh, God! Blu-Ray set in my possession. The movies look very nice indeed. Especially the first one. The 1970s cannot possibly be more vivid short of physically going back in time to them. I love how the visuals pull me backward through the decades to a much, much simpler time. And God's message has resonance now as then. In some regards, more so. Oh, God! Book II, I had not seen since an airing of it on television in the early 2000s. It is a very endearing movie, "narratively" similar to its predecessor but with a more genial God and a more sensitive portrayal of the ordeal experienced by the person, a little girl, chosen to be God's messenger, and a more satisfing outcome for the messenger through God's intervention. The third movie, Oh, God! You Devil!, is a rendition of the story of the Faustian deal with Satan, but with redemption possible. I like it, but the message in the first two movies is more uplifting and satisfying.
Space: 1999. There was a Facebook group discussion last week about Maya presumably knowing the secrets of interstellar travel and evidently purposefully withholding that from the Alphans. The argument was to the effect that Psychons know how to travel from star to star seeing as Psychons reached Norva, as the viewer learns in "Dorzak", and Maya should have shared that knowledge with the Alphans so that they could leave Moonbase and pilot a spaceship or fleet of spaceships to a habitable planet. Look, this is all far outside of required detail for understanding an episode. We do not know what Psychon interstellar vehicles are like. How they are propelled. They cannot be faster-than-light as Maya says that such a thing is impossble. They would be sub-light vehicles, possibly significantly slower than the speed of light, and probably built for multi-generational space flight for reaching stars dozens of light-years away. And furnished with enough food and other essentials to last for generations. Such spaceships would be huge and would require an outlay of materials far beyond what exists on Alpha (if the Alphans were to build one with Maya's guidance). But would Maya have the knowledge to build them? Is she an engineer? Did Mentor teach her to be that? Was Mentor a specialist in spaceship propulsion? Not necessarily. And if she had the knowledge of engineering, would the raw materials exist on Alpha? It is possible that the derelict spaceship found by the Alphans in "Space Warp" might hold the key in its propulsion system to the Alphans attaining interstellar space flight capabilities, but they would still need to build many such propulsion systems or one huge spaceship to ferry the full Alpha population across space. And they lack the needed resources. It is also possible that Psychons have the ability to use space warps to reduce travel time. But this is speculation. It is simpler to just accept that Maya's scientific knowledge does not extend into spaceship engineering. Should this have been said in dialogue? I do not know. My guess is that none of this would occur to the average rational viewer. None of it falls within the scope of required detail for story understanding in any particular episode. If it did, then the contentions would have been raised long, long, long before now.
I really cannot find in myself the impulse to carp very much these days about the attacks upon Season 2 Space: 1999. There were people who did, of course, use the above discussion as another basis for dismissing Season 2 as worthless drivel. But with Coronavirus and so forth, there are now far, far, far more important things about which to concern oneself or worry. I am not going to be buying the Imprint Space: 1999 Blu-Ray set. I have to save my pennies and live as frugally as I can, as I may find myself jobless very soon. I have not as yet come upon any reviews of that Blu-Ray set. When I do, I will Hyperlink to them and make comment on them.
"Hyde and Go Tweet" is on Dailymotion in High Definition. It looks gorgeous in its detail and colour. And not a blemish in sight. It is a shame that it and so many, many more newly restoed cartoons are not going to be available on Blu-Ray, or DVD. It does not appear likely that there will be any follow-up to the Bugs Bunny Blu-Ray box set of last year.
All for today, Sunday, August 22, 2021.
Friday, August 27, 2021.
It is the sixty-sixth anniversary of the theatrical release of "Hyde and Hare". In celebration of that anniversary, here is an image of a couple of statuettes of Bugs and Dr. Jekyll's monstrous alter-ego. Sculptor unknown.
And here is a Dr. Jekyll layout by Hawley Pratt against the Irv Wyner background of the Dr. Jekyll laboratory. From the collection of Irv Wyner.
Looking at this layout affirms for me the "grasp" that director Freleng and writer Foster clearly had of the psyche of Jekyll and his urge to be Hyde, despite all of his nobler desires. They understood the concept of Jekyll and Hyde through and through. And "Hyde and Hare", not "Dr. Jerkyl's Hide" nor "Hyde and Go Tweet", convey this understanding. The Jekyll in "Hyde and Go Tweet" is rather furtive as he enters his laboratory and is about to drink his Hyde Formula, but apart from that there is no insight gained from Jekyll's behaviour into why he drinks the formula and how he feels about doing so. And the split-personality scientist owning the laboratory is nowhere to be seen in "Dr. Jerkyl's Hide".
No news about the Imprint Space: 1999 Blu-Ray release in Australia.
I have a few more days of vacation coming to me this week. There is very nice weather being forecast for each of the days of my planned vacation, and I intend to enjoy that weather and to travel around New Brunswick.
All for today.
Thursday, September 2, 2021.
A very rainy morning in New Brunswick, as the remnants of a hurricane are passing over the province.
Yesterday, I went to the Miramichi and walked around peaceful Douglastown in summer sunshine and comfortable temperatures and gentle breezes and connecting mentally with my distant past. Only the sight of election signs pulled me out of my respite. If lawn signs are anything to go by, it looks like Miramichi is going to go Conservative, but that is not by any means a given.
Being in the Miramichi, and in Douglastown, brings memories back to the forefront of my mind, memories of my parents and my friends, and the integral presence of The Bugs Bunny/Road Runner Hour, Spiderman, Rocket Robin Hood, The Pink Panther Show, and, lastly, in my final year living there, Space: 1999, in my life in those years. My nostalgia for my life in Douglastown is as strong as ever. All my tender memories of long ago.
I had a memory flash to The Tomorrow People as I was going about the residential streets of Newcastle in the Newcastle Boulevard (formerly Prince William Street) area, to seeing episodes of its first serial in spring of 1977, and I watched such last night after returning to Fredericton. I had fleeting sensations from time to time of being back in the spring of 1977, and it made me teary-eyed to not be able to stay there.
Still nothing new to report about the Imprint Space: 1999 box set. To the best of my knowledge, it has not been delayed. It should be "hitting the shelves" within the next few weeks. My intention not to buy it has not changed. But it is Space: 1999, and for me Space: 1999 has proved time and time again to be irresistible. Even a threat of unemployment and the need to live most frugally might not be enough to counter that.
Sunday, September 12, 2021.
Yesterday was an anniversary. It was, of course, the twentieth anniversary of 9-11-2001. But that is not the only significance that yesterday had for me.
It was on a Saturday, September 11 forty-five years ago that Space: 1999 had its full CBC television network premiere, and that also was when Space: 1999 aired for the first time in the Miramichi region of New Brunswick via a northern New Brunswick transmitter. I was conscious of the forty-five years previous significance of yesterday and thought of being outside in mid-September Douglastown as I looked out my Fredericton home window at the blue mid-afternoon sky and the ripened tree leaves fluttering in the late summer breeze. I felt a distinct association with the date being commemorated, for the weather then and yesterday was the same. Temperature. Humidity. Amount of clouds versus blue sky. I could envisage quite clearly being with my father at the Save-Easy in downtown Chatham shortly after 2 o'clock, and our arrival at home from our grocery shopping excursion, and my finding my mother in our living room watching Space: 1999 and the scene of the "Breakaway" episode wherein a remote-control Eagle goes haywire above a nuclear waste storage site. I had been expecting a 5 P.M. airing of Space: 1999, as that was what the CBC promotions for Space: 1999 had said. I had failed to look at the newspaper television listings, and I do not seem to recall having the TV Guide issue for that week (the long Labour Day weekend the weekend before might have delayed delivery of TV Guide to stores in the Miramichi). And there it was, already in progress by close to two-thirds of its length, the Space: 1999 opener that I would come to know as "Breakaway". I would not have missed any of it if I had known that it would be airing at 2 o'clock.
And with that experience, and the many CBC promotions for Space: 1999 in days leading to it, my forty-five-years-long association with Space: 1999 was born. It has been an association of many highs and lows, frustrations and triumphs. Preemptions by CHSJ. The rare instance of a surprising change of heart by CHSJ and a broadcasting of the television show on a day when that had not been expected. Finding some Space: 1999 merchandise and having to accept that other such (e.g. the Mattel Eagle) was not to be mine. Out-of-print Space: 1999 books. The CBC terminating broadcast of Space: 1999 on a nation-wide basis. The abortive in New Brunswick run of Cosmos 1999 a year and more after that. The long years of scarcely any opportunity to view Space: 1999. CHSJ declining to join CBHT, CBIT, CBCT in the run of Space: 1999 in Canada's eastern Maritimes in 1983-5. Early frustration at videotaping episodes and eventually finding success with none other than "Dragon's Domain". The acquisition of all of the episodes on videotape. Success at convincing YTV to run the television series. The checkered history, mostly dark, of my involvement in fandom. My ordeal in 1995 in Canada's west. Abysmal laser videodisc manufacture. Acquisition of the entire television series on DVD and Blu-Ray. What a long road of many ups and downs it has been! What would I say to ten-year-old me were I to see him now? Stay away from Space: 1999? There have been times when I would say yes to that. However, as I face now a most dark future in my home country, I look back upon my life and do find much comfort in my experiences over the years, many, many of them oriented around Space: 1999 and my enjoyment thereof. I have no regrets anymore. My life was what it was, and I appreciate that. I wish that we could have stayed in the Miramichi, but my Fredericton years, school excepted, were all right, all in all. And at times, rather better than just all right. I would trade what I am facing now for any of those old times. Heck, I would not even carp at having to be in school again.
I am continuing to do work on improving images. "Dr. Jerkyl's Hide" images on The Bugs Bunny/Road Runner Hour Page and "Hyde and Hare": An Overlooked Masterpiece have undergone some improvement via digital paintbrush.
All for today.
Saturday, September 18, 2021.
Forty-five years ago today, at 2 P.M., I saw the Space: 1999 episode, "The Metamorph". It was an overcast and rainy Saturday not unlike this one. I was seated in my favourite living room chair in our Douglastown home, our gorgeous Douglastown home, and was swept away into far feaches of space as I beheld for the first time an otherworld envisaged by the science fiction/fantasy opus that was Space: 1999. It looked so real, so very real, there on my living room colour television. A planet of volcanoes and sweeping vistas of rock, over which passed the Eagle spaceship. It was captivating. My first glimpse of a live-action production's rendering of an alien landscape. Words cannot adequately describe the impressions that I was having. I certainly was not on the lookout for flaws on which I could pin some ribbon of dishonour for the makers of what I was seeing. I was bedazzled and disturbed by the episode, as I felt full empathy for the plight in which Alpha found itself at the hands of Mentor, whose biological computer, beautiful and fascinating in appearance, was doing some horrific damage to the minds of anyone who was forced into rapport with it. It was one of my ten most affecting television viewing experiences, and nearer to the top of those ten than to the bottom.
I have not much more to say today. No comprehensive reviews of the Imprint Space: 1999 Blu-Ray set have to come to light yet. People on Facebook are reporting having that Blu-Ray set in their hands and sharing photographs of it. But nothing is said about the video and audio quality of the episodes, or even how the bonus features are distributed within the set. I still am unwilling to part with my money until I have comparisons of the episodes in their various Blu-Ray releases. And know that the episodes look and sound at least as good as they do in the Network Space: 1999 sets.
All for now.
Friday, September 24, 2021
All right. Here it is. My curiosity finally overcame me. I have bought the Imprint Space: 1999 Blu-Ray set. If the box set has disappointing episode film-to-video transfers and has not improved on the audio of numerous episodes, I will sell it; the Imprint sets are in limited distribution in North America and may be a collector's item of some significant value. I just want to see and to hear what the Blu-Ray set is like. I will of course review it extensively here at my Weblog.
So, the Imprint Space: 1999 Blu-Ray box set is en route to me. It should be in my possession by late next week. I ordered it from Amazon.uk, and a week's wait tends to be the norm when products are shipped to me from British Amazon. Even when premium shipping is selected, and that is always the choice of shipping option to which I hew where Space: 1999 is concerned.
Some information has come to light about the Imprint set. The episodes are the same film-to-video transfers used by Network. No knowing, though, if the Shout! Factory tweaks to the episodes' detail and contrast will be ported to the Imprint Blu-Rays. The audio defaults to the 5.1, which is preferable to the Shout! default to mono. And the "movies", apart from Destination: Moonbase Alpha, look awful. Cosmic Princess switches to footage from episodes-proper "The Metamorph" and "Space Warp" for most of its length, as the video quality of the "movie" itself in its 1981 edit, is so atrocious. These "movies" could be reconstructed from scratch using high definition elements as Invasion: UFO was done by Network in 2016. But I guess that no one had the budget or the will or both to do such work. The "movies" are of scant importance to me, anyway.
I will review the set when I have it in my hands.
If my father were still alive today, it would by his ninety-third birthday today.
Wednesday, September 30, 2021.
The Imprint Space: 1999 Blu-Ray box set is now in my possession. It arrived at my doorstep on Tuesday. Since then. I have had occasion to watch a somewhat sizable amount of its content, and I now am in a position to write a preliminary review of it.
Bill Hunt at The Digital Bits has forestalled this review, yesterday penning a detailed analysis of the Imprint Blu-Ray box set. I do not appreciate his slurring of Season 2 and choose not to provide a Hyperlink to his review. A search engine will doubtless suffice for persons wishing to find that review. It is, in any case, not very informative as to the audio and video quality of episodes and extra features. For that, I trust that my review will still have value, to not be redundant, or a vain echo.
All right. Here goes.
I will begin by saying that the Network Distributing Blu-Rays of 2010 (for Season 1) and 2015 (for Season 2) continue to be the gold standard for presentation of the episodes. The Imprint set is much better than the Shout! set with regard to the look of the episodes, each of the episodes that I have watched ("Dragon's Domain", "The Infernal Machine", "The Rules of Luton", "New Adam New Eve", "Seed of Destruction", "The AB Chrysalis", and "Ring Around the Moon") with contrast and detail almost precisely matching such on the Network Blu-Rays. However, from a comparison between the Imprint and Network offerings of "Ring Around the Moon" (I watched it with Scott Michael Bosco's audio commentary activated), I noted a distinct difference in picture vibrance, Network being the better in this regard. As to audio, which I was most earnest about finding some improvement with the Imprint set, the annoying "warble" in the audio of certain episodes is still present in most cases, as is the muffling of music or foley in episodes such as "Seed of Destruction" and the faulty joins between main introduction and start of "hook" in numerous Season 2 episodes, a small portion of music from start of "The Exiles" being heard, on the mono track. I judge this much to be "a draw" for the Network and Imprint sets. I will say, though, that, to my ears, the 5.1 audio is more satisfing with the Imprint on a couple of episodes, "The Rules of Luton" among them. I can better hear the music accompanying Maya's memories of Psychon in "The Rules of Luton". But it still "warbles" and is still less than satisfying in its audibility. On the other hand, a "warble" in the audio at start of "The Infernal Machine", present on all other Space: 1999 Blu-Ray sets since 2010, is now gone. It could be that someone gave special attention to that particular issue and made improvement. I suspect that the producers of the Imprint set are preferential to first season, if the lack of any second season images on the outer box is any indication. These are the only advantages that I can discern so far with the Imprint set. Visually, the episodes are more vibrant and thus more satisfying on the Network Blu-Rays.
As to the bonus features. Oh, dear. Someone made a bizarre decision to divide the "These Episodes" documentary into fifteen segments, each of them specific to a particular episode, and spread them across the five Blu-Rays containing the first season episodes. The lovely main introduction to "These Episodes" is gone, as are the end credits. Worse still, the upscale of "These Episodes" on the Imprint set is atrocious. Digital aliasing and shimmer and compression artifacts on the details of the Eagles and even on people's eyes. The upscale on the Shout! set is far superior. Almost no aliasing or artifacts. Imagine that. The Shout! set actually has an "edge" over the Imprint. All around, the presentation of "These Episodes" on the Imprint set is disappointing. Such a pity, for "These Episodes" is the crown jewel of the bonus features produced to date for Space: 1999 on shiny digital videodisc. And I was expecting three of the four "movies" to look awful, and they certainly do. There is a fluttery video noise on Alien Attack on the main introduction and Lunar Commission scenes. There are noticeable jumps to a slightly superior video source for most of the "movie". However, the editor failed to remove a view of Simmonds as the Meta signals were being heard in Main Mission after the Commission Chairman has said that Simmonds has been reported to have died. The "movie" begins with the ITC logo of the 1990s with a horrible amount of video noise. Surely to God there must be a much cleaner video source for that. Cosmic Princess is mostly a piecing together of sections of "The Metamorph" and "Space Warp" with their original audio, reverting to much inferior elements of the actual "movie" when John and Tony are watching the alien spaceship Captain's recording and at the end of the "movie" as it segues from Maya saying that she feels like having ridden the tail of a comet to closing credits. Similar editing was done to Journey Through the Black Sun, though the difference in quality between the video sources is a tad more subtle.
I have not watched "Memories of Space" yet, but I expect to see the same deficient video as is noted with "These Episodes". The student film from 1976 looks to be of the same quality on the Imprint set as with the Network second season set. Photograph galleries for Season 1 episodes have the "cool" "This Episode" card before them, together with titles in the same font as seen in the episodes (the Shout! set inexplicably removed all of these from the photograph galleries), but they lack the vibrance of the Network Blu-Rays.
The menus on the Imprint sets are the most spartan that I have seen to date for any release of Space: 1999 on DVD and Blu-Ray. Even the A & E DVDs had better menus. After the copyright notice, company logos, and a disclaimer, there is a "hard cut" (i.e. not even so much as a "fade-in") to the menu options on a representation of the Alphan communications post, with a hissy audio and some exceedingly faint traces of dialogue and sound effects. On the Season 2 menus, the sound of Psyche can be faintly heard. I scratch my head most perplexedly. What a shoddy effort! Could there not at least have been some music? Or some animation of the Alphan corridors leading to a communication post? For SPACE: 1999 ULTIMATE EDITION as this set is stated to be on its outer box, this is an inexcusably lackluster component to the product. It is as if menu quality did not occur to the producers of the set until a deadline was upon them.
And I can confirm that the Fanderson Space: 1999 Documentary extracts are missing from the Imprint set. I would guess that Imprint could not come to a monetary agreement with Fanderson for the use of those extracts. Unfortunately, this plus the missing "Message From Moonbase Alpha" and a few other items means that the Imprint set is short of being truly "ultimate". Is it worth the price tagged onto the set? That would depend, I guess, on how much one wants to have some improved audio on one or two episodes, and whether audio commentaries from the A & E sets are to one's desire on Blu-Ray. If I had known all that I have noted here, would I have bought the Imprint set? I doubt it. Certainly not for a price of between 200 and 300 dollars.
I will review the Imprint set further in days ahead.
Saturday, October 2, 2021.
On Saturday, October 2, 1976 at 2 o'clock in the afternoon, I saw the Space: 1999 episode, "Journey to Where", for the first time. My recall of that sunny autumn afternoon in the Miramichi region and my television viewing experience of Space: 1999 in our living room is still vivid.
I have watched more of the Imprint Space: 1999 set and propose to append my earlier review this week some more observations. The majority of them do reinforce my contention that the Network Distributing Blu-Rays continue to be the best.
I have watched "Dorzak", "Devil's Planet", and "The Metamorph" on Imprint Blu-Ray. "Dorzak" looked gorgeous, but it also does on the Network Blu-Ray release. I discerned a slightly lesser amount of detail in the video of this episode on the Imprint Blu-Ray, specifically on the Alphan tunics, and it looked like the blacks could have been inkier. And with "Devil's Planet", vibrance is greater with the Network Blu-Ray, and blacks definitely are more inky and satisfying with Network. Film damage in the scene of the Eagle approaching Ellna near start of episode and at the very start of Act 1 as the episode title is shown, is less noticeable wih Network because of inkier blacks. And there are digital artifacts around Ellna as the Eagle approaches Entra and the writer and director credits are shown that are far more evident on the Imprint Blu-Ray; the inkier blacks on the Network disguise some of the artifacts. "The Metamorph" also had something of a vibrance deficit, and had less inky blacks. Video quality was a Network win in all of these cases. However, the audio is more satisying on all three episodes on the Imprint Blu-Ray release. Especially with "The Metamorph". More satisfying, but not so much so that I am prepared to forego the superior video quality of the Network in favour of watching the Imprint for better audio.
I did watch "Memories of Space" on Imprint and did not see the same video problems that exist on "These Episodes" in the fractured Imprint version thereof. "Memories of Space" looked as acceptable an upscale as it does on the Shout! Space: 1999 release. So, I will recant my stated expectation as regards "Memories of Space" in my review of the Imprint set earlier this week. I would guess that Imprint did its own upscale of "These Episodes" after splitting it into fifteen segments spread across five of the Blu-Ray discs, while the "Memories of Space" upscale was ported from the Shout! release.
Delving further into the bonus features on the sixth Season 1 Blu-Ray disc, I also sat through the Clapperboard One inteview with Gerry Anderson. Sadly, no work has been done to upgrade the video of that since its first inclusion on a DVD release in 2005. The technology exists today to stabilise the colour in an old video source, removing flashing colour bars marring the picture by using video from adjacent frames. But it is not being used to improve the video quality of the Clapperboard One bonus feature. The colour bar problem is pronounced through the bulk of the interview hailing from a 1970s domestically recorded videotape. Not that the interview is particularly interesting for me as it is almost entirely focused upon Gerry Anderson's puppet productions. But it would still be desirable to have it in the best possible quality.
More to come on the Imprint set.
Sunday, October 3, 2021.
The competition between the Network and Imprint Space: 1999 Blu-Ray sets is starting to turn in Imprint's favour. I have watched "Mission of the Darians" and "Death's Other Dominion" and found that the Imprint was superior to the Network in both video and audio with those episodes. Blacks were inkier with the Imprint, and, in the case of "Mission of the Darians", there was a more acceptable amount of grain in some scenes of the Darian spaceship's corridors. A "warble" in the music during the reveal of the Phoenix in "Death's Other Dominion" is less noticeable on the Imprint. I do not know. It could be that my eyes are becoming more adjusted to the look of the episodes on the Imprint and are starting to show bias for that, as opposed to the Network. One thing that is not going to move into the Imprint "camp" is the quality of "These Episodes". The aliasing and shimmer over the details of the S.S. Daria in the "Mission of the Darians" "These Episodes" segment is awful. Horrible. I cannot fathom how anyone could have judged it to be acceptable.
Wednesday, October 6, 2021.
The competition between the Network and Imprint Space: 1999 Blu-Ray sets is now being won by the Imprint. I watched several more episodes, including "Force of Life", "The Beta Cloud", "Space Warp", "A Matter of Balance", "The Lambda Factor", "War Games", "The Troubled Spirit", and "End of Eternity", and Imprint was the clear victor in almost every case. "Space Warp" was a "draw". Network had a vibrance "edge" with "End of Eternity". Likewise with "The Troubled Spirit". And blacks for "The Troubled Spirit" were marginally better with the Network. All of the other episodes aforementioned in this paragraph looked better with the Imprint set. "Force of Life", especially so. Much inkier blacks and a higher contrast ratio made it much, much more visually satisfying. Inkier blacks are present on "The Beta Cloud", "A Matter of Balance", "The Lambda Factor", and "War Games" on the Imprint. Audio quality of all of these episodes is either equal to or better than that of Network.
So, I gave my endorsement to the Imprint set, with reservations regarding "These Episodes" and quibbles regarding menus, and I would recommend it to a North American aficionado of Space: 1999, as it is region-free. The best arrangement for a Space: 1999 fan of North American residence is the Imprint set combined with the bonus Blu-Ray disc form the Shout! Factory set (for a quality rendering of "These Episodes", and the two Space: 1999 Documentary extracts). I am pleased to have the Imprint set for its region-free condition, as I may someday find myself without multi-region playback capability.
I would mention that there are photographs of Johnny Byrne and Christopher Penfold revisiting Pinewood Studios and recording their audio commentary, that were on the A & E bonus DVD, that do not appear to have been ported onto the Imprint set to accompany the Byrne and Penfold commentary. Something else to add to the list of bonus features not to have appeared post-end-of-the-A & E-era.
As regards my Website, I am working on improving title cards to the cartoons, "Claws For Alarm" and "Rabbit's Feat", on The Bugs Bunny/Road Runner Hour Page. And I have done some tweaking of an image of "Dr. Jerkyl's Hide" on McCorry's Memoirs Era 2.
Sunday, October 17, 2021.
A dark and rainy weekend. There is an ominous feel to the weather of late. It and the sirens that I am hearing now seven or eight times daily. And this does not include my sleeping hours. Fredericton has not seen a surge in crime or in traffic accidents. Nor is there a pyromaniac on the loose in the city. These sirens very, very probably are those of paramedics and ambulances going to and from people's homes or workplaces. And as to why there are so many responses by personnel of these emergency vehicles lately, I can speculate and probably would be right. All that I will say is that something is different this year. Something medical. Now, what could it be?
I have recently been working on improving some cartoon title cards on The Bugs Bunny/Road Runner Hour Page. Specifically the ones for "Mad as a Mars Hare", "Hare Trimmed", "Double or Mutton", "Claws For Alarm", and "Rabbit's Feat". The most significant improvements have been to the last two of these. I did quite a lot of digital paintwork on those two title cards, removing ghosting, colour bleed, and digital compression artifacts, and increased vibrance, lightness, and contrast. My Website may not be much longer for this world, but I continue to ameliorate it.
I also had the sad task of adding another actor, Brian Osborne, to the In Memoriam section of The Space: 1999 Page. He was Mr. Potter in "A Matter of Balance". Another death that I must announce with the profoundest sadness is that of David H. DePatie, business partner of Friz Freleng in DePatie-Freleng Enterprises. He was 91 years-old. A good innings. Without his initiative in the creation of a new cartoon production company after the closure of the Warner Brothers cartoons studio and his partnership with Friz Freleng and the hiring of much of Mr. Freleng's talented staff, the character of the Pink Panther as has been known since 1964, would not have come about. I had so much pleasure at many a time in my life watching the cartoons of DePatie-Freleng. I salute Mr. DePatie in his import in bringing to cartoon life so many impressve characters, from the Panther to the Inspector to the Ant and Aardvark.
Rest in peace, gentlemen.
I am continuing to watch the Imprint Space: 1999 Blu-Rays. "Breakaway", "Matter of Life and Death", "The Taybor", and "Brian the Brain" are some of the episodes that I have recently watched on those Blu-Rays. In every one of these cases, Imprint wins against Network on video, with inkier blacks and better contrast. However, audio "lets the side down" with "The Taybor". I found the music at times to be muffled, including the effervescent passage of music in the epilogue. I must award to Network the nod for best audio with regard to "The Taybor". Network is still in contention.
And "The Immunity Syndrome", "Journey to Where", "All That Glisters", "The Exiles", "One Moment of Humanity", "Collision Course", "The Full Circle", "The Seance Spectre", both parts of "The Bringers of Wonder", and "The Testament of Arkadia" (with Sylvia Anderson audio commentary). In none of these cases does Imprint lag behind Network. Video and audio are either better with Imprint or the same with Imprint as with Network. I am noticing a sharper image with increased contrast on close-ups of Helena and other female characters than I was accustomed-to with Network. It could be that some tweaking was done to counter a soft focus used by camera on the female characters, most especially Helena. Or maybe my eyes are tricking me. My fifty-five-year-old eyes. I am an older man now, it distresses me to say.
Earlier this week, I also undertook the unpleasant task of listening to the entirety of Anthony Taylor's audio commentary on "The Metamorph". I guess that I was feeling masochistic. It was as difficult to listen-to as I expected it to be, judging from what I had heard of its first few minutes in my abortive experiencing of it in summer of 2019. Between statements about Anouska Hempel having been in UFO and Brian Blessed being in Flash Gordon (who in following of science fiction/fantasy does not know that?), there are attacks on the story elements as all being nonsensical and dismissable, irascible pointings of finger at alleged deficiencies of technical production, and vilifying of Fred Freiberger and tiresome regurgitating of the more-monsters-and-then-no-monsters diktats of Abe Mandell that Gerry Anderson moaned about in just about every interview and audio commentary that he did. I would respond to the attacks upon the story elements, and someday if I feel like doing so, I will. Not today. I am feeling too depressed and unmotivated today, to venture into writing a response to the cantankerous and specious effort at demolishing of Season 2 Space: 1999's establishing episode. One will see how I feel about doing that in days to come.
I have also been watching the new Blu-Ray of the 1967 Doctor Who serial, "The Evil of the Daleks", that I bought in late September. The animation quality of the lost six of the seven episodes of said serial, is of a higher standard of quality than what has been seen in other recent releases to Blu-Ray of Doctor Who serials devastated by the BBC junkings. And I am looking forward to the Blu-Ray of "Galaxy 4" coming next month. Three of its four episodes will be animated.
All for today.
Thursday, October 28, 2021.
Although I have been spending most of my time of late preparing for a cold, dark winter, my Website has received some significant attention. I have completed work on improving cartoon title cards for "Claws for Alarm" and "Rabbit's Feat" on The Bugs Bunny/Road Runner Hour Page, and work also on the cartoon title cards for "Whoa, Be-Gone!" and "Out and Out Rout" on same Web page. And, more importantly, I have added to the Cartoons Shown On... lists for 1984-5 The Bugs Bunny/Road Runner Show and 1985-6's Bugs Bunny/Looney Tunes Comedy Hour and written a new paragraph on summer of 1986 episodes of Bugs Bunny/Looney Tunes Comedy Hour. I have been in contact again with Frank Rey of Florida, who has recently acquired more videotape-recordings of numerous episodes of The Bugs Bunny/Road Runner Show's final season and Bugs Bunny/Looney Tunes Comedy Hour, and he has generously provided to me a list of everything in the episodes that he now has. Further, he is going to be providing me with screen captures of many more moving-graphic cartoon titles for both television programmes. When I have them, they will be new additions to the Bugs Bunny/Road Runner supplemental image gallery and the Bugs Bunny/Looney Tunes Comedy Hour section of The Other Television Shows Starring the Warner Brothers Cartoon Characters. Stay Tooned.
I have also done some corrections to text in my Era 1 memoirs and in certain of my television listings Web pages. Even after so many, many years, I continue to discover previously undetected errors in my writing of these Web pages. Each new update brings my work closer to that elusive state of perfection.
I have now watched every Space: 1999 episode in the Imprint Blu-Ray box set bar six, them being "Black Sun", "Earthbound", "Missing Link", "The Last Sunset", "Voyager's Return", and "The Mark of Archanon". All bonus features have also now been seen by my eyes, including the "movies". I watched Destination: Moonbase Alpha a few nights ago. It may be in High Definition, but it looks very "ropey", the colour timing constantly fluctuating. Enough to be impossible to notice and downright annoying. Stabilising of colour is something easily done by today's technology, and for the bulk of the movie, footage of "The Bringers of Wonder" from the existing high-quality High Definition film-to-video transfers could have been substituted for what was there in the film print of the "movie". It would have required some work, of course. But film preservation and restoration always does. Actually, the only things of interest in the "movies" are what is not in the episodes-proper. A documentary on the "movies" could have incorporated that. No need to offer the full "movies". And in any case, for most of Alien Attack, Journey Through the Black Sun, and Cosmic Princess, we are not seeing the "movies" as they were originally formulated. Just a mish-mash of footage of noticeably variable video quality. All in all, though, I give the Imprint set my kudos as the superior one amongst the three consisting of it, the Network set, and the Shout! Factory. And if I sit a few feet away from my television screen, the deficiencies in the look of the segments of These Episodes are not as evident and are tolerable.
For now, I still have a job, but it is not looking good at all post-Christmas. When the time comes in March for me to pay for this Website for a further year, my financial condition may be very tenuous, especially if I am unemployed and the cost of groceries has surged into the stratosphere. Or I lose my bank account. Persecution of "the unvaccinated" may be full-throttle come March. I would advise my readers to download everything on my Website and retain it for posterity.
Sunday, November 7, 2021.
Even as my Website traffic continues to more and more disappoint, I continue working on updating of its Web pages.
New screen captures of 1984-5 Bugs Bunny/Road Runner Show motion-graphic cartoon titles have now been added to the Bugs Bunny/Road Runner Hour supplemental image gallery. Twenty-seven in total. All of them courtesy of Frank Rey with my highest gratitude. As all of them are from videotape-recordings of microwave television broadcasts, I had to work on a majority of them to eliminate ghosting, colour bleeding, distortion due to videotape dropout, et cetera. I transferred superior quality renderings of characters and copyright information from other cartoon titlings onto these and used digital paint on the cartoon title text. The image improvement work is incomplete at this time. The titlings to "Claws in the Lease", "No Parking Hare", and "Scent-imental Romeo" need more work, which I will undertake this coming week.
I have enough cartoon titles to do another set of nine, but most of those require more labour to remove ghosting than I have had to do on others. "Dr. Devil and Mr. Hare". "A Bird in a Bonnet". "Fowl Weather". "Ain't She Tweet". "Tweet Tweet Tweety". "Lovelorn Leghorn". "Pop 'im Pop!". And some others have problematic dropout. Dropout that presents an arduous challenge for me to remove. "Dr. Jerkyl's Hide". "Don't Give Up the Sheep". It may be quite some time before these cartoon titlings appear in the image gallery.
I have now watched everything in the Imprint Space: 1999 Blu-Ray set. All episodes. All bonus features. I also watched "The Taybor" again and this time found the music to be much better in audibility. It seems that my Blu-Ray player favours certain components to the 5.1 audio, and each time that a Blu-Ray disc is given a spin, the components favoured differs. My final verdict is that video problems and editing choices with "These Episodes" aside, and apart also from the less than impressive menus, the Imprint set is the one to have, if one wishes to possess only the most comprehensive release.
On the subject of "These Episodes" in the Imprint set, I found the end credits to them after the featurette on "The Testament of Arkadia". So, all that is missing of "These Episodes" in the Imprint is its main opening. A pity.
My word! Mail and courier services have fallen by the wayside as the pandemic continues on and on and on. I ordered the new Blu-Ray of Kolchak- The Night Stalker from Amazon.ca. Orders from Amazon.ca used to reach me within three to four days. I had to wait nearly three weeks for this shipment. I have other parcels shipped a month ago from the U.S. and Europe that, from the tracking information, do not appear to be close to reaching Fredericton. In fact, tracking information has been stalled since late October. And I had two other parcels that were delivered to the wrong address. Fortunately, the people onto whose steps they were erroneously deposited, brought them to my door.
And I bought Universal's new Blu-Ray release of The Incredible Hulk television series. I had to order it from Amazon.com, as Amazon.ca did not have it in stock. It still has not shipped even after nearly a week since my order was confirmed. And when it does, I will have a long, long wait, no doubt.
Everything is collapsing as this pandemic continues, continues, continues. Health care. Businesses. Economies. People's lives. People's rights and freedoms. The food supply. Even the Internet, which seems to be slow as molasses these days. Some people are saying that this is by design. I am not sure what to believe. I do not wish to be branded a "conspiracy theorist" as they seem to have a much shortened life expectancy these days; SARS-CoV-2 in its most virulent variants seems to be especially partial to them, as our legacy news media loves to gleefully report.
All for today.
Thursday, November 11, 2021.
A further nine images of 1984-5 Bugs Bunny/Road Runner cartoon titling have been added to the Bugs Bunny/Road Runner Hour supplementary image gallery. The set starting with "Dr. Devil and Mr. Hare". Most of the images require some more work to bring them fully up to standard. I will labour with them in days ahead. For today and tomorrow, I propose to have a "breather" from this work. One of my eyes is bloodshot, presumably from too much screen time, and needs some rest.
Well, well, well. Just days ago, I was commenting on the video quality of the four Space: 1999 "movies" in the Imprint Space: 1999 box set and saying that High Definition versions of the "movies" could be assembled out of the existing High Definition video transfers of the episodes, as Network has done in the case of Invasion: UFO, if there was initiative to do so on the part of one of the home video companies. And lo and behold, almost as if on cue, Network Distributing now announces just this very thing. High Definition versions of the four "movies", assembled out of the existing film-to-video transfers of the relevant episodes. I knew nothing about this release until now. Honest. It is another of life's amazing coincidences. Or maybe I do have some unconscious chanelling into the unstated intentions of movers-and-shakers in the collective, at least where Space: 1999 and other works are concerned.
I will say again that, for me, the "movies" are not essential purchases, with all episodes of the television series-proper now thankfully available. But Network is piquing my interest by offering alternative, new ways of viewing the "movies", including, for the first time for Space: 1999, updated visual effects. Yes, Space: 1999 now joins Star Wars, Star Trek, and Doctor Who in having newly rendered visual effects commissioned for it. The Blu-Rays will also offer a choice of viewing the "movies" with their Super Space Theatre audio mix and the original audio as heard in the episodes-proper. And 16X9 versions of all four "movies" will be offered alongside the traditional 4X3. And there will also be an interview with David Hirsch on the making of the four "movies".
The box set of the four "movies" will also include an Italian version of one of them, it will be a five-Blu-Ray-disc set, and it will be available in a limited edition at the end of January of 2022.
Who would have thought that the four "movies" would receive such attention? I would have expected them to be shelved permanently, or at most, at very most, an obscure curio on an expensive Space: 1999 box set.
One will see how my finances are come January, and if it would be prudent then to part with my money to have these "movies", which, I say again, are not, for me, essential to have. But my curiosity about this release is at rather a high level. And when Space: 1999 is involved, my curiosity can be overpowering.
In the last several years, I have been awful at responding to e-mail. And now I am especially so, as I am mentally drained so much of the time from anxieties and worries over the pandemic and government action regarding "the jab". But I am going to undertake an effort to respond to some of the e-mail I have in my inbox. I am especially gratified to receive e-mail lauding my autobiography. A rare thing, that is. And even rarer it is for people to read the whole thing, all seven eras, with a keen eye for my recall of expeiences relating to Space: 1999 and empathy for my ordeal within the fan movement for same television show. I am resolved to responding to such e-mail.
All for today, Friday, November 19, 2021.
My eye still is quite red, and I am still refraining from working intensively on improving images of Bugs Bunny/Road Runner title cards. Most of the work is done, anyway, on the images recently added to The Bugs Bunny/Road Runner supplementary image gallery, and to Other Television Shows Starring the Warner Brothers Cartoon Characters. I just need to remove some traces of ghosting in the text in a few of them. Frank Rey has also sent to me a title card for "Cheese Chasers", and I will dedicate myself in days to come to ameliorating the image of such to remove ghosting. This weekend, I have added two images of James Bond 1992 videocassette covers to McCorry's Memoirs Era 6. They are amongst my memories of 1992. And in McCorry's Memoirs Era 4 there are now accurate representations of the CBS-FOX videocassette covers for Thunderball and On Her Majesty's Secret Service in, respectively, 1983 and 1984. They can be found in image assemblages of videotape covers amongst my remembrances of spring of 1983 and spring of 1984. My search continues for images of things and places for my memoirs.
I see that the Space: 1999 Facebook groups have almost all gone to private viewing. And as this removes from the eyes of the general public daily displays of the incessant rancour toward Season 2 and its producer, it is a development that I welcome. Perhaps the only one today about which I can say this. Oh, the bile is still quite replete on the Internet and on the main Space: 1999 Series group still open to public view. But any reduction in the availability of it, is a good thing, nevertheless, in my estimation.
Sunday, November 28, 2021.
Sunday, December 19, 2021.
The darkest time of the year, this is. I am always glad to be past the winter solstice, gaining daylight every day. Just another couple of days, and the northern half of the globe will be on that desirable "other side".
So far, Fredericton has not experienced a signficant snowfall this cold season. I have not had to spend any money yet on snow removal. I pray that this good fortune continues into January.
Spider-Man: No Way Home looks like it is going to be nothing less than awesome. Alas, I will not be able to see it until it is on Blu-Ray. Even if I was allowed in a movie theatre, I would not be comfortable walking into one.
In the post-2020 world, the experiencing of a new movie has altered. Now, if one is among the designated lepers of society, because one is justifiably fearful of an adverse reaction, possibly fatal, to a proved dangerous medical injection, one is not permitted to set foot in a cinema. If indeed it is possible for one to feel reasonably safe (from the virus) in doing so. I cannot say that I would feel thus, but that is not "the point". The option of going into a cinema has been removed from one who is judged to be a dirty, "unvaccinated" sack of human excrement. Yes, even though there is clear evidence of virus infection and distribution among persons who are deemed "clean". I know that these restrictions upon the "un-jabbed" are not to do with health, not to do with limiting spread of SARS-CoV-2, but with punishing people for medical choice, for being afraid of losing life or long-term health, for fearing being among the tens of thousands (at least) of people to suffer an advrse reaction to an injection that, with no long-term safety data, is still technically experimental.
The way that one who is an undesirable now experiences a movie is to watch leaked videos of key scenes from the movie, read the synopsis of the movie on Wikipedia, and wait five months or more for the Blu-Ray. This is how I am experiencing Spider-Man: No Way Home. I am seeing videos from people's cellular telephones of numerous scenes in the movie. And hearing the audience reactions. This is the closest that I will ever come to seeing the very best Spider-Man movie ever (so the reviews are saying) in a theatre.
January 5, 2022.
Well, I have reached my fifty-sixth birthday.
I bought the Space: 1999 Technical Operations Manual from the Gerry Anderson Store. It is en route to me now. I would have liked to have had it in my hands as a birthday present, but it will be here soon. It is coming by first-class courier. The Doctor Who Season 17 box set, that arrived at my door last Friday, will have to suffice as my birthday present. Not the most laudable season of Doctor Who, though "City of Death" is sublime. A sparkling jewel amidst the rough. I do not say so only because Julian Glover and Catherine Schell are in it, though their presence certainly does elevate my enjoyment and appreciation of it. It is a gripping and highly imaginative story. I have always liked "Destiny of the Daleks", mostly due to the production values and the chemistry between Tom Baker and Lalla Ward. The balance of the season does not excite me much, though it always raises an eyebrow to see footage from Space: 1999 (i.e. the surface of planets Retha, Piri, and Terra Nova) in "The Nightmare of Eden". Actually, I have yet to see one of my favourite seasons of Doctor Who on Blu-Ray. Season 8 excepted, it has been a less than enthralling series of DOCTOR WHO- THE COLLECTION Blu-Ray releases so far for me. The releases of individual 1960s serials of Doctor Who with animation for missing episodes, have been rather more gratifying for me over the past two years.
I will write a review of the Space: 1999 Technical Operations Manual when I have it. Sometime next week, I expect.
January 8, 2022.
Arriving yesterday just before New Brunswick was in the grip of its first major snowstorm of this winter was the Space: 1999 Moonbase Alpha Technical Operations Manual. Here is the front cover of it.
As things transpired, this birthday gift's arrival was only a couple of days short of my birthday.
The book is a thing of exquisite beauty. It is written as to be within the Space: 1999 universe as a canonical document, provided to every member of the Moonbase personnel when she/she begins tour of duty. With addenda for updates over the course of the Moon's odyssey post-September 13, 1999. Every spaceship, Lunar vehicle, Moonbase section, piece of personnel equipment, and uniform receives extensive illustrative and textual attention. Same for most of the characters. There is also a section on alien life and technology referencing specific episodes, in articles written by executive Alphans (Koenig, Russell, Bergman, Maya). I may quibble with some of the explanations for the disappearance of characters such as Ouma, Bergman, and Morrow, but I do praise most highly the work put into this project. I would never have thought I would see anything like this, twenty-three years after the Moon was envisaged as being blasted out of Earth orbit. For as long as one is allowed to possess anything, I whole-heartedly recommend this book. Its cover's orange colour rather closely matches the orange of the Imprint Space: 1999 Blu-Ray set. Rather a nice "touch", whether intended or no.
January 12, 2022.
The Space: 1999 Page is updated to add Gary Waldhorn to the In Memoriam section (he, sadly, died this week) and to now include paragraphs on the supporting cast of Seasons 1 and 2. And my Era 2 memoirs now have images of the cartoons, "Piker's Peak" and "The Dixie Fryer", in my rememberings of the Bugs Bunny/Road Runner Hour broadcasts of January, 1974. There is also a photograph of me in our living room in 1972, together with a photograph of the back road of my neighbourhood in Douglastown and an image of Huckleberry Hound. They can be found early in my Era 2 memoirs.
New Brunswick is in the grip of the coldest weather of the winter so far. There was a snowstorm last Friday, and it is nothing but negative numbers for high temperatures for the days to come. Forecasts of this winter being mild in Canada's eastern Maritimes are clearly wrong. I have to return to work tomorrow.
There is nothing "in the pipeline" on Blu-Ray for purchasing in the coming three months, which is quite okay for me as it enables me to invest in my stockpile of groceries and household supplies. I am expecting 2022 to be a fallow year for releases of entertainments of interest to me on physical media. Spider-Man: No Way Home will be released on Blu-Ray near the end of April. If I still have money to spend and I am not dead or imprisoned then for declining to be "jabbed", I will buy that Blu-Ray. By the way, I have now seen at least three-quarters of No Way Home. Only a few minor scenes here and there remain elusive. And I know what happens in those scenes. I guess that I can say that I have effectively seen the movie.
I am not planning to buy the Space: 1999 "movies" released by Network Distributing at the end of this month. I have the episodes-proper and I have unrestored versions of the four "movies" in the Imprint Space: 1999 set. I am satisfied with that. Now that I cannot see the Space: 1999 Facebook groups, which have gone private, I am unlikely to be tempted to buy the Network Space: 1999 "movies". This time, I do not believe that I will waver. But one will see. One will see.
All for today.
I have received my annual renewal notification from HostPapa with regard to my Website. Although I have been disappointed of late with traffic to most of my Web pages, I will go ahead with maintaining my Website for another year.
Word is that the Space: 1999 "movies" on the Network Distributing Blu-Rays have been altered, replacing 2100 with 1999 in the preamble of a couple of them, and eliminating the International Lunar Commission scenes specially made for the "movie", Alien Attack, such that that "movie" is not anything more than two episodes fused together with a "movie" introduction and end credit sequence. All the more reason for me to judge these Blu-Rays as non-essential purchases, and especially so in a time when I am striving to live as frugally as possible.
Thursday, February 3, 2022.
I have read some more reviews of the Network release of the Space: 1999 Super Space Theatre "movies". There is a faithful recreation of Alien Attack with the Lunar Commission scenes included in High Definition. I am starting to be tempted to make the purchase. A fusing of the Imprint set of the television series-proper with Network's set of the "movies" would be the ultimate Space: 1999 Blu-Ray collection. Though the way that things are going, I might have a long, long, long wait for the package from Network to reach my door. Actually, I would have to go to the Post Office to sign for it and probably pay import fees. These days, there are import fees on everything. I do not know. I still am not totally induced into making the purchase. Money is "tight" right now.
February 11, 2022.
Monday, February 14, 2022.
More clarification on the Network Distributing Super Space Theatre Space: 1999 Blu-Ray set. The discussions on it that I read, at Blu-Ray Forum, a couple of weeks ago were stating some erroneous things. There are multiple versons of the movies on the Blu-Rays, and faithful assemblies of the original edits of the movies, including the Lunar Commission scenes, are present in the box set. And I have seen some screen captures of the newly rendered visual effects, some of which are distinct improvements over lacklustre efforts in the original visual effects (such as the two-dimensional, "cardboard cut-out" Eagles in "War Games"). All of them look magnificent, very much in keeping with the aesthetic of the television series, and in many cases add scope and cogent, episode-specific milieux to scenes that had hitherto been just spaceships on black velvet with the occasonal star spec. There are even glimpses of Alpha rooms, ceilings, wall panels, and screens inside the windows of Moonbase. Subtle, not ostentatious. Not like the extravagant, punch-one-in-the-face effects of Star Trek Remastered. Very tastefully done.
Here are some of said screen captures. All of them are from Alien Attack. Widescreen version.
I recommend this box set to anyone who wishes to have a comprehensive collection of Space: 1999 and alternate, fresh ways of watching certain of the episodes, and I am prepared to buy a set for myself. As I say, it will probably be a long, long wait for it, alas, with what is happening now in Canada in addition to the already existing pandemic slowings of the movement of mail.
A truly comprehensive Space: 1999 collection will be coming my way.
All for today.
This week, I have received confirmation of the acceptance of payment for renewal of my Website on HostPapa for the next twelve months. So, whatever may happen to me as a politically set-upon "unvaccinated" person in Canada, my Website should be safely available on the Internet for another year. That is provided that something that I have said in my Web pages does not bring forth the sharp, sharp blade of censorship. To avoid that, I have done a further sweep of this Weblog for political content.
The surprises keep coming with regard to Space: 1999 on home video. This week, I discovered this.
Network endeavouring to outdo Imprint in offering the most comprehensive release of Space: 1999, me thinks. Yes, it evidently does contain the restored and upgraded Super Space Theatre "movies". At a count of no less than eighteen platters, it has the most digital videodiscs of any DVD or Blu-Ray release of Space: 1999 to date. Ah, but let us look at that number of discs, with consideration of all previous Network servings of Space: 1999 in the Blu-Ray era. The 2010 Network Blu-Ray box set of Space: 1999- Season 1 had seven discs, two of them, the ones consisting entirely of value added material, being DVDs, not Blu-Rays. The 2015 Network release of Season 2 had six Blu-Ray discs. Which brings the count to thirteen digital videodiscs. Add to that the five Super Space Theatre "movie" Blu-Rays, and this brings us to eighteen. Fancy that. I have not yet lost my ability to add. I would wager that not a single new glass master was struck and that these are the exact same discs from the aforementioned Network sets. Yes, including the two DVDs from the Season 1 box set of 2010. I could be wrong, but I do not think so. This is, I feel sure, just a repackaging of the Network Space: 1999 Blu-Ray releases. With the redundancy of "The Metamorph" as a bonus on the fifth first season disc.
The Imprint set is still the best one to have, in my estimation. With the Super Space Theatre Network Blu-Rays alongside of it. Will there be a fiftieth anniversary box set of newly remastered episodes in 4K resolution in 2025? Who knows? Who knows if physical media will still be on the market by then? Who knows if the world will still exist by then (yes, I am mindful today of current events in Ukraine)? Who knows if I will be around by then, or if Canada as a free country will still exist by then (yes, I am most assuredly mindful of the events of last weekend in Ottawa)? Who bloody well knows?
For now, I am happy to have the Imprint set sitting on my shelf, and the Super Space Theatre Blu-Rays will soon join them. Soon, hopefully. It has been ten days since Network shipped the Super Space Theatre Blu-Ray set to me. There is no telling how long that I will have to wait. Hopefully not much longer.
As I expected, my wait for the delivery of the Super Space Theatre Blu-Ray set is long. The package still has not reached my door. I ordered it from Network Distributing on February 14, and it was shipped on the day after that. I am dubious of it coming today, Friday, March 4. And so, with this coming weekend added to the total number of days of the parcel in transit, that number will be twenty... and counting. No doubt, the package is being slowed by its passage through Customs Canada, and I am expecting import fees and Customs handling costs.
Two other Blu-Ray titles are going to be shipped to me this month and next. The Bad News Bears in "Breaking Training" and Doctor Who- Season 22. After that, I expect that my purchaes of home video media will be very few and very far between. I have a definite sense of foreboding as regards the state of the world and of my country. Horrible things are happening now. The world has gone from Outbreak to possibly The Day After. And Canada looks like it is being daily pushed all the more toward dystopia. And I am afraid to say any more. This morning, I did yet another sweep of my Weblog for content pertaining to Canadian politics and a certain pandemic virus.
Website updates. Not much to report on that. I have found a photograph of the cover to the VHS videotape, THE BEST OF MARVEL COMICS, which was of interest to me in first third of 1983, but it needs work to correct, to "flatten", the angle of picture of the cover. If I can bring it to an acceptable Kevin McCorry Website standard, I will add it to my Era 4 memoirs.
Viewership of my Weblog has increased in recent weeks. It has received visits from people in New Zealand, India, Kuwait, and the Philippines, in addition to parts of the United States. It could be due to the eyes of the world being on Canada after certain current events. I am fearful of saying more about this. So, I will not.
My Weblog readership has increased, while my autobiographical Web pages are experiencing the opposite of that. Probably due to there being no recent updates. When I was routinely updating my autobiography, last year and the year previous, those Web pages were having some traffic. Now, the visits to those Web pages are cratering. I am planning to do an update of my Space: 1999 Page to include notation on the Imprint set and the Super Space Theatre set. When time permits. If I can tear myself away from the current events in the world.
No new information has come my way about Network's upcoming "ultimate" Space: 1999 box set. I am holding firm to my expectation that all of the discs in the set will be from the same glass masters of the existing Network Space: 1999 Blu-Ray box sets (including two DVDs). I just cannot envisage Network creating new glass masters, for a set that may be superseded in 2025 by a fiftieth anniversary release of the television series in 4K High Definition. Will that happen? The guesses of my readers are as good as mine. Will any of us still be alive in 2025? Who knows? Who bloody well knows? I see that a nuclear power plant in Ukraine was shelled and set afire last night. Insanity! Was not Chernobyl enough? And Fukushima? It has only been eleven years since Fukushima, and here we go again.
I find myself invoking an old advertising slogan. "Calgon, take me away!"
All right. I have rambled long enough this morning. All for today, Friday, March 4, 2022. My mother died twelve years ago today.
The Super Space Theatre Space: 1999 Blu-Ray box set is now in my possession, and I have been watching the contents of it over the past couple of days. Come this weekend, after I have watched everything and have time to write a thorough review, I will do a Weblog entry providing that review. I have umbrage with some of the decisions made in the cutting of the "movies" for the widescreen "enhanced" versions but my review will not be as caveat-heavy as that of Martin Willey at Space: 1999 Catacombs. Anyway, this for another time. Assuming, of course, that I and everyone else are not nuclear shadows by then.
New updates to my Website. Both Era 3 and Era 4 of McCorry's Memoirs have been ameliorated with a videotape cover of THE BEST OF MARVEL COMICS (amongst my spring of 1983 memories in Era 4), an improved image of the cover to CBS-FOX's videotape of The Spy Who Loved Me (also among my Era 4 1983 remembrances), and (in my 1982 memories of Era 3) a more accurate image of the cover to the videotape of Dr. No that I watched in May of 1982, the first videotape played on my then new videocassette recorder. A couple of new paragraphs of text have been added to Era 4, remembring the sunny spring evening in 1983 when I acquired THE BEST OF MARVEL COMICS.
As I age, I become more and more like my father. Like him, I am now falling asleep in my chair in the evenings as I am watching a video screen. I find more and more that my attention is best in the mornings or early afternoon where watching a Blu-Ray is concerned. Part of this is no doubt due to my worry over what is happening in the world (not only is there still a pandemic and increasing totalitarianism, but World War III is closer now than ever in my lifetime) sapping me of my energy by the time that it is evening.
All for today, Thursday, March 10, 2022.
Okay. Now for my review of the Super Space Theatre Blu-Ray set.
Here goes.
Except for the opening and closing credits for Journey Through the Black Sun and Cosmic Princess, which have been recreated, the 4:3 original "movie" cuts are all utterly faithful to the "movies" as they were seen and heard in the 1980s, with all of the goofy reversed footage, incongruously inserted footage of Koenig and Bergman from another scene in the episode at a time when Simmonds was shown in the original "Breakaway" episode's denouement, stated date of 2100, excessive use of Barry Gray music from UFO, the whole nine yards. It is pleasing to have these "movies" in their initial form as representation of the "movie" edits of the episodes to "round out" my collection. The remade credits of two of the movies have some appealing visuals of Eagles with nuclear charges converging on the asteroid in the space sky above Alpha (in the "Collision Course" portion of Journey Through the Black Sun) and the Moon emerging from a space warp in the vicinity of planet Psychon (in "The Metamorph" section of Cosmic Princess). I heartily approve of those. The only complaint that I have of the four 4:3 "movie" cuts is the spelling mistakes noted by Martin Willey in the opening credits to Journey Through the Black Sun. Anthony Terpiloff's surname is misspelled, as is the word, starring, in the credit for Barry Morse. A simple proofread by a second pair of eyes ought to have detected these errors. If this were a Doctor Who Blu-Ray release, the mistakes would be corrected and a new Blu-Ray disc offered for dispatch to all who desire a corrected platter. But this is not Doctor Who. So, alas, one is going to have to just accept the faulty credits. The Lunar Commission scenes in Alien Attack look quite splendid in High Definition, and the opening credits for that "movie" look positively pristine. A restoration triumph, for sure.
There is another spelling mistake to be found in the "movies" in the set. In the widescreen version of Cosmic Princess, Jeffery Kissoon's first name is misspelled in the opening credits. I applaud including him alongside Zienia Merton in the Cosmic Princess opening credits sequence (in the same kind of split-screen effect that is used for Tony Anholt and Nick Tate), but I wish that more care had been done for correctly spelling his name, which is correctly spelled in the closing credits.
As regards the "widescreen" forms of the movies, which contain the bulk of the newly rendered material, such as the changes to visual effects, I have rather more to say. For me it is something of a "mixed bag", my reactions to the alterations. I especially fancy the perspectives of the runaway Moon traversing space between "Breakaway" and "War Games" and accompanying the narration for the openings of three of the "movies". The scale of the Moon looks so much better than it it does in the old "stock shots" of the Moon moving through space, and the new renderings of star clusters and galactic arms are gorgeous, in keeping in every way with how space was depicted in Space: 1999 in its original iteration. I also like very much the novel mixing of astral bodies from the credits of the original television series. It is most effective at presenting the universe of Space: 1999 in attractive new perspectives.
I praise most highly the new rendering of the planet Psychon with the Moon in foreground and the Psychon sun in the distance. This is, I think, the greatest triumph of the new visual effects. I would very much like to see the work of the effects artists on creating alternate depictions of planets Luton, New Earth, Planet D, and Sunim, worlds that were visualised in the original episodes by using footage of Earth as viewed from space. There is definite room for improvement there.
The battle scene upgrades in Alien Attack are all appealing to the eye and faultless. And although I did not think Koenig's erratically piloted Eagle in Destination: Moonbase Alpha warranted a replacement, the work on the newly made views of that Eagle on the Command Centre screen are admirable.
Now, having expressed these plaudits, I am afraid that I will have to join with Martin Willey in not favouring the sight of substantially increased number of stars in space, particularly individual stars outside of the magnificent star clusters, the stars that appear as white dots against the black of space. The paucity of such stars in most of the the space sky above Alpha or in accompaniment to spaceships moving through space, has always been one of the appealing facets of the Space: 1999 aesthetic for me. And one of the reasons why I always preferred Space: 1999's aesthetic over that of Star Trek or Star Wars. I prefer Space: 1999's look of space as something largely empty, a true void wherein stars are not prolific outside of some "stellar neighbourhood" oasies in the vastness of the cosmos. I suspect that I am part of a tiny minority in this regard (so what else is new, right?), but it is my prefrence. I would be okay with one or two added white dot distant stars placed as to conceal the use of multiple exposure in the original Brian Johnson visual effects. In fact, I would approve of that. But such is as far as I would be willing to go.
The newly rendered Eagles on or above the launch pads before being destroyed by Hawks in Alien Attack are seamless in their insertion into the action. And they look splendid. I am very, very impressed by that. I am rather less enamoured with the depiction of Psychon after Psyche's released energy causes that planet's extinction. I just do not like the look of it. I prefer the original murky mass of expanding "white fingers" (to quote Michael Butterworth) look of Psychon destroyed in "The Metamorph" as originally done.
In Destination: Moonbase Alpha, the new maestros of visual effects have offered a view of the Superswift with a swirl of multi-coloured light as it is on Alpha's Command Centre screen. I applaud them for the effort, but it does not work for me. The original view of the Superswift exceeding light as multi-coloured luminescence is alongside of it and in its wake, is a magnificent effect. But the multi-coloured swirls seen around the Superswift as perceived on Alpha's monitor screen are not satisfying for me. If anything, the Superswift from that angle, coming toward Alpha, should be showing Doppler Effect blueness representing its incredible speed. Of course, I know that the Superswift is an illusion, is not real. But the original choices to show just the spaceship on the monitor screen, are more to my liking than the "enhanced" alternative. The swirly colours are just not convincing.
To my surprise, one of the more egregious lapses of "War Games" was not corrected. I refer to the view of an undamaged Moonbase Alpha as numerous Eagles fly in evacuation above it (footage originally lensed for "Guardian of Piri"), right after Bergman says, "Say hello to the planet," to Koenig. Certainly, Alpha in that scene ought to have the ravaged look that it had some scenes thereafter, as the Eagle with Bergman, Morrow, Kano, and Benes was departing Alpha. I do not know if time or money was lacking in this case, or if no one noticed the lapse.
Now, then, onward to my biggest contention with the work on the widescreen versions.
Space: 1999 is not the first opus of the imagination to be graced with a upgrade in visual effects through modern computer-generated digital imaging. Star Trek, Doctor Who, and, of course, Star Wars have all seen efforts to refine their look in their special effects, improving upon what was possible at the time of their production. But the upgrade to Star Trek did stay locked to the length of the original film prints, leaving every part of the episodic "narrative" intact. Scenes were not shortened or cut completely. Some alternate cuts were done to some, a few, Doctor Who stories for DVD releases, in the offering of a widescreen "movie" experience. This was while new effects work done for the main serials was inserted into the episodes in 4:3 without removal of any span of time in any scene. And the widescreen "movies" were unpopular with the fans and promptly dropped as value-added material. And Star Wars, most controversial in its added digital effects, did not shorten or cut any scenes. Scenes were extended or digitally doctored (to add creatures, laser gun blasts, et cetera.), but not cut.
Do my readers see where I am going with this?
For these Space: 1999 "movies", deletions were done to scenes or parts of scenes for the sole purpose of removing content that a fan doing the editing, does not like. Fans often bemoan the unfortunate popping open of spacesuit visors during fight scenes on the Lunar surface. So, what is done here? A brief cutaway to a view of Helena purportedly reacting to what is happening while Nordstrom throws Steiner in "Breakaway" or the Maya creature lifts and pushes Carter onto a Lunar rock in "Space Warp". Of course, these events were not what Barbara Bain was portraying Helena as reacting-to. If I were Barbara Bain, I would object to the repurposing of my acting for a context not intended. I have to admit that when I saw these edits, I was reminded of The Bugs Bunny and Tweety Show and Merrie Melodies: Starring Bugs Bunny and Friends circa 1990 and cutaways to stills of characters during an act of violence by another character. It brought derisive laughs from cartoon aficionados at the time. I know that the purpose of cutaway is different in these Space: 1999 "movie" cases, but they nevertheless make me smile wryly while shaking my head. I really do wish that the editor could have resisted the temptation to do this. Why not just accept that the Alphan spacesuits were never designed for physical combat and that the popping open of the spacesuit visors is an "in-universe" problem? Besides, a momentary exposure to the vacuum of space would not be lethal. And it is not known what the surface temperature on the Moon is at the time of these events. It need not be absolute zero.
But my umbrage with this pales in comparison to my discovery that edits were done to the climax of "The Metamorph" to eliminate some visuals of the Maya/gorilla and also some of the explosions on the surface of Psychon. Fans have something wiggly in their brain when it comes to Maya's transformations. Especially those into monsters or apes. For whatever reason, they just cannot abide them. And so, here we see the effects of that disdain that they have for Maya's abilities to become husky creatures. Out come the scissors. I do not know why the Psychon explosions were trimmed. I guess that the editor received some "ribbing" in his youth from an associate to what was perceived to be a subpar visual effect. And... snip. The entirety of the scene of Koenig being rescued from the crashed Eagle in "The Bringers of Wonder"/Destination: Moonbase Alpha was eliminated for the widescreen version of Destination: Moonbase Alpha. Yes, really. There is a fade to black as happens at the end of the "hook" to part one of the two-part episode, and with the fade-in the crashed Eagle is shown having been being joined by a rescue Eagle, for a few seconds to establish the presence of the rescue party at the crash site, and then we see Alan and Ehrlich carrying Koenig on their shoulders across the Lunar surface whilst Helena is giving her Status Report. The thing is, we hear the footsteps of Alan and Ehrlich while the camera pans slowly from rescue Eagle to crashed Eagle, but we do not see them. It is an awkward edit. A newcomer to the events would rightly be confused as to where the sound of the footsteps is coming from as the rescue Eagle and crashed Eagle are shown. From what I understand, the scene of the rescue was cut because the editor dislikes the sight of flames inside the crashed Eagle after its airlock is opened. The oxygen in the cabin ought to have been expelled into the vacuum of space, yes. Flames ought to have been extinguished by that, not requiring the need of firefighters with their carbon dioxide gear, yes. Ah, but if the Eagle's oxygen tanks were ruptured, supplying the fire with a bountiful flow of oxygen after the airlock opened, then fire could persist. That is a possibility. It is also a possibility that the fire is an illusion projected by the aliens to slow the rescue of Koenig; they do wish him dead. And there is a further possibility that I cannot articulate without violating my pledge not to "steal thunder" from Dean. Yes, him again. Suffice it to say that the fire need not be an unmitigated "blooper" worthy of damning censure with a complete scene deletion. I really do wish that the editor could have resisted the temptation to do that. Ditto Helena donning the surgical mask as she is about to distribute the Contact Gas through Alpha. Yes, I know. The flimsy mask is not airtight. It is definitely not an N95 or a gas mask. I can "buy" that she holds her breath until she has walked into another compartment into which she has controlled the gas not to enter. Or I can just accept that the whole two-part episode has a quirky, skewed, surrealistic quality and that Helena's masking falls in line with that. The edit that was done to remove it is even clumsier than that of the Eagle fire. We hear Helena putting the mask on her face while footage of Bartlett and Alan at the Waste Dome is seen, and then there is an abrupt cut to Helena's hand operating an atmosphere control panel to release the gas into Alpha. We do not see the gas canister being attached to the valve. It is very plain to a casual viewer that some unseemly tinkering was being performed in the editing.
Honestly, if this is what the fans would like to see done to the whole of the television series, count me out. I like some, maybe most, of the upgrades to the special effects, but leave the scissors off of the on-set scenes.
Really, I do not wish to harp on this to a great degree. It really pales in importance to what is happening in the world. But I do not agree with the cutting of the episodes in the "movies" to remove whole scenes or parts of scenes for no reason other than a fan's dislike of how something is depicted. I am referring to scenes as they were intended by the writer, director, producer, and not to a momentary crew-or-equipment-visible "blooper" like a clapperboard or microphone or stage hand's arm in film frame, or wires on spaceships, i.e. things never intended to be in an episode, things whose removal I would be in agreement with, in accordance with the original intent of the production. I accept and applaud the digital removal of clapperboard, microphone, edge of set, wires, and so forth. But not things originally intended to be in scenes in the episodes.
Okay. I think that I have harangued enough on this subject this A.M..
It is a blustery morning, with wind-chills like those routine for January. Yesterday was a rainy day. I am not having my usual walks for this time of year, and I have not been as physically active this year as I have been in the past, fearing falling on ice and hurting myself. The last place where I want to be these days is the hospital. I have also been indulging myself with food treats in recent weeks in an effort to stave off depression. The result is that I have been gaining weight. Not a positive development, especially at my age. I am at about the same age now that my father was at before his cardiovascular problems. I am going to have to diet, and pray that warmer weather is just around the corner.
New additions to my autobiography. A set of images representing my time in Ottawa in May of 1983. Front cover to the Star Trek videotape with episodes "Balance of Terror" and "The City On the Edge of Forever", pictures of Burger King, the Chateau Laurier dining room, and the Parliament Buildings, and a photograph of stacked Space: 1999 paperbacks. Also some additional text regarding my Ottawa, May, 1983 experiences. And an improved image of the front cover to the CBS-FOX The Spy Who Loved Me videotape. All of this is in my Era 4 memoirs amongst my early-to-mid-1983 rememberings.
Well, the blue planet called Earth is closer to World War III than it has ever been in my lifetime. Yet, my anxiety level was already at extreme before the Russia-Ukraine situation this year. Not just due to the pandemic but media "spin" and government action, both demonstrable and possible. This is not the world I knew for five decades of my life. It has turned into a very ugly place populated by very ugly people with very, very ugly inclinations. We were already in a very dark place before Russia invaded Ukraine. I am not sure that there is a way out of any of it now, without some divine intervention. A miracle. I know what the Bible had to say on the subject of "the last days". But Jesus is not expected to return until after Armageddon. Intervention by Him at this stage was not ordained, not by the Bible.
All that I can do is to hope that the coming of spring has a positive effect on people's psyches, and that somehow "cooler" heads will prevail and the tensions in eastern Europe will subside.
All for today, Sunday, March 13, 2022.
Thursday, March 17, 2022.
Peter Bowles died today. I have added him to the In Memoriam section of The Space: 1999 Page. He had a long history of guest appearances in episodes of British television shows. In addition to his portrayal of Balor in Space: 1999's "End of Eternity", he was in The Prisoner (episode "A. B. and C"), The Avengers (episode "Escape in Time"), The Adventures of Black Beauty (episode "Wild Justice"), and the opening episode, "The Fourth Horseman", of BBC's Survivors. Always a memorable performance. Rest in peace, Mr. Bowles.
I propose to offer some addenda for my review last Weblog entry of the Super Space Theatre Blu-Ray set.
On a further watching of the widescreen Cosmic Princess, I found that the Psychon explosion effects that I lamented being missing do in fact "resurface" (pun intended) to serve as a cutaway to "cover" for the removal of some of the Maya/gorilla footage. So, those explosions are in the movie. Only the ever so offencive Maya as a gorilla was what was targeted for truncation in the climax of "The Metamorph" portion of said "movie".
I feel that for the need of clarity I ought to say that, yes, the spacesuit visors popping open were not intended by the production team of the original episodes. And so, yes, a removal of that particular fault would be acceptable to me. But if, only if, it could be done without altering the cut, the scene edits, of the episodes, i.e. without inserting repurposed footage of other characters at the time of the "blooper". Only if it could be removed digitally. I do not believe that budget or technology exists to seamlessly do this particular "fix"; therefore, in my view, the popping open of the visors will have to remain.
I have watched the "movies" enough over the past couple of weeks to tire of them. I will not be viewing them again in the foreseeable future.
Oh, by the way, I did sit through most of the Italian Spazio 1999 "movie". It is not simply an Italian "dub" of one of the four "movies", but a unique putting together, back in 1975, of footage from "Breakaway", "Ring Around the Moon", and "Another Time, Another Place" with Italian dialogue weaving connection between those episodes so that they flow together. I did not find it to be a satisfying experience. The music by Ennio Morricone is bland, lifeless. Roy Dotrice is in the credits but almost all of his scenes in "Breakaway" are dropped. He is suddenly just there in Main Mission for the final act of "Breakaway". His purpose for being there, and who he is, is not mentioned. We do not see any of the Nordstrom and Steiner sequences. The "movie" opens with Koenig on the Eagle on its way to Alpha, said Eagle promptly landing on Moonbase, and Bergman meeting Koenig and providing to him all of the details about an illness afflicting astronauts. All mention of the Meta Probe is eliminated. The "movie" moves at breakneck pace, relying on exposition to tell the story leading to the nuclear explosions. And then, it transitions to "Ring Around the Moon", with no indication of how much the Moon has travelled since leaving Earth orbit. Presumably, the Moon is still in the Solar System. And when the space-time warp occurs at start of "Another Time, Another Place", the Moon is said to be falling into debris from the exploded Triton probe (sure, sure!). And to top this all off, Kano is called Ouma throughout the "Ring Around the Moon", and "Another Time, Another Place" portions of the "movie". Awkward! Most awkward! All told, it is not something that I am likely to ever watch again. I may opt not to keep it.
This year, like last year, announced Doctor Who Blu-Rays are not being given release dates. Presumably there are, thus far, three releases of "classic" Doctor Who this year, two of them having been announced and another widely rumoured. But no release dates. It does give to one cause to wonder. Supply chain issues? Plans under way to eliminate private property? Who knows? Definitely not us plebs. We who work for a living and treasure what property that we have been able to acquire over the course of our life.
I see that there has been another earthquake off the coast of Fukushima, and a tsunami warning. Oh, for God's sake, enough!!!!
Damn, I miss the twentieth century! The part of it in which I lived, at least.
Sunday, March 20, 2022.
First day of spring, but one would not know it looking out of windows in New Brunswick. Last Friday looked and felt like spring, and almost like summer. With sunny skies and a high temperature approaching plus twenty degrees Celsius. Yesterday, it was but plus one degree with wet snow followed by freezing rain. And there was a loss of power in my house sometime during last night. For how long, I do not know.
Until it is spring in northern Quebec and Labrador, it will not be spring here. Not consistently. Once the winds shift to northwest, north, or northeast, down comes the temperature and onward comes the snow.
Anyway, enough about the weather. It is March, after all. The worst month of the year, in my long experience.
What I have to ruminate today is the subject of home video. Firstly, my Era 4 memoirs have been further updated to include some expansion of my recall of my discovering in late 1982 two of the Space: 1999 "movies" available on VHS and Beta videocassette in Great Britain, in my reading of a British home video magazine available on a shelf in Book Mart at the Brookside Mall in Fredericton North. That and my subsequent attempt to procure those videotapes, only to be thwarted by the divide between PAL and NTSC. There are added images of the covers of those two videotapes.
The latest Space: 1999 release on home video, Network Distributing's "ultimate" set of Space: 1999, has now been fully revealed as precisely what I expected it to be. Yes, I was right again. I usually am. Not always, mind. But usually. It is a combination of experience and instinct, I would say. Sometimes, my cynicism can cloud that and cause me to be in error. And I digress. Back to the subject at hand. Network's latest offering of Space: 1999. Yes, it does comprise the same Blu-Ray discs and two DVDs that were in Network's previous Space: 1999 Blu-Ray box sets. Nothing different. Nothing new. Apart from the packaging and maybe the disc art. My advice to anyone wishing the most comprehensive collection of Space: 1999 is to acquire the Imprint set and combine it with Network's Super Space Theatre box set. This is what I have, with the Space: 1999 Technical Operations Manual standing with it on my shelf. A very handsome package. Be advised that the Network Blu-Rays are Region B, and there are no known plans for the Super Space Theatre set to be released multi-region. The all-region Imprint set has the "movies", but they are not restored.
Warner Brothers has decided to officially recognise Tweety's eightieth birthday this year, as it did that of Bugs Bunny two years ago, with a logo designating it to be eighty years since Tweety's inception. Here is the logo, with some accompanying Tweety art.
Now, what does this mean?
When Bugs' birthday was recognised with a similar logo in 2020, a Blu-Ray box set of Bugs' cartoons was released by Warner Home Video late in the same year, encompassing almost all of the Bugs cartoons not having had previous release on DVD or Blu-Ray. Naturally, hopes are that something along the same home video lines might be in the offering for the bulbous-headed yellow cartoon canary. I dearly wish that I could enthusiastically latch myself onto those hopes. To be certain, restored film-to-video transfers in high definition now exist for virtually every Tweety cartoon, including the one most coveted by me for release to optical disc media in a restored form, "Hyde and Go Tweet". They have been broadcast on HBO Max now for several months, and several of them can be found on video Websites. The good people at The Bugs Bunny Video Guide have done a chart for the yet-to-be-released-on-DVD-or-Blu-Ray Tweety cartoons, as they did once do for Bugs' unreleased-to-DVD-or-Blu-Ray cartoons. God knows, I want so very, very much for these signs to point in the direction in which they appear to be gesturing. But Jerry Beck did say a year or two ago that there are no plans for a Tweety box set. And Warner Home Video has seen loss of personnel during the seemingly interminable pandemic. Sales of physical media continue to decline. The Bugs Bunny set did not sell to expectation, and Bugs is more popular that Tweety. I am sorry, but I cannot entertain optimism in this case. I wish, I really do wish, that Warner would licence the Looney Tunes and Merrie Melodies catalogue to Shout! Factory, as it did the Oh, God! movies. If it would do that, then the chances of having every Warner Brothers cartoon of pre-1970 vintage would improve immensely. I just cannot see Warner Home Video assuming the financial risk of commissioning glass masters for a new release of cartoons on Blu-Ray. Not in today's economic climate.
All of this said, a two-disc Blu-Ray release could encompass the whole of Tweety's filmography, or close to it. Maybe a forty-cartoon set omitting some of the Tweety cartoons already on Blu-Ray. I could envision such a release including the three Clampett Tweety cartoons, Friz Freleng's Oscar-winning "Tweetie Pie", "I Taw a Putty Tat", and all of the Tweety cartoons post-1948 not as yet on Blu-Ray. Not including the two cartoons in which Tweety only appears in cameo, "No Barking" and "Heir-Conditioned". Perhaps those could be offered as bonuses. But is this likely to happen under present circumstances? No.
The Doctor Who Blu-Ray range has hit a snag. Word is that production of Doctor Who Blu-Rays was transferred some time ago to Poland. And that Poland is currently mired in a huge outbreak of the accursed Coronavirus (oh, I am so God-damned tired of it!) bringing optical media production if not to a standstill then to a drastically reduced rate. The Season 22 Doctor Who set, scheduled originally for going to market early this month, still has not been given a final release date. Some people are projecting a June or July release date. And with no subsequent Doctor Who Blu-Ray season box set until next winter. Apparently, the Russia-Ukraine conflict is also impacting optical media production in Poland, for reasons as yet unclear. There are also anticipated shipping problems in Europe associated with fuel shortages connected with the Russia-Ukraine situation. Even these projected delayed release times might be overly optimistic.
It really is looking like a Blu-Ray collection of everything existing of twentieth century Doctor Who is not going to be a reality. There were delays in 2020 due to the pandemic, and now again more delays. Before Coronavirus, the rate of release of seasons of Doctor Who meant that a full collection was unlikely until 2025 or 2026. Now, I do not think the full collection will ever sit on my shelf- even if I would be allowed by the Canadian government, to possess one. For as long as I own Doctor Who, it will be a hybrid collection of DVD and Blu-Ray. Of two different ranges of product. No consistency.
I look at my collection and am not optimistic of further upgrades to Blu-Ray. There is talk of Blu-Ray releases of The Six Million Dollar Man and The Bionic Woman in France, of work on those being done by a company called Elephant Films, but it is a project that has been ongoing now for years, and with probable impacts of the Russia-Ukraine conflict upon European supply chains, I think that this release is as cursed as that for Doctor Who. No other Blu-Ray releases of vintage television are known to be "in the works". Or what movies that I have that are still only available on DVD. The Jekyll and Hyde movies. Moon Zero Two (I have abandoned hope of Warner archive releasing a Blu-Ray of that). Pinocchio in Outer Space. The Island at the Top of the World. Treasure Island (1989). Daffy Duck's Quackbusters. The Philadelphia Experiment (1984). The Red Tent (1968). None of these are likely to be green-lit for Blu-Ray. Imprint did release the first two Bad News Bears movies. Someday soon, Imprint will probably announce The Bad News Bears Go to Japan to complete the set. I can see that. Not really a high-priority acquisition. But it would be an upgrade for my collection. Possibly the only one to which to look forward, outside of what Doctor Who will see Blu-Ray release when all is said and done.
All for today, I think.
Saturday, March 26, 2022.
Website updates this week include some sad additions to the In Memoriam sections of The Space: 1999 Page and The Littlest Hobo Page and some improvements to images in my Era 4 memoirs. I am also working on a further montage of images of paperback front covers for my Era 3 memoirs. And completed this morning is an expansion of The Space: 1999 Page's history of Space: 1999 on home video, with added notations on the Imprint box set and the Super Space Theatre set. I also did some modification on my paragraph concerning the Shout! Factory Space: 1999 box sets. I was planning to add an image of the front cover of the Shout! Blu-Ray set but could not arrive at an acceptable image of the same aproximate size as the covers to the other Blu-Ray sets seen on The Space: 1999 Page. The compressing of Martin Landau and Barbara Bain's names kept mixing the letters into a mess. Odd. The Imprint box set is now represented in front cover image on my Space: 1999 Web page. No issues there with the look of it.
Jerry Beck made an appearance this past week on a popular Internet broadcast, and in it he said that he is not aware of any plans for a Tweety Blu-Ray set. And this would appear to be the definitive repudiation of any hope of such. All that Tweety is receiving in this, his eightieth birthday, is some unnecessary new movie called King Tweety, with episodes of The Sylvester and Tweety Mysteries as bonus features on its release to DVD. As I would have said in my youthful days, "Whoopie-frigging-ding". On Bugs' birthday two years ago, Mr. Beck was fully cognizant and revealing of Warner Home Video's plans for an eightieth anniversary Blu-Ray box set for the rabbit. If there really were an intended Blu-Ray box set for Tweety's vintage cartoons this year, Mr. Beck would know about it.
It is so damned frustrating. No restoration needs to be done on Tweety's cartoons. All of them were restored in High Definition in the past two years and look gorgeous and pristine. All of the work that would need doing would be a conversion to Blu-Ray files, assembling playlists and menus, creating a couple of glass masters, and producing some packaging. This does not require much effort or staff. It is all a matter of the will of the company to chance a release of a Tweety set in the present economy and current climate of veneration of the vintage Looney Tunes and Merrie Melodies. The will just does not appear to be there amongst the powers-that-be at Warner Home Video.
And it does not help matters when cartoon fans express their disinterest in or contempt for the cartoons of Friz Freleng's Tweety, as they are known to do. Warner Home Video had no problem releasing the three Clampett Tweety cartoons to Blu-Ray (and DVD). But Friz Freleng's forty-two Tweety cartoons? Less is more, right? This is the opinion that continues to prevail, anyway. And in the selecting of cartoons for the PLATINUM COLLECTIONs, fan opinions were given consideration, in addition to those of Mr. Beck, who I believe is on record as disapproving the existence on DVD of what Freleng Tweety cartoons were there in the GOLDEN COLLECTIONs, If there were an announced Tweety set, the fans would be bemoaning it, no doubt saying that they would prefer a Daffy or Porky set (consisting mostly, no doubt, of pre-1948 cartoons). But enough about this. Goodness knows, the world is divided enough as it is.
All for today.
Wednesday, March 30, 2022.
It has been a cold week so far in Fredericton. Snow on Monday and below-zero temperatures and high winds yesterday. Winds from the northwest, bringing cold air from northern Quebec into the eastern Maritime provinces. I should not carp much about this, as it was rather a tame winter. I only had to spend a hundred dollars on snow removal for the whole season.
In recent days, I did some minor upgrades to text in my Era 3 memoirs and added an assemblage of covers of books and magazines to same memoirs. That assemblage can be found near the end of Era 3. It contains the front covers of Star Trek 10 and Star Trek 11, et cetera.
In my memoirs, I am nearing complete representation of every book that I owned in my childhood. Images of acceptable quality of some of them may be forever elusive. In my most recent addition of book covers to my Era 3 memoirs, I included books that were, in many cases, of a lesser value to me. Books of movies of amusement, though not of much, or any, aesthetic appeal, to me. The Cat From Outer Space was a Disney movie that I saw with my friend, Tony, at the Nashwaaksis Cinema 2 sometime in late 1978. I think it was the first movie that Tony and I saw together in a theatre. I remember the day when he reached out to me after school and invited me to go to see that movie with him. It was a fun Disney romp about an extraterrestrial cat of high intelligence and special powers seeking an Earthling's help to re-power his spaceship. Fun but not particularly stimulating aesthetically. Tony and I saw Steve Martin's The Jerk at a matinee presentation thereof at Fredericton's downtown Gaiety Theatre in mid-1979. A rags-to-riches-to-rags comedy, with often vulgar humour. Something with which for us to pass the time on a Sunday afternoon. We laughed at some of the humour, including the name that Mr. Martin's character gave to his dog. It referred to a bodily emission using the least acceptable word designating such. A Photonovel of The Jerk was in stores, and I was always agreeable to having a movie photographically represented in the form of a book. And to Tony's and my amusement, the book had in its typewritten text the name of the dog. The Final Countdown was another movie that Tony and I saw at a matinee at the Gaiety. A time-travel movie involving the Japanese attack upon Pearl Harbour. An Earthbound time travel story in which a 1980 U.S. aircraft carrier goes through a time warp to 1941. Not the most aesthetically stimulating time travel effort, but still rather enjoyable. When I saw the novelisation of the movie, I bought it, to contribute to growing my collection of books associated with movies and television programmes. A collection which included the novelisation of Jaws 2 and books concerning the making of or critic or fan reactions to Star Trek. I mention The Cassandra Crossing in my rememberings of the spring of 1979 in my Era 3 memoirs. A rather disturbing tale from which it was impossible to look away. I was curious to read how its scenes were described in the book.
What books from my youth remain to be represented? For Era 1, Teena and the Magic Pot. For Era 2, a book on The Flintstones and The Bully of Barkham Street. For Era 3, Star Trek 4 by James Blish, 1980 printing, Spock Must Die and a handful of other Star Trek original novels, The Incredible Shrinking Woman, Black Sunday, and Jaws. The Incredible Shrinking Woman, which I saw by myself at an evening's showing of it at Nashwaaksis Cinema 2, was a minor, Earthbound science fiction film effort, in my estimation. A story of a woman, played by Lily Tomlin (previously seen by me in Nine to Five), who, due to a mix of chemicals, starts to lose body mass... and, as the title does say, shrinks. The book of that movie was another Photonovel, which I could not resist buying. Black Sunday had a most alarming premise, And the interest of my friend, Michael, in Jaws in 1976 had been contagious. I wanted a copy of the Jaws book.
A curious thing about the James Blish Star Trek books. In 1980, I collected all twelve of Mr. Blish's books novelising the Star Trek episodes. I had the 1980 reprints of all of them bar Star Trek 12, which did not receive a reprint as its initial printing had been so recent, and Star Trek 9. To this day, I do not know if there was a reprint of Star Trek 9 in 1980 and, if there was one, what the cover of that reprint looked like.
Blu-Ray release news has my interest this week.
Warner Archive has a couple of unexpected surprises in its announced titles for 2022. In May, the 1941 Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde movie will be made available on Blu-Ray. And sometime around Halloween, that movie's predecessor, the 1932 Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, will reach Blu-Ray, also. Outstanding news! I presume that restoration has been done on these movies to improve their look in High Definition video. The 1941 Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde already looked quite pristine in its release to DVD in 2004. So, I do not know how much more work can be done to had burnish to its visualisations. But the 1932 Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde has yet much, much room for improvement.
The question that occurs to me is what Warner Archive might offer as extras. As many people know, the 2004 DVD of the 1932 and 1941 Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde movies offered "Hyde and Hare" as a bonus item. Might this mean that an appearance on Blu-Ray of the 1955 Bugs Bunny encounter with Jekyll and Hyde is on the cards this year? And if so, will it be the High Definition restoration of "Hyde and Hare" running on HBO Max that will receive the nod? Or just a port of a standard definition un-restored copy of "Hyde and Hare" from the DVD. As it is Warner Archive, not Warner Home Video, doing these releases, there is reason for hope, Warner Archive being more cognizant of the desirability of best possible copies for value-added material than is Warner Home Video. I might also entertain hope that maybe the restored "Hyde and Go Tweet" and "Dr. Jerkyl's Hide" might be bonuses on one of these Blu-Rays. It may be the only chance there is for seeing these cartoons in High Definition and restored on Blu-Ray. One will see. Yes, one will see.
Oh, and if anyone is interested, here is a short unboxing video for Network's "ultimate" Blu-Ray set of Space: 1999. Same Blu-Ray discs and DVDs as in the individual season sets and Super Space Theatre, but with different artwork on them. Cannot say that I like the case. Definitely appears that there is some disc stacking. No booklet on the history of the television series. In my considered opinion, Imprint wins the "battle" of the "ultimate" sets in a landslide.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I9_4Y2YNv4U&t=44s
Frustrating that Network did not even bother to put the Season 1 extras on a Blu-Ray disc and "turf" the old DVDs. DVD is so antiquated now.
All for today.
As readers of my autobiographical Web pages and this Weblog do know, I have been collecting entertainments of interest to me on home video media since 1981, when I acquired my first RCA VideoDiscs. From there, I quickly transitioned to the collecting of VHS videocassette, and many years after that, I was procuring laser videodisc, shortly thereafter moving to the fabulous world of DVD, and thence Blu-Ray. Striving always to have the best possible medium in terms of video and audio quality and longevity, I have made what I thought were improvements to my collection of everything from Space: 1999 to the cartoons of Warner Brothers to the movies of James Bond, Inspector Clouseau, Superman, and Star Wars to the television series and movies of Star Trek to the Spiderman cartoon television show to just about every other imaginative production of my upbringing. I had it impressed upon me uncounted times how easily videotape corrupts and how so very superior optical disc media was. Even when the laser videodiscs that I had acquired were clearly showing signs of the dreaded "laser rot", if not delaminating outright, splitting open before my eyes (have a dubious bow, thou infamous Space: 1999 laser videodiscs from Philips and DuPont Optical), I was an enthusiast for the optical discs, DVDs, of the boding new century. Word was that the problems that ailed laser videodiscs would not "carry over" to the more compact, far better adherent, and more robust DVD. To be sure, the first DVDs I watched seemed positively faultless. Not a speck of incipient "rot" to be seen anywhere. The DVD, with its smaller size, did not bend as easily as the laser videodisc, and the glues were touted as "newer" and much more dependable.
Of course, the honeymoon could not last. There were reports circa 2000 on discussion forums of, "DVDs that go defective years after purchase." "Oh, no! Not again!" I exclaimed. Most of the problem DVDs wre made at a WAMO facility and were primarily coming out of Warner Home Video. A few from FOX. Some from Image and MGM. I scrambled to check my DVDs to assure myself that this new "DVD rot" was not plaguing me. Happily, all was well with my collection. Then. But reports of "rot" kept coming. From numerous places in the world.
As things did transpire, after several more years had passed, I was to discover two incontrovertibly "rotted" DVDs in my collection. One was Alfred Hitchcock's Vertigo. I had bought it in summer of 1999 at Music World and promptly played it. No issues whatsoever. Eight years later, I decided to play it again and found that it erupted into a mess of wayward pixels and froze during the movie's opening credits. Examining the disc, I discovered that it had developed a distinct bronze colour. "Bronzing" had been known to be one of the signs of "rotted" DVD. And Vertigo was indeed mentioned in discussion forums as one of the titles prone to "rot". There was therefore no doubt that I had my first case of "rot" in my hands. Not long thereafter, I found that DVD one of the Brady Bunch fourth season set was another "rot" victim. But one of a different sort. The plastics of the playing surface had been "eaten away", exposing the substrate aluminum to air. Evidently, some residue from the Scanavo plastic thin case in which the Brady Bunch DVDs were contained had chemically reacted with the plastics of the DVD. Sadly, many of the studios were then using the thin cases in which the surface of the discs touched the plastic of their Scanavo vessels. At the time, I had The Wild Wild West- Season 2 and the first two seasons of Mission: Impossible and some collections of Gunsmoke in the same problematical cases, and when I held those discs up to light, I saw blotches of the same accursed residue on the playing surfaces. I was able to remove them with a wet cloth. But they kept coming back. Eventually, I opted to rid myself of those problem discs and forego collecting those television shows. But lo, there were more of those problematical cases in sets for Space Academy and The Six Million Dollar Man and a couple of the multi-DVD Doctor Who releases. I used alcohol to remove the splotches from those before they could effect any "rot". But, alas, I also scratched the discs with the tissue papers that I was using to apply the alcohol to disc surface. Curses! Still, none of those DVDs have "rotted"; I guess that I did save them from becoming expensive table coasters. I have since then been quite meticulous in placing newly purchased DVDs and Blu-Rays in Amaray- or Alpha-style cases in which disc playing surface is not in physical contact with any part of the case. One particular process of "disc rot" was effectively "nipped in the bud", I would say. But the other? I have no control over that, evidently. It can happen, and it does happen. But how often? How widespread is the problem?
Many forums of discussion for videophiles are active to this day with extended "threads" of communication on the subject of "disc rot" in product of Warner Home Video and its subsidiary, Warner Archive. I have recently come upon such "threads" of communication, and found a ponderous list of affected titles. It seems that between 2006 and 2009, Warner DVDs made at the Cinram production plant in Olyphant, Pennsylvania were defectively manufactured en masse. And boxed sets of vintage movies were years later being ravaged by the "rot" problem, with almost every DVD in the sets rendered unplayable, either turning bronze or showing a mess of replete dark spots or blotches. The vast majority of the scourged titles were very old Hollywood musicals and romantic comedies or dramas that had no appeal to me, but a particular DVD boxed set, of the Superman movies, that I bought in 2006 and later, in 2011, replaced with Blu-Ray set, was noted as one of the afflicted products. I long ago abandoned it for a Blu-Ray release of same. Doctor Who DVDs in Region 1 made between the aforementioned years, were also among the "rotters", but I bought all of my Doctor Who from Region 2, which used a SONY DVD pressing facility in the U.K., not the problem Pennsylvanian manufacturing plant. Ah, but I am not "in the clear" with my Looney Tunes and Merrie Melodies DVDs. LOONEY TUNES GOLDEN COLLECTIONs 4, 5, and 6 released in 2006, 2007, and 2008 have reportedly metamorphosed into useless, unplayable platters. Most of my DVDs of those GOLDEN COLLECTIONs were bought in Canada and came out of a Cinram factory in Ontario. They seem to have escaped the curse of the "rot". But the Ontario Cinram facility has also had a noted output of some "rotting" DVDs, and so, I cannot rest easy about the condition of my Warner Brothers cartoons DVDs made in my home country.
What else is there in my collection from manufacture for the troublesome Warner Brothers labels in the problem years? The long-out-of-print Moon Zero Two/When Dinosaurs Ruled the Earth released in 2008. Nothing else. Nothing else on DVD, at least. Now, Blu-Ray. That is another story. I bought several Warner Home Video Blu-Rays in 2010 that might have hailed from 2008 or 2009.
But my DVD of Moon Zero Two/When Dinosaurs Ruled the Earth does have me concerned. Play of it froze on one on my Blu-Ray players when I watched it a year or so ago. It subsequently played without a hitch on another Blu-Ray player, and when I played it again in the machine in which it froze, playback was flawless. I suppose that there could have been a glitch in my player when that DVD's play seized. Or maybe I experienced incipient "rot". I shall have to keep a close eye on that disc in months to come. And my Warner Brothers cartoon discs, also. DVD and Blu-Ray.
Some people are saying that they are having "rot" on Blu-Ray discs, also. Discs just stop playing years after purchase. And not just Warner Home Video or Warner Archive Blu-Rays. Other studios such as FOX and MGM and Lionsgate. And premium Criterion Collection Blu-Rays. Someone has said that rapid ageing tests have shown Blu-Ray not to appreciably "hold up". Even less than DVDs do. Just how much do I need to be concerned for the future of my collection? Should I discontinue my efforts to ameliorate my holdings from DVD to Blu-Ray? What of my Space: 1999 Blu-Rays? And DVD lifespan being compromised, what of my highly cherished, long-out-of-print Spiderman DVDs?
Spooked by the discussions of late, I watched my oldest DVD yesterday. An Image Entertainment release in early 2000 of select episodes of Davey and Goliath. Though it, being an early DVD with rather primitive video compression and no restoration of source materials, certainly did not look very impressive, its spin in one of my Blu-Ray players was without unfortunate incident. That is a twenty-two-year-old DVD. If all of my other optical media discs have the same endurance of the ravages of time, I could feel more assured of my collection's future, avoiding the dark years of manufacture for Warner Brothers as best I can. It would certainly be nice to have a Blu-Ray release of Moon Zero Two. I am surprised that there has not yet been one.
There has been no explanation furnished for why the DVDs made at Olyphant were compromised in their production, doomed to become expensive table coasters. Was there a defective mechanism in the replicators, in the administering of the adhesive agent, or in the curing process? Was there a switch to a chemically impure adhesive at that facility sometime in early 2006? Was there a "time crunch" in production due to increased demand for both DVD and the then-new HD-DVD, and the rushed manufacture meaning insufficient curing and bonding of the adhesives? Warner Brothers has been publicly quiet on the issue. Some people are reporting a replacement programme offered for certain affected titles still in print. That was before the pandemic. And no official declaration of the existence of such a programme.
Are videophiles' collections all doomed to die at the same time of proliferating Web-"streaming" of entertainments and the coming of "owning nussing and being (un)happy"?
My anticipation of next week's Blu-Ray release of Spider-Man: No Way Home and next month's Blu-Ray of the 1941 Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde is being subdued now because of these troubling discussions. But I will buy those Blu-Rays.
Website updates. I added some images of movie theatre posters for Buck Rogers in the 25th Century, Star Trek- The Motion Picture, and Outland, plus some new text regarding my times in cinemas, to my Era 3 memoirs. And I had the sad task of adding another deceased thespian, Nehemiah Persoff, to the In Memoriam section to The Littlest Hobo Page. Mr. Persoff lived to the age of 102. In addition to being in The Littlest Hobo, he was in many an episode of a television series seen by me over the years. He often played shifty scientists, sometimes Russian, or military men in, or in something resembling, the Eastern Bloc in the Cold War. He was in the famous Six Million Dollar Man two-parter, "Death Probe", as a Soviet operative of the scientific profession, and in "The Bionic Woman" was an evil scientific quantity. He was in Battlestar Galactica (episode "Experiment in Terra") and in episodes of The Twilight Zone, Mission: Impossible, and Columbo. May he rest in peace after an amazing innings spanning more than a century.
As I passed some of the more tedious days of work this week, I looked through some old issues of Starlog magazine on Internet Archive, specifically those that I never did possess, those that I skimmed through at stores in Fredericton, i.e. the ones post-1981, post-my-stoppage-in-buying-Starlog. Aside from the occasional interview with people associated with either Space: 1999 (not that their work with Space: 1999 was mentioned, mind; it often was not broached) or Doctor Who, I found myself being as uncompelled to read now as I was back in the olden days. The articles regarding Hollywood science fiction/fantasy output of the years post-1981 by and large just do not attract my interest. With some rare exceptions, I was not imaginatively and aesthetically engaged by what was then-current in theatres and on television. I liked Star Trek II- The Wrath of Khan because it was Star Trek and Return of the Jedi because it was Star Wars. And Star Trek III and Star Trek IV also, for their Star Trek pedigree. I enjoyed Doctor Who, though less and less in the post-Davison seasons. Not much else. I saw E.T. in the cinema but was less than impressed with it. Too sentimental and cutesy. The Thing did not appeal to me. The monster was too abstract for my liking, and too grotesque in depictions of its permutations. The British Columbia production location was insufficiently convincing as Antarctica. I could not divorce Kurt Russell in my mind from Dexter Riley. And no one in the supporting cast of characters was sufficiently made known to me as an individual with history or a relatable, or even likable, personality. They were just there to be killed, one after another, in a gratuitously gory fashion by the abstract creature. And John Carpenter is a taste that I have just never acquired. I have Escape From New York in my collection and have seen it several times, but it does bot grab my imagination. Ernest Borgnine and Donald Pleasence are always good value. Apart from them, Escape From New York is, for me, blah. With the exception of Ladyhawke, the sword-and-sorcery subgenre of fantasy that was replete in movies of the 1980s, did not impress me. Earthbound science fiction after 1981 for the most part did not compel me to part with money for movie theatre tickets, and I grew tired of television's V. Such were the 1980s for me. Ghostbusters had an impressive song, but I did not care to sit for some two hours to watch it. For many years, I was oblivious to the appeal of The Terminator, Earthbound science fiction being what it was for me. And so on. I certainly was not going to spend my money on purchase of issues of Starlog to read in depth articles about such productions. Certainly not when there were videotapes, of earlier productions, that I was wanting to acquire.
All for today, Friday, April 8, 2022.
Sunday, April 17, 2022.
Easter Sunday. I am planning to roast a turkey today, per my usual procedure for Easter Sunday. The weather this long weekend has so far been dismal. Rainy, grey, cool (the temperature just cannot seem to rise to ten degrees above zero Celsius). This is the first mid-to-late April Easter in my memory to have been so dire in its weather. And as unstimulating as the weather is here in New Brunswick, it is infinitely preferable to the blizzards that struck Saskatchewan, Manitoba, and Ontario this past week. What in bloody hell is wrong with our weather? Why is the damnable "Polar Vortex" always over Canada now?
Because of the pandemic and my fears of contracting the virus, I have been delaying a needed refill of one of my teeth for two years now. I can do so no longer. A piece of the tooth has chipped away, and I am having to contend with periodic pain where dentin is exposed, avoid sweet foods and drinks that may exacerbate the problem, and chew always on the other side of my mouth. My dentist appointment is on May 31.
There has been another sad death among persons who contributed to Space: 1999. Jeremy Young, who played Jack Bartlett in the two-part episode, "The Bringers of Wonder", died this past week. In addition to Space: 1999, Mr. Young was in two serials of Doctor Who in its early years, including his portrayal of the very first antagonist to appear in Doctor Who, a caveman whose shadow was in the lower-right corner of the television screen at the end of Doctor Who's very first episode. And he was a guest star in at least two episodes of The Avengers (including one with Christopher Lee) and one episode, "Gnaws", of The New Avengers. "Gnaws" was the episode with the giant rat in the London sewers. May Mr. Young rest in peace. He has been added to the In Memoriam section of The Space: 1999 Page.
I think that we may have passed the grim demarcation of half of the people involved with the making of Space: 1999 being deceased. All of the producers are gone. As are most of the directors, and almost all of the writers. There are some episodes with the entirety or the near entirety of the guest cast being no longer among the living. And of the main cast, Martin Landau, Barry Morse, Tony Anholt, Zienia Merton, and Suzanne Roquette are sadly no longer with us on Earth.
"The Bringers of Wonder" has seen most of its large guest cast stricken by the Grim Reaper, many of them expiring in recent years. Stuart Damon, Patrick Westwood, Drewe Henley, Billy J. Mitchell, and Jeremy Young. Toby Robins died in the 1980s.
It is so depressing to be writing about death and miserable weather. Did anything pleasant happen this week?
Yes. I now have Spider-Man: No Way Home on Blu-Ray. I went to the Fredericton Best Buy after work on this past Tuesday, release day for the Spider-Man: No Way Home Blu-Ray, to purchase the movie. It was the first time in twenty-eight months that I set foot in Best Buy. I was last in there in December, 2019 to buy a Blu-Ray player. It is so sad to see that the old section of the store allocated to movie and television series DVDs and Blu-Rays, has been eliminated. Only the more recent releases of popular Hollywood movies are on racks near the store's front counter. I was in and out of the store in less than five minutes, and double-masked for the short span of time that I was in the store.
It was very, very gratifying to at last be able to watch Spider-Man: No Way Home from start to finish on my huge television screen, after having only experienced it in bits and pieces in YouTube videos on a computer monitor. Through YouTube, I had seen almost the entire movie. Very little of what I saw of the movie on Blu-Ray was new to me. Just a few short scenes here and there. I enjoy the movie for the reasons that have been said many, many times over the past four months by fans of Spider-Man. It deftly juggles no less than five villains and two other Spider-Men in telling a story of redemption for many characters and coming of age for the leading character, Tom Holland's Spider-Man. It hits all of the emotional beats with perfect precision and has a most satisfying ending for Spider-Man aficionados like me who believe that Spidey should be solitary and introspective. I just hope that there is not a reversal of that ending in a movie to come. The chemistry between numerous characters in the movie is quite electric. It is a dream come true to see Spider-Man do Doctor Who, i.e. a multiple Peter Parker story a la a multiple Doctor story, and to do it with such emotion, such energy, such aplomb, such lavishness. The actors were perfect in their roles, and so compelling were their characters' interactions that I could sit for another two hours and thirty minutes watching them just converse with one another. And I have never before now been one for the talky movie.
Spider-Man: No Way Home does have its detractors, largely for how the premise of the movie was put into motion, through the reckless actions of certain characters, or the arguable mistakes of the leading character. And, oh, yes, for "plot holes". Yes, there are "plot holes". As there are in just about any work of filmed or videotaped science fiction/fantasy. As I have delineated before, even the supposedly unassailable Star Trek II- The Wrath of Khan and the Hugo-winning Star Trek episode, "The City On the Edge of Forever", can be found to have several "plot holes". In the case of Spider-Man: No Way Home, "plot holes" are concentrated in the setting-up of Peter Parker's predicaments, and the resolution of the movie with Dr. Strange's magic spell and the particulars of that magic spell. One that came to my notice, without me needing any prodding to perceive it, involved Peter somehow releasing the villains from their cells in Strange's basement. How does he do that? This, we do not see. How is he able to do that? We do not know. Strange did not entrust Peter with any gizmo that would free the villains from the cells. And we know that Strange would not do so. He wants the villains returned to the universes from whence they came, sent thereto directly from their cells, without delay. Why is curing the villains the only way of preventing their deaths in their universes? Surely just having them gain the knowledge that they die fighting Spider-Man would be sufficient to enable them to avoid that eventuality. In fact, two of them are told exactly how they die. They can now avoid that. Why does Peter put May in danger by having her with him as he endeavours to cure five super-powered villains? If he is worried about putting M.J. and Ned in danger, why not be equally worried about May? I guess that that can be explained by naivete. Naive young people do tend to think of their parents and guardians as being somehow immune from danger, impervious to tragic event. When May is dying, Peter cannot believe that it is happening.
How does Doctor Octopus know that Norman Osborn was the Goblin? That information was not made known to the public in Spider-Man 2. Harry Osborn was without such knowledge until after Doctor Octopus' death. I can accept Sandman knowing about Osborn being the Goblin, as he was evidently transferred to the Tom Holland Spider-Man universe some time after Harry's death and after probable searching of the Osborn estate by police and discovery of the Goblin paraphernalia and the Osborn butler revealing all that he knew. That might have been "all over the news", as Sandman said. I suppose that there are ways for Octavius to know, or to at least infer, that Norman Osborn was the Goblin.
I have never seen The Amazing Spider-Man 2, but from what I understand, Electro was absorbing massive amounts of energy before he was transferred into the Tom Holland Spider-Man universe. Returning him cured to that precise moment would very probably mean his death by electrocution.
I am aware of these issues, and others, but the movie is so satisfying, so very satisfying, in its action and its characterisation and its sheer audacity in bringing together so many characters from multiple Spider-Man movie series and thereby canonising them all, that I am prepared to overlook the lapses in story-telling. As indeed are a great many other people.
A criticism that I personally have with the movie that may be solely mine, is that it does tend to be too fast-paced. It could use a scene or two at times to slow the story development down somewhat, allowing to the audience a "breather" and possibly adding some additional fun dialogue between the characters. I think that there is a happy medium between dialogue and fast-paced, action-propelled story development. Some movies, like this one and Tomorrow Never Dies, are rather too action-propelled. And I do know, yes, of some movies that tend toward being talky and veer away from viscerally thrilling, story-propelling action.
This particular comment brings me to a movie that I recently chose to give a re-watch after several years of being removed fom it, and not being particularly in love with it on initial viewing. That movie is 2010: The Year We Make Contact. I had that movie in mind this week after I undertook some additions to my Era 3 and Era 5 memoirs that pertained to my seeing, in 1981, of 2001: A Space Odyssey for the first time, and my later additions of it and its sequel, 2010: The Year We Make Contact, to my collection of videotape in the late 1980s. I added some images of 2001: A Space Odyssey to Era 3 and an image of the 2001 videocassette cover to Era 5. Also new to Era 5 are images of "Plop Goes the Weasel!" and "The Hypo-Chondri-Cat" of FOGHORN LEGHORN'S FRACTURED FUNNIES videotape, an image of Brian Keith as Secretary Gorny in World War III, and another image of The Living Daylights. A collection of those images can be found amongst my rememberings of first third of 1988.
I watched 2010 this past week, by way of my Blu-Ray of it (which I bought in 2019), after writing a brief critique of the hitherto largely ignored in my memoirs 2010 just to see if I might have a different assessment of it. My initial assessment of it was that is was boring. Did I arrive at a different opinion of it? No, I am afraid not.
2010 is still a boring movie. Happily, unlike 2001, it is finished in under two hours. That is one "edge" that I would give to it. Another would be that it does not confuse the viewer at any time during its 116 minutes. The dialogue-heavy script allowed for ample exposition to make the story satisfying. Even if there really is not much to it. Most of the movie is either tiresome antagonism between American and Russian scientists, or protracted spacewalks and spaceprobe flights. HAL is reactivated and the reason for his malfunction is given. There are inconclusive investigations of Europa and the Monolith. Bowman appears to Floyd to warn him to leave Jupiter. Floyd, his two colleagues, and the Russians are able to do so, with HAL's help. Jupiter transforms into a sun, turing the Solar System into a duo-star system (let us never mind the ecological and gravitational effects of that on Earth). The end.
The visual effects are just blah. Travelling mattes compare poorly with "in-camera" visual effects. I could see a matte square around one of the probes as it moved across space. The spaceship interiors are uninspired, looking like "knock-offs" of the Nostromo in Alien, or something that would look quite at home in Outland, which was directed by Peter Hyams, 2010's director (and writer and producer).
The first several minutes of 2010 are long, talky scenes between Floyd and his Russian countrpart at a radio telescope, between a Dr. Chandra and his SAL computer, and between Floyd and a U.S. government official (the two of them seated on a bench in front of the White House). Then, we see Dr. Floyd with his wife and young son in a quite nice domestic scene, as Floyd announces that he is going on "the flight". Some minutes later, we are on the Russian spaceship Leanov, where Floyd is revived from a cyber-sleep to find his Russian hosts to be rather less than pleasant company for him. Exposition aplenty in all of these scenes. Action? None. And then we are subjected to John Lithgow breathing heavily in a spacewalk in a seemingly interminable scene. And so on.
I am surprised that Hyams did not insert his favourite words of dialogue into this movie. "This is in the hands of grown-ups." Or, "You're dealing here with grown-ups." Two of his earlier movies, Capricorn One and Outland, used such words. Admittedly, Capricorn One and Outland and 2010 are the only Hyams movies that I have seen, but he does have a noted tendency for repetition. The Con-Amalgamate company name is another example of such. It is found in both Capricorn One and Outland. The Hyams movies that I have seen are all quite talky, usually with sardonically smart-alecky remarks by seasoned characters. The Elliot Gould and Karen Black characters in Capricorn One and their exchanges of dialogue is an example. There is not as much of the sardonic wit in 2010 as in the other films, which could be either a good or a bad thing depending on one's point of view.
Roy Schieder was miscast as Dr. Floyd. Following William Sylvester's portrayal of the Floyd character in 2001, an actor with a more reserved, more restrained approach to playing a scientist, was needed, for consistency's sake. One has the distinct impression of Dr. Floyd being an introvert in Sylvester's portrayal of him, and Scheider's Floyd is quite extrovert, quite effusive, even smugly so, at times. There is no actor who springs to mind for me as I typewrite this Weblog entry. But if I were to give a day or two of thought, I might have a candidate or two. Why Mr. Sylvester himself did not return to the role, I do not know. Maybe he retired from acting. Internet Movie Database says that he was only active in movies and television until 1983. No mention of any theatre work, however. John Lithgow is not one of my favourite actors. And his presence in 2010 is a non-starter for me. Apart from being afraid during is spacewalk, his character is nondescript. Bob Balaban plays the "nerdy" computer programmer. The "nerd" image is rather stereotypical for such a character. It might have been a better choice to go against type and have a charismatic computer "whiz". But Balaban is effective as the character as written. Though why his name was changed from that spoken by HAL in 2001, I have no idea. Helen Mirren as the leading Russian scientist on the Leanov is not a casting choice that one night expect, but she plays the part convincingly, and with some layers to her character. Probably the best new casting choice for the film. Even if much of the dialogue between her and Floyd is tiresome and cliched. Elya Baskin, who was Peter Parker's irascible landlord, Mr. Ditkovich, in the Sam Raimi-directed Spider-Man movies, was in 2010 as one of the Russians on the Leanov. I just discovered this on my latest viewing of 2010. Eighteen years since I first saw the Mr. Ditkovich character in Spider-Man 2. Which goes to show how little repeated viewing that I have given to 2010. And how rarely I do ever think of it and the people in it.
Dullea and Rain reprise their roles of Bowman and HAL, and I have to say that their portryals are "spot-on". It is quite nice that their characters are reunited as the movie was nearing its end.
As 2010 draws to a close, we are told, "This is what has happened. We don't know how it happened, and we can only speculate as to why it happened. But this is what has happened." First season Space: 1999 episodes were of same procedure in their denouements; they, too, said, "This is what has happened. The hows and the whys we can only guess at, but this is what has happened." In 2001, however, not only are the how and the why for what is happening left unexplained, but what is happening is unclear. Bowman appears to see himself as an old man dining in a fancy hotel room and then on a deathbed. And then, on the same bed there is an embryo. Is that embryo Bowman or something separate from him? Is this embryo seen from Bowman's point of view? What is it, and why is it in space, seemingly close to Earth? Exactly what has happened? The viewer does not know. Some people say that this is brilliant. I am not in that particular "camp". At the same time, I do love Space: 1999- Season 1 and do respect it for what it was doing in its more metaphysical episodes. And unlike 2001, and also unlike 2010, Space: 1999- Season 1 is not boring. Compared with 2001, Space: 1999- Season 1 is positively turbo-charged in its episodes' story development.
Here is a question for the day. Which movie is more boring? 2001 or Star Trek- The Motion Picture? To me, both movies are a chore to sit through, but if I had to choose one of them for a viewing without interruption or distraction, I would go for 2001. I like the look of that, at least. Star Trek- The Motion Picture is, to me, an ugly movie, in addition to being boring. I do not like the look of the renovated Enterprise or the uniforms. Or V'ger. Those long, long, long scenes of V'ger and the crew looking, agape, at V'ger are made all the more difficult to endure because they are uncomely in addition to being monumentally boring. I do not even like the fonts used in the titles to Star Trek- The Motion Picture and subsquent Trek movies. Why did the producers not simply keep to the fonts of the Star Trek television series. Words in the new fonts look like something written in Klingon.
I would much rather watch a couple of episodes of Space: 1999 (of either season thereof), or almost any two episodes of Star Trek. I say almost, because I can think of a couple of episodes of Star Trek so boring to me that I cannot bear the thought of sitting through them. Hint. They are in the second season. And Dorothy Fontana was the writer of one of them.
I should clarify that I do not dislike Capricorn One or Outland. Capricorn One is an outstanding government conspiracy thriller with a stellar cast of experienced thespians and many an instance of quotable dialogue. Outland is not a movie that I like for its look, but I admire it for the imagination in its premise, and Sean Connery is always outstanding value, quite possibly the quintessential twentieth century movie hero actor. I should also state that there is some nostalgia connected to 2010 for me, as there is for all movies that I saw with my late parents at movie theatres in Fredericton and in the Miramichi. My parents treated me to a movie on my birthday in 1985, and my choice was 2010. I think that my mother quite liked it. Or she approved of it as a movie-viewing choice for me, because she still at that time thought that I might have future in space science- and it is a movie about space scientists.
All for today.
Friday, April 22, 2022.
New Brunswick's first thoroughly sunny weekend of this spring is expected tomorrow and Sunday. From it, I certainly intend to derive as much exercise and sunshine-sourced Vitamin D as I can.
Website updates. I have added more paragraphs and images to my Era 3 memoirs, all of them amongst my memories of the final four months of 1981. They concern the airing on television of Close Encounters of the Third Kind and Moonraker, the run of the television series, The Greatest American Hero, and some additional memories of Spiderman on CHSJ-TV. And also some memories of lunchtime when I was in Grade 10. I had to search and search to find a quality image of a McChicken, which was what I had at McDonald's when I went there for lunch many times in my months as a tenth grade Fredericton High School student. And I found one, eventually. I also sought an image of a Wendy's chili with cheese and crackers, preferably from the 1980s. No joy there.
By the time that Burger King opened in Fredericton in June of 1982, I was "turned off" of the McDonald's lunch and dinner items. I had many years previous lost my taste for McDonald's hamburgers, and the McChicken was my only McDonald's sandwich of choice in 1980, 1981, early 1982. I one day discovered a blend of white and dark meat in a McChicken and thought it revolting to my preference for consistency in whatever meat that I am eating. That was the end for me and my craving for a McChicken. McDonald's around 1982 introduced the Chicken McNugget, and I found them repulsive- even before I saw video footage of their manufacture.
I could still be enticed to have a McDonald's breakfast hash brown on occasion, or maybe even a Sausage McMuffin- if McDonald's were the only fast-food choice available to me.
As friends and I used to sing in the early 1980s, "You deserve a break today. So, get up and run away. From McDonald's. We do it all to you." And, "Do you know what it means, when your hamburger's green?" Enough said here? Not quite. The last time that I set foot on a McDonald's property, my ears were assaulted with f-words from two very nasty women employees for the cardinal sin of photographing the strip mall behind the McDonald's building. Needless to say, I will never darken the steps of that place ever again. Even if I do have a craving for a hash brown.
Close Encounters of the Third Kind. After my mention of it in my memoirs, I decided to give to it a viewing, with my Blu-Ray of it that I bought several years ago. It is only the second time that I watched that Blu-Ray since I purchased it. In my memoirs, I describe my interest in Close Encounters of the Third Kind as slight. And that continues to be the case. Of all of the science fiction/fantasy works to come out of the motion picture industry between Star Wars and The Empire Strikes Back, I would say that Close Encounters of the Third Kind is the one that interests me the least, and that I enjoy least. I do not thoroughly dislike it. There are striking visuals in it that could be said to be iconic for the time period that was the late 1970s. The image on the cover of its novelisation, of a dark road leading to a glow on the horizon, is one such. Another is Devil's Tower and the technological complex on the far side of said Devil's Tower (though what Devil's Tower, in its reference to Lucifer, has to do with a visitation by benevolent aliens is obscure). And the alien spaceship itself- though it, in its "city of lights" interior and exterior, has become a cliche. Beyond this, I cannot say that the movie appeals to me. It is Earthbound science fiction/fantasy. It is slow and talky, sometimes "shouty", with unlikeable characters for the most part. And cutesy and twee. Cutesy and twee rather like E.T. is.
Frankly, I do not have the same level of admiration for Steven Spielberg as that of a vast majority of movie aficionados. His directing of the Indiana Jones movies is outstanding. But I cannot say that I am an enthusiast for all of those movies. I do not care for the second one, Temple of Doom, at all. I sat through it once and have no inclination to do so again. And the fourth one is problematic for reasons already outlined by many, many people. I will not bore my readers by rehashing any of that. It is largely a problem with the writing. Not the directing. Jaws is a masterpiece. A work beyond any reasonable reproach. Probably Mr. Spielberg's magnum opus. Beyond this, I cannot say that I am a denizen of the Spielberg appreciation society. I judge the science fiction/fantasy that he wrote or produced in addition to being under his direction, to be staid, dull, twee, and, in the case of E.T., "schmaltzy".
And Richard Dreyfuss is not an actor whom I cannot say that I rate. Admittedly, I have seen very few of his movies. And what I have seen of his acting has not impressed me. He was adequate in Jaws as the overly self-assured sidekick to Roy Schieder. As a leading man, he lacks charisma, and in Close Encounters, he spends most of his screen time looking stunned, perplexed, or flummoxed. His Roy Neary (Neary rhymes with dreary) character and all of the Neary clan in the movie, are grating in their interactions with each other, even before a fleeting experience with the extraterrestrial quantity turns Roy Neary into a slob of an obsessive sculptor. Allowing one of his boys to repeatedly whack a doll on the edge of a playpen without promptly scolding the boy, being uninterested in another of his sons' difficulties with Mathematics, and just being a smug "smart aleck" about everything. That is Roy Neary. Teri Garr as Neary's wife is a close comparison to her portrayal of the wife in Oh, God!, only far less likeable. Far less sympathetic. Her loss of patience with her husband in Close Encounters is like fingernails on a chalkboard, and in this movie, unlike in Oh, God!, she does not have a "seeing of the light" scene. The outbursts of temper from the Neary children are assaults upon the ears and nerves. The domestic scenes of the Nearys have me craving a fast-forward button. If it were not for the glimpses of "Duck Dodgers in the 24 1/2th Century" on the Neary television set, I would skip those scenes without hesitation. Actually, the first time that I saw any of "Duck Dodgers in the 24 1/2th Century", and learned of its existence, was by way of Close Encounters. The only actor and character in Close Encounters I can honestly say that I like is Francois Truffaut and Lacombe- and acting is not Mr. Truffaut's claim to fame in film. He was a director of very lofty repute. But he was famously known not to have a love for science fiction/fantasy. When he directed Fahrenheit 451, he strove to avoid every nod to science fiction/fantasy in Ray Bradbury's Fahrenheit 451 novel. I wonder how Spielberg managed to procure him to act in Close Encounters. There is a story there, and one that I may choose to explore on a rainy day.
But apart from Truffaut, the acting in Close Encounters is not particularly good. Not enough to by itself keep my interest in what is happening in the movie. And not much does happen in the movie. There is no action-filled climax. After some preliminary manifestations, an abduction of a cutesy child who is all too enamoured with otherworldly forces, and people being compelled to seek Devil's Tower, the aliens come to Devil's Tower, communicate through musical notes, and invite some people aboard their spaceship to be emissaries for Earth. That is all. What the movie offers to me, primarily, for the lion's share of most part, is some striking visuals. This said, I would still prefer it over E.T. if I had to watch one of the two movies.
I would much rather watch Starship Invasions, or Starcrash, or The Shape of Things to Come, or any other scarcely acclaimed work of the science fiction/fantasy genre post-Star Wars and pre-The Empire Strikes Back.
All right. Enough said about Close Encounters.
There has been no news of any extra features on the Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde (1941) Blu-Ray next month. As there is no such news at this juncture, I would think it to be a good bet that there is to be nothing in the way of value-added content on the Blu-Ray.
Monday, April 25, 2022.
It was a thoroughly sunny weekend. The temperature reached thirteen degrees Celsius on Sunday. But because of brisk cold winds from the northwest, I found it to be impossible to be comfortable outdoors in anything other than a winter coat. And the weather this week is going back to high temperatures in single digits. At this rate there will not be leaves sprouting on the trees until June. No sign of much improvement in temperature in the first week of May either.
All for today.
Wednesday, April 27, 2022.
I had an interesting discussion this weekend with members of a Facebook group of alumni of Douglastown Elementary. I was curious about how people fared with regard to lunches at Croft Elementary and Harkins Junior High in Newcastle, those being the schools I would have had to attend had I continued living in Douglastown post-August-of-1977. I would have been miles away from home, unable to go home for lunch. Not being an enthusiast for sandwiches, would I have had options of hot meals either from an in-school cafeteria or delivered? Only once a week at Croft, I am told. By way of a delivery service. And it was not inexpensive. On the other days, one would have to bring a brown bag or a lunch box. I suppose that I could have been satisfied with a thermos of hot soup. Harkins students went to the Skillet in Zellers in downtown Newcastle or to a lunch bar at the Newcastle downtown's Steadman's department store on their lunch hours, but it was a steep climb of Prince William Street on return to school. On the colder winter days, I would guess that they stayed at school. I suppose that I would have adjusted to the new situations before me. But at least when it came to lunches and to "breaking up" of the long day, I had a better arrangement in Fredericton once my father started being at home in the daytime. I was able to go home for lunch prepared by my father, for most of Grade 7, and all of Grade 8 and 9. I also went home for lunch in Grade 6, my parents both being absent and me having a Swanson or Savarin Dinner heated in the oven with a preset cooking time. Much better than eating out of a thermos at school and not having occasion of seeing my home in the middle of the long school day. But was this worth losing my social life in Douglastown, losing my home there, having my childhood lacking continuity, fractured into sections, and not having consistency in my relationships with friends in my childhood's latter seven years? We should have stayed in Douglastown all through my school years, until my graduation from high school in 1984. I believe this now. One hundred percent.
This said, I have to acknowledge that if my mother had not been transferred to Fredericton and promoted, our family's stay in Toronto in February, 1978 (a "trip of a lifetime" for me, it certainly was) would not have come about. And it is doubtful that we would have gone to Toronto at any time in my upbringing. Or Ottawa. All of the most impressive journeys undertaken by my parents and I in my life's second decade would not have happened, as all were contingent on my mother holding a managerial position at the V.O.N. in Fredericton. All expenses of the journeys were fully paid-for by the V.O.N.. Would I sacrifice these journeys to remain in Douglastown through my school years? Yes. I do not now think the way I did in 2005 when I wrote the bulk of my memoirs. I do not rate the fourth era of my life as highly as I did in 2005. Oh, I did have some good times in that era, to be sure. But they amounted to nothing, ultimately. The social connections, the friendships, did not survive the teenage years of my younger friends, when I was no longer desirable company. And I do not any longer think that I could have prevented the collapse of my social existence by being better at managing that social existence, being fully articulate in my esteem for a best friend, and better practiced at having difficult conversations. No matter what I did or said, the outcome would have been no different. Unfavourable change was on the cards for me in Douglastown in months subsequent to September of 1977, and in years post-1977. If I had stayed there, I would have had to go through that unfavourable change. But I could have coped with it, and with my confidence in myself continuing to grow in my established Douglastown habitat, I may still have prospered in the company of new friends, and stronger bonds with old friends still within my neighbourhood geography as the 1970s transitioned into the 1980s.
I just cannot "let go" of my reveries of a better life in the last seven years of my childhood, steadfast friends, and a non-lonely existence today. How can I? As I live alone and work alone, and walk a solitary path on the streets, sidewalks, and paved trails of Fredericton, dreaming of having a different, accompanied life does rather dominate my thoughts. Moving to Fredericton in 1977 set me on a road to a life of loneliness, from which respite is all too brief (I always "end up" the loner) and less and less likely the older that I become.
How would my love for Space: 1999 have evolved had I stayed in Douglastown? Well, I would have followed with utmost enthusiasm the run of Season 1 from September, 1977 to September, 1978 on CBC Television and CHSJ-TV. Friends and I would have talked about every episode. In the summer of 1978, there would have been much playtime allocated to Space: 1999, probably with nods to its first season. My ardour for Space: 1999 would have been very strong. And the CBC's cancellation of it in September of 1978 would have impacted me much like it did in my post-1977 Fredericton reality. I would have carried a potent torch for it as friends and I gave attention to Star Wars and Battlestar Galactica. But contrary to thoughts that I had a few years ago, I do not believe that I would have "left aside" Space: 1999 in favour of newer, more popular opuses. I might have been at cross-purposes with some friends on that score. And this might have caused me to "dig in" with my stubborn feet, unwilling to abandon my affection for Space: 1999. Star Wars was, before 1980, one movie; Space: 1999 had forty-eight episodes. Sheer number of encounters with otherworldly quantities would weigh in Space: 1999's favour. Battlestar Galactica was a "flop", and would have been so no matter what direction in which my life had moved. Cosmos 1999's return to television in early 1979 just four months after CBC Television's termination of Space: 1999 broadcasts, would have kept Space: 1999 alive in my life as a present-day viewing experience, and I would have reveled in it, with some of my friends following it with me, us talking on Tuesdays about the past Monday night's episode. And in the Miramichi, CBAFT's cancellation of Cosmos 1999 in September of 1979 would not have ended my ability to watch it (CHAU- Carleton, Quebec was receivable in the Miramichi, albeit not with anything resembling a noise-free picture). I would have had access to it, always with most considerable enthusiasm and anticipation of every episode, until June of 1980, when Radio-Canada brought its Cosmos 1999 telecasts to an end. Except for an ATV repeat airing of Destination: Moonbase Alpha one evening in spring of 1981, I would have been without occasion for seeing Space: 1999 between June, 1980 to 1983, just as I was in Fredericton in those same years. And I would have ached to have Space: 1999 in my possession on home video and would have leapt into action to procure copies of it from the CBHT/CBIT/CBCT run of it starting in 1983. The nostalgia in my enduring love for Space: 1999 may not have been as powerfully potent, but my adherence to Space: 1999 would have been unshakable, even as other productions of a "wow" factor were presented unto me and my friends. I no longer judge my move to Fredericton and the loneliness there as being critical in import in conditioning me to be a lifelong Space: 1999 aficionado. It was a contributing factor in that, to be sure, but I could still have become a devout fan of Space: 1999 without going along that particular avenue in my life. I might not have been quite so attached to Season 2, however, for I would not have so strong a nostalgia for September-of-1976-to-August-of-1977 as my move to Fredericton had fostered. And that might have been a good thing. The "aggro" of my Space: 1999 fandom experience would likely not have come to pass.
I would have had some bumpy going as the years went along. Michael would have left Douglastown in early 1979. That would have impacted me hugely. But other friends would have been with me as I was absorbing the shock of the loss of my best friend's company, and one or more of them might have become as close with me as Michael had been. And nostalgia might, or probably would, have formed around the state of my social experience in my years with Michael, including the heyday of Space: 1999.
All of this can be envisaged in my mind's eye. It is all quite plausible. And now, today, I might not be alone. I might have a family of my own. I might have friends whom I see a number of times a week. And my mother might still be alive. If she was as happy living in the Miramichi post-1977 as she had been pre-1977, and without the stresses of working in management with a difficult superior official, she might have had a healthier life. She might not have smoked as much. My father might have lived longer, too. The evening-and-night work shifts that he had in Fredericton were not conducive to good health.
As is said in Space: 1999, "To everything that might have been." I balk at following that by saying, "To everything that was," unless this is applicable only to my existence before August of 1977. We should have stayed in Douglastown. I do not think that it is likely now that I will return to having a lofty appreciation for my life's Era 4. Not unless some, or even one, of my friends of that era were to reach out to me and start including me in their, or his, lives, or life, again. Realistically, how likely is that?
In recent Weblog postings, I have opted to delve into criticism of movies with which I was rather less than enchanted on my initial viewing of them, and with which lack of enchantment continues to be the case. I do have to be careful not to hypocritically contravene my stance on Space: 1999 fans and their daily sorties against Season 2. I have said that if I do not care for something, I say so the one time and move onward to some other subject. With regard to 2001: A Space Odyssey, I have expressed criticism more than once. Close Encounters, same. Not exactly an everyday refrain, mind, but I do have to acknowledge my having been repeatedly critical, and to desist in further being so.
Any news on the subject of Blu-Ray releases? None. There is still no report of any bonus features on the Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde (1941) Blu-Ray. And still no release date for the Doctor Who Season 22 box set, which was supposed to see release in March. I have relinquished any hope that I may have had of seeing a Blu-Ray collection of all existing Doctor Who from 1963 to 1989. My Doctor Who collection will be a hybrid blend of DVD and Blu-Ray. Nothing on the subject of Looney Tunes and Merrie Melodies. The Bugs Bunny Blu-Ray box set of 2020 appears to be the last hurrah on physical media for Bugs and the gang. Happily, some people have been able to collect restored, High Definition cartoons off of HBO Max. I wish that I could access such a collection somehow, to fill the gaps in what I have of the post-1948 cartoons. And I want to have "Hyde and Go Tweet", "Dr. Jerkyl's Hide", and "Hyde and Hare" in High Definition!
With the private state now of most Space: 1999 Facebook groups, I am now unaware of the animosity toward Season 2 being expressed in them. And this is best for me, I think. Alas, I cannot be unaware of the attacks upon Season 2 at other Internet venues. In a recently produced Chris Dale "primer" video on Gerry Anderson live-action television series, dialogue from "The Metamorph" is repurposed to be included in an assailing of Season 2 as being an obscenity, Fred Freiberger is said to be notorious, with accompaniment of a scene from Star Trek- "Spock's Brain" for this declaration, and people who fancy Season 2 are beliittled as being not in the vaunted majority of fans, a minority of wretched outliers. The same-old, same-old. Why always invoke "Spock's Brain" when mentioning Mr. Freiberger? He produced twenty-three other episodes of Season Three Star Trek. Several of them rather highly acclaimed. Why damn him for the worst episode of his tenure, and not acknowledge the laudable episodes? Why always ignore his work on the inceptive episodes of The Wild Wild West? "Spock's Brain". Always "Spock's Brain". An episode that had a valid science fiction/fantasy concept (if Spock's brain had not been disembodied, the episode would have been quite serviceable), but went off of the rails in the execution of the concept. Where is the love for "Spectre of the Gun", "The Paradise Syndrome", "The Enterprise Incident", "The Tholian Web", "For the World is Hollow and I have Touched the Sky", "Day of the Dove", "Let That Be Your Last Battlefield", "Requiem For Methuselah", and "All Our Yesterdays"? Thrown to the wind because it does not fit a "narrative" that anything produced by Fred Freiberger is devoid of any quality. Along with saying, or implying, that someone being in a minority means that he or she has no validity in his or her point of view, because only a majority is ever right. As for the use of the word, obscenity. Typical bellicose, blinkered hyperbole. Yet, it goes unchallenged in all of the viewer comments, all of them in accordance with the stance of Mr. Dale. So predictable. So relentlessly predictable.
Forty-six years now. Forty-six. Since Season 2 Space: 1999 was made, and since the first dozen or so of the episodes of Season 2 first saw broadcast.
And forty-five years since the most pivotal year in my life's experience, 1977. 1977 and 2022 have identical calendar, too. Fancy that.
As to "Spock's Brain", I tend to regard it as a simple-minded (i.e. not intellectually augmented by the Teacher) Eymorg's telling of the events surrounding the confiscation of the brain of Mr. Spock some Eymorg generations earlier. The happenings of the episode were somewhat different as they actually transpired.
All for today.
Sunday, May 1, 2022.
As April passes into the ether, will May finally bring warmth to New Brunswick? In the final days of April, the high temperatures stubbornly stayed in the single digits, under grey skies. With some chilly rain. There is no sign of leaves starting to sprout, and the lawns are only beginning to show some green. Day after day after day, winds from the north.
Spider-Man: No Way Home is a very rewatchable movie. I have viewed it on Blu-Ray ten times since I purchased that Blu-Ray on April 12. But I am starting to tire of it now and will let it sit undisturbed on my shelf now for awhile. I have found a possible fill for the "plot hole" of Spidey releasing the villains from their cells in Strange's dungeon. In an earlier scene, Strange zapped Peter into one of the cells and then promptly released him, and when Strange did the opening of the cell, Peter may have caught a glimpse of him turning a stone dial on a slab of rock. Mind, Strange's back was blocking some of the view of the dial from Peter's perspective, but Peter would have seen enough to know where the means of releasing people from their cells, is. He could have done some experimental adjusting of the dial until he was able to have it do an opening of all of the cells. It would have been better for the viewer to see this, as releasing the villains is a key action for advancing the story to the following scene. "Economy of detail" could, I suppose, be invoked here. But No Way Home is a movie without the length constraint of an episode of a television show. And wherever there is potential for more dialogue between Spidey and the villains, why not have it? I think that No Way Home would be all the better to have its story progression given a smidgen of a slowing-down. I would be quite happy if it were a three-hour movie. I would not mind seeing all of the villains leaving the Sanctum and stepping into the F.E.A.S.T. truck and some onlookers having quizzical expressions on their faces. And the conversation where Lizard says that he does not wish to go into Happy's condominium. Better to see it and not just hear about it after the fact. Deleted scenes do exist, and I reckon that they will eventually be available in a deluxe Blu-Ray release of the movie.
I have my personal "ultimate" Space: 1999 Blu-Ray set sitting on one of my many shelves. It consists of the Imprint Blu-Rays of Seasons 1 and 2, including their bonus Blu-Ray discs, and then Super Space Theatre for the restored four movies. I dream of having an additional Blu Ray disc of bonus material that would have:
"Message From Moonbase Alpha"
The Space: 1999 Documentary: Pt. 1
The Space: 1999 Documentary: Pt. 2 (with disclaimer concerning the vitriol of it)
BBC Horizon with Brian Johnson
Clapperboard One with Gerry Anderson and Brian Johnson
Visual Effects Film (of Season 2 visual effects being filmed intercut with scenes from "The Metamorph") (from the A & E DVDs)
"Promo" and "Props and Ships" galleries (the only two galleries from Network not on the Imprint Blu-Rays)
"These Episodes" omnibus
Johnny Byrne and Christopher Penfold Revisit the Studio (photograph gallery from the A & E bonus DVD)
Derek Wadsworth alternate Season 2 main opening music
The Books of Space: 1999 (printed matter gallery)
"Year 2" Concept Art (from the A & E DVDs)
Character Profiles (from the Carlton DVDs)
"Space Brain", "The Metamorph", and "The Exiles" deleted scenes (with photographs and script excerpts)
U.S. "Year 2" promotions with Landau and Bain for many television stations (from the A & E DVDs)
Space: 1999 On Home Video: A History (with text and photographs of many VHS videotape, laser videodisc, and DVD and Blu-Ray covers)
Cosmos 1999 (Cinelume) opening sequences for Seasons 1 and 2 and episode title sequences
Mattel Eagle commercial, 1976 (it exists on the Internet)
ITC Space: 1999 trailer (from the French DVDs)
How does this sound for an additional bonus Blu-Ray disc? I can dream, of having the most comprehensive collection possible.
This is all for today, another grey and cool day in New Brunswick.
Wednesday, May 4, 2022.
I will resist the 4 May Star Wars reference that seems to be de rigeur on the Internet in recent years.
It seems that 2022 will not be as much the fallow year for Blu-Rays of interest that I expected that it would be. Shout! Factory has announced for July a Blu-Ray box set of the entire Six Million Dollar Man television series, with hints of The Bionic Woman sometime to follow. With these plus the Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde movies, and plenty of time for some other announcements, it seems that my yearning for replacing DVDs with Blu-Rays in my collection will contine to be satisfied for some time yet.
Shout! Factory does have something of a checkered record when it comes to quality. One can only hope that the Six Million Dollar Man box set will be one of those releases that is without deficiencies in the quality department. I worry, though. The Six Million Dollar Man and The Bionic Woman have had a troubled history on home video. To this day, there are episodes that have issues with audio. Muffling of either music or sound effects or dialogue. Including some of the most famous and desired episodes. The ones with Bigfoot, the Fembots, and the ALEX super-computer and Doomsday Device.
I have added an image of the theatre poster to Starcrash to my Era 3 memoirs. It joins a cluster of images of theatre posters that includes those of Buck Rogers in the 25th Century, Star Trek- The Motion Picture, and Outland. And I found a better picture of a McChicken to accompany my memories of lunches when I was in Grade 10.
The weather improved on Sunday, Monday, and yesterday, with sunny skies and high temperatures near twenty degrees, but today it is back to grey skies, rainfall, and and cool temperatures. A high of twenty-two degrees is forecast next week. Alas, on one of the days on which I have to work.
My thoughts this spring are on spring seasons of my past, most especially those of 1977 (arguably my best spring of all time) and 1983 (the spring on which my parents and I were in Ottawa for a week and on which my social existence in Fredericton, such as it was, was reaching a peak). Those are the two springs that I remember most vividly. I do wish that I had more pictures than I do, of the years of my youth. Film was an expense that my parents and I did not opt to absorb in our budgets. All that I have in the vast majority of cases of happy times, are my memories. And my collection of television shows and movies that were often part of those happy times.
I have nothing more to say today.
Well, there has been a review posted at Blu-Ray.com for the Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde (1941) Blu-Ray. It is almost bare-bones. Same cut as what has been available of the movie for decades. No added scenes, though several minutes of deleted scenes do exist. And apart from the theatrical trailer, no value-added content. No cartoons. None. I am not hopeful of there being much in the way of bonus material on the eventual Blu-Ray of the 1932 Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, either. Maybe the Greg Mank commetary from the DVD will be retained. "Hyde and Hare"? I very much doubt it. Certainly not restored and in High Definition. There is just no interest any longer in output on physical media of the newly restored High Definition film-to-video transfers of the cartoons of Warner Brothers that were on HBO Max.
I continue to think about the most pivotal year, 1977, and most pivotal event, the move from Douglastown to Fredericton, of my life. I have been musing of late over a new eventuality for consideration. What if my parents and I did move to Fredericton in 1977 and then returned to the Miramichi to live, in 1978? It is an alternate timeline with a substantial amount of plausibility. My friends, Tony and Steven, moved to Moncton from Fredericton in 1984 and returned almost a year later to my neighbourhood to live there again. Their parents were less than happy with the move to Moncton, and I am sure that Steven, at least, missed his former life and the friends of his former surroundings. Tony, not so much, I would guess. But with this there is a example that I can perceive as having a parallel with our, my parents and I, moving to Fredericton. My parents were not happy with the outcomes of our move to Fredericton. My mother never liked our new house. She had a stressful work environment as a V.O.N. organiser in Fredericton with friction with her supervisor and was increasingly not at home in the evenings. She had been so much happier practicing nursing in the Miramichi. My father lost a job that he enjoyed at C.F.B. Chatham and was in a job at a company in Fredericton called Battery and Electric that was not much to his liking. And I was not faring particularly well at school in Grade 6. Horrible teacher, awful peers, many a day (even after I met David B.) being a sad and lonely personage on the school grounds during recess. By the spring of 1978, my social situation around home was improving, but the ultimate direction of that situation was uncertain. My new friends and I were not a good mix, for the most part, as circumstances did eventually prove. I can see my parents examining our current circumstances and deciding that going back to the Miramichi might be in our best interest. Or mine, at least. As to why they did not actually consider that option, or, if they did, did not bring it to fruition, I cannot say. I cannot ask them as they are no longer alive. Money may have been a consideration. My mother was making more money as a V.O.N. organiser. And she was also now living in her home town, able to see her parents and her sister's family anytime she wished, without a gasoline-burning hundred-mile journey from the Miramichi to Fredericton. But we had been doing quite okay, financially, in Douglastown. We had a lovely house. My parents had enough income to put siding on the house. Christmases were always blessed with an abundace of gifts. And going to Fredericton to visit my grandparents was a nice weekend away from home every now and then. Once every couple of months or so. In any case, my parents ought to have been more mindful of my development and my happiness in a stable social environment. That should have been paramount consideration. Clearly, I was not faring in Fredericton as I had been in Douglastown. And the tumultous years of junior high school were looming with me coming out of Grade 6 having nary a sympathetic peer. The younger friends whom I had found on our street would not be in the same school as I was in the school year, 1978-9, to come. From a perspective that my parents might have had in spring of 1978, that did not bode very assuringly at all. I had not long known those new friends, and they and I could easily grow apart as we attended different schools.
In my mind's eye, therefore, I can visualise a conversation with my parents some time in spring of 1978, that would go like this.
I walk into the house one evening to find ny parents both in our living room
MY FATHER: "Kevin. We'd like a word."
ME: Yeah?
MY MOTHER: "We've come to a decision. We're going to move back to the Miramichi."
ME "Huh? (pausing a second or two to absorb what I just heard) When?"
MY FATHER: "We hope to have it done before school goes back in September. That way, you won't have to go to the junior high school here. You'll be able to start Grade 7 at Harkins in Newcastle. You'll be reunited with your old classmates and friends."
ME: "But will they welcome me back, after I left them?"
MY FATHER: "Sure, they will. And you'll all be together again, in the same boat, going to junior high."
MY MOTHER: "We won't be able to get our old house back. It's gone. But we'll find some place. Maybe somewhere in Newcastle close to the school. So, you can keep on walking to school and coming home for lunch."
MY FATHER: "And we can take you to Douglastown to visit Michael and the others whenever you like. And you can invite them to our place whenever you like. You and Michael will be reunited and can be as close friends as you were before."
ME (with my unfortunate fixation, then, on material things): "What about cable TV?"
MY FATHER: "We don't know when we're going to get cable TV here. By the time we do, they may have it in the Miramichi. It's only a matter of time. And you grew tired of going to grammie's every Saturday to watch cable TV. We managed before, and we'll manage again. Besides, your favourite show now, Space: 1999, is available without cable TV. Just be patient. We'll get cable TV as soon as it's offered in the Miramichi."
MY MOTHER: "Well, what do you think?"
ME: "I've made some new friends here? What about them?"
MY MOTHER: "They're just playmates, Kevin. You haven't known them long enough to really bond with them as friends. They're all younger than you, and you'll be in different schools next year. They'll be with each other more than they'll be with you, and have more in common with each other when it comes to day-to-day experience."
MY FATHER: "You'll be with the old friends you had known for the 5 years we were in Douglastown."
ME: "But will they welcome me back?"
MY MOTHER: "Yes, they will. Michael will be overjoyed to be with you again. The others will be, too."
MY FATHER: "It's also not working out for us here. Your mother's not happy with the house or her new job. I'm not enjoying my new job either. Every day driving to work and back home in jammed traffic. We're tired of it."
MY MOTHER: "I'll request a transfer back to Newcastle and a demotion back to nursing duties. I'll just say things aren't working out for our son, and we would like to go back to the life we had. And your father might get back the job he had at the base. We're going to try."
MY FATHER: "We'll make it work. I don't expect any difficulty selling this house. It's near two schools. We might even get a bit more for it than we paid."
MY MOTHER: "What do you think?"
ME: (pensive and smiling) "Yes. Let's go."
I can see it happening. Going back to the Miramichi. Nervous about the welcome back that I would receive and then being at ease with my classmates and friends all smiling at seeing me with them again.
If I had returned to the Miramichi before start of Grade 7, my junior high school would have been Harkins Junior High in Newcastle. In 2011, Harkins looked like this.
Circa 2000, it was renamed Harkins Middle School, becoming a school for Grades 5 to 8, not Grades 7 to 9 as Harkins Junior High School had been. The building was demolished in the late 2010s.
After going to Harkins for Grades 7, 8, 9 between 1978 and 1981, I would have been at Miramichi Valley High School, also in Newcastle, for Grades 10, 11, 12 between 1981 and 1984. I would have known those schools in my upbringing and would never have set eyes upon Nashwaaksis Junior High and Fredericton High School. Here is a 2011 photograph of Miramichi Valley High School.
To be sure, it would have been better to have not left the Miramichi, our place in Douglastown, at all. But having done so and found Fredericton not to be our oyster, and still having had our time in Toronto in my "trip of a lifetime" in February of 1978, a return to the Miramichi would have been the next best thing.
I am very sanguine about the idea, although it really is just a thought experiment. It is physically impossible by all known natural laws for it to be anything else. Going back in time is still science fiction/fantasy. As are multiple universes of alternate timelines.
A different life path that would not lead to loneliness, is really quite desirable. I know the path of my existence in Fredericton. I cannot say that it is a path that I would have chosen in 1977 or 1978.
Now, having indulged myself with consideration of another different timeline for my life, I must return to the real world that I must live now, and that I have in stored memories to recall whenever I feel so-inclined. We left Douglastown and moved to Fredericton with sincere hopes of a life as good, if not better, than the one that we had left behind us. We tried to make it work, our new situation. And for some years, in the 1980s, my life did appear to be reasonably fulfilling. For as long as I was spending quality time with Joey, winning at baseball, and drawing enthusiastic crowds for presented movies and television series episodes in the home video age. But it amounted to nothing in the end, it has to be said. My contentment, my happiness, was based on a mirage, for there was no great, lasting love for me as I was, among my friends in Nashwaaksis.
For some of them I was just another body for a baseball game. For others, I was a provider of a movie-viewing experience on a cold or rainy Sunday afternoon, and nothing more than that. Or someone with whom to combine videocassette machines and copy videotapes. Or someone to be of assistance in the making of money and to be with for some conversation on a summer's night after everyone else had retired to their houses. And in the early, pre-home-video days, I was someone with whom to have some fun in producing audio plays or in the doing of some other project of interest. I think the gamut is run here. This encompasses my worth to my friends in Fredericton of the latter years of my youth. If someone more appealing to their interest in fun, profit, or conversation came along, it was, "Adios, Kevin."
Now, make no mistake. I enjoyed most of the baseball games that I played, and I was at my happiest when I did have occasion to share my entertainment fancies with my friends. But for these people I considered my friends, there was no great fondness for me. Dispensing with me was a "piece of cake".
Much as I do now wish that Douglastown had been my place of residence all through my school years, the bottom line is that this was not the case in the reality of my life as my life was post-1977 and now is. My parents and I did move to Fredericton, and we lived there for decades, until their deaths. Tons of memories exist in my head for the Fredericton years. Every nook and cranny of my home, every walkway, street, and field of Nashwaaksis, has many a memory attached to it. And I derive comfort from being near those places, near to where those memories had their predicate. I will never leave my home of my own free will. I would have to be dragged out of it, kicking and screaming.
I had many positive experiences in my Fredericton years. Sitting and talking with with Joey at sunset. Being triumphant in numerous baseball contests. Presenting my favourite works of entertainment to a room full of enthusiastic youngsters. Going to the movie theatres with Tony to see the latest imaginative movie. Yes. All of these experiences were of an enjoyable and a to-me affirming nature. At the time. Years before my dissolution as a friend was apparent. And these days, with the state that the world is in and the dire outlook for the future (a future in which there will be no place for people like me who prize individual liberty and the right to have property of a meaningful import), virtually every past era (yes, even the weaker ones) of my life has a potent nostalgic cachet.
Still, I cannot and will not deny that all of the friends of my Fredericton portion of upbringing, are my friends no longer. The cessation of their bond to me as friends in the everyday, was decades ago. I dare not count the years since the last time that they were "hanging out" with me, and calling upon me as a person with whom they wished to "hang out". What good times that we had is counterbalanced with the not-so-good or distinctly unpleasant times, and the ultimate banishing of me from their company and rejection of me as a friend of any significance. I could have been a better person, and so could they have been. They could have been more understanding, more tolerant, more supportive of me in the frustrations that I was experiencing, like with baseball. Instead of "turning on me" in the "heat" of competition on the diamond and "rubbing my nose in it", and ultimately declaring me unfit to participate further in their fun activities. They could have been more sensitive, more empathetic, over how I was feeling at being sidelined for periods of time when they were preferring the company of others. They should have accepted that my being an only-child did lend itself to some personality traits that were somewhat different to those of sibling-endowed people. They ought to have not been as bitingly critical of me for my liking too much, they contended, the works that I fancy. Really, though a lacking of empathy was a failing of mine during my upbringing, I was not the only person in my life who did have an empathy deficit. My friends in Fredericton all did. I cannot think of one who did not lack empathy on at least one occasion. It does have to be said. Some were better at it, being empathetic, than others. But I cannot say that anyone was consistently empathetic, consistently friendly. And I seldom ever really felt the love of my friends for just being myself. Tony would never express esteem for me as a friend. The word, friend, and buddy and pal, were not in his lexicon. In regards to me, at least. And he was not tactile. The only affectionate friend of my Fredericton years, was Joey. But that was not long for the world after he entered his teenage years. He became aloof, too, where I was concerned. And I shrunk from raising this particular subject in conversation. Difficult conversation was not my forte then. Or now. Joey should have been more considerate over how I was feeling about being with him less and less. And no longer being affectionately greeted by him. The good times in Fredericton did not last. And I doubt that they would have lasted even if I did handle relationships and circumstances differently.
But this said, I have nostalgia for the good times. I long for them. I ache for them. With my parents gone now for ten and twelve years and my not having any other family, I wish to God that I had some friends from my youth in my life now as a tangible presence. I need that connection to the past. My past. Douglastown past and Fredericton past, both.
These are my thoughts now as spring is finally with New Brunswick, and memories of springs past are pouring into my considerations.
All for today, Friday, May 6, 2022.
Sunday, May 8, 2022.
Sunny though still on the chilly side this weekend. But a warm-up and then some is expected by Tuesday, with high temperatures reaching the upper twenties. Then, at last May will be the perfect month that I have always thought it to be. Comfortable outdoor temperatures. The weather improving steadily with the summer solstice still in front view. Foliage in fresh bloom. Green grass. Grass with no burn yet from summertime sun. I think that I can say that May is my favourite month. That used to be August, back in the days when there were summer vacations from school and the company of friends was in abundance.
There is an image addition to my Era 6 memoirs, specifically one of the front of the cover to the VHS videocassette of Bugs Bunny Superstar. I have also found and corrected errors in numerous of my television listings Web pages.
As I proofread my Weblog entry of Friday and render corrections for typographical errors and mind slips during the typewriting process, I find myself once more asking questions of myself on how healthy it is for one's spiritual health to be lamenting over and over again a decision that was made forty-five years ago now. It cannot be changed. Nothing back then can. So, why not just "let go" and concentrate on the here and now? The answer that I have to that is of course that the here and now is the result of past choices. And it does actually lift my spirits to consider the possibility that I was not doomed from birth to be the solitary personage that I now am, spurned inevitably by the friends that I make. That maybe things might have been different if my parents and I had been more thoroughly considered as regards pros an cons of leaving Douglastown for Fredericton.
Additionally, I find myself once again questioning the propriety of looking back critically upon the friends that I had in past life eras, as indeed I do in both my autobiography and, increasingly, in this Weblog. I can envisage some, maybe most of my readers, asking that question and judging me unfavourably.
Is it wrong to criticise my friends of yesteryear? It would be if they were still my friends, certainly. But then, if they were still my friends, and really my friends in every definitive sense, I would not have cause for any criticism. And for me to criticise them here while being in their company, pals with them in the here and now, would be quite two-faced and despicable. As we are still separate and evidently will be so for the rest of our days, it is not the act of a two-face to express criticism.
My friends of the yesteryears that were the Fredericton portion of my upringing, were, yes, not adults; they were developing, as was I. Today, they might be much different from how they were way back when. But if they are, I do not know it. Because they are not with me for even a fraction of a second. I will wager that I am not in their thoughts except for maybe a rare occasion when something that they see triggers a distant and faint memory associated with me. A memory with which there is, sadly, no vestige of fondness. I meant nothing to them beyond ephemeral moments of fun on a baseball field, in a theatre, in my television room, or on streets or in yards of our surroundings. The triggered memory is promptly, within seconds, "shrugged off". And they "carry on" with their present-day relationships, oblivious to their past with me. Reconnecting with me is a non-starter for them, and has been so for longer than I have been proffering my life's story and posting Weblog entries. In the vast majority of cases, the friendships ended not with a quarrel, a "falling out", in which irreconcilable differences were laid bare, but with a decision to simply no longer be inclusive of me, favouring instead new friends, and some friends of old other than me. A decision that I was no longer worth the allocation of any time. Sometimes it was a misunderstanding followed by snubs of estrangement that heardled the dissolution of a friendship. No initiative undertaken by them to repair the rift, and a dismissing of overtures by me to endeavour to do so. With the impact that this has upon me, it does warrant mention and criticism. Especially where I am giving an account of how I came to be as attached as I am to the works of entertainment venerated by my Website.
And with the friends whom I do criticise I have a care in not revealing their full name, only their first name or, in cases where I have had other friends with same first name, the first letter of their surname. Only people who knew them (and/or their association with me) and their location(s) once upon a time in Nashwaaksis would know that I am referring to them. And it is decades since most of the happenings involving them and me, occurred. At some point in time, it should be permissible to reference those happenings and to address them with some critical eye, knowing the eventual effects of them upon my life over the successive decades. I would most definitely write a retraction for anything that I said if my perceptions are revealed to have been in error. Nobody is perfect. I am not. They are not. I criticise myself, and I criticise them. Maybe some of them, maybe all of them, do feel regret over severing the tie with me, doing so while I was still within daily visiting reach. But if they do, I cannot know it without them letting me know it, in no uncertain terms. As long as their abandoning of me years ago remains the basis of current circumstances, I ought to be free to express my criticisms.
In the absence of any overtures from them, I must "fall back" upon what phenomena of comfort there may be in my past. Concentrate my attention upon that. And extrapolate an alternate timeline from it, had choices of life path been different. And this I am doing when I think about my parents and I staying in Douglastown or moving back to the Miramichi a year or so after relocating to Fredericton.
Outside of mention of there having been an occasional quarrel, and my addressing of my "falling out" with Michael in 1980 and its possible or probable causes, I do not express criticism of my Douglastown friends. Only the Fredericton ones. Fredericton is where I live, and old friends living in Fredericton are disinclined to reach out to me. My relationships with my Fredericton friends ended not after them or I moving to another community, but with them and I still within everyday visiting distance, and them choosing not to bother.
All for today.
Weblog readership is down, and I have received and mentally processed the hint from that. My Weblog entries of late have largely consisted of deliberations on the direction of my life post-1977 and, what some or many people may judge it to be, my neurotic hand-wringing over the critical stance that I have in my memoirs with regard to certain erstwhile friends. Criticism of erstwhile friends is the way of the world. Granted, in most cases, such criticism is limited to people's private conversation and is not expressed in a public way through an autobiography or Weblog. But what was, was. And what is, is. How I was treated by friends did largely affect my attachments to works of entertainment that brought me to the formation of this Website to which persons interested in those works have come. My history and people who shaped that history are a vital component to my particular mindset that fostered my creation of my Website, and in order to understand and appreciate how I came to be so dedicated to the productions that I venerate, one has to know my life's story. The good times. The bad times. The ugly times.
I will say again that my erstwhile friends of my upbringing years were not adults then and should not be judged as adults. And they ought to have the humility to acknowledge that as children or as teenagers, they were not paragons of perfection. And nor was I. Nobody is. But do I wish that they could have been better, more steadfast, more dedicated friends to me? Of course.
And with this, I propose to "leave aside" my recent musings on my past life.
I am going to address this little gem on the one remaining public Space: 1999 Facebook group.
"They all worked together before the waste dumps blew. They all worked together in Season 1. Yet....
In Season 2, the needed name badges with their pictures on it! 'My name is: Commander Koenig'."
This griping about the identification badges on the Season 2 uniforms long ago became tiresome. Why cannot the Alphans simply opt for a different style of uniform? For aesthetic purposes, if for no practical reason. Or to give the Moonbase quartermaster something to do, a project, in the quiet weeks between Alpha's encounters with other worlds. Given that Alpha is having visits by aliens who do not know every Alphan on sight, the identification badges serve a practical purpose in identifying each Alphan's field of expertise for the alien visitors. And some sections of the base may have Security protocols requiring that an Alphan's badge be scanned to determine whether they are authorised to enter. Commlocks were stolen in the past and used to gain unauthorised entry to what are supposed to be secure sections of Alpha. Simmonds stole Koenig's Commock to gain entry to the Power Room. Cellini filched Carter's Commlock to board the stand-by Eagle. The badges may offer an added level of personal identification in the interests of security. I can envisage Tony Verdeschi proposing it, and I can see Koenig approving it.
There, then. This works for me, as it should for any reasonable Space: 1999 fan.
All for today, Monday, May 9, 2022.
Summer now beckons in New Brunswick. Midday temperatures in the high twenties. The leaves on the trees starting to bloom. At last the ability to discard winter or even spring apparel.
It used to be that that good, old-fashioned carefree feeling would "come over" me as a long summer vacation was imminent. Not anymore, alas. I strive to have as much summertime respite from the "grind" of my months at work, but there are concerns that prevent me from fully rejuvenating mentally. Concerns for a future in a country where it is becoming increasingly expensive to live as normal, where discrimination based on medical choice has become the norm, where there are constant encroachments upon people's rights as individuals to avoid severe adverse reactions to medical interventions, to have privacy, to own things, and to be free to go to wherever one may wish.
Since 2015, the citizens of Canada and all other Western countries have been living in a toxic culture war fuelled by "identity politics". Individuals are no longer seen as sovereign beings but as parts of an "identity group", their personality and outlook totally formed by their "group", and are at odds in some way with other people who are in a different "identity group". Some "identity groups" are favoured, others are judged caustically, often based on some hereditary guilt, their persons needing to "check privilege" and stay silent when their "identity group" is vilified in the news media. Individuals are being condemned for the actions of someone in their "group", present or past. People who speak or write in any way contrary to where "acceptable" opinion resides on a continuum of political discourse, are demonised, judged for all time as unworthy of any recognition, or indeed any acknowledgement of existence. Such people are effectively "cancelled", hence the use of the term, "cancel culture". This is the oppressive environment in which one must guardedly live in what used to be free, democratic, liberal (classically liberal) societies. If one fails to self-censor, one risks being "cancelled", all of one's past accomplishments or proclamations dismissed utterly, and source of income and livelihood in present and future "cut off". For a person like me with no family, a removal of a source of income could result in homelessness and premature death. What a world in which one must now live! And has any of this actually been put to a vote in a referendum with clear statement of all of it as a proposal for twenty-first century life? No. Just saying that people support everything that a political party stands for when they cast a vote for a candidate for that party, is ludicrous. If indeed the party is truly "up-front" in articulating all that it stands for, in an election. This said, I do not doubt that there is already a sizable minority percentage of citizens who are perfectly happy to live in an autocratic "cancel culture", as long as they have government hand-outs and perceive their "identity group" as being protected from "the other". And given enough unrelenting propaganda, most people could be swayed toward relinquishing their individualism and all of the rights that go with that. This is scary. So very scary.
Since the start of the Coronavirus pandemic, "cancel culture" has been fused with the directives of government, government mandates, to stifle any dissent against coercive or draconian, rights-denying measures, and governments across the West have been resembling more and more states of eastern Europe during the Cold War, or oppressive Communist regimes of the present. I really cannot see how anyone can deny this. It is a self-evident truth.
I have had to "go back" and censor my Weblog entries of the past several years, and to rigidly censor myself in my present writings. Today, I dare not express support for any political party, person, or idea. And I must shrink from levelling criticism at government action said to be for "the common good".
These days, I do wonder how I would have fared within fan movements if I had stifled myself in my contributions over the years to those. In a sense, I experienced a "cancel culture" within fandoms when I deviated from "acceptable" discourse. In Space: 1999 fandom, I was provoked, demonised, compelled to leave, all of the good that I had done for "the show" dismissed as inconsequential. Yes, indeed. "Cancel culture" is not a new thing these past seven years. It existed back in the 1990s, and it did before then. It certainly was quite at home in Eastern Bloc countries, though the procedures for handling the persons "cancelled" there were decidedly brutal. Exile to Siberia. Imprisonment. Torture. Or outright execution.
The human psyche really has not progressed very much in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries, it seems. We humans still prize conformity and ostracise people who think differently from "the herd". And now such has become integrated in values and practices of mainstream society across the West, and indeed across the world. There is scant, or no, tolerance for a plurality of points of view in any contentious thread in the political tapestry. Not the sort of world in which I would wish to live. But I have no mechanism for exit. Interplanetary space travel and time travel are not at one's disposal.
And so, this summer, like last summer, I will be in constant anxiety over the next "boom" to be lowered upon one by the government, lowered with full agreement with such process, by a majority of my fellow citizens.
I have done some improvement to images in my Era 7 memoirs and The Spiderman Page. And found text needing correcting on numerous Web pages.
After having suggested that the identification badges on the Space: 1999 second season Moonbase Alpha uniforms might have some Security purpose, I found myself looking for episodes that may be regarded as going against that notion, and "A Matter of Balance" came to my attention, for in it Shermeen, unbeknownst to Koenig or Security, has access to Launch Area and an Eagle with Bill Fraser inside of it. Surely if her identification had some Security practicality, she should not be able to pass through Launch Area and board an Eagle without authorisation. Oh, I can see the cascading criticism now of the episode for the liberty that Shermeen has after acting strangely following a reconaissance mission to an alien planet.
This has had me envisaging scenes and dialogue that might "explain away" the inconsistency and counter the attacks upon the episode that may be triggered in one's considerations of the possible use for the identification badges. And I went further in imagining still more additional scenes, or scene extensions, to fill "narrative gaps" (not necessarily "plot holes") in the episode.
Here is what I have "come up with", if anyone is interested.
ACT TWO
Eagle lands on planet, and crew prepares to disembark Eagle.
KOENIG: "Maya?"
MAYA: "Same sensor readings as on Alpha. Abundant vegetation. No animal life. I also detect no hostility in the environment."
KOENIG: "Plants with no animal life. Not exactly a very balanced ecology. Reminds me of another planet we visited."
MAYA: "Luton?"
KOENIG: "Yes. What would the odds be of encountering two worlds with identical ecological circumstances in different solar systems in rather a short order... for a wandering Moonbase traversing a vast cosmos?"
MAYA: "Slim."
KOENIG: "But not nil. I can't say I'm entirely sanguine about exploring this planet. Inviting though it certaibly is. ... But as Commander, with the fervent wishes of our people in mind, I have to do the full survey of any potentially habitable planet we encounter. So, we go out and explore and take samples of the vegetation. All right. Shermeen will collect samples as per normal procedure. The rest of us will look for any potential concerns with the environment and any evidence of habitation, past or present. Shermeen, regular contact every ten minutes."
SHERMEEN: "Yes, Commander." (sets timer on her Commlock for the device to activate a beep sound at a ten-minute mark)
KOENIG: "Maya, as vegetation is confirmed, set your sensors to concentrate on detecting life of any other kind."
MAYA: "Yes, Commander."
KOENIG: "Okay. Here we go."
Hatch opens, and the Alphans disembark Eagle and move out onto the planet. All are in delight at breathing the fresh air, feeling a breeze on their face, seeing a sun in the sky, after having not had such experiences for many months. Shermeen eyes her first plant sample and looks at Koenig.
KOENIG (tensely watching): "Go ahead."
Shermeen removes bloom from a plant. Nothing happens, and Koenig breathes a sigh of relief, relief that what happened on Luton is not going to happen again.
KOENIG: "All right. Let's go."
The landing party starts to disperse, with Shermeen going on her own way, as seen in episode at start of second act.
MAYA (to Koenig in reference to Shermeen): "What do you think?"
KOENIG: "This isn't the first planet she's been to. She was okay then. And Helena certifies her fit for duty. I trust that. I know she's been upset, but we can't coddle her. That'll just upset her more. ... We all have a job to do, and she has hers. And our time here, though fairly plentiful by our usual standards, is not unlimited. Let's go."
ACT THREE
During conversation between Koenig, Maya, and Verdeschi in Command Centre.
KOENIG: "Tony, something happened to Shermeen on that planet. I want to know what it was."
VERDESCHI: "Well, why don't you ask her?"
KOENIG: "I did, but she was holding back."
VERDESCHI: "Oh, I see. You want me to ask her, right?"
KOENIG: "Right. I think you can reach her."
VERDESCHI: "Not anymore, I don't think.
KOENIG: "Try, Tony. Because if we don't find out."
VERDESCHI: "Okay. I'll try."
KOENIG: "Good. I feel confident that she'll open up to you, Tony. She really likes you. ... I've had her movement monitored enough to determine that she went direct to Hydroponics after the routine post-reconnaissance Medical checks. And that's where she is now. Beyond that, I know how sensitive Shermeen is. I'm not going to subject her to official observation or restriction, but I want you to talk with her and keep a close eye on her, Tony."
VERDESCHI: "Right."
KOENIG: "I know it goes without saying, but if she says or does anything unusual, let me know immediately."
VERDESCHI: "Will do."
Shermeen after leaving Equipment Room with portable generator.
SHERMEEN: "Where to now?"
VINDRUS: "You will need to steal an Eagle. And hypnotise a pilot."
SHERMEEN: "The stand-by Eagle is under the most strict Security protocol. But I think we can board one in the Launch Area and have a pilot raise the ship to Launch position."
Koenig in Command Centre with Maya. Sandra has joined them there, her duty shift just starting.
KANO (on screen at Koenig's desk): "Commander Koenig?"
KOENIG: "Yes, Kano."
KANO: "I was looking over the Computer records of section access in the past fifteen minutes. Computer indicates that Shermeen Williams entered the Equipment Room at 17:54 Lunar Time. She used her Commlock to unlock the door and then manually pressed the door button to enter. You were having her monitored earlier. I thought I should notify you."
KOENIG: "Good work, Kano. Thank-you. (looking at Maya) Tony's conversation with Shermeen was awfully short, and why no word from him? (frowns) ... Check the equipment requisition list. Does Shermeen have authorisation do visit the Equipment Room."
MAYA: "Yes, Commander."
KOENIG (to Sandra): "Sahn, raise Tony on his Commlock."
SANDRA: "Yes, Commander"
Koenig walks over to Maya's desk and watches her speedily make her inquiry.
MAYA (looking worried): "No indication of equipment requisition for Shermeen Williams."
Koenig frowns and returns to his desk.
KOENIG (presses button on his console): "Equipment Room. Potter? (no response) Maya, let's get down to the Equipment Room and find out what the hell is going on."
SANDRA: "No response from Tony, Commander."
KOENIG (sighing in frustration). "Send a Security detail to Hydroponics. Tell them to find Mr. Verdeschi."
SANDRA: "Yes, sir."
KOENIG: "Also, I want a Security guard to meet us at the Equipment Room."
SANDRA: "Yes, sir."
KOENIG: "And have Kano deactivate Shermeen's Commlock. Let's go, Maya."
A boarding tube docks with stand-by Eagle (Eagle Two) on launch pad, Alan Carter enters it to do some checks on its systems. This accounts for scene of boarding tube connecting to Eagle on Launch Pad.
Some levels below.
SHERMEEN (meeting a Launch Area technician, who is on his way back to his work station after "coffee break", just outside Launching Area) "Tom. Is Bill Fraser about? I need to ask him something about the planet we just visited."
LAUNCH AREA TECHNICIAN: "Yeah, he's doing an examination of Eagle One. I'll need to scan your ID before I grant you access. Just routine."
SHERMEEN: "Certainly. But first, Tom, have a look at this plant. Isn't it beautiful."
Launch Area technician falls under hypnosis. Shermeen reaches around the corner of a Communications Post and grabs the portable generator that she was concealing from the technician.
SHERMEEN: "Let me go through."
Technician uses his Commlock to give Shermeen access to Launch Area and then allows her to pass into boarding tube, unlocking the boarding tube door for her, so that there is no Computer trace of Shermeen's presence in Launch Area.
VINDRUS (to technician): "You will forget everything that just happened. Find yourself a secluded place and go to sleep."
KOENIG (at Equipment Room): "Potter?"
Potter is still unconscious and is moaning and groaning.
MAYA: "A laser stun wouldn't have him acting like that, Commander."
KOENIG: "I know."
MAYA: "Shermeen must have some other way of incapacitating a person."
KOENIG: "This could also be what happened to Tony. (gestures to Security guard) Let's get down to Hydroponics, Maya, do a quick check on the equipment stores. If you find anything conspicuously missing, let me know immediately."
MAYA: "Yes, Commander."
GUARD (on Koenig's Commlock): "Commander. Security here at Hydroponics. We've found Mr. Verdeschi unconscious. He seems to be all right, though."
KOENIG (sighing in both relief and frustration at having been right): "I'll be right there. Full Security Alert. Find Shermeen Williams."
Shermeen enters Eagle One, puts portable geneator on floor, and approaches Bill Fraser.
In Hydroponics. Verdeschi is groaning as he tries to pull himself out of unconsciousness.
KOENIG: "How is he?"
GUARD: "He's coming around, Commander."
MAYA (on monitor) "Commander."
KOENIG: "Yes, Maya."
MAYA: "A portable nuclear generator appears to be missing."
KOENIG: "What? What would Shermeen want with one of those? She wouldn't have the first idea how to start it up."
Tony moans and starts to form words.
MAYA: "How's Tony, Commander."
KOENIG: He'll be all right, Maya."
Maya smiles in relief and switches off the transmission. Koenig returns to Verdeschi.
SANDRA (on monitor in Equipment Room): "Commander?"
MAYA: "Commander's at Hydroponics. What is is, Sahn?"
SANDRA: "Eagle One just took off without authorisation. I had brief visual of the Pilot Section before communication cut out. Bill Fraser was at the pilot controls. Shermeen was in the co-pilot's seat."
MAYA (both eyebrows raised in surprise): "Thanks, Sahn. I'll notify the Commander."
(seconds later)
VERDESCHI: "Oh, wow! Do I feel lousy."
KOENIG: "Yeah, so does Chris Potter. We found him in the Equipment Room in the same state you're in."
As Koenig and Verdeschi are hurrying out of Hydroponics to go to an Eagle.
VERDESCHI: "How in hell did Shermeen get access to an Eagle, and get Fraser to pilot it for her?"
KOENIG: "Your guess is as good as mine, Tony."
VERDESCHI: "Flower power?"
KOENIG: "You may not be very far wrong, Tony. We'll find out soon enough. Knocking people out is evidently not all she's able to do. (shakes head) This blindsided me. I wasn't expecting it."
VERDESCHI: "I don't remember being knocked out."
KOENIG: "What do you remember?"
VERDESCHI: "I was on my way into Hydroponics to talk to Shermeen. And that's all I remember before I came to."
KOENIG: "Maybe it'll all come back to you in time."
EPILOGUE
Debriefing session on Alpha after Koenig, Maya, Verdeschi, Fraser, and Shermeen return to Alpha from the planet.
KOENIG: "So, Vindrus appeared to you before we left Alpha to explore the planet."
SHERMEEN: "Yes, it was shortly after I returned to work after Dr. Russell visited me in my quarters."
KOENIG: "And he was responsible for what happened to Eddie Collins."
SHERMEEN: "And so was I. I did what Vindrus directed me to do. He instructed me to grow a plant. Its fragrance overcame Eddie."
VERDESCHI: "Like what happened to me."
SHERMEEN: "Yes, exactly. And then there was Chris, Tom, and Bill."
KOENIG: "You put Bill under hypnosis with a flower?"
SHERMEEN: "Yes. And Tom."
VERDESCHI: "That's how you got into Launch Area?"
SHERMEEN: "Yes. Oh, I'm so ashamed. I fell for Vindrus' charms completely."
KOENIG: "You were vulnerable. Vindrus knew that and used it to his advantage."
SHERMEEN: "A lesson has been learned, Commander. It will never happen again."
KOENIG (smiling reassuringly): "I know it won't, Shermeen."
SHERMEEN: "Commander, what did you mean when you said only matter will be destroyed, not anti-matter?"
KOENIG: "I wasn't speaking fully accurately. We hadn't time then for me to go into a conversation about Maya's particle equilibrium theory. Essentially, the
explosion of the reactor was only in the matter universe. Any immediate destruction by it would be to inanimate matter. Animate anti-matter in Vindrus'
universe would not be affected. Some inanimate anti-matter would have disintegrated somewhere in the anti-matter universe to maintain the balance. Well,
according to the theory."
SHERMEEN: "I think I understand, Commander."
VERDESCHI: "Certainly more than I do."
KOENIG: "Shermeen, what did you see when you were in the anti-matter universe?"
SHERMEEN: "Vindrus' people kept me in the conversion cabinet. They didn't let me out. They were doing some kind of contamination check on me. I think they were afraid of interacting with me until the check was completed. I saw the same temple that you all saw. And I heard your voices. I was so scared. They had me at gunpoint. And they told me if I called out to you, Vindrus would retaliate against you. After you tricked Vindrus into the cabinet, I got my nerve back enough to call out."
KOENIG: "You're okay now, Shermeen. You did very, very well. We wouldn't have been able to bring you back without your help."
MAYA: "It was fortunate that they kept you in the cabinet. Made it easier for us to get you back."
Shermeen nods in agreement.
SHERMEEN: "Why did you put the generator on self-destruct, Commander?"
KOENIG: "I was hoping the explosion would put the converter out of commission on the matter side. To prevent Vindrus or one of his people from trying the same thing again."
MAYA: "Now that the planet no longer seems to have a foothold in matter space, hopefully Vindrus' people will now accept their evolutionary fate."
VERDESCHI: "Amen to that."
Days later, Tony is hosting a visit by Koenig and Maya in his quarters, hence scene in epilogue.
Some people, maybe most people, would dismiss these imagined extra scenes or scene extensions as a "fanboyish" attempt to explain away lapses of story clarity in an episode that ought never to have been made. For my own purposes, they add some enhancement to an episode whose "economy of detail" in all of its filmed scenes is, by my judgement, satisfactory. And they make the possible use for the identification badges easier to accept. And frankly, as to whether I am judged to be "fanboyish" or not, I do not give a rat's derriere. I appreciate Space: 1999 in my own way, on my own terms. Of course, it is not perfectly consistent across all of its episodes of both seasons. But it is the concepts that are beautiful and compelling, along with the artistic correspondence between episodes and patterns in the episodes as chronologically delineated. Inconsistencies do not detract from that, and they can be explained. All that one needs is an unblinkered mindset and a little imagination of one's own. Alas, the average Space: 1999 fan possesses neither.
Oh, I know that I may be as guilty of treating Space: 1999 fans as a collective and subsuming individual autonomy under a collective classification as people are of doing same with regard to "identity politics" groups. It may be just as wrong for me to make generalisations and to denounce declarations of individual members of a collective as being representative of everyone, as it is for people to do so for persons in "groups" in "identity politics". To judge the individual for the behaviour of a herd, or of other persons in a herd. But Space: 1999 fans do pride themselves for their being a homogeneous mass of "right"-thinking persons, and they are dogmatic in enforcing their particular "group identity" as people who despise Fred Freiberger and proclaim Season 2 as excrement. Never is a contrary point of view given credence, and what people there are who like Season 2 pronounce their "guilt" over the "pleasure" that they have in watching Season 2. They are themselves designated an "identity group" of people who must all be "guilty" for liking the filth that is Season 2 Space: 1999. The arrogant and downright toxic attitude of the detractors of Season 2 does warrant my strident criticism, and I must apologise to outlier individuals in the fan movement (though I wish that they were not so self-deprecatingly abject, as that only fuels the egos of the haters of second season).
All for today, Saturday, May 14, 2022. A gorgeous Saturday with summer temperatures nearing thirty degrees Celsius.
Sunday, May 15, 2022.
I propose to refer back to my added and extended scenes for "A Matter of Balance" of Season 2 Space: 1999 for some additional commentary.
In writing that material, I opted not to make any reference to Shermeen's years of age. I prefer to leave that to the interpretation of the viewer. As I have said in the past, on my first viewing of "A Matter of Balance", on January 8, 1977, I regarded Shermeen as a young woman, a woman in her twenties, as indeed the actress, Lynne Frederick, playing her, was. Miss Frederick was twenty-two years-old when she played Shermeen, and, frankly, she looked her age. Or maybe a year or so older. I had known some teenaged girls as my sitters, and she did not look like them. So, when Maya said that Shermeen had a "teenage crush" on Tony, and Helena mentioned a simple case of teenage infatuation on Alpha, I interpreted the word, teenage, as descriptive of the "crush", the infatuation, and not the person. Infatuation tends to be associated with teenagers. Young adults can have "crushes", yes. Pre-teenagers can have them, too. But they are mainly in the domain of the teenager. So, when someone wishes to emphasise the immature nature of an infatuation in a person older than the age of eighteen, that someone could attach the word, teenage, as a descriptor, for emphasis on the immaturity of the "crush". In Shermeen's case, I hew to the notion thay she joined Alpha at age eighteen as a prodigy and lived a shut life on Moonbase post-"Breakaway", her development as a young woman stunted, her being Alpha's second youngest inhabitant (Jackie Crawford being the first youngest) meaning that she was treated with "kid gloves" and that she retained her naivete. And so, as Helena says "She's a very sensitive girl. Very impressionable." The use of the word, girl, in referring to a young woman was, by the way, not unprecedented in Space: 1999. Bergman called the deceased orderly, Hillary Preston, a girl in "Force of Life". It was something that was done in the 1970s. The heroines of the James Bond movies, whatever be their age, were called "James Bond girls".
Shermeen is said in the novelisation of "A Matter of Balance" to be eighteen years of age at the time of the episode. But the novelisations are not canon. Only a filmed episode in its final cut as broadcast, is to be considered canon. The novelisations may hint at some particular aesthetic interpretation of an episode's subject matter, that one might choose to follow, but they cannot be said to be canonical in every item of essential information provided in them. Shermeen's surname in the "A Matter of Balance" novelisation is given as Goodwood, not Williams as is her last name in the filmed episode. Goodwood was perhaps her name in the script's early stage of development. And I am thankful that it was changed. Goodwood is a bit too Ian Fleming-esque. Though albeit rather aesthetically apt for the suname of a botanist. Perhaps a bit too much so.
For Shermeen to be eighteen years-old in "A Matter of Balance", minors would have had to be allowed on Alpha pre-"Breakaway". Some writers have opted to explain Shermeen's presence on Alpha as a teenager in "A Matter of Balance", and her therefore having come to Alpha when she was thirteen years-old (or younger), as being predicated on some visit with a relative, or on some science fair project or reward. Nice ideas, but I prefer to see Shermeen as a young woman in her twenties in "A Matter of Balance". It is the only way that one could accept that she had been approved to be on earlier reconnaissance missions, and that Koenig and company are agreeable to her being by herself on an alien planet, as in "A Matter of Balance". She would have to be at least in some occupational capacity a seasoned adult for that. A woman as young as eighteen years of age would not be left by herself on an alien planet. A woman of twenty-three or twenty-four, perhaps. A socially, interpersonally naive woman of twenty-three or twenty-four, perhaps. But not an eighteen-year-old.
This is how I choose to interpret "A Matter of Balance", and I am grateful that I have liberty to do so. That Shermeen's numeric age is never given in the canonical episode.
I love "A Matter of Balance". I love its concept. I love the look of the planet, the temple, and, yes, even the Sunimian dress. I love how it does some novel things with Maya's powers, her turing into a fox and a baboon. I love the "away team" of Koenig, Maya, Fraser, and, later, Verdeschi. I love how gentle and sympathetic Koenig is with Shermeen. And I do appreciate the journey through which Shermeen goes over the course of the episode, advancing past her naivete and choosing to bond with Maya, her former rival for Verdeschi's attention, as the episode is in its climactic scenes. And then her self-confident "brush-off" of Tony who had been so brusque with her. And I love Dean's interpretation of the episode, which he still has not seen fit to dissemenate to the world. I am not going to reject the episode because fans of Space: 1999 are so intractibly literal in how they choose to regard Shermeen.
And although I first saw "A Matter of Balance" in the dead of winter, my other cogent experiences of it were in the springtime. Its first airing in French on Radio-Canada, which was on May 7, 1977. Its repeat broadcast on CBC Television on May 28, 1977. Its first repeat on Radio-Canada, on April 23, 1979. My acquisition of it on videotape in May of 1985. It is associated with sunshine, warmth, and incipient, growing, or newly thoroughly sprouted spring foliage. It is one of those Space: 1999 episodes vividly associated in my mind with the superlative spring of 1977. Douglastown under sunny skies, with warm daytime temperatures and sight of my house with foliage bursting forth all around it. "The Rules of Luton" was another of those. And "Space Warp".
The nostalgia that I have for those days is formidable. Indomitable. It is counterpointed with the coldness that I feel for my first months as a Frederictonian, my suffering as a loner at Park Street School in the dictatorial, collective-guilt-assigning classroom of Mrs. O'Hara. It is clear to me now, as I look back to my early experiences in Nashwaaksis, Fredericton, that I had brought unto myself a Karmic curse. I should never have consented to or supported the decision to leave Douglastown and move to Fredericton. The Karmic reprisals were swift. Being denied cable television in our new home despite it being available across the street, being on the other side of the river from the bulk of the shopping options of Fredericton at that time, living on an unpaved, un-curbed street with rocks for a lawn, and in an unattractive house amongst many other unattractive houses, an ugly new habitat. And then derisive peers and Mrs. O'Hara. Her and her full-class detentions. My head down on my Friday afternoon desk. Alone at home when I finally went home, having to console myself over the difficult day.
And here is something else that I have not before mentioned. There was a fellow in our Grade 6 class who had a marked proclivity for sticking his finger up his nose, removing dried mucous membranes from his nasal cavities, and rubbing those dried membranes ("snot" or "boogers" were the words of use for such in the then vernacular) somewhere on his person. On his neck, maybe. Or on his shirt collar. Oh, most people do occasionally "pick their nose". When there is no Kleenex handy and a nose is uncomfortably caked with mucous membrane. And God knows, the school classrooms of Fredericton and their exceedingly dry air were prime places for discomfort up the nostrils. But this fellow did the "nose-picking" to excess, sometimes doing it until his nose bled. And he was very indiscreet, very immodest, in his actions of inserting index finger into nostril, rotating it, and pulling out the "stuff". He was also known to have issues with flatulence and runny excrement. But that was mostly before my time as a Frederictonian. Thankfully. Suffice it to say that he had become a very unpopular person at the school. He seemed to be lacking in any awareness of how "grossed-out" people were with him. How I certainly was. And especially why that was the case. And Mrs. O'Hara was constantly trying to push him onto me, partnering him with me whenever the opportunity to do so arose, or was made to arise by her. And it so often did because I was not a person of any social standing in our class. I resented it- and rightly so. I was new to the school, the only new Grade Sixer in the school. Why push me into relations with the most unpopular person in the school? That was disgusting of her, and it was certainly more grist for the mill in my intense disliking for her.
One day in the classroom I had a Space: 1999 book with me for private reading. While it was sitting on my desk, the aforementioned fellow picked up the book and started flipping through its pages, vigorously "picking his nose" as he did so. I just could not believe the effrontery. If I had had the skills and self-confidence at difficult conversations, and the gumpton, I would have confronted him and said, "Who gave you permission to touch my book and put your snot all over the pages?" Doubtless, my confronting him would have meant trouble for me with Mrs. O'Hara. That was an eventuality not lost on me. As things transpired, the book was deposited in a garbage can and not touched again by my hands, as I "wrote off" the one dollar and fifty cents of my weekly allowance that had been spent on that book. Grade 6 was a long school year made all the longer by Mrs. O'Hara compelling togetherness between me and this person. I became quite resentful of her and him. Was I right to resent him? It is possible that he was somewhere on the autism spectrum. I do not know. At that time, I had not heard tell of autism. It was a word never mentioned in my presence. Nor were its particular behavioural characteristics. There were special needs classes in Fredericton schools of those times. I therefore do tend to doubt that he would have been integrated into our class if he were on the spectrum. I just knew that I did not like that person and wished not to be friends with him. Was that wrong of me? Cannot one be in any way discriminating in whom one chooses to befriend? Does one have to like everyone? Cannot one be resentful of being put with a person whom one does not like? It was a relief when another classmate chose to partner with me on our day's excursion by train to Moncton in late June of 1978. We had an odd number of pupils in our group that day, and that classmate had a choice of either me or the other unpopular person. And he chose me. Understandable, I guess. He chose me before Mrs. O'Hara could push the "nose-picker" upon me. She was quite displeased by that. It was a good thing that my days of suffering under her tyranny were coming to an end.
But did I incur it all as Karmic punishment? I tend to think so, today. Ideally, if I were to find someone like that in my class, I ought to have been allowed to avoid him if I wished to do so. Everyone else did. Why could I not? Oh, it was a relief to be away from Mrs. O'Hara and from him during the week in February, 1978 that may parents and I were in Toronto! That was a mercy, one of few, that I had that school year. The "trip of a lifetime" in Toronto and my visits with Michael in Douglastown were among the respite that I had that school year from my Karmic punishment. I had some respite. I should be thankful for that.
But oh, we should have stayed in Douglastown, in the Miramichi. In no way was the grass greener on the other side of the fence. What grass there was on that other side of fence. I associate Douglastown with green grass, fields, trees. How apt it was for my Space: 1999 viewing experiences of spring of 1977 to accord with that on a number of occasions in planets visited by the Alphans!
Wednesday, May 18, 2022.
I typewrite the numbers for the current year, and I wince. Where is the time going?
Website updating. Not much to report on that, other than the addition of an image of the cover of ITC Home Video's videocassette of The Return of the Pink Panther to my Era 6 memoirs.
I propose to return briefly to my mention last Weblog entry of a Grade 6 classmate and one of his ways. I was eleven and twelve years-old at the time that I was in Grade 6. As I say, I had no knowledge, then, of autism. None whatsoever. Not in any of the forms of it on its spectrum. I suppose that it is possible that someone with the milder variety of autism, Asperger's, would have been included in our class. I do not wish to "come across" as wilfully uncomprehending or unaccepting of anyone who might have that condition. I do not purport to be thoroughly knowledgeable on the subject now. And I certainly was not "in the know" back then with regard to inclusion policy at the province's schools. But it would also be wrong to make assumptions as to someone being somewhere on the spectrum. He may have just had an obsessive-compulsive personality. It is true that his unawareness of other people's opinions of his habit might be a symptom of an autistic condition. But an inability to see oneself through others' eyes was a problem that I had. His ways could just have been born of a sheltered youth in his case. I honestly do not know. I did not know of his earlier life before Grade 6. Eleven- and twelve-year-old me was rather less considered on the factors in a person's less than appealing character traits than I now am. And then, at the time, I preferred not to engage with that person, but Mrs. O'Hara forced the matter. And that, compounded with my not "seeing eye-to-eye" with my other peers, made for a rather less than pleasant school year. I wish that I had stayed in Douglastown and did not need to experience any of my Fredericton years of school.
But enough about my past. Weblog readership is has dropped of late. That could be a result of the pleasant spring weather and people wishing to away from their computers and enjoying the outdoors. Or it could be that my subjects of rumination have not been of particular interest.
The Blu-Ray of the 1941 Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde is en route to me now. Tracking says that it is in Fredericton and is "out for delivery".
I have watched Spider-Man: No Way Home a few more times. It continues to be a satisfying viewing experience for me, to whom Spider-Man has long been a favourite character. But I have come upon some YouTube videos that excoriate the movie for its writing, for how it chose to propel its story development toward a meeting of the three Spider-Men. And for some of the scenes of the three Spider-Man in action. When one subjects the premise of the movie to an increasing scrutiny, criticisms do tend to gush forth, most especially on how the movie "sets up" the scenario of Peter going to Dr. Strange for help and in how it chooses to pull the villains and heroes of the other Spider-Man movie series into its story and how is opts to portray those characters and the Marvel Cinematic Universe (MCU) Peter's interactions with them. The whole business about the "frame" of Peter by Mysterio and Peter's consequential legal troubles is argued as not following logically from the events of Spider-Man: Far From Home and Peter's connections with the Avengers. Tony Stark doted on Peter; surely Pepper Potts or one of the other Avengers could have rallied to Peter's aid to defuse the confrontations with the law, and help Peter and his friends in admission to college. And, if things did still go as awry as they do in the movie, to "round up" and administer cures to the villains in a more secure location than Happy's condominium. Aunt May need not have died, and it is possible that the meeting of MCU Peter with his other "mes" would have been brief, if it happened at all. Dr. Strange was not consistent with how he was in earlier movies. He was overcome too easily by Peter. And then, there were so many conveniences in the story. Evidently, everything that happens is contrived to bring about the three Spider-Man grappling with the villains of two universes at the Statue of Liberty. And for MCU Peter to be prevented from going down a dark path, by his fellow, more seasoned Spider-Men. The reactions of a large portion of the public to Spidey's identity reveal are also said to not jive with gratitude for Spidey for his role in stopping Thanos in the Infinity Saga or with what should be an obvious "frame-up" by Mysterio or by Mysterio's team.
I acknowledge all of this. It certainly is integral to the essential "narrative beats" of the story. Invoking "economy of detail" may not be warranted, if the quibbles are with the story's essential development, how it "gets us to" the desired unions of characters. I tend to concur that the legal wrangles could have been very brief, the allegations against Peter dispelled, and Jameson chastened if not sued for defamation. The "court of public opinion" may still have been divided, but not enough to hurt Peter and his friends' quest for college admission, and even if it did, Peter would have to be more desperate to seek out Dr. Strange for help, and for Strange to want to help him. I do not know. Maybe have Peter and his loved ones be under threat as a result of Peter being Spider-Man being common knowledge. Some immediate threat that is ruining their lives, including college plans. Strange's spell might have been corrupted by some means other than stupidity on the part of Peter or Strange. The cure the villains angle might be jettisoned and instead have the villains threatening the city and needing to be stopped. Or it could go ahead, under more controlled conditions, and Green Goblin could still explode into a violent frenzy and still wreak havoc on MCU Peter's life before the other Spider-Man appear.
At the end of the day, the movie is what it is. As are other Marvel movies that are subjects of quite scathing YouTube videos. Is there a perfect movie? The early MCU movies may have been more successful at offering a less perforated, or potentially perforated, story, due to the universe in which they transpired not yet being highly populated by persons of super-heroic abilities and the super-heroes who do exist not having been unified. And not only that. Once there are magical characters in the mix, characters with ability to will the opening of portals, or cast spells to erase knowledge or memory and induce changed behaviour, foresee future events, accidentally overlap universes, and time travel at will, with an eye to tying movies of disparate producers or directors together, the potential for inconsistencies, contradictions, "plot holes", et cetera, can only increase. As the MCU expanded, problematical movies became more and more difficult to avoid. Crowd-pleasers though they still may have been.
And the early MCU movies are not perfect either.
Spider-Man: No Way Home proceeds at such a breakneck pace that its beholders have not time to thoroughly mentally process all of the details and subject the details to scrutiny and criticism. Not in the initial viewing or first few viewings. And, as I do with Space: 1999, viewers may opt to compensate for missing details by furnishing some information to account for some of the questionable story elements. Information that may come from other entries in the television or movie series, or spring from a rational interpretation of them. Or not. The furnished information could be entirely "made up" in the viewer's mind. I often, though not always, propose "economy of detail" should exposition may be lacking for some, not all, circumstances that may be ancillary to the "driving narrative force" of the story. The issues that people have with some of the Marvel movies are with essential story development. The actions or conditions that bring about the changes of fortune or the challenges for the characters, setting the "narrative beats". But there is room for embellishment of some of the "set-up" to explain some of the lapses in the story. Though the imprudent decisions of Peter and Strange, their neglecting to discuss the parameters of the spell before its casting, that set the "multiverse" story into motion, may be less readily rendered acceptable.
Spider-Man: No Way Home is a controversial movie, certainly. It was less so on its first spins on cinema movie projectors, and with repeat viewings opinions on it became more divergent, and now, here we are. It is an irresistible "ride" for a Spidey fan such as I, with so many villains and multiple Spider-Men with such palpable chemistry. I certainly cannot hate it.
I enjoy the Marvel movies. The ones with characters familiar to me from my upbringing, most particularly. They are fun. They are vivid. They are colourful. They have likable heroes and interesting villains. I cannot honestly say the same for the latter-day movies of James Bond and Star Wars. To this day, I have not seen the J.J. Abrams and Rian Johnson Star Wars movies, and I have not seen the Daniel Craig James Bond films post-Skyfall. Or Quantum of Solace.
Sunday, May 22, 2022.
The forecast for this weekend was for sunshine and warm temperatures. It was wrong, wrong, wrong.
I went to the Miramichi yesterday, and while I was there, the skies were dark grey, the temperature did not rise above fifteen degrees, and there was a gusty wind. And when I was walking around Douglastown, it started to rain. I returned to my car and went home. It was an expensive abortive "day trip", to state it mildly. To fill just over half of my car's fuel tank, the cost was above seventy dollars. How could the meterologists have so egregiously "fouled up" their forecast? I will leave that question rhetorical. And as for the cost of the gasoline, I know who to blame.
Today, the weather is scarcely any better. There is sunshine in the prognostication for for tomorrow, Victoria Day. One will see if the weather forecasters can be right about that. They are not exactly batting a thousand.
This week, I came upon an image of the front cover to the 1985 MCA Home Video VHS videocassette of Fahrenheit 451 that is of a quality much superior to that of what I had previously in my Era 4 memoirs. That superior image is now in said memoirs amongst my memories of the autumn of 1985. I also found a quality image of the North American VHS videotape of Doctor Who- "The Daemons", which is now in my Era 6 memoirs, along with a new cluster of images of covers of videocassettes of Earthquake, Star Trek II- The Wrath of Khan, Logan's Run, and Star Trek- The Motion Picture. I almost typewrote "Motionless Picture", but, then, I would, would I not? Or maybe one of the other pejorative monickers given the 1979 Star Trek exercise in pretension, such as "Where Nomad Has Gone Before" and "Spock-Alypse Now". Or maybe just "The Ugly, Boring, Time-Waster of a Picture". What can I say? I was a completist. Still am. I have the STAR TREK 50 Blu-Ray box set, which includes Star Trek- The Motion Picture. This will be representing the 1979 movie in my collection in perpetuity, or for as long as the Blu-Ray disc does not "rot". I have no intention of buying The Director's Cut of Star Trek- The Motion Picture, which is coming soon to Blu-Ray.
Oops. I lapsed into criticising something more than once.
The 1941 Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde Blu-Ray is now in my possession. There is a marked improvement in picture quality over the DVD, but not to a large degree. As expected, other than the theatrical trailer, no extras.
I have recently purchased four more Super Space Theatre box sets, so as for those, plus the set that I bought in February, to complement the five (yes, five) Imprint Space: 1999 Blu-Ray box sets now on my shelves. I trust that five sets are enough of a guarantee of sufficient copies of the most definitive Space: 1999 collection to last a good, long time. I know of no "disc rot" problems with Imprint, or with Network Distributing, Blu-Rays. I trust that these companies have not used Philips and DuPont Optical or Cineram.
Of late, my Weblog has been seeing an array of new visitors from the United States, Britain, and Hong Kong. I note this with interest. No theories as to why.
Nothing else in the way of news. And nothing more today.
Saturday, May 28, 2022.
Forty-five years ago, on a sunny Saturday, I was with my parents in our car on our way back to Douglastown after a stay of several days with my grandparents in Fredericton. It had been Professional Development week for the teachers at Douglastown Elementary School. On that stay with my grandparents, I bought the Orbit Books versions of the Space: 1999 books, Breakaway and Moon Odyssey, and I would bring them with me to school on the subsequent week. After I watched some Saturday morning American television network programming, including Sylvester and Tweety and The Bugs Bunny/Road Runner Hour, my parents and I boarded our automobile for the hundred-mile journey back to our home village of Douglastown along the river Miramichi. We were at home some hours before the CBC Television and CHSJ-TV broadcast of Space: 1999- "A Matter of Balance" at 5 o'clock.
Forty-five years ago. More than half a lifetime. I can still smell the scents of the Regent Mall in Fredericton back then. And of the Coles Bookstore therein. Where I found those two books. I can still remember my parents remarking bemusedly about my quickening pace as I walked toward the bookstore with a building anticipation.
I wish that it was any year of my life besides this one, as I have a dentist appointment this coming Tuesday for either repair or extraction of a badly damaged tooth. For many people, going to the dentist is "no big deal". For me, though, with my traumas in the dentist's chair in my youth, I cannot approach any dentist appointment without feeling dread and even mortal fear. My dentist in the Miramichi was not bad. But the needles still hurt, and the freezing effect was not pleasant. However, the move to Fredericton required my having a new dentist, and the Karmic curse that was upon me as a result of that move and my agreement with it, effected yet more misery upon me. The dentist whom my parents found for me was an older man. I later learned that he had been an army dentist. I do not think that he had any empathy for children. Or that he was either qualified in, or interested in, having the least painful procedures possible. On my first visit to him, in May of 1978, I had a toothache. As I recall, my gum beneath the tooth was swollen with pus. The tooth was abscessing. He gave to me one needle and then yanked the tooth out of its socket with a pair of pliers. I had never felt so much pain before in my life. I screamed. In early 1981, as I was about to have braces put onto my teeth by an orthodontist, I had to visit my dentist to first determine if there was any standard dental work needing to be done. He found five cavities, and they were to be filled on two appointments, the first of which was for fillings in three of the teeth, one of which was a front tooth in what he called a "tender" area. I had to have three needles, the one in the "tender" area exquisitely painful. And they scarcely worked. I could feel the drill and was groaning in agony. But the dentist was oblivious to my pain and kept on drilling. The pain was so unbearable that I rose in the chair, and the dentist ordered his nurse to restrain me. And after that ordeal, a further one, to fill the remaining two cavities, loomed as I dreaded it like death itself. I cannot forget those experiences. They are indelibly imprinted upon my psyche. And even though my dentist today is agreeable and benevolent and very competent, my fear remains acute. I fear having a panic attack in the chair. Choking on my saliva. Or having an acid reflux attack and choking from that. Or even a heart attack from the stress and fear. Maybe this is irrational, but it is the result of very real trauma in a dentist chair in my upbringing years.
Why, oh, why did I not do a better job at caring for my teeth when I was a teenager?! The problem that I have now, the problems that I have had in the past twenty-two years, have been all due to required fillings of my youth falling out of my teeth, or tooth decay forming around them or under them. If I had not needed fillings back then, I would probably not be going through what I am experiencing now. Why did my mother allow me to suck a peppermint in bed before going to sleep (after, not before, I brushed my teeth for the night)? I did that because I was prone to sore throats because of the exceedingly dry air at Nashwaaksis Junior High School. Why did my father not insist that I brush my teeth after having a Mars candy bar for dessert after lunch and before returning to school for the afternoon? Why was I not advised to drink Coca-Cola with a straw, or better yet, to not drink Coca-Cola (or any other soft drink) at all? Why was I not instructed to brush my teeth after having pancakes with syrup and before leaving home to go to school? It is amazing that I only had five cavities. Oh, I had more later on, in my very early adulthood. Not as many, but enough to keep my mortal dread of dentists going.
Back then, I had my parents to reassure me that everything would be okay. Now, I do not have that, and try though I do to "channel" them to reassure myself, I cannot say that I am successful.
Anyway, this is where "I am at" on this overcast Saturday morning of late May.
I have done some updating of my Era 2 memoirs to include the cover of a comic book, Captain Enviro, about pollution, a comic book that was in the Grade 2 classroom at Douglastown Elementary School, and some elaboration on its effect upon me. And I have expanded my memories of seeing Space: 1999- "Journey to Where" for the first time (on October 2, 1976) and how my earlier experience with Captain Enviro tied into that. And added a paragraph about two of the astronomy books that I had in autumn of 1976, and also an image of a general science book that my father gave to me for Christmas in 1976.
The impressions that I received from my first viewings of Space: 1999 episodes "The Metamorph", "The Exiles", and "Journey to Where" continue to be difficult to thoroughly put into words, try though I will always certainly continue to do. The visual effects of those episodes and production design of them are not loftily regarded today, but they, on my initial viewing of them, completely "sold" to me the television series as an exquisite rendering of otherworldly settings. On the screen of the McCorry living room television, the scale of Psychon, Golos, and 2120 Earth looked as authentic as any actual place that I had seen, only out of the world that I had known, a "mind-blowing" series of places most vividly imagined and put to film. I was only ten years-old then, it is true. But youth should not impair valid appreciation of filmed visual marvels.
Still, people, many people, most people, contend that Space: 1999 was not "good". I had that thrust upon me numerous times by peers in my Fredericton years of school, or by contributors to Starlog magazine, or by Space: 1999 fans. Today, Season 2 Space: 1999 is lambasted everywhere that it is mentioned. But does this mean that it is not "good", or that people are oblivious to its "goodness", made blinkered to it by their preference for Season 1? I believe the latter to be the case. That and something in the collective subconscious. Something that makes it imperative for people to resoundingly scorn and denounce anything and everything Season 2.
Some time ago, someone said to me that it is okay to like something even if it is not "good". To like it for nostalgic reasons, perhaps. Or just for visceral thrills. Or some other reason. I ought not to dispute this. Everyone should have a right to like what they are sentimentally attached-to or what gives to them some pleasure as a viewing experience. And such pleasure should not be branded as "guilty". I acknowledge this. But it is not how I view Season 2 Space: 1999 and my bond to it. I do not judge Season 2 not to be "good", and my sentiment for it based on fondly remembered past conditions of my life during my seminal experiences of it, is not all that there is to my appreciation of it. No. I am not going to concede to the claim that Space: 1999, either season, is not "good". Or for that matter anything else that has a Web page at my Website. Oh, there are some portions of some of these entertainments of which I am critical. Season 1 Rocket Robin Hood, for instance. But Seasons 2 and 3 are more than sufficient to "make up for" the deficiencies of Season 1. If I did not believe these entertainments to be "good", with quantifiable evidence, articulated by me, that they are in fact "good", would I bother writing the Web pages and paying every year to keep my Website in the size that it has, on the Internet? Oh, nostalgia is a factor in this, certainly, but not the only one, and certainly not the primary one in my initial writing of my Website some twenty-five years ago. I came onto the Internet because I had a case to make about my favourite entertainments as being not only "good" but magnificent aesthetic gems.
Oh, there are entries of series of television programmes, movies, cartoons, that receive less plaudit from me, maybe because they cut corners in their production or maybe due to their being "cheater" entries in a series ("clip shows" and so forth). But the oeuvre as a whole in those cases has my veneration. And is rightly honoured at my Website with a Webpage, or at least some extensive mention in my memoirs.
And what qualifies something as being "good"? Is something more of a determining factor for that than others? Quality of acting or cinematography tends to be invoked as a meter of "goodness" or "not-goodness". But these days, even these seem to be superseded by writing, by how developments in a story are contrived to happen through, say, decisions and actions of persons in the story, on whether those are consistent with established characterisation. When it comes to stories with fantastical elements, people look for an internally consistent universe and balk at any deviation, or apparent deviation. Or they will reject a concept outright if it is not realistic in an Earthbound sense. But stories are written by men and women, and men and women are imperfect. Especially when working under deadlines. And also when there is a strict limit of screen time in a filmed production. Some "economy of detail" may be necessary. I am not as concerned about "air-tight plotting" as I am for a story to have a compelling imaginative concept. A certain amount of licence is required in an imaginative opus. And a production may have a story that is difficult to fault and be a bore, or be lacking in likable characters, production values, et cetera. I think that "goodness" is a combination of many elements, not just writing, and that there should be some allowances with the writing for dramatic or aesthetic necessity.
Do I like entertainments that I recognise as not being "good"? I have to admit to not giving much, or indeed any, thought to such. Usually, if I like something, it is because there is something "good" about it that I acknowledge and appreciate. "Oh, come on," my readers are probably saying. "Surely there must be some universally derided work that you like for sentimental or visceral reasons only." What about the cheap "knock-off" movies that emerged from the first heyday of Star Wars? Starcrash? There is much about Starcrash that I can judge not to be "good", from the acting to the dialogue to several of the visual effects. But some of the visual effects are serviceable, and the music has a stirring quality to it (and John Barry is difficult to fault with anything that he did). I like The Shape of Things to Come, though some, not all, of its acting is poor. Definitely not that of Barry Morse. His enacting of Dr. John Caball is always dignified. Jack Palance is... Jack Palance. Always the villain with a fuse, short or long. And effectively menacing, as always. The young characters played by Nicholas Campbell and Eddie Benton are competently portrayed and likable. Carol Lynley is not up to par. Her acting seems laboured and lacking in nuance. Some of the other actors of the people on Delta Three are not compelling in their performance. The robots are clunky but definitely not Ed Wood quality. The visual effects are not I.L.M.-standard but satisfactory. The story of the movie is slow but adequate in its development. How the heroic characters reach Delta Three is insufficiently explained. The robot says that the spaceship, Starstreak, went through "time dilation", but there is no difference in time between them and the people on Delta Three. I do not judge The Shape of Things to Come to be on the whole "not good", but it does have demerits. I accept that. It was made in Canada. after all. Canadian cinema then was not exactly creme de la creme.
But as I look over my holdings on DVD and Blu-Ray, I see scarcely anything that I can say is "not at all good". Some of the later Tomorrow People serials, perhaps. Yes, maybe those.
On the other side of the coin, there are entertainments widely recognised as being "good" that I do not like. I have mentioned some of them in this Weblog.
What I contend, and will contend to my dying day, is that the entertainments with Web pages at my Website are both liked and considered mostly or entirely "good" by me, and I argue a case for their "goodness". If people, or indeed the vast majority of people, are oblivious to that "goodness", that is their problem, not mine. As the Jon Pertwee Doctor of Doctor Who once said, "Well, you please yourself, sir. I've already done all I can to convince you."
I am an older man now who worries about having a heart attack in the dentist's chair. And I am tired, so very tired, of having to go on the defencive for my love for the works of entertainment the experiencing of which has been integral in the forming of my identity.
Tuesday, May 31, 2022.
Well, to use a quotation from The Flintstones, "It's d-day. D-for-the-dentist-day." My appointment is at 2 P.M.. I have to go to the dentist from work and then return to work following the procedure, whatever the procedure is. I slept well last night, amazingly enough. And feeling somewhat confident this morning. Last evening, I used some meditation techniques to calm myself. Them and stroking my purring cat. I credit my Vietnamese friend for the meditation that he taught me, and the strong memories of my parents onto which I locked my mind during the meditation. And it is a sunny day, too. Which always makes me feel better.
I have not much else to report today. Other than that I found an old TDK blue-dye CD-R of Space: 1999 music that was "burned" more than twenty-four years ago. And it still plays. Fancy that. Maybe dye-based recordable optical disc media is more durable than has been said.
Saturday, June 4, 2022.
Saturday, at last. An insanely busy week of work, with evening hours until 10 P.M. on Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, in addition to the routine daytime hours. Plus a very mentally draining anxiety over my Tuesday dentist appointment, after which I had to return to work. And I am feeling very, very exhausted.
My tooth needs to be extracted. I opted not to have the procedure done on a day when I had to work to 10 P.M.. The extraction is scheduled for early August. Hopefully, the tooth will not be bothersome to me in the interim.
I do not know what I will do with two consecutive teeth gone on one side of my mouth. A gap of two missing teeth. I do not know if there is a denture configuration possible to fill that gap. But if not, I guess that I will cope with my new oral condition. I still have my front teeth, and enough teeth on one side of my mouth with which to chew.
Here is an interesting question. If a person publicly calls me self-satisfied and delusional and "one can short of a sixpack" and later writes a book about my favourite television show, with content including many never before seen photographs, ought I to "hold my nose" and buy the book? Ought I to set aside the umbrage that I have with that person, his biases, and his opinion of me, and just buy the book if I want it? I have ruminated on this question. Goodness knows, I bristle at the thought of this person receiving money from me, whether he knows or not that it came from me. But I am curious about the content of the book and do like the look of it, from what I have seen.
I am afraid that I relented to curiosity and bought the book. It will soon be en route to me.
To what book am I referring? Space: 1999- The Vault.
Worry not, my readers. The author of this book is not the same fellow with whom I stayed in Calgary in 1995. Though he, too, has written a book, a few books, about Space: 1999. Yes. After having dispensed with me and my contributions to an Ultimate Guidebook, and then ingratiating himself with people involved with the making of Space: 1999, and some accomplished persons of early fandom for same, he proceeded to "make a name" for himself as a published author on his favourite subject. While I languished in obscurity at a strand of the World Wide Web in the most remote corner. I have to say, my grievances with him are far more sorely felt than are those with the other "guy", and there is no way that will I touch any book written by him and published. No matter what enticing content may be promised. I have to "draw the line" somewhere.
During some of the more tedious hours at work this week, I indulged myself with some toying with some thoughts of Space: 1999 releases over which I might have some control. I know. I am scarcely a person of any import, any influence, on any decision vis-a-vis Space: 1999 in its iteration in any commercial product. I am a nobody where Space: 1999 is concerned. Always have been. Always will be. Worse than that. A pejoratively labelled nobody. "Fanboy". A self-satisfied perennial loser with "screws loose upstairs". There, I said it. My detractors need not do so. Oh, but they will, still. For as long as I am here in this isolated niche on the Internet, ruminating for a dozen or so people who have some interest in what I have to say, I must be derided. No one, absolutely no one, must give to me any attention, much less credence.
Anyway, I was remembering the releases of Space: 1999 episodes on videotape by Columbia House in 1997. Only ten Columbia House videotapes with Space: 1999 episodes on them, were made. Each videotape had an episode of Season 1 mated with an episode of Season 2. I do not remember there being any "themed" rationale for which episodes were paired together. I thought it might be interesting to consider "themed" pairings of episodes, and I made my own such pairings. For consumption by my readers, here is my conception of a Collector's Edition of Space: 1999 using the Columbia House template. "Breakaway" and "The Metamorph" are the only two episodes forming a pair without any discernable connection. Other than their being first episodes of a season. It makes sense for them to be together on the first videotape, as was the case in the actual Columbia House Space: 1999 releases. The other twenty-three videotapes in my imagination have twosomes of episodes with some "thematic" similarity. The associations are rather obvious in some cases, and less so in others. My readers can endeavour to trace those connections for now. And in a later Weblog entry, I will delineate what those connections are.
One of the qualities of Space: 1999 that I love so very, very much, and that is of an enduring love despite all of the adversity that I have had to experience, is the propensity for artistic correspondences between episodes, and, yes, this extends to instances of such between the episodes of the quite different, styistically different, arguably contextually different, seasons.
And so, here is Kevin McCorry's consideration of a Collector's Edition, a la Columbia House, of Space: 1999.
Videotape 1: "Breakaway"/"The Metamorph"
Videotape 2: "Death's Other Dominion"/"The Exiles"
Videotape 3: "Earthbound"/"Journey to Where"
Videotape 4:" Guardian of Piri"/"The Taybor"
Videotape 5: "Ring Around the Moon"/"One Moment of Humanity"
Videotape 6: "End of Eternity"/"All That Glisters"
Videotape 7: "Alpha Child"/"The Mark of Archanon"
Videotape 8: "Another Time, Another Place"/"The Rules of Luton"
Videotape 9: "The Full Circle"/"New Adam New Eve"
Videotape 10: "The Infernal Machine"/"Brian the Brain"
Videotape 11: "The Last Sunset"/"Catacombs of the Moon"
Videotape 12: "Voyager's Return"/"The AB Chrysalis"
Videotape 13: "Force of Life"/"The Beta Cloud"
Videotape 14: "Missing Link"/"Seed of Destruction"
Videotape 15: "Matter of Life and Death"/"A Matter of Balance"
Videotape 16: "Black Sun"/"Space Warp"
Videotape 17: "Collision Course"/"The Bringers of Wonder: Pt. 1"
Videotape 18: "Space Brain"/"The Bringers of Wonder: Pt. 2"
Videotape 19: "Mission of the Darians"/"Dorzak"
Videotape 20: "The Troubled Spirit"/"The Seance Spectre"
Videotape 21: "The Last Enemy"/"Devil's Planet"
Videotape 22: "Dragon's Domain"/"The Lambda Factor"
Videotape 23: "The Testament of Arkadia"/"The Immunity Syndrome"
Videotape 24: "War Games"/"The Dorcons"
Lastly, some reports of Website updates. New images are in my Era 2 memoirs. Images of the cartoons, "Tweet Dreams", "Hare-Less Wolf", "Tweety's S.O.S.", and "I Gopher You". And I am working on a further assemblage of images of items of some significance for me in Era 2.
All for today.
Website updates. New images and some new text for my Era 2 memoirs. Amongst my memories of first half of 1974 are new images of SONY audiocassette sleeves, a Road Runner activity book, an NHL hockey players sticker album cover, and a promotion for the 1974 Dairy Queen mystery rings. Also a new image of "Tweety's S.O.S." for the collection of images representing September 14, 1974.
Apart from these updates, I have had not much time in the past couple of weeks to do anything besides work at my job and recuperating from exceedingly long hours thereat. The long hours at work came to an end on Friday. I should have more time to dedicate to Website work and Weblog entries in the weeks ahead. Today, however, gorgeous weather in Fredericton is prompting me to go outside for most of the day. After beng "cooped up" at work for several days, I need no prompting to spend time outdoors this weekend. And I will do so.
Space: 1999- The Vault has not arrived at my door as yet. I expect that it will be in my possession sometime this week.
Last Weblog entry, I had some fun envisaging videotape releases of Space: 1999 combining episodes of the two seasons, a la Columbia House's template for Space: 1999 videocassettes. I "pitched" the notion of "themed" releases of pairs of episodes and promised to elaborate later on what the associations are between the two episodes in the pairings that I propose. I will do so now.
Some of the connections are more extensive and satisfying than others, but here is how I would have done a "themed" videotape release of Space: 1999 using the template of Columbia House.
Videotape 1: "Breakaway"/"The Metamorph" (opening episodes of the two seasons)
Videotape 2: "Death's Other Dominion"/"The Exiles" (the cryogenic freezing of the Golos exiles and a "living people frozen in eternity" on Ultima Thule; character (Dr. Rowland, Cantar) ages rapidly to death in final minutes of episode)
Videotape 3: "Earthbound"/"Journey to Where" (an offer of a return to Earth, the prospect of that appearing certain for an Alphan or Alphans, but something goes awry)
Videotape 4:" Guardian of Piri"/"The Taybor" (a Catherine Schell robot has its face blasted away)
Videotape 5: "Ring Around the Moon"/"One Moment of Humanity" (spheres of influence, Alpha seized, and Helena chosen as an instrument by an alien quantity in an apocalyptic bid to achieve some desired knowledge about humanity)
Videotape 6: "End of Eternity"/"All That Glisters" (living rocks)
Videotape 7: "Alpha Child"/"The Mark of Archanon" (children on Alpha)
Videotape 8: "Another Time, Another Place"/"The Rules of Luton" (the ending of both episodes involves a flower or flowers)
Videotape 9: "The Full Circle"/"New Adam New Eve" (cave-dwelling creatures on an Earth-like planet, and a pit trap)
Videotape 10: "The Infernal Machine"/"Brian the Brain" (artificial intelligences, and Alpha menaced by a machine)
Videotape 11: "The Last Sunset"/"Catacombs of the Moon" (fanaticism of religion or faith in both Morrow and Osgood)
Videotape 12: "Voyager's Return"/"The AB Chrysalis" (talking probes; Alpha buffeted by violent waves of energy, either those of fast neutrons or the electrical discharges of the Chrysalid world an its moons; Aliens condemn Alpha to destruction, and Koenig endeavours to persuade them otherwise)
Videotape 13: "Force of Life"/"The Beta Cloud" (Alpha's life-support capacity in jeopardy by a quantity (the alien-possessed Zoref, the cloud creature) stalking the Moonbase, eventually reaching a certain essential section where there is a showdown)
Videotape 14: "Missing Link"/"Seed of Destruction" (an "image" of Koenig is on Alpha while the real Koenig is elsewhere)
Videotape 15: "Matter of Life and Death"/"A Matter of Balance" (anti-matter)
Videotape 16: "Black Sun"/"Space Warp" (displacement of Alpha through space, with some Alphans in an Eagle thought "left behind", until a miraculous, or highly fortuitous, return)
Videotape 17: "Collision Course"/"The Bringers of Wonder: Pt. 1" (Koenig's mental competency and fitness for command is in question, and he is confined)
Videotape 18: "Space Brain"/"The Bringers of Wonder: Pt. 2" (Koenig undergoes a brain procedure, either symbiosis with Kelly or treatment with the Brain Impulse Machine)
Videotape 19: "Mission of the Darians"/"Dorzak" (Alphans answer a call for help and board a space vessel on a long journey)
Videotape 20: "The Troubled Spirit"/"The Seance Spectre" (the seance of Mateo and his colleagues, and the seance-like autohypnosis procedure of Sanderson and company)
Videotape 21: "The Last Enemy"/"Devil's Planet" (alien worlds with an exclusively female leadership)
Videotape 22: "Dragon's Domain"/"The Lambda Factor" (memories of a horrible disaster in space exploration reassert themselves in the present, for both Cellini and Koenig, both of them shown tossing and turning in their sleep early in the respective episodes)
Videotape 23: "The Testament of Arkadia"/"The Immunity Syndrome" (a planet found to be less than benevolent to the coming of the Alphans to its surface, and skeletal remains of an earlier presence on the planet discovered)
Videotape 24: "War Games"/"The Dorcons" (Alpha under attack)
All for today, Sunday, June 12, 2022.
After a splendidly sunny weekend, the work week so far has been a wet and cloudy one. And I am still recouperating from my exceedingly busy past two weeks at work. I am trying to add some sleep time to my nights, but my biological clock keeps thwarting this endeavour. Plus my cat's insistence on coming earlier and earlier to my bed in the mornings and doing bothersome things to rouse me from my sleep. Such as grabbing my hand or my toes, licking my arm, and jumping onto and off of the bed and onto it again.
My mind is still rather hazy from the long hours of work with a mask on my face. It is a struggle to think of and typewrite the words to these Weblog entries. A good vacation should fully rehabilitate me. It is coming, but not until mid-July. And I doubt that I will be able to afford much, if any, travel.
The "disc rot" issue continues to rear its monumentally ugly head. I came upon a discussion "thread" about Twilight Time Blu-Rays losing their playability over time. Two of the titles specified, Zardoz and Nicholas and Alexandra, are in my collection, in which there are eight Twilight Time Blu-Ray discs in total (the others being Rollerball (1975), Journey to the Centre of the Earth (1959), Nine to Five, Sinbad and the Eye of the Tiger, The Bounty, and Inherit the Wind (1960)). I have nervously been checking these Blu-Ray discs for playability issues. All of them except for Sinbad and the Eye of the Tiger and Inherit the Wind have been so-surveyed, and all are evidently untouched by the Twilight Time "disc rot" problem. So far. From what I have read, Twilight Time used the troubled Olyphant, Pennsylvania Cinram facility for disc production. Lovely! Some of these titles are available elsewhere, and some are not (or at least not in an English-speaking country with English on the cover and in the menus). The Twilight Time releases of them are all no longer in print. This is where things stand for me on this particular matter. Is there no escape from "rotted" media in any format?
I also had a Twilight Time Blu-Ray of Nineteen-Eighty-Four (1984) but replaced it with a Criterion Collection release of same movie. I do not recall what I did with the Twilight Time Blu-Ray disc. I either gave it away or threw it away. That was in 2019. Of course, Criterion Collection DVDs and Blu-Rays have a reputation of "rot" problems, too. And last week I also saw some mention of Imprint Blu-Rays not working right out of the wrapper years after purchase. This is profoundly worrisome, as the Imprint Space: 1999 Blu-Ray set now sits on my shelf five times over as the definitive iteration on home video of my favourite opus of science fiction/fantasy.
On the subject of Space: 1999, there was some recent discussion of it at the Roobarb's Forum in which a couple of individuals had the following to say. To which most people commenting in said discussion, cocurred.
"I find large amounts of alcohol to be the best companion to watching the series.
I love everything about Space: 1999. I have all the novels, comics new and old, the technical manual, Eagle toys and all sorts of other stuff. But I find the actual programme unbearably dull."
"It's certainly true that the fictional world-building exceeds the quality of the scripts by a substantial margin- which is why I love the Technical Manual so much- but I do enjoy the actual programme too. The first series for the atmosphere and imagination, the second for the bonkers action ... but neither for the dialogue, acting or rational plots!"
There is no specification as to which episodes are thought to be dull. Whether they are Season 1 or Season 2 or both. Some of the episodes are slow, some not. Some have action. Some have suspense. Some are dark. Some are fun. There is something in Space: 1999 for everyone, I think. I cannot answer in specifics to someone who just writes with general description. Unless I wish to invoke and defend every single episode. And I have neither the time nor the willingness to do so.
I just do not "buy" the script quality criticism. The scripts are all (all, as in both seasons) dripping with imagination in concept. And the episodes do make rational sense to me. All do. There is not an incoherent "Alternative Factor"-like episode in Space: 1999's mix. Just because some ancillary details to a story are economised or a viewer is left to intuit the motivations or the rationale of choices of characters in a time-constained, life-or-death situation, does not mean that the "plots" are not rational. And I have very few issues with dialogue, or acting. I think that the acting was consistently admirable, from some of the very best talent in the business on either side of the Atlantic. Yet again, not one example is provided to support the critic's claim. And just what is "bonkers" about the action? It works. We understand why action is required and why characters act as they do. Or we should. Why does Koenig fight Elizia and her guards? To escape Entra, of course. When he cannot use stun guns or the Eagle laser, has has to use whatever weapons that he can find. And a fire extinguisher can be effective as a weapon if trained at a person's face. James Bond uses one as a weapon, in Diamonds Are Forever. Koenig employs the bolas to fell Alien Strong. What is "bonkers" about that? What should he have done instead? Go hand-to-hand against a creature who can tear mountains apart? Go down on his knees and pray to the M.U.F.? Does not the Lord help those who help themselves? He had to topple Alien Strong to free Maya from the cage, because Maya evidently cannot transform into something smaller. Yes, there is an inconsistency here with other episodes wherein Maya does change from creature to creature. But within the internal continuity of "The Rules of Luton", there is no illogic. Maya is caged and must be freed to change back to herself at the expiration of an hour. Period. She may not be able to change from a creature of significantly smaller mass to another creature of a much, much smaller mass. Is this a detail that should not have been economised? Maybe. But "The Rules of Luton" is still comprehensible as a standalone story. Alien Strong still had to be felled for Koenig to refuse to kill him and subsequently confront the Judges shouting, "Kill! Kill!" on their cruelty. The action serves the story and is sensible. Details like the nature of Maya's powers could be left to the viewer to intuit or posit.
Space: 1999 is conceptual science fiction/fantasy. It is not just people interacting on a Moonbase of the future. It is not the guest character of the week with some family estrangement to resolve with a member of the crew, or a border dispute with an alien race, which was what tended to be the bread-and-butter of many a latter-day Star Trek television show. The concepts of the episodes and how they are depicted define my allegience to Space: 1999 somewhat more than does the "world-building" with the Eagles, the look of the Moonbase, the stun guns and Commlocks, the uniforms, et cetera, though all do contribute to the overall appeal to me that Space: 1999 has had for nearly forty-six years now.
At the end of the day, I just do not understand these people. Why cannot they see in Space: 1999 the beauty that I see? To this day, the vast majority of my fellow human beings are oblivious to the exquisite correspondences between the episodes and the patterning to the episodes that Dean saw. It is so very, very frustrating. Of course, Dean has done Space: 1999 no favours by sitting on his hands all this time. It is now thirty-two years since the conversation that I had with Dean at the house in Belledune, in which he said that he must have whatever time that he needed to craft his tome, with no forestalling by me in my youthful, naive zeal to divulge to an audience all that I love about Space: 1999. It has been thirty-two years, and still Season 2 is target of routine venom. More vitriolic venom than ever.
I save said it oh, so many times. Perfect writing of any created-by-human story is unlikely to be found anywhere. "Plot holes" exist in some of the most highly acclaimed movies and television series episodes. In my view, they should be more forgivable if they are in a story of high imaginative concept.
Space: 1999- The Vault arrived today, and I examined all of its pages, reading sections of the pages and marvelling at all of the photographs. It is a very, very beautiful book. I love the layout of all of the pages, the ones focusing on episodes and those showcasing merchandise, promotional materials, or persons involved in the production. There are even pages dedicated to The Day After Tomorrow- "Into Infinity". And the writing of the book is very professional, polished, and richly informative. Both seasons are treated with respect. I have to say, Chris Bentley did a superlative job in writing the book and curating all of the material. I like it more than the Technical Operations Manual, though both books are outstanding additions to my collection and stand magnificently aside my Blu-Ray collection of Space: 1999. There. I am prepared to laud a work penned by one of my detractors of olden days, and I sincerely do. It is a thing of beauty. Worthy of Space: 1999 itself.
Here is the front cover to Space: 1999- The Vault
But I still "draw the line" on the Calgarian's book. I remain doggedly resolute on this score.
All for today, Tuesday, June 14, 2022. Forty-five years ago today, I was visiting my friend David F.'s place after school (I rode the school bus with him to his place), and we were watching The Little Rascals- "Little Papa".
Tuesday, June 21, 2022. First day of summer. Fredericton has emerged from a regressive dalliance with April temperatures, but there is no hot summer weather in the long-range forecast. Just temperatures around twenty degrees. Not bad for actual temperature, but a brisk wind would make being outside without a jacket less than fully comfortable. I read an article yesterday that said that Canada is a cooler-than-normal anomaly, or outlier, in the world in May and June.
Readership of my Website is in the doldrums again. Possibly due to the pleasant weather in most of the world and people doing outdoor activities. And people concentrating attention on summer plans.
This week, the Doctor Who Season 22 Blu-Ray box set is en route to me. I have also bought a Blu-Ray set of The Little Rascals. I am awaiting Shout! Factory's Blu-Ray release of The Six Million Dollar Man next month and of The Bionic Woman in August. And doing so with some significant reservation. The potential for a bungled release is very high, knowing that original audio elements for The Bionic Woman were of deficient quality. And I have an uneasy feeling that the unique opening titles for "Kill Oscar: Pt. 1", with a magnificent Joe Harnell music composition, will be dropped and replaced with the usual opening with the Jerry Fielding music. And that the audio issues with several episodes, including my favourite, the two-parter, "Doomsday is Tomorrow", will persist.
Not much else to say today. I am looking forward to my vacation.
Friday, June 24, 2022.
Forty-five years ago, 1977, June 24 was also a Friday. And the final day of a school year, as it is again today. 24 June, 1977 was a sunny day. We had school in the morning only, which was the norm for elementary schools in the Miramichi region at that time. What is most significant for me in this anniversary, is that June 24, 1977 was my last day of school in the village of Douglastown on the river Miramichi. Grade 5 was coming to an end for me and for the classmates whom I had had for most or all of the years I was in Douglastown Elementary.
I remember that day so very clearly. Our teacher, Mr. Donahue, allowed for me and my friend, David F., to teach to the Grade Fours and Fives about planets and stars. And as the boys and girls of both classes alternated between being in our fifth grade classroom and going to Physical Education class, David and I "wowed" everyone present in said classroom about the awesome sizes of the planets and stars and the enormous distances between them. We compiled a quiz for everyone, but our time expired. As I was packing all of my displays of things astronomical, the boys of my class gathered around me to say their farewells. My upcoming move to Fredericton later that summer was known to everyone. Mr. Donahue wrote a good luck message on my report card. I turned to wave goodbye to everyone as I left the classroom. I walked out of the school and down the road to home in gorgeous midday summer sunshine, feeling very, very good about life and the world.
And less than two months later, we were in Fredericton, and my life would not be the same again. The excellence of that final day of school in Douglastown could not be more sharply contrasted with the first day of the following school year, my first day of school at Park Street School, Nashwaaksis, Fredericton. Park Street School, where my arrival in the classroom was met with snickers and cold stares. And at recess, with me within earshot, my f-word-bombing new classmates said my name mockingly and laughed. Another classmate, also named Kevin, declared me a name-stealer. I was such a sensitive eleven-year-old that these things cut into me like daggers. The minutes went by so slowly before I went home for lunch, and my parents (who had stayed home from work that day) struggled to console me as I told them how awful the morning had been. And Grade 6 would be consistently dire in the months to follow. Horrible teacher. Classmates who were at best cold and indifferent, if not outright unpleasant.
My life in 1977 went from riches to rags in terms of friendship, acceptance, good company, and general joie-de-vivre. I will probably alternate for the rest of my life between whether moving was the right or the wrong thing to have done, to have supported. One thing is certain. It was, is, a defining element of who I am. It and the memories and the enduring interests that I brought with me. But everybody should have a happy life throughout their childhood. This cannot be denied. I was happy that final day of Grade 5. I wouldn't have been so if I knew the heartache that was to come a few months down the road. Down the 100-mile road that was the Miramichi-to-Fredericton highway. I had that day. That splendid, excellent day. The snobby glares and put-downs of abrasive Frederictonians in school classrooms and corridors cannot take that away.
Forty-five years ago. I cannot believe that it has been that long!
All for today. This very, very special anniversary day. Forty-five years since one of the most memorable and treasured days of my upbringing. And my recounting today of it does not even include the letter that I received from CHSJ-TV (my very first), dinner at the Zellers Skillet in Chatham, my watching of He's Your Dog, Charlie Brown, and the sleep-over with my best friend, Michael.
Wednesday, June 29, 2022.
One week away from start of vacation. The weather is consistently seasonal now, with plenty of sunshine, blue skies, and gentle summer breezes rustling through the leaves on the trees.
The Doctor Who Season 22 set is now in my hands, and I am gradually going through its content. I have things to say on the subject of Doctor Who and its Blu-Ray releases, but I choose to defer that to a time during my vacation when I am not under time constraint on any given day and can dedicate to it my un-rushed, uninterrupted attention. I also have more things to say (of course, I do; I will for the rest of my days) on Space: 1999. But, again, that for another time.
All for today.
Saturday, July 2, 2022.
The day is starting with thunder, lightning, and intermittent heavy rain. The same weather occurred last night during Fredericton's Canada Day fireworks.
On the upcoming Six Million Dollar Man and Bionic Woman Blu-Ray box sets, my forebodings have been confirmed. The defective audio tracks on Bionic Woman episodes, that have plagued DVD releases of both The Six Million Dollar Man and The Bionic Woman since 2010, are being carried-over into these new releases. We can expect muffled music, sound effects overpowering dialogue, deficient sound effects, and so forth. On some of The Bionic Woman's most appreciated episodes. Virtually no effort was done to correct the problems. Not even using the corrections that Fabulous Films commissioned for its U.K. DVD releases. Of course, where Shout! Factory is concerned, it is par for the course. I have certainly not forgotten the debacle of the Space: 1999 5.1 audio, the softening of image on Space: 1999, the wrong aspect ratio on Earthquake, and also Jesus of Nazareth missing key scenes. And then there is that Space: 1999 snow globe that is best totally forgotten. It is clearly too much to ask for a Shout! Factory release to be problem-free.
So, what does this mean for my plans where purchasing the Blu-Rays of The Six Million Dollar Man and The Bionic Woman are concerned? The Six Million Dollar Man Blu-Ray set is reportedly a vast improvement in terms of picture quality over the old Time-Life DVDs, and its audio on the Bionic Woman crossover episodes is no different from what is on the Time-Life DVDs. So, I am not losing anything, only gaining, by junking the Time-Life DVDs and replacing them with Shout! Factory Blu-Rays. Assuming of course there are not other problems with Shout! Factory's Six Million Dollar Man Blu-Rays. As for The Bionic Woman, I will forego the Blu-Rays, much as it anguishes me to do so, and retain my Fabulous Films DVD set with the corrected audio on numerous episodes. The encoding of those DVDs is very sharp, almost Blu-Ray quality, when up-scaled. Apart from four episodes whose earlier, softer film-to-video transfers were resurrected, two of those four being both parts of "Doomsday is Tomorrow". So sad. "Doomsday is Tomorrow" is my favourite Bionic Woman episode.
Of course, Shout! is going to say that it only used what Universal provided to it, and that any fault with audio quality rests entirely on Universal's shoulders. Not so. Shout! could have asked Universal for a new audio mix on all episodes with compromised sound quality, or requested older audio sources of the episodes and used those to correct the problem, as Fabulous Films had done. As things do stand, I expect that nothing will be done by Shout!, and fans of The Six Million Dollar Man and The Bionic Woman, if they desire Blu-Ray collections of them, will be expected to "grin and bear it".
I have watched most of the Doctor Who Season 22 Blu-Ray set. Here is how that Blu-Ray box set looks following unboxing and a full opening-up of it, revealing its contents.
And it has been a been rather a "downer" of a chore to do the watching of it. I remember how I felt when I first saw the serials of that season, with Colin Baker's splenetic, tacky, and brash portrayal of the Doctor. They are really quite explicitly violent, and the repelling of characters from the violence seems insufficient to reduce the impressions of wilful nastiness in what being presented. The body count is very high in most of these serials, and many deaths are senseless, contributing nothing to "plot". The television series was no doubt in its declining time period during Season 22. I thought so back in 1986 when I first saw Season 22. Most of the criticisms of producer John Nathan-Turner and his decisions are valid, in my estimation. Of course, I do not carry a particular nostalgia for the year, 1986, and my television viewing experiences therein. My opinion of Season 22 has therefore no sentimental mitigation. This said, I do think that Pip and Jane Baker, late of Season 2 Space: 1999, wrote the least repugnant serial of the season, "Mark of the Rani". It is quite a charming, little tale, and I adore the music at the start of it. There is not a ton of senseless killing in it. My only issues with it are the ill-tempered sniping between the Doctor and his companion, Peri, and the non-explanation for the return of the Master, who had been shown disintegrated by fire in an earlier serial of the late Davison era.
But I am wrestling with a feeling that I have been having for some time now. A feeling of boredom with Doctor Who. Maybe it is because of my advancing years, but I find that I cannot sit and watch a full Doctor Who story, without losing interest, becoming restless, and switching it off about forty-five minutes into it. I feel an urge to do something more productive with my time than to sit and watch something on a television screen. Not for more than fifty minutes tops. Not even on rainy or mid-winter afternoons do I feel inclined to spend sizable amounts of my time watching something with which I have already extensive familiarity. Maybe this also has something to do with the collapse of my nostalgia for most of my life's fourth era in which I saw most of the 1963-87 Doctor Who serials known to exist. I am fairly certain that my disagreement with decisions in the making of new Doctor Who is not a factor in this. I have not approved of the direction of "Nu-Who" for nearly fifteen years now, and really, in all of that time, "Nu-Who" never had any appreciable impact on my esteem for "classic" Doctor Who, and I am quite certain that this is still the case. I am just an older man now who feels that it is more imperative that I leave the den sofa and live what years that I have remaining to me, and outdoors as much the weather will allow. And if not outdoors then certainly indoors in some constructive pursuit, such as Website expansion. My mind also drifts as I am watching something, drifts to concerns and worries about the condition of the world and my country and my rights as a citizen of my country, and the dire predictions credibly made for the future in this decade and beyond.
Also denting my enthusiasm for Doctor Who and particularly the latest range of home video releases of it, the Blu-Ray sets, is my awareness of the glacial pace at which seasons are being released. We are down to just two a year now. At this rate, it is extremely unlikely that the entirety of the existing Doctor Who catalogue will see Blu-Ray release. At this rate, the seasons will not all be released until 2030, and I very much doubt that the range will continue to then. The plug will be pulled on it years before. When physical media will have been deemed to have exhausted its sales potential. Sometime around 2025, I would guess. And we may be owning nothing and being miserable by then. I have not forgotten that. How could I? I say that it is extremely unlikely for every existing episode of Doctor Who to reach Blu-Ray, but the way that things are going, the entirety of 1980s Doctor Who will very probably be on Blu-Ray. 1980s Who does seem to be prioritised by the powers-that-be in the Blu-Ray range. In the last three years we have had Season 23, Season 26, Season 24, and now Season 22. There seems to be a directive to grant priority to the declining years of the television programme, in the Blu-Ray sets of it. Colin Baker and Sylvester McCoy are verging on being fully represented on Blu-Ray disc. I would expect that Season 25 will be green-lit for 2023. It being another anniversary year for the Doctor. I still wait, and likely will go on waiting until the range is axed, for my favourite season, Season 13, and my second favourite season, Season 7. For some reason, the plan seems to be to withhold Season 13 to the very end of the range, as one of Season 13's stories, "Terror of the Zygons", was eschewed until one of the very last DVD releases. And it will not be released before the cancellation of the Blu-Rays. Of this I feel sure, and it is hampering my enjoyment of the Blu-Rays being released now. Most definitely.
And Season 22 is just not an enjoyable season. It is quite nice to see Patrick Troughton back in "The Two Doctors", but the serial is marred by some very, very unpleasant behaviour, one of the characters craving to eat people and stabbing a restaurateur in the stomach. And the pacing of it is exceedingly slow in its first episode. And the electronic music, "Mark of the Rani" excepted, is very bleak, even cacophonic. In its flourishes accompanying the dark developments in the stories, it makes the viewing experience all the more unpleasant. But I persevered and watched most of the episodes in the set, even if only in fifty-minute chunks.
But, anyway. I will continue to buy the seasons of Doctor Who as they are released, to improve upon what I have, in deference to my collector's acquisitions and yens of yesteryear. I wanted these items then, and it is satisfying to improve upon them now. With the world going to the proverbial hell in a hand basket, I need to find satisfaction wherever I can find it, and for as long as I can have it.
And I continue to have satisfaction with my Space: 1999 Blu-Ray collection as its is currently constituted. Imprint for the forty-eight episodes and the bonus features, Network for the "movies". With Space: 1999- The Vault sitting along with them on my shelf. If there is not a superior release in years to come, like in 2025, Space: 1999's fiftieth anniversary, I am content to brand this as the culmination of my thirty-nine years of collecting Space: 1999 on home video, plus my earlier seven years of collecting it on audiotape. And I have enough copies of it to safeguard, hopefully, against loss of it to the dreaded "disc rot".
This said, it would be nice to have "Message From Moonbase Alpha" in my collection. At present, this is not the case. My A & E DVDs were given away several years ago.
Website updates. More additions to my autobiography. Era 2 now has several additional images of Gold Key comic books, and I am working o a further collage of such images. Era 2 now exceeds Era 4 in length. I have also added an image of Fredericton's Luckey Lunch store and eatery from the late 1970s to my Era 3 memoirs, along with several new paragraphs remembering a 1981 late-summer Saturday afternoon walk by Tony and I to Radio Shack, passing the Luckey Lunch on our outward and return journey, and episodes of Buck Rogers in the 25th Century that I put onto an open-reel audiotape that I bought that day. To fit those paragraphs seamlessly, I had to do some adjustment of some of the others.
Buck Rogers. A television show that I liked at the time of its heyday, if heyday is the appropriate word. But which paled in my estimation when compared with Space: 1999. Space Age entertainment always had value for me back then. But the years in which I saw Buck Rogers on its initial run, are not years for which I have sentiment. There are no "rushes" of nostalgia when I watch Buck Rogers. In 1981, I thought Season 2 of Buck to be superior to Season 1. Nowadays, I do not think so. Though neither season is what I would judge to be the ne plus ultra of space science fiction on television or cinematic film. In 1981, I appreciated Season 2 for concerning itself mainly with conceptual science fiction/fantasy, that concern being the propelling force in the development of the episodes. Whereas in Season 1, the concepts of science fiction/fantasy were incidental to, or underscored, stories wherein James Bond tropes were the order of the day. Season 1 was James Bond in space, with some Star Wars or Battlestar Galactica sorts of dogfights at climaxes of some of the episodes. The Bond tropes were all there. The undercover missions, the gadgets, scenes of casinos and gambling, the maniacal villains, the unusually powered henchmen, and the pretty girl or girls. Episodes had girls or women in their titles. Season 2 put "pulp" science fiction/fantasy concepts front and centre. Encounters with alien life forms or alien artifacts and efforts to understand them. More along the lines of Star Trek and Space: 1999. One of the episodes, "Mark of the Saurian", borrowed wholesale from a particular Space: 1999 episode, the two-parter, "The Bringers of Wonder". I appreciated this more at the time. But the pacing is leaden, the aesthetic appeal is almost non-existent, and the episodes were filmed in very uninspired locales, on the Universal back lot. Season 1 is at least fun in its Bondian escapades, and better paced, even if its aesthetic appeal to me almost as sparse. Either way, all through my 1979-81 experience of Buck, I wished that I could be watching Space: 1999. Those were years when Space: 1999 was largely withheld from my life.
All for today.
It is Thursday, July 14, 2022.
In recent days, I have added to my Era 3 memoirs some recall of my searches for Space: 1999 paperbacks of the Star Books branding, in a bin of books at Fredericton Mall Zellers in 1980 and in 1981. My searches proved fruitless. Michael Butterworth's The Time of the Hawklords was all that I could find under his penmanship in that bin. Michael Butterworth had been the author of the novelisations of the episodes of Season 2 Space: 1999.
Persons wishing to read more about that search are invited to have a look at my Era 3 memoirs and the area thereof around years 1980 and 1981. In the vicinity of images of Zellers and the Skillet Restaurant (both of those newly added to my autobiography).
The Holiest of Grails of printed matter for me at that time was the elusive sixth book in the line of Space: 1999 second season novelisations. I had not seen it on any bookstore shelf. Not in Fredericton. Not in Toronto when I was there. I only knew of its existence from a catalogue of book titles and publishers at Fredericton Mall Beegie's Bookstore. Below the sequence of books Planets of Peril, Mind-Breaks of Space, The Space-Jackers, The Psychomorph, and The Time Fighters was The Edge of the Infinite, book six in the Star Books Space: 1999 series of paperbacks written by Mr. Butterworth. Beegie's kindly agreed to order it for me, and later informed me over the telephone that it was no longer in print. In my many weeks of wait for news about the order, I imagined, with friends of the time (1978), what the front cover would look like. What episode, what scene, would comprise the front cover photograph? I doubt very, very much that my friends much cared about this but were just humouring me for awhile. A short while, they doubtless hoped. David B. had no use whatsoever for Season 2 Space: 1999. And paperback books, be they Season 1 or Season 2, were not of interest to him. Eric had scant use for Space: 1999 as a whole. Mike J. was a tad more amenable to my fancy for the television show, but it did not enthuse him much. Tony saw Space: 1999 as not much more than a curiosity at that time. I do not remember the precise reasons as to why, but he had seen very few Space: 1999 episodes prior to meeting me. I think even use of the word, few, is overstating it. I remember him only describing two episodes to me ("The Full Circle", "The Last Enemy") in one of our earliest conversations on the subject. Even though he was very keen on space fiction on film and television, and had been for at least a year before I met him, he had not watched Space: 1999 at all faithfully. And I do not remember him doing so in the few remaining months in summer of 1978 that Space: 1999 clung to life on the CBC Television and CHSJ-TV airwaves. It could be that the airtime was not convenient for him, though that airtime did vary over the course of the two years that Space: 1999 was on the full CBC Television network. But anyway, in our group in 1978, I was the only person looking forward eagerly to seeing that Space: 1999 book, The Edge of the Infinite. The news of its unavailability was deeply dispiriting for me, as one can imagine. A book that according to that catalogue did exist, and was not on the market long enough for me to procure a copy. Might I strike "pay dirt" in that bin at Zellers? I had to try. And so, I did. And nothing. Not even any copies of the other five books.
As is known to most aficionados of Space: 1999, there never was a Star Books edition of The Edge of the Infinite. Warner Books in the U.S. was the only company to publish it (and I did not know of the existence of any of the Warner Books Space: 1999- Season 2 paperbacks until 1990). Beegie's was incorrect about Star Books' The Edge of the Infinite no longer being in print. It never was. Apparently, sales of the Season 2 books were so poor in the U.K. and the British Commonwealth that U.K.-based Star Books "pulled the plug" on the series of books before the final one's manuscript could ever reach a printing press. And with the cancellation announcement for Space: 1999, merchandise had scant chance of continuing to be made. And so the darkest time in my association with Space: 1999 did loom. My quest at Zellers was in the midst of that darkest time. And yet, I could not help but entertain the hope to continue looking, as book after book after book was found to be not what I was seeking.
I finally had the Warner Books The Edge of the Infinite in my possession in 1990, having acquired it from a mail-order vendor in the U.S.. A picture of that can be seen in my my Era 5 memoirs. But I have numerous times fantasised what a Star Books version of that final Michael Butterworth-written Space: 1999 book would look like. Some while ago, a person at one of the Facebook Space: 1999 groups posted to that group a mock-up of a Star Books The Edge of the Infinite front cover. I saved it to my computer. Subsequently, that Facebook group went private, and short of joining that group (which I am loathe to do) and searching it for that post in particular, I cannot procure the name of the creator of the mock-up and credit him here. Perhaps someday he will contact me and share his name with me so that I can credit him. The only credit that I can give to myself in my sharing of the image of the mock-up is the fact that I did save it to my computer, and the minimal digital paint work I did on it to bring it fully to my standard.
Here it is.
In my considerations in 1978 on what image might adorn the front cover of the book, and in my later fantasy imaginings of that image over many years, I did think it to be a strong possibility that "All That Glisters" might have been on that front cover, had the book seen publication. Star Books had already proved itself to be partial to "All That Glisters" in its book covers. Both The Space-Jackers and The Time Fighters sported photographs of Martin Landau as John Koenig in "All That Glisters" on their front. And as The Edge of the Infinite very probably had "All That Glisters" among the episodes novelised on its pages, the probability of another picture of "All That Glisters" being used for the front of it was very high indeed. So I felt over the years post-1978, pre-1990. And as I discovered with the Warner Books The Edge of the Infinite in 1990, "All That Glisters" was the very first novelised episode in the book, the other three being "Journey to Where", "The Dorcons", and "The Immunity Syndrome". And, yes, Warner Books' The Edge of the Infinite had an "All That Glisters" photograph (Dave Reilly carrying the Maya/rock) on its front cover. So, I think that the maker of the Star Books The Edge of the Infinite mock-up is quite correct to choose an image of "All That Glisters". And a very good one, with Koenig, Maya, Carter, and Reilly in frame, with the visualisations of the red-skied alien desert planet around them. I can definitely see in mind's eye The Edge of the Infinite on a Beegie's bookshelf or in that Zellers bin looking like this. And oh, would my eyes have popped out of their sockets if I did discover this front cover amongst the books in that bin!
From imagined merchandise to the real thing. I have to report that my Six Million Dollar Man Blu-Ray box set still has not arrived on my doorstep. It did clear Canada Customs a couple of days ago and is now in transit. Of course, every man apart from me, and his bionic dog, who was intending to buy this box set, now has it and is revealing to the world what par-for-the-course deficiencies that there are. Not only are the Bionic Woman cross-overs marred with bad audio (even worse so than they were on DVD), but so, too, are some Six Million Dollar Man episodes. Dialogue is said to be low in volume in scenes in "Day of the Robot", and in other episodes. There are abnormalities in the audio mix of Bionic Ever After?. Yet again, Shout! has "dropped the ball" on quality control. If Universal's masters were found to be of anything less than top quality, why could not Shout! have requested better elements, as Madman Entertainment in Australia had done with its release to Blu-Ray of Journey to the Far Side of the Sun? Episodes that sounded perfectly fine in the Time-Life Six Million Dollar Man DVD set in 2010, now are of a diminished audio quality. And this is the trade-off for the greatly improved picture quality. Why must there be a trade-off? Why? Why not just source the audio from the DVDs? This does not bode well for The Bionic Woman at all. I expect many of its episodes to sound as awful as they did on the Universal Region 1 DVDs. Without the corrections that Fabulous Films had made. If I cannot enjoy the audio, and am constantly distracted by how poor the audio sounds, how am I to have a thoroughly pleasing viewing experience with the 1080p video? Shout! "blew it" again. As M.J. did say in Spider-Man: No Way Home, expect the worst so as not to be disappointed. This should be the maxim when buying something from Shout!.
All for today.
Monday, July 18, 2022.
Three more weeks remaining for my vacation from work. I am hoping for some favourable weather for a day's visit to the Miramichi region. One day this week. Other than that, it continues to be a vacation of mental travel to the past. To before the terrorism, the financial crises, the nuclear disaster, and the pandemics of post-year-2000. To before the end of the latter half of the twentieth century, the best time ever to be alive on this planet Earth. To before my loss of youth. To before the abandonment of me by my Era 4 friends. Back to when life was simpler, fuller, less hampered by anxieties for the future. Back to when there was still optimism for the future. Back even to before the move to Fredericton and the beginnings of that Karmic curse. I miss the twentieth century so much. Not only for the loss in my life of people. But also for the loss of the way that life used to be. When my parents' generation was the dominant political force in the world, and things that are happening now would be utterly unthinkable. I had some good times long ago. Those are what I revisit as an escape from awful things happening today.
I now have the Six Million Dollar Man Blu-Ray set. So far, I have watched the episodes, "Population: Zero", "Day of the Robot", "Doomsday, and Counting", "Eyewitness to Murder", "parts one and two of "The Bionic Woman", parts one and two of "The Return of the Bionic Woman", "The Price of Liberty", parts one and two of "The Return of Bigfoot", "Nightmare in the Sky", "The Bionic Boy", parts one and two of "Death Probe", "Danny's Inferno", and the first two reunion movies. The only episodes with audio problems are those expected to have them. "Day of the Robot" and "The Return of Bigfoot: Pt. 2". But the proverbial day is still young. The picture quality is magnificent, stunning. Especially with the first season episodes, which have always been grotty-looking. Not so, anymore. I love the sharpness and depth of colour. I was especially struck at the uniform worn by William Smithers in "Doomsday, and Counting". Wow! The quality improvement is not quite as noticeable in the Season 4 episodes, but still quite apparent. I have watched most of my favourite episodes. I have not cast eyes on "Kill Oscar" yet. Or the first Bigfoot two-parter. Or the original pilot. Those are next. Oh, and I have never seen such clarity on the face of Martin Landau as I do in The Return of the Six Million Dollar Man and the Bionic Woman. It is astonishing how much detail that there is in the picture on that. Evidently, unlike most late-1980s television movies, this one and its first successor were both lensed and edited on film. They look nothing less than absolutely spectacular. And no audio issues at all.
All for today. I shall continue today to delve into the world of Steve Austin in High Definition.
Sunday, July 24, 2022.
Thirty-nine years ago, Sunday, July 24, 1983, was the day that CBHT, CBIT, CBCT aired Space: 1999- "Dragon's Domain" from noon to 1 P.M.. That Space: 1999 broadcast was the first to be successfully videotape-recorded for me by my benefactor at Video Home Entertainment Centre, Dartmouth, and was sent to me in the mail on the following day. It arrived in my mailbox on Friday, August 5. It may be thirty-nine years ago, but I remember my exalted joy at receiving that videotape, as though it were yesterday. It did not know that the episode on that Scotch T-120 videocassette was going to be "Dragon's Domain". Per the sequence of episodes in Starlog apparently being followed in the CBC's 1983 run of the televison show, I was expecting "Earthbound". Or, as TV Guide erroneously synopsised, "Mission of the Darians". Oh, what a grand surprise that videotape did bring!
I continue to watch episodes of The Six Million Dollar Man from my new Blu-Ray box set of same. And I have found two more instances of muffled audio. The more egregious one is in first season episode "Dr. Wells is Missing". Dialogue is muffled through much of the first half of the episode, and most especially in a scene in which Steve is talking to a waitress on a restaurant balcony. Something that he says is so muffled as to be almost inaudible. The second season episode, "The Midas Touch", has a muffle to its dialogue for much of the first twenty minutes. So far, this is three Six Million Dollar Man episodes with deficient audio, "Day of the Robot" being the other. And the Bionic Woman cross-overs. Those, too.
Happily, fan favourites such as the pilot movie, "Survival of the Fittest", "Straight On 'Til Morning", "The Seven Million Dollar Man", "The Deadly Replay", "Kill Oscar: Pt. 2", "Bigfoot V", and "The Return of Deathprobe" are without flaw. As are "Burning Bright", "Run, Steve, Run", "The Pioneers", "Pilot Error", "Steve Austin: Fugitive", "Big Brother", "The Most Dangerous Enemy", "H+2+O=Death", "To Catch the Eagle", and "The Ghostly Teletype". I have seen all of these on the Blu-Rays, and they sound fine.
Saturday, July 30, 2022.
One more week of vacation left. What to do? What to do? What to do? I have been to all of my usual summer places, including the Miramichi, and yet feel quite unfulfilled. I need for this vacation to do all of the rejuvenating and refreshing and reinvigourating that it can possibly do.
In this past week, we have lost David Warner, Paul Sorvino, Tony Dow, and Bernard Cribbins. Outstanding actors, all. All of them having contributed to so much of my entertainment of yesteryear. Bernard Cribbins was, of course, a Space: 1999 alumnus, late of the second season entry, "Brian the Brain", playing both the mad robot, Brian (voice only), and its creator, Captain Michael, plus a Maya transformation into the latter. Fans of Space: 1999 gave grief to Mr. Cribbins at science fiction conventions, I have read, for his contribution to what is considered by many a loutishly blinkered fan of Space: 1999 to have been the worst episode produced of that beleaguered television show. I have no doubt that they did. It fits their character. Happily, Mr. Cribbins did not "take it to heart". And his C.V. contains many a respected work, in any case. Most especially his contributions to the universe of Doctor Who. I am no fan of twenty-first century Doctor Who, but I have looked at Mr. Cribbins' appearances as the character, Wilfed Mott, and he is nothing short of fantastic. He did comedy with the utmost flair, also. His one episode of Fawlty Towers is a highlight of that television series, in quite possibly the best episode of it. He was also in the second Dr. Who movie with Peter Cushing, as a policeman in something of a foppishly comedic performance. And on the other side of the spectrum, he was in Alfred Hitchcock's Frenzy as a belligerent publican. But for me at least, possibly as least as the only person on God's green Earth, his work in Space: 1999 is the most noteworthy item in his C.V.. May he rest in the most divine peace. All of the others, too. David Warner was a superlative actor who could play the kindly and the villainous with equal conviction and believability. He played kind-hearted Titanic sinking survivor Lawrence Beesley in S.O.S. Titanic (1979) and a cruel henchman in Titanic (1997). And a good Klingon seeking peace in Star Trek VI- The Undiscovered Country and a conscientious photographer doomed to decapitation in The Omen. And Jack the Ripper in Time After Time and Evil itself in Time Bandits. And the angelic father to Superman. Quite a range of roles. May he rest in heavenly peace, also. Paul Sorvino could play a highfalutin Southern evangelist like no one could. An outstanding performance in Oh, God!. And Tony Dow was the consummate older brother in Leave it to Beaver and was also one of the producers of the Doctor Who television movie in 1996. God speed to them, too. Rest in peace, all.
Mr. Cribbins has of course been added to the In Memoriam section of my Space: 1999 Page.
I have been watching my Six Million Dollar Man Blu-Rays, and, alas, I have more problematic audio to report. More incidences of muffling. Two of them quite egregious. In "That Winning Smile", a scene in the final act where Callahan is being abducted in a restaurant and Steve and Oscar are in a car searching for her, is marred so badly that Steve and Oscar are inaudible in one exchange of dialogue. A fault equally as bad as that in The Bionic Woman's "Deadly Ringer" episode that necessitated a DVD disc replacement programme. And in "Dr. Wells is Missing", Steve is barely audible when he is talking to a waitress. And there are other scenes in that episode in which dialogue is far from perfectly clear. And music is muffled through a substantial portion of "Target in the Sky", including the main opening. In this day and age when the Doctor Who Restoration Team performs miracles with fifty-year-old domestic off-air audio recordings, there is no excuse for this. None. Particularly as clear audio sources exist in the European DVD releases of the 2000s. And technology exists to "crank" up a particular element in an audio track that may be lacking here or there in an episode. All that it is, is a shoddy remix of the audio elements. Nothing more. Nothing less. And shame on Shout! Factory for outputting so defective a product.
What is worse is that Shout! finally acknowledged problems with audio across a large swath of Bionic Woman episodes and is pledging to tweak what Universal provided (the inferior remixes) to try to compensate for the problem. I cannot see how that can be done without separating the various audio elements, which would mean having access to them in their raw, unmixed state, and I doubt very much that Shout! has that. Or the know-how or the equipment or the time to effectively make adjustments, from the provided remixes, to so many episodes. I do not expect The Bionic Woman Blu-Rays to be of acceptable audio quality at all. I would wager that even "Deadly Ringer" will have its uncorrected audio track from the DVD release. It is so very, very frustrating to lose audio quality in the gaining of High Definition. Why cannot we have the best of both worlds? I am sick and tired of having to accept deficient audio with Blu-Ray releases. Certain episodes of Season 2 Space: 1999, as already documented in this Weblog. On Her Majesty's Secret Service (downright awful, so much so that I can no longer enjoy the movie). The wrong music in certain Inspector cartoons. An Ant and Aardvark cartoon with audio not synchronised with video. Fahrenheit 451 and its faulty placement of foley for a chunk of the movie (while the Julie Christie commentary from the DVD release has the correct timing of the foley sounds). Scott of the Antarctic and its monumentally awful clipping and "warbling" of dialogue and Ralph Vaughan Williams' magnificent musical score. Travesties, all. All due to lack of proper restoration, stemming from either lack of time, money, or personnel, or sheer lack of care. Or just poor taste in the emphasis of louder sound effects over suppressed music. Whatever it is, I am tired of favourite entertainments being ruined by poor audio, while looking fabulous in High Definition.
Is there good news with the Six Million Dollar Man Blu-Rays? Some. I can confirm that "Little Orphan Airplane", "Stranger in Broken Fork", "The Peeping Blonde", "The Last Kamikaze", "Return of the Robot Maker", "The Wolf Boy", and "The Bionic Criminal" all sound fine. "Divided Loyalty" has a bit of suppressed music in its epilogue but is otherwise okay.
Well, I have had my various rants for the day. And bid farewell to some beloved actors. I may as well close.
Until next time. Whenever that will be.
It is Friday, August 5, 2022. My final day of vacation except for the coming weekend. Going back to work after a long vacation always depresses me. I also have a tooth extraction scheduled for Monday morning. Not exactly good times to which to look forward. I therefore propose to look backward, to arguably a very, very strong contender for my life's best day.
The day was Friday, August 5, 1983. 39 years ago. A day I remember as vividly as any day of the past year. The weather that started it was exactly the same as the weather this morning. Overcast. Muggy. It was an unusual morning for that summer as I had no callers. I was in a glum mood for that reason, and also because I had effectively "given up" on the package sent to me by Video Home Entertainment Centre, Dartmouth, on July 25, almost two weeks earlier. That package containing a Scotch T-120 videotape on which an employee, Fonda MacDonald, at that store had recorded an episode of Space: 1999 for me from broadcast on CBC Halifax (CBHT) on Sunday, July 24. The first episode of Space: 1999 known to be successfully committed to videocassette by my newfound benefactor in New Brunswick's neighbouring province. I had sought someone to videotape-record my favourite television show for me after CHSJ-TV in New Brunswick had declined to air any broadcast of Space: 1999 in that CBC Maritimes repeat run beginning in 1983. And in Fonda I had found someone. What I had not "figured on" was Canada Post losing the package as it was en route to me. After the passing of so many days, this was my deduction. My seemingly incontrovertible deduction. Space: 1999 seemed destined always to frustrate me and remain out of reach, eternally elusive in my quest to possess it on videotape. I was cursed, I had to conclude. An earlier attempt by me that summer to videotape-record an episode in Amherst had met with failure. And here was I, being frustrated yet again. Why, oh, why, could I not "catch a break"
I was most keen on acquiring the episode, "Dragon's Domain", Space: 1999's most famed episode about a flashback to a disastrous 1996 space mission to a far-off planet, discovery of a graveyard of spaceships, and a most horrific alien monster that killed, ate, all but one of the space mission crew members. And Alpha encountering that same cluster of derelict spacecraft some five years later and the sole survivor of the past space mission "taking matters into his own hands". I was worried that I had already missed it in the CBC Maritimes run beginning that year, and indications were that I likely did. As per usual, my mother was at work in daytime on August 5, 1983, and my father was at home. My father and I watched The Edge of Night at 10:30 A.M.. I remember the exact episode that was. Raven and Gunther discovered listening devices in both telephones in the private detective office that Sky and Raven were renting. Cliff tried and failed to arrange circumstances for a reconciliation between Calvin and Didi at the Rock Garden. Raven spoke into one of the listening devices and said to "metal-mouth" that she and Sky are "onto him" for his having had Nicole and private detective Walter Gantz killed. And sometime later, the limping man ("metal-mouth") is creeping about in the hallway outside the detective office, turning off a couple of the corridor lights and thereby instilling fear in Raven, before Police Detective Egan visited her at the office, argued that the lights flickered out without anyone's surreptitious action, and exited the building with her, while the limping man watched them depart. The Edge of Night credits were then running as my father went to check on the morning mail.
I then heard, "Kevin! There's a package here for you!" And icould only be one thing! I dashed off of the television room floor and down our house's hallway to top of our stairs, where my father handed to me a parcel from Video Home Entertainment Centre in Dartmouth, Nova Scotia. I tore away the brown wrapping to see that Scotch T-120 videotape labelled, "Space: 1999: July 24, 1983". I moved to insert said videocassette into a trusty apparatus, prepared for what I felt certain would be the episode, "Earthbound". I was feeling sure that it would be "Earthbound" as the CBC that year seemed to be following the order of episode printed in >Starlog magazine. "Earthbound" would be next after episodes "Force of Life" (June 26), "Alpha Child" (July 3), and "Guardian of Piri" (July 10), and a preemption of the show for British Open golf on July 17. Moreover, my friend, Tony, had notified me that, while he was in Halifax on July 31, he had seen "Mission of the Darians", the episode after "Earthbound" in Starlog's printed sequence. It seemed to me to be a foregone conclusion that "Earthbound" would be on that videotape. The first sights should therefore be of the Moon in galactic space and then of Commissioner Simmonds looking out of a window. The start of a rather un-thrilling, early first season episode. Not a particular favourite of mine, but still better, much better, than nothing. But, wait a minute! That was not what I my eyes were beholding.
Helena Russell was at a typewriter. A sight which was, I had come to know, what distinguished the commencement of the episode titled, "Dragon's Domain". This was it! The episode that I wanted above all others. The one that I had I thought that I had missed on some theoretical, unknown pre-July CBHT/CBIT/CBCT telecast (if indeed the CBC was following the Starlog sequence). Evidently, I had been wrong about that. Delightfully wrong! I sat there in front of my television screen for more than ten seconds in a disbelieving state. Was I dreaming this? No. Much too vivid, much too precise, it was, to be a dream.
My mother, who had had to console me after so many Space: 1999-related disappointments, learned of the awesome news when she came home from work. I heard my father say to her, "Kevin got his tape today." Before I could tell her that myself. But I still had the privilege of telling her which episode it was.
The rest of the story, the whole magnificent rest of it, can be found in my Era 4 memoirs. I am enjoying very much the recollections of that wonderful day that I now experience with the clarity that comes of this being the exact same day of the week with the exact same weather.
All for today.
Sunday, August 7, 2022.
In recent days, I have watched several more Six Million Dollar Man episodes on Blu-Ray. Happily, no more noticeable audio problems. "Operation Firefly", "The Rescue of Athena One", "The Last of the Fourth of Julys", "Nuclear Alert", "The Pal-Mir Escort", "Double Trouble", both parts of "The Deadly Countdown", "Killer Wind", and both parts of "Dark Side of the Moon". The last of these had exceptionally stunning colours, on the garments worn by Steve Austin and mad scientist Dr. Leith, and amazing clarity. The fourth and fifth season episodes seem to have escaped the scourge of muffled audio. Or maybe it is too soon to say. I did have rather a start when my Blu-Ray player froze during part two of "The Deadly Countdown". But the Blu-Ray played smoothly on a second attempt. It could have been a "crash" of the computer inside my Blu-Ray player, and nothing to do with the Blu-Ray disc itself. It is an older player.
Saturday, August 13, 2022.
Forty-five years ago today, I was watching the Star Trek episode, "This Side of Paradise", on CBCT Charlottetown, having tuned that television channel from across the Northumberand Strait in on our living room colour television. And the Space: 1999's episode, "One Moment of Humanity", on its 4 P.M. airing, could be watched by me on either CBCT or on CHSJ-TV. I had a choice. That was the final Saturday for my parents and I in our house in Douglastown along the Miramichi River. I remember it almost as though it were yesterday, but it does seem like an eternity ago. Life was so different then. So very different. Oh, how I miss the twentieth century! Pre-Trudeau-the-Second. Pre-Cancel-Culture. Pre-my-parents'-deaths. Pre-Fukushima. Pre-9/11.
In my autobiographical eras, and my Boy Meets Alpha memoirs, every Space: 1999 paperback book of the 1970s is shown except for the first five of the books consisting of Season 2 episode novelisations published by Warner Books. As I delineate, my quest for The Edge of the Infinite, sixth and final book in that range, eventually led to my discovery of the existence of Warner Books' Space: 1999 output. The Edge of the Infnite had not been published by Star Books in the U.K. with the other five books, the Star Books editions of them being the ones with which I was familiar post-1977. So, when I finally found The Edge of the Infinite in 1990 through a mail-order vendor, and had it in my hands, I surmised, from its Warner Books format, that there had to be Warner Books versions of the first five books of second season novelisations.
And as I discovered in my attedence of a convention in 1995, there were such books in existence. All of them styled in the same way as The Edge of the Infinite. Planets of Peril, Mind-Breaks of Space, The Space-Jackers, The Psychomorph, and The Time Fighters all were sold in the U.S. under the Warner Books line. But I was not particularly motivated to"track them down" and pay a premium price for mint-condition copies of them.
Why? Well, quite frankly, they were inferior to the Star Books versions in every way, except for their use of the Space: 1999 logo on their covers (Star Books did not use that logo). Star Books had a much better grade of paper, more flexible, less-prone-to-creasing paperback binding, and had the black-and-white photographs in its picture section on a glossy grade of page, with plenty of fine detail in image, whereas the photographs in the Warner Books versions looked little better than Xerox copies on distinctly un-glossy paper. And the covers were, in my opinion, ugly. Cluttered, with diagonal slicing of photography, or in one case with a a photograph of Season 1's "Breakaway" and another with a double-exposed Eagle on Psychon. And I have never been a fan of the "Year 2" designation of second season, and it is plastered on all of Warner Books' covers atop the Space: 1999 logo. The Star Books covers were far from ideal either, granted, but the photography was more satisfyingly rendred, not degraded with diagonal bordering or bizarre double exposure.
I did eventually find and buy all of the first five Warner Books, on eBay or via Amazon Marketplace, all of them in near-mint condition, and they occupy a place on one of my book shelves between the Pocket Books Space: 1999 paperbacks one to ten and The Edge of the Infinite and The Making of Space: 1999. But I do not believe that I have opened them more than once. If I desire to read any of the Season 2 novelisations or look at the photographs in the books, I opt for the Star Books versions. Or Powys Media's Space: 1999 Year 2 Omnibus.
One item of news on the subject of cartoons. Something way out in left field. Jerry Beck has announced work on restoring Linus the Lionhearted for Warner Archive. I would never have expected to see Linus the Lionhearted on home video, and now that appears to be imminent. And the plan is to include theorginal commercials with Linus and the gang. I do not know if this is planned to be for DVD-R or for Blu-Ray. Of course, I would prefer the latter, but how much vintage cartoon production is put onto Blu-Ray by Warner Archive? Nothing springs to mind.
No official announcement yet about Warner Archive releasing Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde (1932) on Blu-Ray sometime around Halloween, or any inkling of what bonus features will be included. Will "Hyde and Hare" be included, and, if it is, will it be in High Definition, fully restored? I would not be at all surprised if it is not in the bonus features package, or that if it is, that it will be unrestored, nothing but an upscale from the existing Standard Definition film-to-video transfer used for the 2004 DVD of the 1932 and 1941 Jekyll-and-Hyde movies.
My outlook with regard to staying in Douglastown versus moving to Fredericton is shifting again. This past summer, I have been rediscovering my nostalgia for Era 4, with many, many flashbacks to those olden days when I sat outside past sunset with Joey, participated in some of the more outstanding neighbourhood baseball contests, and was young Kevin McCorry under the protection of my parents (oh, how I miss them!) in a world that made some appreciable amount of sense and that was run by people at least halfway competent. These days, any pre-pandemic time has an immense nostalgic cachet. Any time pre-my-parents'-deaths much, much more so. I acknowledge that I do wish that my Era 4 experience and social existence had amounted to more than it did, that friends then were still putting effort into keeping relations alive with me now, today, that there were significant, enduring parts of it still very much in situ now in my life. But I am grateful to have had the good times that I did, in the years of that era. And I am not as plaintive now over my having left Douglastown to come to Fredericton. I still think that I suffered quite extensively following that move, but my lot in life would have been a darned sight worse in the many years following the move than it was, had I not met the friends that I had and had them in my life, most particularly in Era 4. And who can say for sure how I would have fared if I had stayed in Douglastown? I might have prospered, or I might not have. Things could have gone either way for me at school in Newcastle, and the effect of my best friend Michael's departure from Douglastown might not have been something I "bounced back from", if I was struggling to "fit in" at the Newcastle schools. And being separated from the younger fellows at the Douglastown school might not have been a condition compensated-for by some other means of coming together. They and I could have drifted apart.
Yes, there is something to be said for staying in one place all through one's upbringing. Especially for an only-child. Having continuity of relationships with friends all through my school years, could have spared me my loneliness of today. But was that really "on the cards" had I remained in Douglastown? It would not have been so with regard to Michael. Or David F. Both of them left Douglastown. My being there would not have changed that. And I just do not know if my other friends and I had much of a future closeness going to schools in Newcastle, or separated in different schools. And Johnny and Rob's summers in Douglastown were not a continual guarantee, and that was two months a year out of twelve, in any case. Ten months is a long time for a youth, especially a youth whose social existence at school has fallen by the wayside.
It could have been my destiny to be lonely either way. At least in Fredericton I did have some quality years in the 1980s. 1983 still ranks very highly indeed for me. When remembering past experiences in my Fredericton neighbourhood, 1983 is the year toward which I gravitate. And as things do stand, with my final year in Douglastown being so very positive, so fondly remembered, it leaves an everlasting positive stamp on a most formative stage of my life, and gives to me something for which to long, an existence that did not drastically deteriorate and cast me into a protracted time period of doleful loneliness. I will forever revere my Douglastown years as being my golden life era. And I think if my parents were living now, they would also say that it was theirs.
In my mindset as it is now, I will not lament that move in 1977, though I will always wonder if perhaps, just perhaps, a lonely life might have been avoided had we stayed in the Miramichi region. I should be permitted that line of thinking as I go about my daily solitary life.
Wednesday, August 24, 2022.
I am feeling rather Six Million Dollar Man-ed-out. Over the past 7 weeks, I have watched the entirety of Seasons 1, 2, 3, and 4, on Blu-Ray. And about half of Season 5. The episodes remining to watch are parts one and two of "Sharks", "Target: Steve Austin", "The Cheshire Project", "The Lost Island", both parts of "Date With Danger", and "The Moving Mountain". Not episodes that I am keen to watch. I remember them being quite tedious when I watched them on DVD twelve years ago. "Date With Danger" seemed interminable, as I recall. Some of these were produced by Fred Freiberger, I know. But in fairness, some of them were produced by Richard Landau. And there are episodes of earlier seasons I judge to be equally tedious. I sat through the second season yawner, "Lost Love", yesterday. A few days ago, I watched the banal "Cross-Country Kidnap". Also Season 2. And not being in any way a fan of football, I struggled to sit through Season 3's "One of Our Running Backs is Missing". One item of interest with "Cross-Country Kidnap" is how the episode titles are displayed. It used the freezing of frame over a steeplechase jump during title and credits, as U.F.O.'s "The Sound of Silence" had done. I am not sure if the latter, produced in 1970, inspired the former, made in 1974. Guest star Frank Aletter is also shown in freeze-frame, during his credit. And then, we see scenes of Steve jumping over the steeplechase pillars that seem to be metatextual, not happening in the events of the episode as it unfolds. Weird. Not only is "Lost Love" boring, but I disliked Steve in the episode. How he tries to persuade his old flame to leave her older husband. In my estimation, it was a major misfire.
A couple more audio issues. Minor muffling of dialogue in "The Deadly Test" and "The White Lightning War". It does not impair comprehension of anything being said in those episodes. For some reason, Season 3 is the season with the most audio problems, including the most egregious case, in "That Winning Smile".
Against my better judgment, I have bought Shout! Factory's Bionic Woman set, as I am curious about the audio tweaks that Shout! is saying that it has done. Some people are saying that the audio is scarcely any better in episodes wherein it has been deficient since 2011. Some people are saying that the audio is better in "Doomsday is Tomorrow". I want to hear it for myself. In all probability, I will not be satisfied and will keep my Fabulous Films DVDs with the audio corrections. Maybe someday, soon, Fabulous Films will release The Bionic Woman in the U.K., with the corrected audio tracks. Anyway, the Shout! Factory Bionic Woman set is on its way to me now. I may have it before Labour Day weekend.
The BBC has announced the next Doctor Who season box set. Season 2. I would say that Season 2 is my least favourite of the William Hartnell seasons. I continue to wait for my favourite seasons to be released in DOCTOR WHO- THE COLLECTION. I doubt that they will see release on Blu-Ray before the format is retired. No release daye is given for Season 2. Some people are saying 2023. If so, then 2022 will have had only one vintage Doctor Who season release.
Still no news about the Blu-Ray of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde (1932).
All for today.
My latest round of Website updates, again all to my autobiographical Web pages, include some expansion of my Era 1 memoirs to describe the conditions of my parents' lives before I was born, the significance of the year, 1966, in which I came into the world, my relationships with cousins in my early life, an added paragraph for my remembering of seeing "Hyde and Hare" in 1972, and a paragraph outlining how much that I fancied The Bugs Bunny/Road Runner Hour and the Warner Brothers cartoons. And Era 3 has some additional paragraphs in my memories of my parents and I going to Toronto in 1978 and 1980, remembering more of what I bought, what I ate, and some of the sights that met my eyes. Plus what the weather was like. My recall, prior to the recent updates, of those visits to Canada's metropolitan heartland, had not really done sufficient justice to the quality of those fabulous experiences with my late parents. Our journeys to Toronto of 1978 and 1980, and also that to Ottawa in 1983, were my three "trips of a lifetime". My favourite of the three is definitely the one in 1978, my first ever experience of being in a big city, at a time when I was more impressionable than I would later be. I cherish the memory of being in those cities with my parents and sampling all that the places had to offer. The shopping, the restaurants, the primary tourist attractions. The C.N. Tower. The Parliament Buildings. In my adulthood, post-1984, I have never had so enjoyable a travelling experience. I was in Toronto again in 1984, for the last time, and it just was not the same as on my two previous stays in the Toronto area. My father was not with my mother and I, and the hotel was in Mississauga, miles and miles away from Toronto's downtown core. While my mother was attending her V.O.N. conferences, I was alone all day. Going alone by taxi to Toronto to shop. Sitting alone in our hotel room.
Space: 1999 was a part of import of all three of those "trips of a lifetime", for my shopping expeditions were all predicated primarily on the search for Space: 1999 merchandise, whether it be toys and books (in 1978) or just books (in 1980 and 1983). The memories that I shared with my father of going up and down Yonge Street in Toronto all have Space: 1999 in them. Space: 1999 was as much a player in the happiness of those sojourns as the accompaniment of my parents and the sights of the city of Toronto itself and the sumptuous meals that I had. I would not cheerfully forefit any of it.
And this said, it does have to be acknowledged that all three of those "trips of a lifetime" were possible only because my mother had a management position at the V.O.N.. It was the V.O.N. that paid all expenses for our family on all of our travel and accommodation days on those magnificent treks. Had it not been for that, we would not have gone to Toronto or Ottawa then. If we had remained in Douglastown in 1977, with my mother continuing to be a rank-and-file V.O.N. nurse there, she would not have been invited to any conferences, including the three that brought about those Ontario journeys for our family. I doubt very much if we would have gone to Toronto or Ottawa at all through all the years of my upbringing. If I wanted to go, I would probably have had to go by myself sometime after graduating high school. Perhaps if Michael and I had stayed friends long-term after his move to Toronto, I might have gone thereto to stay with him for a few days, and seen Toronto with him as my guide. Yes, perhaps. But it would have been many years after 1978, after Space: 1999's heyday. Space: 1999 items in stores would not have been as plentiful as they had been.
Allocating expenses for travel was something of a tall order for my parents. We did go to Halifax in 1975 and had done some within-province travel in New Brunswick, and we went to Maine a handful of times. Outside of the V.O.N.-sponsored journeys, that was all that we did in my upbringing years since our having moved to New Brunswick in 1970. So, I am grateful to the move to Fredericton and my mother's promotion that precipitated it, for this reason at least. Those stays in Toronto and Ottawa are definite highlights of my youth. They may not compensate for the loss of social life in school and so forth, but I still would not wish to lose them in some alternate reality.
At last, I have finished watching the Shout! Factory Six Million Dollar Man Blu-Ray set. And alas, some of those Season 5 episodes remaining for me to see when last I wrote a Weblog entry, have the audio muffle problem. "The Lost Island" has scenes with dialogue that one must strain to hear comprehensibly, plus some muffled music. And both parts of "Date With Danger" have muffled dialogue for sections of them. All told, I count thirteen episodes with deficient audio to some degree. This is not including the Bionic Woman cross-overs known for a long time to have faulty audio. Here is the list of the Six Million Dollar Man episodes that this encompasses.
"Day of the Robot" (dialogue)
"Eyewitness to Murder" (dialogue)
"Dr. Wells is Missing" (dialogue)
"The Midas Touch" (dialogue)
"The Deadly Test" (dialogue)
"Target in the Sky" (music)
"The White Lightning War" (dialogue)
"Divided Loyalty" (music)
"That Winning Smile" (dialogue)
"Just a Matter of Time" (dialogue)
"The Lost Island" (dialogue and music)
"Date With Danger: Pt. 1" (dialogue)
"Date With Danger: Pt. 2" (dialogue)
So, this is thirteen out of close to a hundred episodes. Is this a good average? I suppose that one should be grateful that the problem was not even more pervasive. It is a sad fact that the problem could easily have been corrected by a competent audio technician not indifferent to the material with which he or she was working, simply by isolating the dialogue or the music track and boosting its level when necessary, perhaps also dialing up treble and reducing bass. It is such a pity that the set could not have been perfect because the picture quality is outstanding, to put it mildly.
Admittedly, some of the episodes I judge to be tedious, and I am not likely to sit through them very many more times in my lifetime. But knowing that perfection had been achieved would have been so much better than accepting that the set has flaws. Totally avoidable flaws. Happily, all of the Six Million Dollar Man episodes for which I have affection, and which I am likely to watch again numerous times, are unaffected by the faulty audio problem. The same cannot be said of my favourite episodes of The Bionic Woman, unfortunately.
The Shout! Factory Bionic Woman is still on its way to me. I now do not expect to receive it until sometime after Labour Day weekend. There have been no new reviews of its audio quality. I am not hopeful of the most egregious examples of the audio muffle ("The Return of Bigfoot: Pt. 2", "Kill Oscar: Pt. 1", both parts of "Doomsday is Tomorrow", "The Night Demon") being ameliorated to an acceptable degree.
I am still unable to view the list of Internet Service Providers of visitors to my Website, and what Web pages were accessed by those visitors. My motivation to do Weblog entries has been impacted by this.
All for today, Monday, August 29, 2022.
At last, the announcement has come. Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde (1932) is coming to Blu-Ray this autumn by way of the Warner Archive Collection. No news yet as regards extras. Will "Hyde and Hare" be included in the extras package as it had been on the DVD release of the movie? I expect that the answer to this question will be forthcoming within the next few days.
I would imagine that some considerable restoration work has been done on the movie itself. I am looking forward very, very much to seeing it looking pristine in High Definition. I cannot say that I am in agreement with the choice of cover art. I would much prefer to see the art used on the VHS videotape and on the laser videodisc and on the initial 2004 DVD of this and the 1941 Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, repurposed for the ultimate release of the movie on home video media. But one cannot have everything. I am so very grateful to Warner Archive for finally giving the nod to the 1932 Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde.
Images of the Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde (1932) VHS videotape and laser videodisc covers can be found in my Era 5 memoirs and Era 7 memoirs, respectively.
All for today, Tuesday, August 30, 2022.
A foggy Thursday, September 8, 2022.
There is some "scuttlebutt" on Internet discussion forums about the extras on the Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde (1932) Blu-Ray. The Greg Mank commentary from the DVD will be included, along with a new one, among the value-added material. And there will be a Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde radio play of the 1950s starring Fredric March. No mention of "Hyde and Hare". None. I presume this means that the cartoon has been dropped as a bonus item. Why? A High Definition film-to-video transfer exists. As the cartoon was on the DVD, why cannot it be on the Blu-Ray? Is it because someone involved with this Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde (1932) Blu-Ray release does not like "Hyde and Hare"?
I do tend to notice things. It is my talent, and, perhaps, my curse. In the LOONEY TUNES GOLDEN COLLECTION days, music from "Hyde and Hare" was heard often on bonus documentaries. A clip from it was used for the "Friz On Film" documentary of 2006. However, since 2009, "Hyde and Hare" has not been sourced for any value-added material on a DVD or Blu-Ray release of the Warner Brothers cartoons. Why? Well, 2009 was the year of my "falling out" with the Internet community of followers of the cartoons of Bugs and company. And lack of appreciation for "Hyde and Hare" and Friz Freleng was the spark that ignited that conflagration. Attitude toward "Hyde and Hare" on the part of the movers and shakers in the decision-making process of Warner Brothers cartoon DVD and Blu-Ray production might have changed, as a result of that conflict. Or maybe I am assigning way too much import to my involvement in the fan movement, and the attention paid to that movement by persons like Jerry Beck, Constantine Nasr, and others. But the return to neglect of "Hyde and Hare" these past thirteen years, is noted. There was no trace of it on the latest Bugs Bunny documentary, on the Bugs Bunny Blu-Ray box set. Or in any of that Blu-Ray set's other extras. Not even when mention was made of noxious substances in Bugs' cartoons.
My Shout! Factory Bionic Woman Blu-Ray set still has not reached my door. It was being shuffled around from place to place in Illinois for some two weeks before finally crossing the Canadian border. Since then, no tracking information. There is no telling how much longer I will need to wait for the package. Numerous people at Internet discussion forums have the set, and there is some disagreement as to quality of audio on the episodes known to have audio problems. I want to hear the audio for myself, to make my own determination as to its quality.
And this is all for today.
Queen Elizabeth II has died at age of 96. When I was little, I was fascinated by the Monarchy and by her. I was among the Douglastowners lined all along Douglastown's main road as Her Majesty and her husband, Prince Philip, passed through our village in a motorcade in summer of 1976. All that I saw of her was her hat as she remained seated in her vehicle, while Philip was waving. That was the closest that I ever came to meeting the Queen. In my adulthood, I have had less than the fullest reverence for the Royal Family. Like many people, I do not care for Charles, for the same reasons that many people do not care for him. And the less said about Andrew, the better. How those men were raised is all down to the Queen and her husband. I still have respect for the Queen, however. She was devoted to her responsibilities as Queen, and faithful to her husband. And I respect her title and the grace with which she embodied it, A sizable amount of my loftier regard for the Queen was "handed down" to me by my grandmother who was very much adherent to the Royals, every Christmas insisting that we watch The Queen's Message. And my mother was always captivated by the Royal Family. When Charles married Diana, she was right there at the television to see every visual that there was on the ceremony, and watched every news report and documentary on the Royals at that time. And I was there with her through most of that.
May Her Majesty rest in peace. I doubt that she will, though, with Charles being King.
Happier news. My Bionic Woman Blu-Ray set finally arrived at my door yesterday. Here is my assessment of the audio.
"The Night Demon", "Road to Nashville", and both parts of "Doomsday is Tomorrow" have had their audio fully rehabilitated. They all sound as they should. I cannot say for certain whether this is Shout!'s doing or Universal's, but kudos definitely for this, to whoever did the work. And the fix to the audio of the first ten minutes of part one of "Deadly Ringer" was carried over from the Universal Region 1 DVDs to this Blu-Ray set.
Unfortunately, the first six or seven minutes of "Kill Oscar: Pt. 1" are still problematic. There is evidence that Shout! did its best to make the audio clearer and more dynamic, as the conversation between Jaime and Callahan in the reception area outside Oscar's office is much less muffled than it had previously been. And the join between that and the fully clear audio in a subsequent scene in Dr. Franklin's laboratory as the Lynda robot is being prepared, is less jarring than it had been on the North American DVDs. However, the key scene in the prologue wherein Dr. Franklin and Katy outline their plan to Baron Constantine, is still much, much less than satisfactory. It sounds slightly better, but if one did not already know what the characters are saying, there are still places where one would be at a loss to understand what is being said. "My creations," and "human glue" are still so muffled as to be barely audible. The U.K. Fabulous Films DVDs had all of this fully corrected. I just do not understand why Universal did not do the same fix on its North American master. Indifference, I suppose. I really cannot suppose anything else.
I also have to report that the muffling of the sound effect of glass breaking as the Callahan Fembot shatters the glass wall to Kyler's suite in part one of "Fembots in Las Vegas", has not been corrected. And the "Friends" song at start of Act 3 of "The Bionic Dog: Pt. 1" is still at a low volume, sadly. I love that song.
There was also an attempt to boost the muffled music in "The Return of Bigfoot: Pt. 2". It sounds better than it did previously, but is still much, much short of being fully restored.
The most egregious examples of defective audio have been addressed with this set, thankfully. "Doomsday is Tomorrow" and "The Night Demon" most particularly were awful on the Region 1 DVDs, and now they sound fine.
Saturday, September 10, 2022.
Tuesday, September 13, 2022.
It is September 13. What fans of Space: 1999 have designated as "Breakaway Day", it being the date in Space: 1999 of the Moon being blasted out of Earth orbit. There tends to be fan conventions scheduled for 13 September, and that appears to be the case this year. Sadly, attending Space: 1999 conventions is something that I will never more do, as I am persona non grata in the fan movement, and the current personalities in charge of that movement and convention organisation, are the very persons with whom I had that unpleasant set of experiences in 1995. The bottom line is that there is no respect for me for my staunch loyalty to Season 2 and its aesthetic qualities and my refusal to bow to the detractors of it in their wilful ignorance of merit to second season and their invalidations of me and my existence. There was no such respect then, and there was not in 2000 and 2001, and there is no indication of any change to that today. Does it gall me to see those very people "running the show", as it were? Yes. How could it not? But such is my Karma. It is all Karma. Bad Karma. Bad Karma that began in 1977. It could not be anyone else presiding over the fan movement today. It has to be them. Just to "rub my nose in it".
And I am tired of it all. So very tired. I see the same tripe today littering locales on the Internet, a "piling on" of sweeping denunciations of Season 2, one person after another, never a single dissenting point of view, in comment "threads" on Facebook. The same old Fred Freiberger-is-show-killer, "Year 2"-is-a-"hot mess", a-thoroughly-silly-and kitschy-piece-of-garbage, and so forth. Reviews of Season 2 Blu-Ray releases alleging too many space clouds and bug-eyed monsters (as though those cannot have any artistic worth in concept or patterning over the chronology of episodes- and they are not in the majority of episodes). Judging it for it not referencing Season 1 and not assessing it on its own ideas. Arrogant dismissals of people who like it as being a minority and worthless. The same old blinkered, obtuse, abusive sorties. On and on and on it goes. People will not "move on" from their disdain for Season 2, Fred Freiberger, and people like me.
I see myself in the mirror when I am in the lavatory at work, going greyer by the day now. My body deteriorates, and still the attitudes that confounded and frustrated me for oh, so many years, for decades, persist as the only accepted perspective, oblivious utterly to anything that I have ever said, or ever will say. I really cannot be bothered saying anything more on the subject of Space: 1999 beyond my autobiographical rememberings that I continue to insert into my life eras. Anything that I say is ignored or scoffed-at, anyway. I have better things to do with the time that I have left on this Earth, and even if I did not, I would much rather do nothing.
I continue to watch my Bionic Woman Blu-Rays. Video is very, very sharp and sublimely colourful. But the audio muffling continues to plague the viewing experience. No improvements have been done on any further episodes that I have watched. Music in both parts of "Jaime's Shield" is suppressed in scenes where it should be pulse-pounding. "Once a Thief" is beset with a squashed musical score. "Welcome Home, Jaime: Pt. 2", likewise. Dialogue is muffled in "Canyon of Death" and in one scene in a car in "Mirror Image". Bionic sound effects are less than optimal in "Sanctuary Earth". All of these were acknowledged problems in the 2011 DVD sets. I do not remember them being as noticeable then as they are now. It does not sound like Shout! did any tweaking to the audio of these episodes. Neither did Fabulous Films. So, on these episodes, at least, the Shout! set is no worse than the U.K. DVD effort. The only capacity with regard to audio in which it is worse, by my reckoning, is the first six or seven minutes of "Kill Oscar: Pt. 1".
I watched some of the Queen's funeral this morning. It was on CBC, CTV, Global, CBC Newsworld, the CTV news channel, Radio-Canada, NBC, ABC, CBS, and FOX. A very impressive slate of broadcasters covering the event, but Princess Diana's funeral in 1997 tops it, for it was not only on all of the aforementioned channels, but also A & E, Atlantic Satellite Network, and, if, I remember correctly, Vision TV.
I have completed my viewing of Season 1 of The Bionic Woman on the Shout! Factory Blu-Rays. I cannot say that the last batch of episodes that I watched was a satisfying experience. "Fly Jaime" had problematic audio for almost all of its scenes after Jaime, Rudy, and others were marooned on the beach. It was at times a strain to hear what was being said. And, oh, is "Winning is Everything" a losing proposition! Throughout it, the dialogue is under some kind of veil, while the sound of race vehicles assaults the ears. There are countless scenes where Jaime and Tim Sanders are talking and what they are saying can scarcely be discerned. After hollering, "Would you please let me hear what they are saying?!!!" I "gave up" on trying to follow the episode by the start of its third act. There was also a very annoying hum during times of silence between the acts. For the life of me, I cannot understand how anyone could have considered this audio mix satisfactory. I dare say that this can only be attributed to a combination of incompetence and indifference. I do not remember it being as bad as this on the Universal DVD in 2011, but I only watched this episode on that DVD once. I do not believe that I ever once watched this particular episode on the Fabulous Films DVD set. It is, admittedly, not a favourite of mine. A series of motor vehicle race cliches, a guest character in which I have no interest, and a McGuffin, an audiocassette, whose import I struggle to recall. The only things of note in it in my estimation are the fake mustache worn by Richard Anderson (Oscar) and Oscar calling himself Mr. Bartholomew. Oh, I remember being impressed back in 1976 at the appearance of an audiocassette in a television show. That, too. But it is not an episode that I am likely to watch again anytime soon. Or later than soon. Nor "Fly Jaime", for that matter. "Fly Jaime". A repurposing of the script for a first season Six Million Dollar Man episode, "Survival of the Fittest" (and by saying, repurposing, I am being charitable; a slang hyphenated word of six letters, with the hyphen between letters three and four, would be a more apt on to use, perhaps, though I do tend to balk at such bellicose language), with Jaime and Rudy being in Steve and Oscar's places. There was very little change to the story. When Oscar arrives with the rescue party and finds Rudy on a stretcher, Rudy having been operated-upon by a reluctant medico of shaken self-confidence, and Jaime with a bandaged bionic hand, he really should say to her, "You know, Jaime, this looks eerily familiar." And there is a scene of deficient dialogue in the middle of "The Jailing of Jaime" while Jaime is on the run from government officials. This defect was definitely present on the 2011 DVD of same episode. This, I do remember.
It is so frustrating that Universal (I now believe that it is Universal) did quietly rehabilitate the audio to "Doomsday is Tomorrow", "The Night Demon", "Road to Nashville", and, another episode that now sounds much improved, "Beyond the Call", but left several others alone to wallow in defective sound. And more than a little galling, with the price that I had to pay to purchase the Blu-Ray set. And I would make the same comments about the Six Million Dollar Man Blu-Rays and the thirteen flawed episodes therein. I suspect that the same incompetent audio technicians were employed for the recent Six Million Dollar Man restorations as were commissioned to do those of The Bionic Woman in 2011, and likely also the audio mix for Fahrenheit 451, in which sound effects are badly out of synchronisation with video (but are perfectly okay on the Julie Christie commentary) for a sizable chunk of the movie.
Anyway, I am finished with Bionic Woman Season 1 (a season that I do mostly enjoy, it having a warmth to it as Lindsay Wagner's charm and gravitas carry many of its stories, even if they mainly kept Jaime's missions and other experiences "grounded"; the television series did not really start spreading its imaginative wings and do bold things until Season 2, easily my favourite of the three seasons) and also nearly done watching Season 2. Only four episodes of Season 2 to go, none of them favourites. "Assault On the Princess", "In This Corner... Jaime Sommers", "The Dejon Caper", and "Iron Ships and Dead Men". I have watched a handful of Season 3 episodes on the Blu-Rays. Season 3 largely leaves me cold. Joe Harnell's dynamic, very expressive music is absent for most episodes, the music for most of them being dull, and there are signs of flagging interest on Lindsay Wagner's part. There are no less than three episodes in which she is scarcely even present. After an outstanding pair of two-parters opening the season, it seems to "peter out". The only notable post-"Fembots in Las Vegas" third season episodes for me are "Brain Wash", "All For One", "The Martians Are Coming, the Martians Are Coming", "Sanctuary Earth", "Out of Body", and "On the Run". "The Pyramid" had potential but is so very dull. And I am not a fan of the Evel Knievel episode. It is rather run-of-the-mill. At best. Season 3 of The Bionic Woman, coming after my move from Douglastown to Fredericton, was lacking warmth, rather aptly coinciding with lack of warming interactions for me in my new Fredericton surroundings. And no, Fred Freiberger cannot be blamed for the decline in The Bionic Woman and its cancellation, much as many a person would love to do so, I feel sure. He only produced the final season of The Six Million Dollar Man, which was now decoupled from The Bionic Woman by television network edict, and only half of that season, to boot, Richard Landau producing the other half. From what I understand, Lindsay Wagner was not interested in doing a further season, while NBC executives were of the opinion that it was time to retire the television show. And I think that they were right. ABC executives, too, with regard to The Six Million Dollar Man.
All for today, Monday, September 19, 2022.
Wednesday, September 21, 2022.
Recent discussion of my junior high school years with the members of the Douglastown Elementary School group of which I am administrator, has left me reeling in recent days. I could not interest anyone in a conversation on what junior high school culture was like in Newcastle, on whether it was significantly different from that in Fredericton. Rather, my rememberings for them of some of what I had to experience at school in Fredericton, was met with silence, indifference, or advice to "let it go".
The lonely uniqueness of my situation is made all the more clear, as I seek solace in the company of people of my old home community like I have done recently. Nobody there can relate to my situation, evidently. No one is in sympathy. Not there. No more there than in Fredericton. Just an opinion that I am a odd person who cannot let go of the past, who will not slavishly adhere to the cliches of "let it go", "move on", "never look back, only forward", "chin up", "deal with it", and so forth.
I was an only-child in the village of Douglastown for five years, from start of Grade 1 through to end of Grade 5, and the summers before and after those grades of school, subsequently leaving there and moving into a suburb in which I did not "fit in", did not prosper. Not at school, certainly. From start of Grade 6 to end of Grade 12. And belonging around home was limited, inconsistent, and ephemeral, my efforts in that ultimately proving futile, despite some good times had along the way. A few of my fellow pupils in Douglastown did leave around the same time as I did, but they prospered in their new environment, or they had siblings in the same boat as they. They did not experience the loneliness that I did.
Now, I do sense an opinion among my Douglastown co-inhabitants of olden days, to the effect that I did not keep in touch in the decade or more after my move from Douglastown, and, so, my laments ring hollow. To this I say that when one is eleven, twelve, thirteen, fourteen years of age, one does not have a good deal of latitude. One cannot at those ages just step into a car and travel a hundred miles north when there is the desire to do so. Nor can one hop onto a bus, stay by oneself in a hotel in Newcastle, ride taxis into and out of Douglastown, and jump back onto a bus to return to Fredericton. Even if there were funds readily available for doing so.
My parents were just not supportive of facilitating continued connection between me and Douglastown. If I went to them and asked if we could go to the Miramichi, they would almost always say no, and an argument would ensue. After awhile, I stopped asking. I am not oblivious to how they felt. After a long week of work, they did not wish to spend a day or two of the weekend on the road. And my mother had some responsibilities at work on many a weekend. Oh, we did go back for a visit once in 1978, and once in 1979, but that was after enough time had passed to pique their interest in seeing what had become of our old habitat. And they were not entirely unsupportive of my wishes to maintain connection. If I received an invitation to visit a friend up there, to stay with that friend for, say, a weekend, they would be obliging- as long as it was only once in a while. And if a friend was committed to maintaining a pen pal connection with me, my parents would allocate the monies for postage stamps, paper, envelopes. But they fully expected this to be temporary, that eventually this would "fall away" as friends and I "grew apart". And that I would soon concentrate full social attention to what associations that I had formed in Fredericton, specifically those with my younger cohorts of my neighbourhood.
I knew very quickly that the move had been a mistake. Indeed, I had misgivings about it even before moving day, after I had seen what was to be our new house and new neighbourhood. And on the first morning of Grade 6, I was quite distraught, and my parents, although sympathetic, rejected the very idea of a return to the Miramichi. Our new life was to be permanent, and I had to make whatever I could of it. Persevere, and eventually I will find my niche. That was my mother's thinking. I did not find that niche in Grade 6, or in junior high school, or in high school. And my younger friends around home could be quite prickly when it came to being unconditionally accepting of my tastes, my sensibilities, and my ways as an only-child and a fish out of water, as it were. And in any case, they did always prefer their own peer groups. I cannot think of anyone who was an exception to that. Somehow, I managed to have some enjoyable experiences and some good one-on-one rapports with my neighbourhood friends, but it was on-again, off-again, those relationships, and it all proved futile in the end. They could not relate to me, and when their social time became less abundant, I was the first person to be dropped.
By then, I had been out of touch with the people of Douglastown for many years. A decade or more, in most cases. The people there had not been privy, not even through letters, of what I had experienced over the years in Fredericton. From their perspective, I think, I had forfeited any claim I had to a foothold in their lives. First by moving, and then by not coming back on anything resembling a routine basis or exchanging letters (though it is uncertain if, apart from a couple of my friends who broached the idea prior to my moving, people were keen to write- and I was too fearing of an answer of no, to suggest it myself). The advice given to me on my return to Douglastown a couple of times in 1988, was that I should "make do" with whatever I had left of my Fredericton social existence, and keep trying there to find my niche.
But, alas, my frustrations in Fredericton carried with them quite a lot of emotional baggage. A lot of which I managed to live with by being resolutely nostalgic for anything and everything from my happier formative years. And this was something that did set me apart from the vast majority of my fellow Generation Xers, who largely sneer at carrying a torch for anything past. And I had scars that I was reluctant to have salt thrown into, by already erstwhile friends of yesteryear and what new ones that I might make at university and later in my working life. And still, true kindred spirits were few, very few. Kindred spirits among old friends even more few.
And when I found them, I soon lost them. They moved far away. One of them died. Dying just a couple of years after we fully reconnected, after we were entirely "on the same page".
All told, I do have a mountain of regrets concentrating mainly on that decision in 1977 which fractured my life in ways that most people cannot relate-to or empathise-with. I cannot "let go" of them, or of my imaginings of a better life if the decision had been different. Or, as readers of this Website can attest, the entertainments and my perspectives on them, that I have brought with me on my life's journey. People have been so intolerant of such, people in fan movements, and people who knew me years ago in junior high school and are now commenting on Facebook on my autobiography. Empathy and understanding is scarce everywhere these days, and especially so with regard to viewpoints such as mine.
Saturday, September 24, 2022.
If my father were still living, he would be ninety-four years-old today.
This week, I completed my viewing of my Bionic Woman Blu-Ray set. Some of the Season 3 episodes were a chore to sit through, but I succeeded in doing so. No further notation of deficient audio, thank goodness. Among the final batch of episodes that I watched was the penultimate episode of Season 3 and of the entire television series, "Rancho Outcast". Strangely, I do not remember ever seeing that one before. Not on original broadcast, or in rerun, in syndication, or on DVD. The second-to-last episode of a television show running low on fuel, it was threadbare in the imagination department. Its McGuffin, a couple of counterfeit money plates, is a rehash of the one in the Six Million Dollar Man two-parter that introduced Jaime Sommers. It is another in a long line of episodes of Jaime having to go to a foreign country of hostile denizens and fight her way out, with a male companion of uncertain allegiance by her side. It could be that just its synopsis in TV Guide, or on a DVD booklet, was enough to deter me from giving to it a watching. Or maybe just a glimpse or two of its pre-credits teaser. By the way, I have always thought it a mistake for The Bionic Woman to reformat itself in its Season 3 to the elimination of prologue in favour of the pre-credits teaser. Not only does this shorten the "narrative" length of the episodes by thirty seconds, but it subverts suspense on what events will happen and what the episode will look like as it progresses. The pre-credits teaser was becoming routine for American television in the late 1970s and would be de rigueur for television programmes, of all genres bar the situation comedy, originating in the U.S. through the 1980s and into the 1990s. I have never favoured it. But I digress. Back to "Rancho Outcast". Jaime dances bionically on a bar counter in a Central American saloon and is aghast at going on a mission with a convict name of Pete the Weasel. This is in the teaser. And through the episode, Jaime is not in the best of humour, jaded, short of patience, clearly quite tired of having to go through the usual motions (same probably was true for the actress, Lindsay Wagner), either inadvertently or intentionally providing an apt segue into the final episode of the television series, "On the Run", in which Jaime decides that she has had enough of the agent life. "Rancho Outcast" is not as dire as I thought that it would be. If it is viewed metatextually, and internally as a story near the end of a character arc for Jaime, it does have some interest to it. And to my surprise, Keenan Wynn was a Bionic Woman guest star. I had not known that. And of course Keenan Wynn is always... Keenan Wynn. Menacing, volatile, and blustery.
I ought to qualify my statement above. My viewing of the Bionic Woman Blu-Ray set is not entirely complete. I abandoned watching the Blu-Ray disc with the latter two reunion movies. They look and sound the same as they do on the Six Million Dollar Man set. I do not feel compelled to watch them again. The only reunion movie that I can honestly say that I enjoy is the first one. Though the second one does have some moments that appeal to me. Actually, however, it was one of the bonus items that had me pressing stop on my remote control to my Blu-Ray player. Shout! Factory does not seem to have any standard of quality when it comes to value-added material. I do. And I judge the Bionic Woman episode promotions on that Blu-Ray disc to be unacceptable for my collection. The video quality is execrable. In my opinion, domestic videocassette recordings are not of a passable standard for any commercial DVD or Blu-Ray release, whether it be for main content or bonus items. And these ones are especially objectionable, for they have a CKVR logo in the lower right of screen (CKVR is a broadcaster of Barrie, Ontario; it was once CBC-affiliated before going fully independent) and a Canadian Ratings System graphic in the upper left corner, and that obscene colour multibust "rainbow glitch" that plagued my editing days with the VHS videocassette format. Intrusive-on-screen "lower-third" logos and "dancing rainbows" are not welcome in my collection. Really, if Shout! was so gung-ho about including these promotions, why not use the audio from the original recordings and recreate the video from the existing High Definition masters? This is a process that some fans have undertaken to utilise for YouTube videos. Sure, it would have been time-consuming, but if quality is a number-one concern, and if the inclusion of these promotions was absolutely necessary, this would be the way to go. As it is, I cannot accept the promotions as offered, and as that Blu-Ray disc is otherwise surplus to requirements, I choose to drop it from my set of Bionic Woman Blu-rays on my shelf.
Here is something that may raise a few eyebrows. I recently joined Fanderson. I did so in order to buy the DVD of The UFO Documentary and The Space: 1999 Documentary, which is only available through membership with Fanderson. That DVD arrived yesterday in my morning mail. I wanted "Message From Moonbase Alpha" (on this DVD as a bonus item) after having dispensed years ago with my A & E DVD set that had it as value-added material. And as is known, it has not to date been included in any Blu-Ray release. I want it resting on my shelf alongside the Space: 1999 television series-proper. I also desired The UFO Documentary, which is a the definitive making-of infotainment for UFO, leaps and bounds superior to the wretched piece of work on the Network Blu-Ray set. And though I am no more a fan of the second part of The Space: 1999 Documentary now than I was in 1998 when I first saw it, that documentary as a whole is an apt companion piece for the television series, styled very much after it in its choices of font and its overall presentation. The "piled-on" diatribes against Season 2 are always very unpleasant viewing, but the first part of the documentary, and some parts of the second, are very good, and by times excellent, value.
Before my Fanderson membership expires, I may avail myself of a couple other items. Probably not the The Day After Tomorrow- "Into Infinity" and Space Police DVD, as I expect that Network's encode for those on THE LOST WORLDS OF GERRY ANDERSON DVD is the superior one, it being of more recent production than Fanderson's DVD products. I think that the Documentaries DVD was originally mastered in the mid-2000s. And the same is probably true for Fanderson's DVD of The Day After Tomorrow- "Into Infinity" and Space Police, whereas Network's LOST WORLDS OF GERRY ANDERSON DVD was released in, if memory serves, 2014.
A most pleasant surprise on the Documentaries DVD is a set of excerpts from the 1991 Alphacon Video, which I had not seen or heard since the mid-1990s. It is so good to see and hear those again, including the main introduction.
With the addition of the Documentaries DVD to my collection, all that I lack now with regard to Space: 1999 are the second Clapperboard One episode, i.e. the one with Gerry Anderson and Brian Johnson, Brian Johnson on BBC's Horizon, and a few photograph galleries. It would be so nice to have everything on Blu-Ray, for consistency's sake. But beggars cannot be choosers, and when it comes to me and Space: 1999, I always feel like a beggar.
All for today.
Thursday, September 29, 2022.
It always amazes me how fast the weather deteriorates in the first weeks of autumn. Every day brings a noted difference in how much more one needs to turn up the heat or a do a thickening of outdoor attire, while the look of the sky, the trees, and the lawns tends more and more to resemble that awful final, raw day before wintertime-spanning snow cover starts.
The Blu-Ray of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde (1932) is less than a month away from release, and I still do not see a comprehensive list of bonus features for it. I am not hopeful that "Hyde and Hare" will be on that Blu-Ray, though precedent is in favour of such, based on other bonus feature Warner Brothers cartoons making the transition from DVD to Blu-Ray. If "Hyde and Hare" is left off of the Blu-Ray, quietly, with no explanation, I am going to think that someone in a position of authority is opposed to allowing for that particular cartoon to make its way to Blu-Ray.
Sunday, October 2, 2022.
My morale was low yesterday morning, and I decided to go to the Miramichi region for the day. I have not been there very much in the autumn since moving away from there forty-five years ago. Being there yesterday was a pleasant enough change from the spirit-crushing realities of my life of late in Fredericton and on social media. But there were still some upsetting discoveries of yet more demolitions of houses and other buildings. More and more and more, the vestiges of my time there are being erased by the unendingly grinding wheel of change. And I wish to God there was someone, just one person, there with whom I could "hang out". With my friend Sandy's passing in 2014, I have been without that, to my profound sadness. I no longer think that Sandy's aunt still lives in their house. From the paraphernalia in the yard, it looks like the house was sold to a young family. Sandy's aunt may, too, have passed, or had to move into a care home. If the house was sold, then there is no connection left for me with Sandy on that property. Time has "wiped that out". Time erases everything, eventually. Unlike in the late 1980s, there is no one now in Douglastown and the Miramichi area as a whole, for me to visit. Friends are gone, and their parents are gone. Neighbours are gone. Sitters are gone. Friends, contemporaries, of my parents are gone. Oh, there are still some people I know in the Miramichi region. Old schoolmates. Even some old friends. But they have made it clear that they have no time for me. The most that they want to do is to be on Facebook with me, without interaction. Just for old times' sake, I guess. For some people, perhaps many people, Facebook is like a hockey card collection of people they knew at some time in their lives. Nothing more.
There has always been a waxing and waning of my involvement in, and enthusiasm for, Facebook. I am now in one of the wanings. This one may be permanent. I have been disenchanted with Facebook for its politics for some time, and its suppression of essential conversations about the safety and efficacy of a certain pharmacutical (the less said about that, the better- for the sake of this Website's continued existence), has definitely not warmed me to the Zuckerberg social media application these past couple of years. The vast majority of my Facebook friends are not being supportive and communicative. And I have already mentioned the recent experience on the Douglastown school alumni group that I administer, one that called into question whether empathy and understanding from those persons is at all possible.
There is no denying that "cancel culture" is more pervasive now than ever. It always existed in some form, in some capacity. I was "cancelled" in the late 1980s by my then friends of Nashwaaksis. I was "cancelled" by the Space: 1999 fan movement helmed by my malefactor of Calgary, in the mid-1990s. Him and my other "friend", the Reginan. I was "gaslit" and "cancelled" in that fan movement, and also in the fandom for the Warner Brothers Cartoons, at Golden Age Cartoons, in 2009. Now, as is known, "cancel culture" is the Zeitgeist, has been so since at least 2015.
It does have to be faced. Social media platforms like Facebook and Twitter are in no small part responsible for the growth of "cancel culture". The proliferation of social media has definitely coincided with the pervasiveness of "cancel culture" in the 2010s and now the 2020s. I cannot see how this can be denied. I use the word, coincided, but it is not coincidence. Such media are facilitators of "cancel culture", mechanisms of it, instruments of it. It all started with the "like" click. If one is a "good boy" and parrots the approved "narrative", or "virtue-signals" to it, one is in favour, and receives "likes", but the slightest deviation from what is judged by the majority of persons in one's social media circle to be "right-think", and one is persona non grata. The "right-think"/"wrong-think" paradigm is not restricted to politics. Certainly not. It is "wrong-think" to like "the old stuff", to be nostalgic, to not effusively embrace "going forward". I was "cancelled" immediately by my peers in school in Fredericton for liking Space: 1999. That, too.
"Cancellation" on Facebook seems to be a four-stage process. First is "ghosting". Then "un-following". Then "un-friending". Then blocking. "Ghosting" is choosing not to read or reply to messages, and/or to not respond to interactions on a person's "Live Feed" postings. "Un-following" is hiding all of a person's postings to the "Live Feed". "Un-friending" is self-explanatory, as is blocking. Some of these steps may be combined. A person may "ghost" and "un-follow" someone at the same time, or "un-friend" and block at the same time. I have been "un-friended" many times. And it usually is preceded by non-replys to messages or ignoring of everything that I post, including attempted interactions below a person's posts. I only know of one person both "un-friending" and blocking me. And let me tell to my readers, this hurts as my most unpleasant experiences in childhood did. More so, actually. Because it is done without any in-person opportunity to hear the "case" against me from someone I consider to be a friend, whatever it be, and to give an accounting for myself, or to apologise if need be, or to defend myself. I invariably do not know the reason why I am being declared unsuitable for further friendship. And that is cruel beyond any pre-twenty-first-century measure.
I have had to "ghost" someone, but only after she "tore into me" on my Facebook "Timeline" for the unspeakable crime of complaining about Fredericton receiving eighty centimetres of snow, with another heavy snowfall incoming. She did so in front of all of my other friends (none of whom came to my defence, I might add), and has not apologised. It was in 2017 that she did that. Five years ago. This is sufficient reason for "ghosting", I would say. It would even be sufficient reason for "un-friending", though I do balk at doing so. Yes, even in her case. Because I know how much that that hurts.
What was life like before Facebook? I certainly do remember it. That was most of the span of my life. But my parents were living then. Now, they are gone. And Sandy is gone. Sandy was not a fan of Facebook and was not on it. The reasons that he gave to me for his decision, have all been proved valid. I am estranged evidently from several people, several old friends, from whom I was not estranged pre-Facebook. The "cancel culture" that Facebook enables, is so insidious. Twitter is even worse, I hear. I always gave to Twitter a very, very wide berth.
Being in the Miramichi region yesterday, close to memories of more than forty-five years ago, helped some to improve my mood. But now, I have to go back into broadcasting the New Brunswick Legislature yet again. And doing so alone again. Alone there. Alone at home. Alone on my walks. Loneliness is, as I say, my lot in life. Starting forty-five years ago with that move to Fredericton. Much as I try to escape it, and may appear to do so for awhile, it is the condition that I always default-to, when my social existence falls apart, as it does always seem to do. In space, or in Cyberspace.
Saturday, October 8, 2022. The Saturday of Thanksgiving weekend. I have a turkey thawing and a grocery store bakery pumpkin pie. And memories of happier Thanksgivings when my parents were living.
Foremost in my memory this morning is Saturday, October 8, 1977, the day on which CHSJ-TV frustrated me in my desire to see that day's 2 P.M. CBC broadcast of Space: 1999- "Force of Life". Canadian Express was on CHSJ for that airtime, while CBHT, CBIT, CBCT all were showing Anton Zoref (Ian McShane) stalking Moonbase Alpha in search for heat. How I envied the people of Nova Scotia and Prince Edward Island that day! And if only we had stayed in Douglastown, I might have been able to tune in CBCT on our antenna tower, as I had done on Saturday, August 13, 1977, and watch and audiotape-record the Space: 1999 episode that CHSJ was denying to the people of New Brunswick. Yes, that is quite possible, as October 8, 1977 was a fair weather day. Sunny. Blue sky. Gentle breezes. Atmospheric conditions would have been right, I believe.
I did that morning see an instalment of the CBS 1977-8 season of The Bugs Bunny/Road Runner Hour (no memory of specific cartoons therein) and a rather unimpressive episode of Space Academy at my grandparents' place. And was there at 2 P.M. when CHSJ frustrated me.
On the subject of Ian McShane, he is celebrating his eightieth birthday this week. I doubt that he is reading this Weblog, but my most heartfelt greeting of happy birthday, all the same. With many more happy returns. Ian McShane was one of those Space: 1999 actors that I faithfully resolved to see when he was in other productions. And he was in many another production that was of interest to me in its own right. I saw him in Roots and Jesus of Nazareth and Marco Polo and The Great Riviera Bank Robbery and Dallas and War and Remembrance and Columbo and Lovejoy. A most charismatic actor. And he is still working.
Website updates. Yet more text and images added to Era 3. The new additions consist of memories of the Logan's Run televison series, and a quartet of Logan's Run television series images. I also did some corrections, here and there, to other text in same era.
Still no official statement, from Warner Archive, on "Hyde and Hare" being a bonus feature on the Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde (1932) Blu-Ray. There have been some early reviews of the Blu-Ray, but they have focused exclusively on the main feature, which, by all accounts, is going to be a revelation as regards its picture quality. In one of the reviews, "Hyde and Hare" is listed among the bonus features. So, there it is, then. Almost as good as an official Warner Archive declaration of it being on the Blu-Ray disc. Ah, but what does the cartoon look like? Is it in true High Definition, or just an upscale? Frustratingly, one probably will not know what "Hyde and Hare" looks like on this Blu-Ray until cartoon fans themselves start commenting on it- if indeed that ever does happen. I fully expect not to have the Blu-Ray in my hands until at least a week after all other release-date buyers of this product, have theirs. I do not believe that I have ever seen a Warner Archive Blu-Ray on store shelves in Fredericton. Not at Sunrise Records. Not at Wal-Mart. Definitely not at Future Shop. Future Shop scarcely stocks any physical media at all, these days. So, I am at the mercy of Amazon.com and the U.S. and Canada postal services, for the receiving of my Blu-Ray in a timely manner.
Yes, I was wrong, evidently, in my negativity surrounding the possible inclusion of "Hyde and Hare" on the Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde (1932) Blu-Ray. My cynicism does these days rather reduce my tendency for being right. Cynicism that is not without more than a fair amount of justification, I might add. But I was wrong on this particular matter, and I "own" that wrongness. I am not always wrong, however. I have no doubt that some people of ill regard for me would be inclined to argue that if I am wrong about some things, then I am wrong about everything. Such is part of the idiot logic that has come to permeate the World Wide Web. Being wrong about the decision-making process of some individuals in the home video industry does not equate with being wrong about appreciation of a particular work and having umbrage with ignorant disappreciation of same work. This should go without saying if I was in a world of reasonable people. But as I am not in such a world, then I have to say it.
It will be so good to have Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde (1932) on Blu-Ray and to be able to retire the last "flipper" DVD in my collection. I am also doing a countdown, hopefully eventually to zero, of movies and television shows in my collection upgraded from DVD to Blu-Ray. When it comes to movies, I am down to twelve. I hope to bring that number to zero, but in some cases that hope will prbably be dashed.
Here is the list of movies that I still have on DVD and for which I am awaiting a Blu-Ray release.
The Island at the Top of the World
Pinocchio in Outer Space
The Red Tent
The Bad News Bears Go to Japan
Moon Zero Two
The Philadelphia Experiment (1984)
Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde (1955)
The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde (1968)
Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde (1981)
Jekyll and Hyde (1990)
Treasure Island (1989)
Daffy Duck's Quackbusters
It is indeed very impressive that the number of movie DVDs in my collection to be upgraded to Blu-Ray has been as high as it is. As for the twelve that remain non-upgraded, I think that there is a good chance of seeing Moon Zero Two on Blu-Ray from Warner Archive. It is surprising that this has not yet happened, actually. The Bad News Bears Go to Japan will probably see Blu-Ray release in the near future, probably by Imprint, as a follow-up to Blu-Ray releases of the first two Bears movies. The Red Tent may also be released by Imprint at some point in time. And Disney may someday give the nod to The Island at the Top of the World in its exclusive range of movie releases to Blu-Ray (the same range that includes The Black Hole). I am quite astonished that The Philadelphia Experiment (1984) has not yet reached Blu-Ray in the English-speaking world. I doubt very much that any of the other titles populating the above list will ever be on Blu-Ray. But maybe I will be wrong again.
Now, as to television shows. Here are those in my collection for which I still await Blu-Ray releases.
Spiderman
Rocket Robin Hood
The Littlest Hobo
Space Academy
Logan's Run
Gunsmoke
The Fugitive
Planet of the Apes
Star Blazers
Return of the Saint
The New Avengers
Peanuts
Voyagers!
Star Maidens
The Last Place On Earth
Shackleton
The Last Days of Pompeii
I am much less hopeful where this list is concerned. Kino or Shout! may someday release Voyagers!, as Universal productions do seem to be reaching Blu-Ray in rather large numbers, The Six Million Dollar Man and The Bionic Woman being the latest ones to grace Blu-Ray disc. There are select
I received my Fanderson membership packet. A very nice array of materials, and with it a very professional welcome letter. My purpose in joining has already been met, and I doubt that I will stay a member unless something newly made surrounding Space: 1999 and exclusive to Fanderson is announced sometime within the next eleven months.
Buy the way, there is, from The Gerry Anderson Store (a concern separate from Fanderson), a UFO Technical Operations Manual due to be released in coming months. I do not believe that I will be tempted to purchase that. I am just not enough of a fan of UFO to buy that, much as it would be a handsome companion to the Space: 1999 Technical Operations Manual on my shelf. When it comes to UFO, I prefer just to have it on home video. With whatever bells and whistles in audio-visual media that may be offered with that. Books and other merchandise? "Nah".
Someone at Blu-Ray.com Forum is reporting that "Hyde and Hare" will indeed be on the upcoming Blu-Ray of the 1932 Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. Awesome news, if true. A good tonic for my low spirits of late, though I would prefer instead to have my friends. Alas, I have not yet seen an official statement of this news by Warner Archive. I am guardedly optimistic, though. It would be awesome if this is true, and all the more awesome if "Hyde and Hare" is in High Definition. True High Definition. Not just an upscale of the existing film-to-video transfer on the 2004 DVD (which was itself of quality inferior to that of the LOONEY TUNES GOLDEN COLLECTION iteration of same cartoon).
If "Hyde and Hare" is on the Blu-Ray in some capacity, I will gladly retract my words about powers-that-be "having it in" for the still largely unsung Bugs Bunny encounter with the Victorian physician-chemist with the split personality. The rank and file cartoon aficionados will no doubt not give a hoot for this news, even if "Hyde and Hare" does have a Blu-Ray release of its remaster in High Definition. I am not sure if a High Definition remaster was done in 2004, or more recently than that. Someone was saying that all cartoons in the GOLDEN COLLECTIONs bar the Tweetys and Road Runners were remastered in High Definition, but I do not remember if that person had read an official reportage on such.
It is a pity, such a pity, that "Dr. Jerkyl's Hide" and "Hyde and Go Tweet" have not been accessed for value-added material, too, as this could be the only chance that they may ever have, to see release on Blu-Ray. Would I prefer for them, and "Hyde and Hare, to be in a dedicated Blu-Ray release of Warner Brothers cartoons and not as bonus features for a Blu-Ray release of a movie? Certainly. But as I do tend to say, beggars cannot be choosers.
All for today, Thursday, October 6, 2022.
Thanksgiving Monday. October 10, 2022.
A memory of a past Thanksgiving Monday is in my mind this A.M.. That of the Thanksgiving of 1982. I was watching my television post-Sesame Street to see the preview for that day's episode of Spiderman on CHSJ (Spiderman previews usually followed Sesame Street on CHSJ, in the minute before 10 A.M.). On Spiderman at 4:30 that afternoon would be "Sting of the Scorpion"/"Trick or Treachery", from a not very good looking film print. For most of the afternoon, I was involved in a baseball game at Park Street School field under blue sky and bright sunshine. I was standing in the outfield when I saw my father at the Park Street-to-Linden Crescent path summoning me to home for both Spiderman and turkey dinner. That Thanksgiving Monday is mentioned in my Era 4 memoirs.
When one is alone on days like this, no parents, no siblings. no accompaniment of friends, it is natural to give thought to past iterations of the particular day. Ones that clearly indicate that life was not always lonely for me. Though loneliness does always seem to be my inevitable default condition.
I have not very much to say today, other than comment on the latest news about the Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde (1932) Blu-Ray now making the rounds of the Blu-Ray and DVD reviewers at various places in Cyberspace. Another review has become available. And this one is forthcoming about what "Hyde and Hare" looks like on the Blu-Ray. And I cannot say that any of what I read is to my liking. It is the same film-to-video transfer sourced for the 2004 DVD of the two vintage Hollywood "talkie" Jekyll and Hyde movies, one that was pre-LOONEY TUNES GOLDEN COLLECTION 2, hailing instead from the late 1990s. It is a laser-videodisc-era film-to-video transfer commissioned for the Japanese BUGS AND FRIENDS laser videodisc set of 1998. It has been upscaled to 1080p, is soft in definition and has faded colour and aliasing. Yes, very apparently either Warner Archive did not even try to access the High Definition rendering of the cartoon circulating at HBO-Max, nor even the DVD quality file of it use in GOLDEN COLLECTION 2, or the main Warner Brothers home video division refused Warner Archive's request. Either way, this is exceedingly disappointing news. It was the only hope that there realistically was, of having the High Definition film-to-video transfer of "Hyde and Hare" on physical media. The ball was either fumbled or slapped down to the ground. What is the use of having "Hyde and Hare" on this Blu-Ray? I will never watch it, opting always instead for the superior look of the cartoon on the GOLDEN COLLECTION 2 DVD, digital compression artifacts aplenty.
It is so disappointing, and so galling, that new High Definition film-to-video transfers of some cartoons have been used as value-added content on Warner Archive Blu-Ray and that "Hyde and Hare" will not be among the cartoons with such a privilege.
At least the movie itself will be worth the upgrade from DVD to Blu-Ray. There is significant improvement in the look of the movie, as every reviewer has indicated.
All for today.
Saturday, October 15, 2022.
October 15 was a Saturday in 1977, and that was the Saturday when I watched and audiotape-recorded the Space: 1999 episode, "Alpha Child", from 4 P.M. to 5 P.M., before World Series baseball began at 5 o'clock. Like today, it was a thoroughly rainy Saturday. My father was in our new Fredericton house's living room, watching Space: 1999 with me. It was the first time that I watched Space: 1999 in the living room of our new home (for several Saturdays, I had been at my grandparents' place for most of the day, as I had desired access to cable television at their place). My mother was away at V.O.N. meetings for most of Saturday, October 15. After Space: 1999 had concluded at 5 o'clock, my father and I waited for me mother to come home and prepare dinner. I had some Chocolate Wafer cookies in my room while listening to my audiotape of that day's Space: 1999 episode, as I was waiting for my mother to come home and my father was watching World Series baseball action.
My mother was at many, many meetings, in addition to her 8 A.M.-to-6 P.M. usual workday, after her transfer to Fredericton and promotion to V.O.N. management. It had become a new fact of life for our family. I remember being alone at home on so many weekday evenings in 1979 and 1980, while my mother was at meetings. The majority of the Cosmos 1999 broadcasts that I watched in 1979, were on Monday evenings when my mother was not at home and I was alone.
I am having many retrospective thoughts of late. This week, I again remembered Saturday, September 29, 1990 and "Hyde and Hare" making its debut appearance on The Bugs Bunny and Tweety Show. I will not bore persons already familiar with that day, by recounting it again. I did a recounting of it most thoroughly in a Weblog entry dated December 6, 2013. My thoughts were this week with 29 September, 1990 probably because of "Hyde and Hare"'s release on Blu-Ray.
Another day in 1990 was in my mind this past week. It is one that I have not elaborated much upon in my Weblog or in my Era 5 memoirs. So, I will do so now.
The day was Tuesday, September 4, 1990.
Through the eight months of 1990 prior to that day, I had seldom bought TV Guide magazine. However, I did routinely have a look at the latest issue of TV Guide on the stands of Fredericton stores. Sometimes, I would walk from home to the Brookside Mall of Nashwaaksis, Fredericton, and look at TV Guide in the Book Mart store that existed in that mall in the 1990s. Most of the Book Mart clerks were quite tolerant of some minutes of reading of magazines on the store's shelves.
Naturally, the September issues of TV Guide had a heightened interest for me, for September was when most television stations changed their line-ups, and I was especially keen to see those line-ups in September of 1990.
Readers of this Weblog, and certainly people who knew me in the 1970s and 1980s, are aware of how adherent that I am to a science fiction/fantasy television series name of Space: 1999. After a two-year run on the CBC Television network between 1976 and 1978 (one that straddled the August of 1977 boundary between my life in the Miramichi region and my existence as resident of Fredericton), Space: 1999 had an incomplete run in French in my area in 1979 and then vanished. Absence certainly made my heart grow fonder, especially in years when I was not faring particularly well in the social milieus of junior high school and the Nashwaaksis neighbourhood in which I lived. Fondness for Space: 1999 fused with that for the Miramichi region and the village of Douglastown. For many years, through much of the 1980s, my love for Space: 1999 was a proxy for my nostalgia for Douglastown.
I was not prepared to just accept that I would never see Space: 1999 again. In 1982, I decided to write a letter to the CBC in Ottawa asking for Space: 1999 to be run again, and received a rather encouraging letter in reply. A year later, Space 1999 returned to the CBC Television stations in my part of the country, the eastern Maritimes, but not on the New Brunswick CBC affiliate, CHSJ-TV. Though I was able to find someone in Nova Scotia to videotape episodes for me off of CBHT Halifax, it was still a deep disappointment that CHSJ was so obstinate against giving to Space: 1999 some renewed exposure in New Brunswick. I was able to achieve a collection of all the episodes on videotape (though having to turn to American collectors to acquire more than one-third of the episodes). They were in various forms of completeness, and of video quality all too often leaving much to be desired. In 1988, a youth television channel, YTV, debuted in Canada. Immediately apparent to me in the YTV schedule was a preference for 1970s classic TV programmes, and among them the British science fiction/fantasy television series, The Tomorrow People (which I used to watch back in spring of 1977). In 1989, YTV augmented its British science fiction/fantasy roster with Doctor Who, Blake's 7, and The Tripods. It looked to me like YTV would be amenable to suggestion that it might add Space: 1999 to that roster. I wrote a letter to YTV and received an enthusiastic reply. If I could have others follow suit and write letters requesting same television series, it stood a better chance of appearing on the YTV airwaves. And so, I launched a letter-writing campaign, convincing people I knew at that time to write to YTV with a request for Space: 1999. This was in late 1989. Dean wrote one. My later-to-be-malefactor contact in Calgary wrote one (what might have been the only decent thing that he did). Tony wrote one. I was able to persuade him to do that. And why not? It only required one paragraph, a envelope, and a postage stamp. A few others with whom I had correspondence at the time, wrote letters.
In the afternoon on the Tuesday after Labour Day in 1990, i.e. Tuesday, September 4, 1990, I walked to the Brookside Mall and stepped into Book Mart. The issue of TV Guide with listings for the upcoming Saturday and following six days, was on the shelf. Beginning with the listings for Saturday, I scanned the pages, and I did not need to go very far before my eyes caught sight of a set of three nines. There it was. At 5:30 P.M. on Saturday, September 8. "YTV Space: 1999 - science fiction". No episode synopsis. Just that. But it was enough to send my spirits into the stratosphere- and beyond. I had to look again to make sure that I had not hallucinated. I gave to myself a pinch to determine that I was not dreaming. My discovery confirmed, definitely real, I could scarcely contain myself as I headed for the exit to the mall and began a most effervescent walk to home. There was a spring in my step. I was leaping up, punching the air with my fist, and proclaiming, "YESSSS!!!!" I was, and am, passionate, most effusive, when it comes to my entertainment favourites. It is one of my more defining traits. It did have to be suppressed, much to my chagrin, through my school years in Fredericton. Friends, associates, around home, were known to reprimand me for excesses of zeal for and conversation about such works of imaginative entertainment. Scarcely anyone was of a similar inclination to me to be passionate about such things. As I have said, Tony was not. Reservedness was his characteristic. Even my parents were weary of my wide-eyed wonderment for television shows of yesteryear that they doubted I would have occasion to see again on broadcast television. But here it was. And my letter and the letter-writing campaign that I orchestrated were indeed what had brought Space: 1999 to YTV across Canada between the years 1990 and 1992. The sense of accomplishment was huge. I could not wait to tell the news to my parents, and to my friends (at least those who I knew would care about this development). It was knowledge within my albeit meager social world of that year, by the close of that Tuesday in early September of 1990.
YTV was able to acquire newly remastered prints of most of the episodes, alas being left with worn and faded old CBC prints of seven of them. Six episodes, including the two season premieres, were unavailable to YTV because of rights issues. And numerous episodes were either cut or time-compressed, for commercial time, and in a few cases for removing of violence (YTV was a youth channel and some of the episodes were judged to be a tad too violent; curiously, the most gruesome episode, "Dragon's Domain", aired uncut on YTV).
September 8, a sunny Saturday, had another delightful surprise in store for me. A revamp of The Bugs Bunny and Tweety Show with a vast array of vintage cartoons never before on the television show, making a first appearance. Between this and Space: 1999 at 5:30, I was in an euphoric frame of mind through the afternoon hours. It was to be the best season of television that I had had for a long, long time.
My enthusiasm was subdued somewhat when I saw my first glimpses of the first episode of Space: 1999 to be telecast on YTV. It was not "Breakaway", and I had not expected that it would be, knowing as I did that "Breakaway" was out of the television series-proper being offered to broadcasters. I was expecting "Death's Other Dominion", for that tended to be first episode to air on television stations in North America, after "Breakaway" and "War Games" were removed from the syndication package. But it was not "Death's Other Dominion", either. It was "Voyager's Return". How more subdued a return to television in Canada could Space: 1999 have received than that? "Ring Around the Moon", maybe. Anyway, "Voyager's Return" did look gorgeous. Better than I had ever seen it before. But YTV went to a set of commercials right after Haines questions to himself Linden's statements about overriding onboard computer and security codes being irrelevant, and then returned with Linden injured and Helena giving to Koenig her diagnosis. The viewer did not see Haines confront Linden with the realisation that he is Ernst Queller and grab him by the coat collars and push him backwards toward a work table, inadvertantly causing injury to Linden and damaging vital equipment. The viewer could only infer that Haines had an altercation with Linden, possibly envisioning something much more violent than what had occurred. It was a very awkward cut. I remember going for a walk after the episode had ended at 6:30, perambulating on the sidewalks of streets Broad and Evans, contemplating YTV's editing of the episode and what that boded for all subsequent Space: 1999 showings on YTV.
"Dragon's Domain" was on YTV on the next Saturday, time-compressed and missing no scenes. It was the first time that the episode was shown in its entirety in a Canadian English television broadcast. "Mission of the Darians" was the third episode on YTV, missing the scene at the top of it wherein the Alphans hear the Darian S.O.S.. The viewer did not learn that the Alphans had received a distress signal until Koenig mentioned it to Kara in Act 2. There would be more flaws to YTV's Space: 1999 telecasts, but the episodes mostly looked better than ever before, and a plurality of the second season episodes were complete and not time-compressed. However, laser videodisc releases of Space: 1999 in 1991 did make the YTV broadcasts redundant for collectors. The most important thing about the breakthrough in my letter-writing campaign was that people could see Space: 1999 again, all across Canada. And people were watching. Many people. YTV told to me that ratings were very, very high. It was one of YTV's most-watched television programmes of 1990 and 1991.
Funnily enough, although participating in my letter-writing campaign, Tony rarely watched the YTV Space: 1999 broadcasts. I do not believe that he videotaped the episodes. In fact, I only remember Tony telling me of his having seen "Voyager's Return", on September 8, and "All That Glisters", on December 29. He did not see the broadcast of "Dragon's Domain" on YTV. I remember telling him of that some days later. Either he was working or he was socialising with his girl-friend, his girl-friend who was soon to be his fiancee, and, in December of 1991, his wife. Tony's brother, Steven, rarely watched YTV's broadcasts of Space: 1999, either. Joey and I were not communicating at that time, and I doubt that he watched any of the YTV offerings of Space: 1999. I had failed to interest him enough in the television show for him to be at all immersed in it. My favourite television show may have been enjoying high ratings, but not in my world as I knew it at that time. This had a definite minimising effect on my enjoyment of the success with YTV. My Miramichi friend, Sandy, years later revealed to me that he watched the television show each week on YTV, and another friend, Ray, spoke of his watching of Space: 1999 on YTV when I was conversing with him one day in 1992. But in 1990 and 1991, I was the only person in my social sphere known to be "tuning in" every week to watch the odyssey of Alpha Moonbase. That diminished the feeling of triumph. Of course it had to, did it not? It is my lot in life.
Ah, well. At least I had that day in September, 1990, when I saw that issue of TV Guide at Book Mart.
Today, I am going to invoke a day from the depths of time. One from way back in the Year of Our Lord, 1979. Thursday, April 12, 1979. I do not address it in my Era 3 memoirs. And I propose to do so here. At some length.
Yes, I remember the exact date. It was an overcast spring day in Fredericton. With fairly comfortable temperature. It was the day of school preceding the long Easter weekend. The afternoon routine for me at that time was that I would come home from Nashwaaksis Junior High School, whereat I was then in Grade 7, and I would be summoned immediately by Tony to his place so that we could spend together the approximate hour and half before supper, playing our favourite opuses of imagination together or just talking about them. In early April, Tony would be at his door, on the lookout for me to appear, book satchel in hand, around the western turning of Linden Crescent, the street on which we both lived at that time. The inner door of Tony's place would be open and he would be observing me through the glass of his home's outer door. And he would emerge from behind his outer door and make a motion of his arm indicating that he wanted for me to come to him. I would deposit my books inside my house, notify my father that I was going to visit with Tony, and then off to Tony's place I went.
On Thursday, April 12, 1979, I encountered rather a different set of circumstances. Coming home as normal, at the usual time of 3:30 approximate, I looked in the direction of Tony's place, and saw both doors firmly closed. I received no hand-motion summons to visit with Tony. Nor a telephone call. I awaited some sort of action on his part to ask for my company, as the after-school minutes ticked away on the clock. I sat on my front doorstep. In case he had been detained at school, I could meet him on his walk home. No sign of him. When I went indoors for the dinner that my father had made, I asked him if Tony had called, and he said no. After dinner, and after my father had left for work and my mother had come home, I was back out on the front doorstep. It was after 6 o'clock. I looked at Tony's place. His parents were home from work. Both doors were closed. I sat there on my doorstep and sat there and sat there, and then I heard something.
Coming from the direction of Park Street School was the distinct sound of a group of boys boisterously conversing as they stepped off of the Park Street-to-Linden Crescent gravel path and onto Linden Crescent and walked in the direction of the row of homes including mine, nearly all of which they had to pass in order to reach a path to Maple Street, a path through which most mid-Fulton-Heights youths had to walk in order to go home from school. When they were within view from my pair of occular organs, I recognised the boys. Tony and four or five of his Grade 5 peers. They were all carrying school books, indicating that they were just now going home from school. To this day, I do not know why they were so late in doing so. No teacher detains her or his pupils beyond the 5 P.M. dinner hour.
Tony saw me sitting there and feigned non-recognition, before a couple of the other boys flung some derisive words in my direction. Ridiculing words. Hurtful words. And the entire group laughed in unison at the ridicule. Including Tony. I could not believe the utter effrontery. Oh, I might have expected it from the other boys, but from Tony? My friend, Tony? Not only did he not express any disapproval at his peers for their words and actions, he joined in with their disdainful slurring of me. Past me they all walked. When they reached the path to Maple, Tony diverged from them and proceeded to his house, the others all going down the path. Not looking back at me, probably not even twitching an eye, Tony went into his house and closed both doors firmly shut. And I did not see or hear from him for the remainder of the day.
That incident hurt me like I had never been hurt before. It was the worst kind of snub possible. I was ignored by someone I considered to be a friend. And not when he was alone but when he was with others. Others upon whom favourable attention and company he clearly gave while denying such to me, a clear statement of my inferiority, my lesser worth and status as a friend in comparison with them. And he not only stood by while those persons he was with said insulting things to me, but he joined in the laughter ensuing after the hurtful verbage. And then remorselessly continued past me, not looking back. And then he left me to feel the full slight of the incident, with no mitigation, for the balance of the day. I had not ever been so hurt in my life before that awful day. Never before had someone so egregiously betrayed my friendship. Betrayal is definitely the word. That was exactly what I was feeling.
So, what happened after that?
Next day was Good Friday. At close to 9 A.M., clouds were dissipating and sunshine was starting to pour down onto Linden Crescent, which it would do for the rest of that long weekend. David B., Mike J., and Eric, with whom I was on rather shaky ground with regard to friendship in first third of 1979, but still amenable to conferring-with and maybe having a game of baseball with, on occasion, were out on the pavement of Linden Crescent in front of my place, and I joined them. Minutes later, Tony appeared. He said nothing in greeting to me and had few words to speak in regards to me, only referring to me in the third person when he did say those words. Needless to say, it was salt in the deep wound that he had inflicted the day earlier. I beared that situation as long as I could. We played some baseball, the group of us. Eventually, I left the group and went indoors, and they dispersed. I did not see or hear from Tony for the rest of that day.
Saturday, April 14. Sunny. I spent most of the day outside on our street, eschewing almost all of the Saturday television programming on cable television which I had in our home by that time, looking repeatedly toward Tony's place. He must have seen me outside as the day progressed- but he stayed in his house. He stayed in his house until about 4 o'clock, when he finally emerged from the two doors and beckoned me to come over to him. He invited me to go with him to see Buck Rogers in the 25th Century that evening at the Nashwaaksis Cinema 2. We had both already seen that movie, me in a solitary attendance of it the Saturday previous, and him with one of his friends (not me) the Tuesday previous. I happily, graciously, gratefully, agreed to go with him, so very pleased that he was talking with me again. He was charming, in his best humour, and we had a good time together at the cinema. The next two days of the long weekend saw much one-on-one association for us and a return to the rapport that we had shared before the incident of 12 April.
What can I say? I was a weakling. I could not manage difficult conversations and avoided them. A difficult conversation was required for genuine reconciliation with someone who had wronged me, and I had sidestepped it. I had been grievously hurt, more than I had ever been before. And I trivialised it by not requiring any word of regret from Tony for what he had done. How could I know that he did regret it? Was inviting me out to the movie with him supposed to be a "making up" for what had been perpetrated? Or was there no connection whatsoever between the two?
I want to be clear. I did not forgive him for what he did, and I sure did not forget it. But I expediently chose to put it aside and to continue onward with friendship with him. Why? Because at that time Tony was the only approximation of a close and best friend that I had in my Fredericton environment. We two liked so many of the same things. Tony was not anti-Space: 1999. Nor was he anti-Space: 1999- Season 2. A rare, rare find in Fredericton. We lived on the same street. We had to be friends, I felt. Without him, what would life be like for me? Autumn of 1977 again? I could not bear the thought of that. I was willing to do anything to avoid it, including not "standing up" for myself after someone had callously hurt me. Which Tony had done.
The wound was there. An evening at a movie was not going to wipe it away. And behaviour on Tony's part would aggravate it in months to follow. I do say in my memoirs that he could be quite dismissive of me when others were present. And this he was in May, June, July, August, 1979. He cut me out of his life totally during his cousin's visit with him in August. He said that his parents required that of him. I honestly do not know if that was true. I can see his father imposing that. But his mother, who was a very nice woman, could have vetoed it. Or at least have suggested some compromise for my sake. Tony ought to have refused to snub me utterly. But he did not. I was dead to him during those weeks. He showed no notice of me at all when I was outside and he was in his yard with his cousin. But I left aside all of this too. And continued on with being friends with Tony after his cousin had left. Even conceding to Tony's ultimatum that I "brush off" Joey. Tony definitely did not like Joey's appearance in my life in summer of 1979. Joey was very young at that time. Tony had a most distinct edge over Joey on basis of age alone. To say nothing of number of things in common. He "pressed" his advantage. And I hurt Joey. I know that I did. And I hate myself for doing so.
So, what is the bottom line in this exercise in remembering painful circumstances of long ago? I have no doubt that some people would tell me to just "let it go", but it is not that easy. Wounds, or residual scarring from them, cannot just be willed way. Incidents like that of April 12, 1979 became an integral part to my look on the world and human nature, and their impact upon my psychological make-up, most especially that in my subconscious, cannot be denied. It affects even today how I respond to people.
I "carried on" being a friend to Tony for more than a decade after the incident of 12 April, 1979. He never apologised for it. I am not sure that an apology would have been enough, frankly. It would have to have been a damned good one. He would have had to give a thorough accounting of himself and his actions, express absolute contrition, and promise to never, ever do what he did or anything remotely like what he did, again. But of course this is a forlorn hope. Tony never apologised for anything. He never addressed anything. His dismissiveness of me when others were present, his abandoning of me for his cousin's visit, his not inviting me to the birthday celebrations for him and his brother at Howard Johnson's, his declining to ever once "have my back" when others were saying unkind things to me. He addressed none of it.
I am not a paragon of virtue, I admit. I hurt Joey. And I admit to enacting some retribution upon Tony by deciding not to be with him when my Douglastown best friend, Michael, was visiting me in July of 1980 (though only for four days, not even half as long as my exile from Tony's life during the visit of his cousin the year before), and I declined to "have Tony's back" when he was being needled by a girl named Kelly and her friend, Teena, in 1980 or 1981 (I guess that deep down in my soul I judged that Tony was not deserving of any such move on my part). Still, I kept on being friend to Tony in a number of ways, helping him on his first day in high school, seeking him out for talking about science fiction/fantasy television, videotape collecting, et cetera. And I used him (yes, I used him) for partnering on videotape duplication, and for his connection, through his brother, with other youths of the neighbourhood, for successful video shows and some of the best baseball games I ever played. So, the expediency of leaving aside those hurtful things did have some considerable value. But it was wrong. I ought to have had more integrity. And as a person of integrity call a spade a spade. Something hurt me, and I will not forgive it without a most elaborate apology. And in the absence of an apology, I ought to have nothing more to do with the person who had hurt me.
Of course, I have known people who wronged me worse than Tony did that day. But I had failed to develop the skill and confidence at properly dealing with those wrongings. On the spot. With forceful conversation. And in that failure, I guaranteed to myself yet more wounding, scarring, and an unending run of being "jerked around" by people who would consign me to the trash heap once my usefulness was at an end. Stand up and be counted, Mr. Calgary. One might say that I brought it all on myself, Karmically, because I did not react as I ought to have done to incidents more than four decades ago. And I hurt people. People like Joey. People like friends I had in Douglastown who did not want for me to leave there. Who knows? Maybe Michael's animus toward me in his stay with me in 1980 was powered by hurt? And Karma will not absolve me from lifelong punishment for things that I did or failed to do, even in childhood. So much of it could have been avoided if we had just stayed in Douglastown. But I am not going to go down that road again. Not today.
All for today, Sunday, October 16, 2022.
Some further rumination regarding the incident of April 12, 1979.
It was an awful day. It left a wound, and a lifelong scar. But I can imagine some of my readers countering my accounts of the incident with suggestions that maybe Tony was "out of sorts" with me for something that I may have said on the previous day. Empathy and ability to see things from multiple angles were, after all, not my strongest quality. Surely I ought to consider some faux pas on my part as the instigating quantity in that unpleasant experience.
I do not deny the possibility of my having a slip of the tongue, or an inadvertently brusque delivery of an occasional sentence, in my conversing with Tony on the previous day, Wednesday, April 11. Blessed as I am with a good long-term memory, I do not remember there being any time that any such things occurred on the Wednesday before the hurtful incident. Do I "rule out" any such things? No. I cannot claim perfection in my long-term memory. And as I later learned in the 1990s, I can indeed be quite fallible when it comes to conversation. But I was not "called out" for anything by Tony, "taken to task" on the spot, at any time in that hour and a half that we two were together on Wednesday, April 11. Of that, I am sure. I would remember something like that if it had occurred. Just as I am sure that Tony was more than capable of doing such a "calling out" of me, i.e. saying that he did not like something that I had just said and asking me to clarify my intent behind what I had spoke. He had a definite social confidence at that time. He was, as I say, a social quipster. He had no inhibition at that time about saying that he did not like or appreciate something done or said. Besides, even if I did have an indelicate moment, one not by my design, in my conversation, it could not justify what Tony did the next day. Nothing could. What he did was wilful, not inadvertent, and it was the worst slight that a person can inflict upon a purported friend, using the ill-intent of a group of others for whom one shows clear higher favour, as a springboard to deliver a whopper or a insulting snub.
And I would add that this slight had an aggravating echo in his recurrent practice, through spring and summer of 1979, of being dismissive of me when others were present. And there was his ignoring of me during his cousin's visit. It was not a "one-off", his diminution of me in favour of others. His behaviour on April 12, 1979 was that diminution on steroids.
And yet I designate him as my best friend of Era 3. Why? Because of all that he had in common with me. Because of the amount of time that we were together. The breadth of what we did together. Because among him, David B., Eric, and Mike J., he was undoubtedly the person with whom I had the best rapport, and the person whose spirit was most kindred with mine with interests that I had and my manner of appreciation for them. And it would be some while yet before Joey and I would start to bond as close friends. But looked-upon in the midst of every other friend I had in all other eras, the Douglastown era inclusive, Tony certainly was not my best friend of all time. Michael was a better friend. The majority of other friends I had in Douglastown, were better friends. Joey was a better friend. And if I use the strictest definition possible of friend, someone upon whom one can depend to be at one's side, defending one's back from slings and arrows, and someone with whom one could confide and count upon for moral support during times of upset, Tony would not be a friend at all. Merely an associate. A close associate, yes. Perhaps closer even than some strictly defined friends. But still just an associate.
But I opt for a looser definition of friend in my memoirs. So, Tony is referred-to always as such, there. And as best friend in Era 3.
Why did I choose, finally, to share that incident here in this Weblog with my readers after opting to exclude it from my memoirs for oh, so many years? It was "on my mind" in recent days. Why not share it? As I have said before, Tony is no longer a friend in even the remotest sense. It was his decision to no longer be inclusive of me. A decision that does underscore the unpleasant times, rather than the happier ones. Erstwhile friends can expect no "holding back" from me in revealing to the world the darker days of our relationship. And my delving into the hurt of 12 April, 1979 may foster for some people a more cogent awareness and better understanding of my sensitivity as regards friends and their connections with peers relative to that with me, a comprehending recognition that there was a wound caused by that particular issue, one which could be salted in future incidents wherein a friend snubbed me, or was less than fully genial with me, when he was with others.
Tony did change over time. He was not like he was in 1979 in, say, 1983. At least not outwardly. It is possible that in adulthood he is the exact opposite of how he was on that spring day in 1979. Somehow, I doubt it, though. I just do.
I do not believe that I mentioned this before now, but I did have an encounter with Tony and his brother, Steven, at the food court of the Regent Mall more than four years ago. They were seated at a table, just the two of them, as I walked along the perimeter of the food court. They were eyeballing me, definitely. They recognised me. I detected not the faintest smidgen of warmth emanating from them in my direction, and I looked away and kept going at brisk pace to my chosen destination in the mall. Are they aware of my Website and autobiography and have umbrage with me for my published recollections of experiences with them? I do not know. If they are, and they dislike me intensely for revealing and criticising some of their childhood ways and some specific incidents, rather than agreeing that they were imperfect back then and being accepting of my choosing to mention such things in delineating their effect upon me in past eras of my life, then this would suggest that perhaps a haughtiness exists in them today, and that they have no regrets over how I was treated by them in some of the less agreeable times of long ago. And they discontinued friendship, or whatever, with me nearly thirty years ago. Yes, they did. This is indisputable. As I have said, I owe them nothing more than fond memory of the good times (there were good times), memory albeit tainted with the awareness that lack of esteem for me was what ultimately prevailed.
But what does all of this have to do with my interests that constitute the bulk of my Website? It provides context for how attached that I am to certain entertainment works and my nostalgia for the more pleasant times in my adherence to those works, how I relied on these for moral strength during times of deeply hurtful betrayal by friends, and why I reacted as I did to latter-day situations wherein I had contretemps with associates or supposed friends in appreciation of my favourites. And yes, make no mistake, it was to my benefit that I had the likes of Space: 1999 to turn to, to immerse myself in, when I was wounded by actions such as that of Tony on that day in April, 1979. I endured such unhappy times with the aid of my dedication to entertainment favourites. I survived school in Fredericton, and being a sometimes put-upon inhabitant of the Linden Crescent and Woodmount Drive neighbourhood of Nashwaaksis. Would I have survived all of that without having favourite works to "latch onto"? This is uncertain.
Wednesday, October 19, 2022.
Weblog entries post-October 19, 2022.
Space: 1999, to which my adherence is an awareness of my Weblog's readers and of people who knew me in the 1970s and 1980s.
A quintet of images of cartoons in the Saturday, September 8, 1990 episode of The Bugs Bunny and Tweety Show. First image from left is of the cartoon, "Baton Bunny". Second image from left shows "Duck Dodgers in the 24 1/2th Century". Represented in third image from left is "Rabbit Hood". Fourth image from left is of "Ali Baba Bunny". Lastly, the fifth image from left shows "Room and Bird". All cartoons in the September 8, 1990 Bugs and Tweety instalment were new to The Bugs Bunny and Tweety Show, denoting a revamp of the Saturday television show for the cartoons of Warner Brothers.
Shown in five images, the Buck Rogers in the 25th Century movie that I went with one Tony to the Nashwaaksis Twin Cinemas to see on the Saturday of Easter weekend in 1979.
The Fredericton Regent Mall food court, as seen in 2019. Some four years before 2022, I was walking through the Regent Mall food court and encountered a couple of people of past presence in my life. Tony and Steven.
Space: 1999 images, image of The Return of the Pink Panther, Alien Attack, Destination: Moonbase Alpha, Journey Through the Black Sun, and Cosmic Princess images, and Capricorn One images (c) ITC Entertainment/ITV Studios Global Entertainment
Gunsmoke DVD box set image (c) CBS Home Entertainment and Paramount Television
Muppet Show image (c) Jim Henson Productions and ITC Entertainment/ITV Studios Global Entertainment
The Empire Strikes Back images (c) Lucasfilm Ltd.
Star Trek II- The Wrath of Khan images (c) Paramount Pictures
Flash Gordon Blu-Ray cover image (c) Universal Home Video
Dr. No Blu-Ray front cover image (c) United Artists and MGM/UA Home Video
The Omega Man and Oh, God! Blu-Ray front cover images (c) Warner Home Video
Image of the front cover to the Blu-Ray of Terminator 2- Judgement Day (c) Artisan Home Video and Carolco Pictures
The Day the Earth Stood Still Blu-Ray front cover image (c) Twentieth Century Fox Video
Image of the cover to the Blu-Ray of Capricorn One (c) ITV Studios Home Entertainment
Bugs Bunny eightieth anniversary Blu-Ray set images (c) Warner Home Video
Images from "Blooper Bunny", "Hyde and Hare", "Baton Bunny", "Duck Dodgers in the 24 1/2th Century", "Rabbit Hood", "Ali Baba Bunny", and "Room and Bird", and "Hyde and Hare" production cel image (c) Warner Bros.
Buck Rogers in the 25th Century Blu-Ray set cover images (c) Kino Lorber and Universal Television
MARVIN MARTIAN'S SPACE TUNES and THE BUGS BUNNY GOLDEN CARROT COLLECTION DVD cover images (c) Warner Home Video
Image of From Russia With Love (c) United Artists
THE FLINTSTONES- THE COMPLETE SERIES Blu-Ray box set cover image (c) Hanna-Barbera and Warner Home Video
Where Eagles Dare image (c) Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer
The Black Hole Blu-Ray front cover image (c) Buena-Vista Home Entertainment
Alien image (c) Twentieth Century Fox
Images of the front covers of the Blu-Rays of The Bad News Bears (1976) and Heaven Can Wait (c) Paramount Home Video
Doctor Who images (c) British Broadcasting Corporation
Ulysses- Comin' Home front and back cover images (c) Friesen Press
Bugs Bunny/Road Runner Hour card (c) CBS and Warner Bros.
SPACE: 1999 ULTIMATE EDITION image (c) ViaVision and ITC Entertainment/ITV Studios Global Entertainment
Doctor Who Blu-Ray images (c) British Broadcasting Corporation
Earthquake images (c) Universal Pictures
Journey Through the Black Sun poster and Cosmic Princess poster art (c) ITC Entertainment/ITV Studios Global Entertainment
Space: 1999 U.K. DVD cover images (c) Carlton Communications and ITC Entertainment/ITV Studios Global Entertainment
Space: 1999 Moonbase Alpha Technical Operations Manual front cover (c) Anderson Entertainment and ITC Entertainment/ITV Studios Global Entertainment
ULTIMATE SPACE: 1999 Blu-Ray box set image (c) Network Distributing and ITC Entertainment/ITV Studios Global Entertainment
80 Years of Tweety image (c) Warner Bros.
Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde (1941 and 1932) Blu-Ray front covers (c) Warner Archive and Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer
Vertigo DVD front cover image (c) Universal Home Video
Spider-Man: No Way Home Blu-Ray cover image (c) Sony Pictures Home Entertainment, Marvel Studios, and Buena-Vista Entertainment
Tijuana Toads and Pink Panther cartoons Blu-Ray covers (c) Kino Lorber and United Artists/DePatie-Freleng Enterprises
This Island Earth Blu-Ray front cover image (c) Shout! Factory and Universal Pictures
S.O.S. Titanic Blu-Ray front cover image (c) Kino Lorber and EMI Home Video
2010: The Year We Make Contact Blu-Ray cover image (c) MGM/UA Home Video
Destination: Moonbase Alpha VHS videotape and DVD cover images (c) Channel 5 Video, Carlton International, and ITC Entertainment/ITV Studios Global Entertainment
Spider-Man: No Way Home images (c) Marvel Studios and and Buena-Vista Entertainment
Images of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde (1941) (c) Metro-Goldwun-Mayer
The Shape of Things to Come images (c) Film Ventures International
Nicholas and Alexandra Blu-Ray cover image (c) Twilight Time and Columbia Pictures
Rollerball Blu-Ray cover image (c) Twilight Time and United Artists
The Bounty Blu-Ray cover image (c) Twilight Time and and Orion Pictures
Zardoz Blu-Ray cover image (c) Twilight Time and Twentieth Century Fox
Image of the front cover of Space: 1999- The Vault (c) Signum Books and ITC Entertainment/ITV Studios Global Entertainment
Images of He's Your Dog, Charlie Brown (c) United Feature Syndicate and Charles M. Schulz Creative Associates
Space: 1999 second season novelisation book covers (c) Warner Books and ITC Entertainment/ITV Studios Global Entertainment
The Six Million Dollar Man and The Bionic Woman Blu-Ray box set cover images (c) Shout! Factory and Universal Television
The Bionic Woman image (c) Universal Television
Image of the front cover to the DVD of The UFO Documentary and The Space: 1999 Documentary (c) Fanderson and ITC Entertainment/ITV Studios Global Entertainment
Buck Rogers in the 25th Century images (c) Universal Television
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