Television programmes [2]

Just a little shout-out to halfie for suggesting Northern Exposure - it has become one of my favourite shows
Chris is just a fantastic character

How ironic, the video is blocked in my country.

I dunno if I want these two doing horror.

Erm, a British count? Isn't that a contradiction? Or is it going to be "Earl Dracula"?

What happened to Transylvania.

I dunno if I want these two doing horror.- Halfy

{{Gatiss has a long deep love for Victoriania and the weird and freakish of that time. He also has a life long love of horror in film and books and has written on the subject and made documentaries on it. And of course he cowrote the League of Gentlemen which mixes dark humour with the macabre.
So on paper Gatiss is well suited to it.





Moffat of course is famous in his Who era for some of the scariest monters and some of the creepest images and ideas. And he also adapted Jekyll and Hyde for the BBC as a contemporary piece many years ago (Ive never seen it however so cant say if its any good or not but was up for a Golden Globe if that counts as any indication) but again on paper its a good match. }}

Jekyll is largely atrocious, so there is that.

{{ I suspect the BBC will be less interested in if individual people thought it was good than the fact it did well and it sold well, especially abroad and critics on the whole liked it a quick google search indicates, and it got several award nominations and even won one or two. If you're the BBC thats all music to the ears, especially when you also made a massive pile of cash off their last joint endevaour too which also sold very well overseas.
And are you sure your thinking of the right one and not the ITV version called Jekyll and Hyde, which had 'fantasy' elements added made a few years later? It was not so well received.}}

https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0497298/

This one, with James Nesbitt.

The critics also lauded the latest series of Who, and it got some awards right? Can't trust it!

Still, I don't think the quality or lack thereof with Jekyll means that this new Dracula show will be good or not. Directors/Showrunners have their hits and misses.

{{ As I said Ive never seen it so I am entirely going on the results of a quick google search to guage its reception and that trailer (I quite liked the line 'I have a nice side, but you just missed him.')
The point was more to say why from the BBC point of view Mofffat and Gatiss would seem a fairly sound investment to make a horror piece. Especially as I assume Dracula is public domain by now.

And series 11 of Who was put up for every award going, it just didn't win any of them. }}

Dracula must be PD, yeah. I see what you're saying Petty.

There was that Sherlock finale which was fairly scary movie/horror inspired. I'd say that should count against them. But if someone would remind them what genre they are writing every 10 minutes or so then maybe...

Has War of the Worlds come out yet. If it has, is it any good?

Also is the Watchmen any good?

{{ Still waiting on BBC WoW Chris- its over a year late now! Was meant to be in last years Autumn lineup but never made it- was a newer trailer for it recently- but more I see more I hate so far. From what I can tell it looks like I am still going to be waiting for someone to adapt the fecking book!! }}

I'm enjoying Dr. Strange & Mr. Norrell (2015). I really enjoyed the book, and the show is not disappointing too much so far.

{{ I havent read the book but I really enjoyed the tv series. }}

Lin-manuel Miranda looks perfectly at home there, but I want him creating, not being locked into a series. I suppose he wants a steady income like everyone, though.

I'm going to see that at my cousin's house Tuesday. For the company more than anything. I'm not a fan of the books, having read them in my early teens.

{{ Clip from the BBC War of the Worlds- the firt attack with the heat ray in the pit.

Only its mainly full of things to make me crabbit!



Why are the aliens in some sort of hoovering sphere thing? Its suposed to be a huge cylinder they arrive in that unscrews at the end- thats an iconic moment! And brilliantly tense- go listen to Jef Waynes version of that moment for some tension.



And what is that sphere from Doctor Who?



Is it bigger on the inside? As it is supposed to contain the first wave of martians plus all the equipment they need to build their first tripods. Also if the ship they arrive in can fly about, hoover, and deal out death to all those around, why do they need bloody tripods at all?!!!!    (In the books the Martians are working on a flying machine but they only get to the test flight stage before their defeat as earth's denser atmosphere is proving tricky for them to suss out flight in).

The heat ray is noticably lacking a ray element- in the book the heat ray is a weapon that is either mounted on a pole thing that rotates to guard perimiters (think of the eye of sauron in the films sweeping round with a beam watching, like that only you turn to flame when it 'sees' you. Dramatic and terrifying.)

Here there is no ray, what is it proximity? And is it invisible? (Not just the 'ray' which is not visible in the books either but probably should be adapted to be so in a visual medium, but its source is always visible, the weapon itself which is a box like device in the books that can be mounted or carried by tripods).
From a writing persepective this seems a step down to me as you lose the tension of seeing the heat rays, or when the tripods raise the heatrays you know the shits about to hit- if there is no ray to see, and no heat ray weapon to use you lose all of that.

In fact this entire scene is utterely lacking the books slow and deadly build up to the reveal- nor do we se the Martians emerge here as they do in the book before they heat ray everyone, so the horror generated by their hideous appearence is also absent.

The pit itself is tiny compared to the books impact area, and why is everyone so close?  In the book the police had already cordoned the area off before the cylinder activated and all the people were on the permiter.  And there were a hell of a lot more people- wheres the barrows boy with his barrow for example, a kid the narrator notes in the passing when he arrives and sees the burnt remains of boy and barrow when he's fleeing- another nice touch of horror and fear thats utterly absent here and seems a mised opportunity.

The people you first see go up in flames I assume are suposed to be Ogilvy the astronmer, Stern the Royal Astromomer and various other well intentioned indivdiuals who made up a party under a white flag to try to speak and learn from the martians- only then to be set ablaze instead for their overture.

All of that seems missing here, though I assume some of those characters (Ogilivy seems to be there) are introduced before it seems to be lacking the whole set up of the book.  This might not be so bad, well ok yes it is, but the BBC keep trying to sell this as the first proper adaptation of the books- and its clearly not. }}

Yep, need that cylindrical heat gun.  In Howard Waldrop's Night of the Cooters one of the Martian ships has the misfortune of landing in the jurisdiction of a Texas sheriff.  He holds them off for a bit by mounting a sharp shooter a half mile off who knocks off anything that pokes out of the ship, including the gun.

“They’re using that thing on the end of that stick to watch us,” said Lindley. “I had Sweets jump around, and every time he did, one of those cooters would come up with that fire gun and give us what-for.”
Skip said nothing. He loaded his rifle, which had a breechblock lever the size of a crowbar on it, then placed another round—cap, paper cartridge, ball—next to him.
He drew a bead and pulled the trigger. It sounded like dynamite had gone off in their ears.
The wobbling pole snapped in two halfway up. The top end flopped around back into the pit.

There was a squeech; the whole top of the round thing opened up; it spun around and backward, things in its front working like a daddy longlegs thrown on a roaring stove.
Skip loaded again. There were flashes of light from the crater. Something came up shooting, fire leaping like hot sparks from a blacksmith’s anvil, the air full of flames and smoke.
Skip fired again.
The fire gun flew up in the air. Snakes twisted, writhed, disappeared.
It was very quiet for a few seconds.
Then there was the renewed whining of machinery and noises like a pile driver, the sounds of filing and banging. Steam came up over the crater lip.
“Sounds like a steel foundry in there,” said Sweets.
“I don’t like it one bit,” said Lindley. “Be danged if I’m gonna let ’em get the drop on us. Can you keep them down?”
“How many are there?” asked Skip.
“Luke and Sweets saw four or five before all hell broke loose this morning. Probably more of ’em than that was inside.”
“I’ve got three more shots. If they poke up, I’ll get ’em.”

...

One of the pale things was creeping forlornly across the ground with great difficulty. It looked like a thin gingerbread man made of glass with only a knob for a head.
“It’s probably hurting from the gravity,” said Leo.
“Fix it, Sweets,” said Lindley.
“Sure thing, Sheriff.”
There was a gunshot.

Then he dynamites the things before a delegation arrives from the University of Texas to inspect it:

“Shit on the University of Texas and the horse it rode in on,” said Lindley. “My jurisdiction runs from Deer Piss Creek to Buenos Frijoles, back to Olatunji, up the Little Clear Fork of the North Branch of Mud River, back to the creek, and everything in between.
“If I say something gets blowed up, it’s on its way to kingdom come.” He put his arms on Leo’s shoulders. “Besides, what little grass grows in this county’s supposed to be green, and what’s growing around them things is red. I really don’t like that.”

...which is why nobody every heard of the Martian invasion of Texas.

http://clarkesworldmagazine.com/waldrop_05_14_reprint/

{{ I havent read the unofficial stuff, but um, that seems kind of what I expected, Martians turn up America triumphantly kicks Martian ass. The end. I hope I am doing it a disservice with that however.

But yeah you need a heat ray thing. The sphere thing disintigrates so I am assuming the cylinder is under the ground like the Speilberg version? But then if they can make hovering sphere things of heat ray death (also don't like the ray doesn't act like a ray, it might be invisible to the eye in the book too but you can predict and follow its path of fiery death and destruction because its a beam coming from a point and moving. When the narrator gets over the ridge and down the slope away from the pit the ray is only hitting the tops of the trees as thats all it can hit over the crest of the ridge of the pit. In this -whilst I like the effect and its pretty close to the book description- it looks like people are just randomly popping into fire in all directions) why don't the hoovering sphere things of death do the job of killing then instead of tripods? And even if you wanted tripods too for extra fire power you'd take your spheres of death with you. So it's either going to need some explantation, or turn up all the time in fghts as just a weapon they have, or be a weird one off plot anomaly!

Also the lack of a heat ray 'gun' makes me think there will also be a lack of a black smoke-cannon too.
One of my favourite scenes in the book is the first time you see the black smoke deployed. The narrator is hiding in the verge watching tripods approach a valley ahead thats heavily wooded, and in which are several british gunnery battalions hidden and awaiting to ambush them.
They take out a tripod in the first wave, but then the tripods back off, one calls out and a another one comes strifing into the fields carrying in its metal tentacle like limbs the black smoke-cannon. Passes it to the first one, tentacle to tentacle, who then takes aim with it and fires the black smoke, silencing the guns with poison gas (which after a few hours disappates into a harmless dust).

One of the reasons I really like this scene other than the visual picture it paints is it perfectly gets across something often wrong about tripods- they dont move like machines, they move like live things (Speilberg to his credit did a far better job of this than most have).
The martians have so long had no physical abilities of their own outside thinking about shit that they wear machines like we wear clothes, and they've been doing it millenia, their machines are an extension of themselves and as versatile as any living body.

But I fear now I will never see that scene realised on screen. }}

I'm sure if the Martians landed in Scotland the story would go much the same way. The point of the story is cultural orneriness, the refusal to put up with being put upon. Then you play it out according to each cultural tradition.

{{ I enjoyed reading it.

But I rather always felt the point of the original story was more- 'if you were the last Tasmanian when the Biritsh Empire bristling with powerful metal weaponry and deadly machines you previously had no concept of existing, came into view over the horizon after wiping out everyone else- this is exactly how that feels. Oh and heres some science I like and a couple of social lectures about class. But don't worry you won't notice because I put in a bunch of ugly aliens striding about in massive tripods blowing famous landmarks and shit up.'
}}

But then there's people like the Ethiopians who stubbornly refused to be colonized.  I'm not sure what it is exactly in their nature that let them shove wannabe conquistadors out of their land, but they pulled it off.   Ethiopians come across as a sweet and gentle people, yet somehow I don't think it's just the mountains that have protected them.  Sort of like the Swiss: they both have mountains but there's more going on beneath their sweet exteriors.  Perhaps the Afghanis are a better example - clearly more ornery and not ones to mess with. I'd love to see a version of War of the Worlds set in Afganistan: the Martians come out of their crater to see a ring of none too happy herdsmen surrounding them, and after that it's a bunch of clanging and scuffling and that's all she wrote.