Like the time I clicked on the TV just in time to hear this exchange of dialogue from "Hud":
Brandon DeWilde: "It's a lonely old night."
Paul Newman: "Yeah, well, ain't they all?"
For years that's always been one of my favorite lyrics from John Mellencamp, and a little research revealed that he's a big fan of Paul Newman movies and his songs are littered with such references.
Never would have known that had I not turned on the TV at that exact moment.
The latest example I can remember happened about three weeks ago. (I've been so busy with just watching the stuff I taped, - five hours worth of shows I only have three hours free time the next day to watch! - that I have no time to idly channel surf "live".)
I had been told two years ago by my sister that there was a scene in an episode of 'Becker' in which the name of my employer is not only mentioned, but Dr. Becker is later shown there, trashing a room rented by a character played by Kelsey Grammar.
So that's what happened three weeks ago: I tuned in just in time to see the receptionist say the name of the Edison Hotel and stayed with the episode to see what a room there looks like in the TV Universe.
The last time one of our hotel rooms showed up in Toobworld, George Costanza was handcuffed to the headboard on 'Seinfeld'......
Anyway, the Toobworld concept is hardly a religion. (Although I think I could tweak it to become some kind of a "Dianetics"-like cult if I put my mind to it; "Better Living Through Your Inner Sitcom" books.)
It may not be religion, but a lot of Toobworld has to be taken on faith.
Here's a case in point:
(Oh, and by the way, for those fans of 'Doctor Who' in America who have not yet seen the finale of Rose's second season with the Doctor, there be spoilers ahead!)
'Doctor Who' producer Russell T. Davies said that plans for a spin-off special starring Billie Piper as companion Rose Tyler were scrapped at the last minute. Davies got cold feet while filming Piper's final appearance for the two-part finale, "Army of Ghosts" and "Doomsday".
"It was actually commissioned by the controller of BBC One and budgeted," Davies told Doctor Who Magazine. "It was going to be fantastic. We'd have had a lovely budget, and done brilliant things with it, maybe one Bank Holiday special a year."
But the proposed special, 'Rose Tyler: Earth Defence', was "a spin-off too far" in his opinion. After all, 'Torchwood' is coming out soon, and Sarah Jane Smith and K9 are both getting their own treatments as well.
And so Davies cancelled the production.
"It spoils Doctor Who if we can see Rose..." Davis splained. "If we see as a concrete fact that her life continues to be as exciting without the Doctor."
The thing of it is, Rose's life does continue as a concrete fact in a parallel TV dimension. And as far as it being still as exciting without the Doctor around as it was with him, she admits as much at the very end of "Doomsday". She tells the Doctor through the rapidly disappearing vortex conduit that she has gone to work for that dimension's version of Torchwood in the time since they parted.
As it is with all TV characters, we have to accept that their lives continue after a show's cancellation, or after they've been written out of the plotline... unless of course, Death played a role in the proceedings to write the "Big Fini" to their contributions. Eventually there's always the chance we may meet them again, even if it should take more than thirty years, as was the case for Alan Brady of 'The Dick Van Dyke Show' when he appeared on an episode of 'Mad About You'. And then there was the Lane Family of 'The Patty Duke Show' who returned in a TV movie reunion.
So Rose Tyler, dubbed by the Doctor in that last visit to be "Defender Of The Earth" during the parting of their ways, is probably having fantastic adventures even now in her new home dimension. After all, she brings a lot of experience to the Torchwood Institute as an expert in dealing with a variety of alien life forms. And in the downtime between her episodes in which we don't know what she and the Doctor were up to in the TARDIS (Easy, boy!), Rose probably used the TARDIS computer files to learn even more about Sontarans, and Ice Warriors, and Zygons, and all of the other alien races she never got the chance to meet herself.
And you know there will be an endless supply of tie-in franchise novels for those 'Doctor Who' adventures with Rose that were never telecast; just as there has been for all of the incarnations of the Doctor and his many companions.
So why not tie-in novels that chronicle her adventures as this "Defender Of The Earth" in her new dimension?
BCnU!
Tele-Toby
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