Thursday, January 10, 2008

TIDDLYWINKYDINKS: EARTHSHOCK, AGAIN





We saw the Earth destroyed...

And in a heartbeat everything and everyone we knew were gone.

There were five of us.
The crew of the space shuttle Odyssey.
And we were the only survivors.

A mysterious being who called himself The Seeker rescued us.
And he sent us back into time.

And now we have five years to live over.
Five years to discover who or what destroyed the Earth.
Five years to stop it from happening... again.
- Chuck Taggart
'Odyssey 5'

Toobworld was destroyed last year on August 7th, 2007.

'Odyssey 5' ran for only one season and it ended on a cliffhanger, so we never saw how the situation was resolved. But as the Toobworld Dynamic is based on the belief that all TV shows share the same universe, and as we have seen that "Life" continues in TV Land since that date, then we have to assume that the crew of the Odyssey were successful in their mission.

The show's creator, Manny Coto, has expressed his desire to return to the series and either continue it or wrap it up in some way. I'd suggest a wrap-up, as the cast has aged since it ended in 2003 and that may be hard to splain away. As for a continuation, I doubt you'd be able to get such actors as Christopher Gorham (former showkiller) and Peter Weller to re-up for that commitment. And if that's the case, I'd have no interest in seeing the show if they had to recast any of the roles.

Besides, unless they started again from scratch, that date of the Earth's destruction means that any resolution to the series would have to be seen as a flashback. A two-hour movie might work fine, but I think it best that it should be integrated into a TV show where they could deal with the situation as being in the past. And I'm thinking 'Eureka' would be the best place to take up the cause. (Of course, 'Doctor Who' would probably be ideal.)

At any rate, this wasn't the first time that the Earth in the TV Universe was destroyed and then "rebuilt" with a new timeline. We saw it happen also in 'The Hitch-Hiker's Guide To The Galaxy', and it occurred on September 3rd, 1981.

I have Alberto Monteiro to thank for that nugget of information.... information.... information....

He writes:

The precise date of the destruction of the Earth by the Vogon Construction Fleet can be calculated this way:

It happened on a Thursday in some year of the 1980s (The Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy)

Two days before, the English - Australia match for the Ashes finished rather spectacularly, with three alien ships invading the playing field; but the aliens made England win the match and the ashes - (Life, The Universe, and Everything)

The destruction of the Earth happened in the first days of September (So Long, and Thanks for All the Fish)

So, I searched for all Ashes in the 80s where the last test was close to September and England either won or lost by a small margin (so that an Alien invasion might reverse the outcome). The only possible candidates were the 1981 and the 1985 Ashes. But the 1985 Ashes ended on a Monday (September 2), while the 1981 Ashes fit nicely into the timeline.

There have been other shows, usually Sci-Fi anthologies like 'The Twilight Zone' and 'Tales Of Tomorrow', in which the Earth has been destroyed. But the shows lack the redemptions to be found in 'The Hitch-Hiker's Guide To The Galaxy' and 'Odyssey 5'. So they have to be tossed into the dimensional dustbin and relegated to other versions of Toobworld.

BCnU!
Toby OB


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