OUR WEEKLY "ENDEAVOUR" - "COLOURS"

'ENDEAVOUR'
"COLOURS"

From the IMDb:
A photo-shoot on an army base turns sinister when one of the models is found dead. But the investigation is complicated when Sam Thursday is revealed to be involved.

After a fashion shoot at an army base where Thursday's son Sam is stationed, model Jean Ward is murdered, clutching a cap badge, apparently belonging to Private Oswald, who, as a black man, was Jean's type, according to her estranged stepmother, Lady Bayswater, a former Nazi sympathizer. Jean had flirted with Oswald and Sam and was once engaged to visiting military historian Rex Laidlaw. Believing Oswald was framed, Morse does some private sleuthing and gets attacked by Colonel McDuff, a former war hero, now an unpredictable drunk. Following a second murder Morse suspects that one of the officers had a link to Jean's past but discovers that 'the army looks after its own' before cracking the case. 

Not as many connections as last week, but even so there is plenty to work with!

These are the items of interest from the IMDb's trivia page:

When DI Thursday is interviewing Lady Bayswater he says that her husband should have been been hanged, along with various other Nazi sympathisers. One of those mentioned was Spode, a reference to Roderick Spode the rather ridiculous Black Short leader created by P G Wodehouse.

Wodehouse is well-represented in Toobworld with adaptations of his works from BookWorld, especially with the stories of Jeeves & Wooster.  And in the second adaptation of the books, Roderick Spode was portrayed.

From Wikipedia:
In the 1990–1993 television series Jeeves and Wooster, Spode was portrayed by John Turner.  In this series, the Black Shorts are portrayed as a tiny group of around a dozen men and teenage boys dressed in uniforms similar to those of the Sturmabteilung. They also have the same flag colour scheme as the National Socialists. They comprise the small, but enthusiastic, audience to whom Spode makes loud, dramatic Hitler-like speeches in which he announces bizarre statements of policy, such as giving each citizen at birth a British–made bicycle and umbrella. In the original stories, none of Spode's speeches are depicted, and no other members of his group make an appearance. Another difference is that only in the television series, Spode has a secret recorded in the Junior Ganymede club book involving a kangaroo named Celia.

Unfortunately, ‘Jeeves & Wooster’ is a TV remake of the Wodehouse material.  This places it into the Land O’ Remakes, Toobworld 2.  ‘Endeavour’ is in Earth Prime-Time, the main Toobworld.

The original adaptation of the Wodehouse stories was ‘The World Of Wooster’ which was broadcast from 1965 to 1967 and starred Dennis Price as Jeeves and Ian Carmichael as Bertie Wooster.  That belongs in Earth Prime-Time.

I’ve checked the full cast list at the IMDb but there’s no listing for Roderick Spode.  It may have been the stories about him were too controversial for those times since England was going through anti-immigration backlash protests in the mid-60s. 

Still, Thursday's mention of Spode means he's out there somewhere since ‘The World Of Wooster’ opened the entire Wodehouse world to Earth Prime-Time; we just haven't seen him.

Could Private Collier have been one Terence Collier who was seen joining the army on 23rd July 1966 in the final episode of "The Likely Lads"?

Sorry.  I'm putting the kibosh to this connection.  "Collier" is a fairly common name.  I’ve looked through the script of this episode and Private Collier was never unidentified by his first name.  And more importantly, this Private Collier looked nothing like James Bolam, who played Terry in ‘The Likely Lads’. 

But to help expand the TV Universe, I could see this as a theory of relateeveety in which Private Collier was Terry’s cousin.  And both of them joined the Army around 1966, two years before the episode.

This episode contains yet another ("in-joke") reference to an ITV owned intellectual property - Creighton-Ward happens to be the surname of Lady Penelope in "Thunderbirds", by  icoincidence originally made by ATV, whom also made the TV Series "Crossroads" aka "King's Oak", referenced in an earlier episode. ATV happened to be the company re-structured as Central TV, which later started "Morse".

I'm afraid this can be chalked up to the demi-god of Coincidence.  They may share a common name, but there can be no familial connection between humans and the puppet people.  And their world is so extensive, I think all of those superanimation marionettes live in a different TV dimension like the animated characters.  They are considered fictional by Toobworld characters as was seen in the anesthesia dream experienced by Edina Moon in ‘Absolutely Fabulous’. 

"Stuart Hargreaves" may well be another playful in-joke reference to the BBC TV series "Hi De Hi", which was also set in the 1960s in a fictional holiday camp called "Maplins". In "Trove", the holiday camp featured had a near identical name, and the staff wore Yellowcoats. In "Hi De Hi", the two ballroom dancing instructors were Yvonne and Barry Stuart-Hargreaves.

Finally!  A link that works!  I accept that Yvonne and Barry had a chain of dance schools in the same vein as Arthur Murray.

From the IMDb's Connections page:

Blackadder Goes Forth (1989)
The Battle of Mboto Gorge (from "Plan F: Goodbyeee") referenced.

While going up the stairs, Morse stopped to look at a painting which focused on the regimental drummer….

Dr. Laidlaw:
Drummer Hawkins, the boy that saved the colours at Mboto Gorge.  That's his actual drum. Victoria Cross, posthumous. 

DS Morse:
Oh, his parents' pride, I'm sure. 

Dr. Laidlaw:
Well, the regiment's, certainly.

The Battle of Mboto Gorge is fictional; it only happened in the TV Universe. Here are the original references to Mboto Gorge from 'Blackadder Goes Forth'….

1]
Melchett: 
Don't be ridiculous, Darling. The Hero of Mboto Gorge, mad? Well, you've only got to look at him to see he's as sane as I am! Beeaaah!

2]
Darling: 
Would that be the Mboto Gorge where we massacred the peace-loving pygmies of the Upper Volta and stole all their fruit?

3]
Edmund: 
Well, you see, George, I did like it, back in the old days when the prerequisite of a British campaign was that the enemy should under no circumstances carry guns -- even spears made us think twice. The kind of people we liked to fight were two feet tall and armed with dry grass.

George: 
Now, come off it, sir -- what about Mboto Gorge, for heaven's sake?

Edmund: 
Yes, that was a bit of a nasty one -- ten thousand Watusi warriors armed to the teeth with kiwi fruit and guava halves. After the battle, instead of taking prisoners, we simply made a huge fruit salad. 

4]
Haig: 
I haven't seen you since... 
Edmund: 
'92, sir -- Mboto Gorge.

Haig: 
By jingo, yes. We sure gave those pygmies a good squashing.

The trouble is, because of the drastic alterations to historical events that happened in all of the ‘Blackadder’ series, I had to remove them all from Earth Prime-Time.  Since historical figures in those shows, especially Queen Elizabeth I and Samuel Johnson, I’ve placed the show in Doofus Toobworld along with ‘The Secret Diary of Desmond Pfeiffer’ and ‘That’s My Bush!’.

So the Battle of Mboto Gorge may been fought in both Toobworlds, and perhaps others as well, but unless the official record was covered up in the main Toobworld, they each had a different history.  So it’s just an interesting example of the changes wrought on history by the different worlds.  But the basis remained the same – both shows had a Battle of Mboto Gorge.

But I'll give it a theory of relateeveety - Drummer Hawkins was descended from Jim Hawkins as seen in the first TV adaptation of 'Treasure Island'.

So that about wraps it up for this episode.  There were references to other TV shows, but only three to shows set in Earth Prime-Time.  And even then, two are mostly hypothetical. (I’m taking the Stuart-Hargreaves Dance School reference as being an official link to ‘Hi De Hi’.)

As for the others, the ‘Thunderbirds’ and ‘Blackadder’ references belong to other TV dimensions which may have commonalities with Earth Prime-Time but are not the same dimension.

Still three more references to link ‘Endeavour’, as well as the other two shows in the franchise, to help expand the TV Universe. 

‘Endeavour’ – Britain’s own ‘St. Elsewhere’.  There just better not be a snow globe in the final episode!

O'Bservation:
For fans of the world of ‘Morse’ and its sequel ‘Inspector Lewis’ and ‘Endeavour’ the prequel, you may be interested in visiting the web site “Morse, Lewis, and Endeavour” for an in-depth analysis of this episode and all the others.  You’ll find the link to the left in my blogroll, Mateys!

BCnU!