TVXOHOF, OCTOBER 2018 - CARL KOLCHAK

As October is the month in which we traditionally celebrate Halloween by choosing new members with some connection to Horror, it has taken Toobworld Central far too long to bring our new inductee into our midst….

CARL KOLCHAK

From Wikipedia:

‘Kolchak: The Night Stalker’ is an American television series that aired on ABC during the 1974–1975 season. It featured a fictional Chicago newspaper reporter—Carl Kolchak, played by Darren McGavin—who investigated mysterious crimes with unlikely causes, particularly those that law enforcement authorities would not follow up. These often involved the supernatural or science fiction, including fantastic creatures.

The series was preceded by two television movies, “The Night Stalker” (1972) and “The Night Strangler” (1973). Although the series lasted only a single season, it remains popular in syndication. In 2018, it aired late Saturday nights on Me-TV. It is often cited as the inspiration for the popular series ‘The X-Files’.

The series features Kolchak as a reporter for the Chicago branch of the Independent News Service (INS), a small wire service.  

Carl Kolchak (Darren McGavin) is a talented but outspoken investigative reporter with an affinity for bizarre and supernatural occurrences, obtaining information driving around Chicago in his yellow Ford Mustang convertible and snatching exclusives armed with his camera and portable cassette recorder.  Using only limited information, Kolchak has cracked several cases relying on gut instinct and often prevailing through sheer dumb luck. More often than not, Kolchak's prospects are hampered by the destruction of evidence to prove his claims, advancing the sheer implausibility of his stories where his peers, particularly his editor, are concerned. On other occasions his investigations have led to demotion or relocation of varying authority figures, though reasons for these actions are never truthfully disclosed.

More on Carl Kolchak

Kolchak is certainly an iconic figure in Toobworld, especially thanks to that outfit he always wore – the dingy, ill-fitting white suit and the floppy straw porkpie hat.  I think he’s one of a handful of Toobworld characters you know just by the clothes they wear.  (And I say “handful” because I count the Doctor as one person.)  I’ve often wished I could have seen a photo of Darren McGavin in character with Peter Falk as Lt. Columbo – what a sartorial disaster they would have been together!

So, a TV series and two TV movies – that covers the necessary requirements for membership in the TVXOHOF without resorting to theories and hypotheticals.  But wait, there’s more!

From Wikipedia:
‘Night Stalker’ is a television series that ran for six weeks in fall 2005 on ABC in America. The series starred Stuart Townsend as Carl Kolchak, an investigative reporter whose wife was murdered. Kolchak spends his time investigating other strange murders, believing they are linked in some way to his wife's murder. He is helped along the way by a fellow crime reporter Perri Reed (Gabrielle Union), photographer Jain McManus (Eric Jungmann) and editor Anthony Vincenzo (Cotter Smith).

‘Night Stalker’ was a remake of the 1974 series ‘Kolchak: The Night Stalker’. ABC owned the rights to the original television movies, but not the Universal television series, and was limited to using only characters that had appeared in those movies.

‘Night Stalker’ was canceled after six episodes due to low ratings. However, the Sci-Fi Channel (now known as Syfy), which frequently shows canceled network genre shows, showed all ten filmed episodes during summer 2006. The ratings were poor on SciFi Channel as well.  

The last episode to be broadcast was the first of a multi-part episode, so viewers never saw the end of the sixth story. However, some time after the cancellation, the seventh episode appeared on Apple's iTunes Music Store for download. On February 7, 2006, the final three episodes were released on iTunes.

This O’Bviously takes place in the TV dimension of Toobworld2, the Land o’ Remakes.  The time period was now later; Kolchak’s DNA was altered; and the events in his personal background had been rewritten.  (I don’t remember, but I think his taste in wardrobe was changed to the point of being nondescript.)

So normally it would have no bearing on the induction of Carl Kolchak as played by McGavin into the Hall of Fame.  But here’s the thing – in the first episode when "Kolchak2" returns to the L.A. Beacon newsroom, the original Kolchak, the One and Nearly Only, can be seen leaning against one of the desks in the foreground.

(That second picture reminds me of Vincent Van Gogh 

hearing his praises sung in the future.)

Nothing more is made of his presence there.  But it happened, and even if behind the scenes it was just a tip of the hat cameo using old footage reinserted into the new scene, it still showed up on our TV screens and that makes it canon.

But how did it happen within the reality of the story? 

I've got some splainin to do.  We’re entering the realm of fanfic now, kids; better put on your galoshes.

I would not be surprised if there are at least a thousand fans of the original 'Kolchak' who have come up with their own ideas, and probably even fleshed out those theories with fan fiction.  I’m no arbiter on what should be deemed the official splainin; I can only go with what I think works best for Toobworld. 

“Kolchak1” is of course in a different dimension, parallel to his own.  However, it also is about thirty years into his own future – he looks as he did back in the mid-1970s, certainly not old and fat as he described himself in an interview about his guest star role as Arthur Dales in two episodes of ‘The X-Files’.

Somehow, that “younger” version of "Kolchak1" had to be transported into that other world.  There are several crossovers that come to mind – ‘Sliders’ perhaps, or one of those episodes of ‘The Twilight Zone’ in which a guy wakes up to find himself inexplicably in another world.  But that’s too nebulous a splainin for a modern audience, and Quinn Mallory wouldn’t be inventing the sliding device until the 1990s.

I think there’s only one way to go here.  Who ya gonna call when you’re traveling through both Space and Time?

The Doctor, of course.

I’ll just offer up the bare bones of a premise – the Doctor (any incarnation) and his companion (relevant to that incarnation) arrive in Chicago in late 1975 (after ‘Kolchak: The Night Stalker’ has been canceled) and quickly become involved in a supernatural investigation which Kolchak was pursuing.  

Take your pick

In keeping with a basic rule from ‘Doctor Who’, there will be a rational, not supernatural*, “splainin” behind the entity Kolchak has been tracking down – perhaps an interdimensional alien.  And when that alien tries to escape through a dimensional portal, the Doctor gives chase in the TARDIS.  But Kolchak quickly rushed inside the police box to go along for the ride.

That would bring them to the Los Angeles of Toobworld2 and the resolution of the case.  Kolchak would get to see the future (one that he wouldn’t live to see in his own dimension), and even see his doppelganger from that world.

Any more details than that would go beyond splainin and into true fan fiction.

Carl Kolchak is thus a multidimensional in Toobworld, but he’s also a multiversal – he began “Life” as a character in BookWorld… technically.  The novel upon which the first TV movie was based had not yet been published when the premise was optioned.  Author Jeff Rice got it published after the movie was broadcast to monster ratings. (Not sorry for that, Chief.)  Rice would go on to write the novelization of the second movie, based on the script by Richard Matheson.

Matheson wrote up a script for a third TV movie installment of the franchise, but by then the suits were more interested in developing the property into a series and so that third movie was scrapped.

It’s a shame too, because the premise sounded intriguing.  After they got their tails booted out of Seattle, Kolchak and Vincenzo went their separate ways.  However, while working as a newspaper editor in Honolulu, Vincenzo called for Kolchak’s help in uncovering a mystery that would involve UFOs and rich, influential people being murdered and replaced by android duplicates.

How Tony Vincenzo would have looked in Hawaii

Man, I wish that saw the light of day!

As it didn’t actually appear on TV, it can’t be used for Toobworld.  But that doesn’t mean I can’t keep it in the back of my mind as a missing adventure for Kolchak which would lead to the series set in Chicago.  (Similarly, Jeff Rice revealed in his original novel that Carl’s first name was actually “Karel”, to me suggesting that he was the first generation son of immigrants.  But again, that has to be just a detail tucked away in the Toobfiles.)

I was speaking earlier of my desire to have seen a crossover between Lt. Columbo and Carl Kolchak.  There once was a great site for ‘Columbo’ fan fiction called “Just One More Paragraph”, maintained by Martin Ross.  At least one story involved Columbo being “helped” by Kolchak on a case.  Wish I saved a copy of that one.  (Again not that it could be considered canon.  It was just a very fun read.)

There have been other suggestions for 'Kolchak' crossovers, in fan fiction and in art.  Here are just a few of them, from the logical to the ridiculous:

I do have an idea for a fanfic crossover with Kolchak, based on a one-shot guest appearance by my all-time favorite character actor, Phil Leeds.

As seen here, Leeds played Howard Gough in the episode "They Have Been, They Are, They Will Be...."  And in the series finale of 'Night Court', he played an extraterrestrial allegedly from Jupiter who had taken the name of Norm.  (It's an alias perfect for those places where everybody knows your name.)

Norm and the other Jovian, Angelo, took court bailiff Bull Shannon back to their home planet in the final scene of the series.  So... what if Norm had been using the alias of Howard Gough when he met Carl Kolchak?  (Based on the episode, apprently the alien's alias held and Kolchak never investigated him,  Come to think of it, Norm could be part of that storyline which got Kolchak mixed up with the Doctor.)

So here’s to our Halloween 2018 member of the Television Crossover Hall of Fame.  Welcome to the Hall, Carl.  I hope you get along with our monstrous members like Jack the Ripper, Hitler, the Frankenstein creatures, and Orange45….

BCnU!

* O'BSERVATION:
The Doctor can deny the existence of magic in Toobworld all he likes, but it does exist.