VIDEO SATURDAY - "EAST HOLLYWOOD SQUARES"

Remember earlier this month when I showed the variations of TV shows as seen in Black Toobworld?

;This could be a part of that world as well, but it could also be in Skitlandia.....

BCnU!

FOR BLACK HISTORY MONTH - THE BLACK BIRD

From Wikipedia:
[Harlan] Ellison has on occasion used the pseudonym Cordwainer Bird to alert members of the public to situations in which he feels his creative contribution to a project has been mangled beyond repair by others, typically Hollywood producers or studios (see also Alan Smithee). The first such work to which he signed the name was "The Price of Doom", an episode of 'Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea' (though it was misspelled as Cord Wainer Bird in the credits). An episode of 'Burke's Law' ("Who Killed Alex Debbs?") credited to Ellison contains a character given this name, played by Sammy Davis, Jr.

So for the purposes of Toobworld, Cordwainer Bird is the former joke editor for Debonair magazine.  There is no connection to Harlan Ellison.  Ellison does have a presence in Toobworld, but nothing really worthy of the TVXOHOF at least.  Mostly his appearances have been as a pundit in discussion shows or as a couch guest on talk shows.  He has acted in a few shows, but those were all as distinctively individual characters with no real connection to Ellison.

("HE" is definitely part of the Tooniverse, however, with appearances on 'The Simpsons' and 'Scooby Doo Mystery Incorporated'.)

So let's take a look at the "real" Cordwainer Bird of Toobworld....

'BURKE'S LAW'

"WHO KILLED ALEX DEBBS?"

Cordwainer Bird had risen to a prestigious position in the magazine publishing world as the Debonair joke editor.  Being a relatively young man (he was under forty during the episode) who knows how far he got?  I would not be surprised if he ended up as the managing editor at NewsTime magazine or some other high end publication.  He could even have been placed in charge of a chain of magazines, maybe even at Howard Publications which would have included People and Crime.  (If so, I wonder if he was able to see the similarities in resemblance between Glenn Howard and Captain Amos Burke?)

But working in the field of magazines wasn't Cordwainer's original dream.  As he demonstrated often in that four minute clip above, he wanted to be a dancer.  And it looks like he may have harbored resentment that he never made it, based on his race.  As he told Captain Burke and Officer Tom, they woulld probably have allowed Gene Kelly and Fred Astaire to dance on top of Burke's desk, but not him.

It's my belief that the reason why Cordwainer Bird was able to gain the editorship of the humor department at Debonair was due to his association with a legend in the joke biz - Maurice Sorrell, known to all as Buddy Sorrell.  We saw Bird trying to emulate Buddy's reputation as a "human joke machine" while he was in Burke's office.  

At the time of the episode, Buddy was working in New York as one of the writers on 'The Alan Brady Show', so the chance for Bird and Buddy to get together were no longer that frequent.  But I'm sure they talked often on the phone, coast to coast - the student picking up tips from his mentor.

Once upon a time, it's pozz'ble, just pozz'ble, that Cordwainer was an intern on the production team for Brady's variety show.  How did he land that job?  Perhaps he was working in a haberdashery to support his dance classes and as it turned out, the proprietor of the shop was a former comedy-writing legend known as Happy Spangler.  Once Spangler's own attempt to get back in the biz on the writing staff at the Brady show fizzled out, Happy could have recommended Bird for an internship so that he could learn the ropes.  And that led to the friendship between Buddy and Bird.  

We just never got to see it happen.  And maybe Buddy was able to help Cordwainer fly from the nest and stand on his own, by getting him a job as a junior writer on one of several shows - the Stevie Parsons talk show, 'The Dan Howard Show', or even the Jellybean puppet show.  

I'm leaning towards Stevie Parsons' talk show.  On a night when girlie magazine publisher Alex Debbs was scheduled to appear to plug his new magazine Debonair, Debbs might have seen something in Cordwainer Bird while waiting in the show's green room and so he offered the job to the young writer.

Years later, could Cordwainer have decided to get back into television again?  After the big social changes ushered in with the 1970s, maybe he wanted to ride that wave of relevance with cutting-edge material that would reach a wider audience.  And perhaps he finally embraced his own "black is beautiful" image rather than being bitter about not being white like Astaire and Kelly.  

So among the shows to be found only in Toobworld, he could have worked on 'The Dusky Realm', a rip-off of 'The Twilight Zone' - perhaps even writing an episode with controversial political and racial overtones based on that word in the title: "Dusky".

But no matter what path Cordwainer Bird's life took after we saw him back in the early 1960s, I believe he lived as long as the actor who played him - Sammy Davis, Jr.  (This is not to say he couldn't have lived longer, nor that he had to face the same fate as Davis suffered.)  But I think Cordwainer Bird is gone now and with him his perspective on the humor that lightened America's heart during a dark and turbulent time in its history.

BCnU!

OTHER SHOWS CITED:

• 'The Dick Van Dyke Show'
• 'The Name Of The Game'
• 'The X-Files'

FOR BLACK HISTORY MONTH - MAYBERRY PART THREE

We're finishing up our three-day look at the African Americans of Mayberry, with a look at Mayberry, North Carolina's most prominent black citizen......

From the Mayberry Wiki:

Ralph Barton is a Mayberry citizen played by actor Charles Lampkin in seven episodes of 'Mayberry R.F.D.'

Not much to go on there.  But Mayberry maven Ivan G. Shreve, Jr. says that Ralph was twice the farmer that Sam Jones ever hoped to be.  And he was involved in all facets of Mayberry life - town council, school board, always there to lend a hand. 

.

Here are the episodes of 'Mayberry RFD' in which we got to see Ralph Barton "in action":

107 "Youth Takes Over"
Sam pushes for a new youth initiative that will allow students to take up the major role in running the town for a day. The children embrace their roles with far more enthusiasm than anyone thought. 

110 "Sam Gets a Ticket"
Sam runs into trouble with the police after he makes a turn without signaling. Sam doesn't think he's done anything wrong, but is unsure if he should contest the ticket in court. 

117 "Driver Education"
The local school decides to institute a new driver education program. Everyone in the town council is very supportive, however the question of who will teach the students creates some interesting problems.

120 "Sam the Expert Farmer"
Sam is concerned his string bean crop has turned out very poorly. He becomes more concerned when Millie grows the same vegetable with far better results. 

203 "Howard the Poet"
Howard is commissioned to write a poem for a literary magazine. He is very proud and excited at the prospect of being published. Writer's block spoils his happiness and frustration soon takes over.

208 "The Caper"
When Howard becomes convinced Goober is not an effective deputy sheriff he decides to prove it - by robbing the Mayberry bank.
218 "Goober's Brother"
Goober's brother is returning to Mayberry to visit him. He hopes his brother will be impressed with his accomplishments but those hopes are soon dashed when he discovers his brother is an important engineer for the space program.

(All plot summaries are from the IMDb)

We never saw Ralph in the parent series, 'The Andy Griffith Show', but that doesn't mean he wasn't there.  I don't think he was a recent transplant to Mayberry; instead, I think his family had deep roots in the area.  We never got to see all 400 members of the Enterprise crew on 'Star Trek', but we knew they were there.  The same should hold true for Ralph Barton.

And when I say Ralph's family had deep roots in the area, that means they were there back in the days of slavery.....

From The North Carolina Civil War Sesquientennial site:

While North Carolina did not have the same investment in slavery as the Deep South, African Americans still suffered greatly in the Tar Heel state. During the antebellum period (between 1800 and 1860) the institution of slavery became more deeply entrenched in Southern society. Restrictive laws gripped North Carolina's enslaved people, and the state's free blacks fared little better.

One of the sad, enduring legacies of slavery would be the surnames carried by the descendants of those slaves.  Their ancestors were the property of the slave holders and as would happen with property, those owners put their names on  what they owned. 

Perhaps the most famous slave in Toobworld would be Kunta Kinte.  But that was his African name.  He was forced to take the slave name of Toby and - as the property of John Reynolds, he was fully known as Toby Reynolds.

The same would hold true for the ancestors of Ralph Barton.  They were owned by the landed gentry of the area who were known as the Bartons.  The white Bartons still lived in the environs of Mayberry, but maybe they never had a clue that in their midst lived a man whose ancestor once was the chattel of their own ancestors.

The Barton family, who lived in the downtown area during the 1960s, consisted of Elsie and her daughter, as well as Mr. Barton.  He had a cousin who was a detective in Siler City.  And their common ancestor who owned the slaves saw his brother and family move West to Walnut Grove, Minnesota.  There young Seth Barton began courting Mary Ingalls until he found out that she was blind.  (As someone posted online, "She went blind and he went south.")

I like to think Ralph Barton lived a long life, at least as long as Charles Lampkin who portrayed him.  (Lampkin died in the late 1980s.) 

Here are the appearances by the other Bartons of Mayberry:

'Mayberry RFD'
 Barton
- Millie, the Secretary (1970) 

'The Andy Griffith Show'
 Mrs. Barton 
- Sam for Town Council (1967) ... Woman
- Barney Comes to Mayberry (1968) ... Mrs. Barton

'Mayberry R.F.D.'
- The Mayberry Road (1970) ... Elsie

O'Bservation: I see no reason why we can't combine Elsie with Mrs. Barton and the woman who greeted Barney Fife at the Tina Adams movie premiere.

For more about slavery in North Carolina, click here.

BCnU!

A big thanks to the aforementioned Ivan G. Shreve, Jr. whose blog "Thrilling Days of Yesteryear" looked at episodes of 'Mayberry RFD' in detail.  It's from those blog posts where I stole a lot of these pictures of Ralph Barton and one of Elsie Barton.

FOR BLACK HISTORY MONTH - MAYBERRY, PART TWO

'THE ANDY GRIFFITH SHOW'
"OPIE'S PIANO LESSON"

When Clara Edwards gets an opening for a new piano student, Aunt Bee thinks Opie should take lessons. Andy isn't keen on the idea and is surprised that Opie is even interested. Opie assures everyone that he will work hard at learning the instrument and will practice every day after school. A conflict arises however when the school hires an ex-NFL player, Flip Conroy, as its new football coach. With football practice scheduled for same time as his lessons or practice time, Opie finds himself trying to be in two places at the same time. Opie and his friend Arnold cook up a scheme that doesn't quite fool anyone. 
Written by garykmcd

According to the episode, Conroy played with the Giants for ten years before retiring.  As Conroy really wasn't the focus of the episode, there weren't any other details about his career.  

George Papadopolis, adoptive father of 'Webster' Long, had been a professional football player as well.  It could be that he was one of the Toobworld professional football players who played against him.  Conroy was finished by 1967 and if George's career was similar to that of the actor who played him (Alex Karras), he was done by 1970.  However, we don't know what team George played for.  

Since Flip Conroy was playing for an actual team, I think we can safely assume that George did as well.  I lean toward Chicago since that's where the Papadopolis family lived.  I'm not going with Detroit Lions of course, since they already had George's lookalike Karras on the team.

I'm sorry if this turned out to be more about George Papadopolis (now where have I heard that name before?) than about Rockne Tarkington's character, but I needed some way to immerse Flip Conroy into Toobworld more fully.  Interaction with another Toobworld character from a different show helps with that.

He may have also known Hayden Fox, future coach of Minnesota State University's Screaming Eagles.  In fact, their paths may have crossed after that episode of 'The Andy Griffith Show' rather than before it.  Who knows?  It could be that Conroy was also in the running for the job of head coach at Minnesota State.

BCnU!

FOR BLACK HISTORY MONTH - MAYBERRY PART ONE

In July of 1992, artist Drew Friedman was interviewed by the Comics Journal about the collaborations he did with his brother Josh.....

FRIEDMAN: The first strip we ever did was the ”Andy Griffith” comic, about the black guy coming to Mayberry and getting lynched. And it was 1978 when we came up with that idea. We came up with it because Josh had been an editor at Screw at the time, and he had been making connections in the magazine world, and was starting to be published elsewhere. He was published in New York magazine and Penthouse ran a short story by him. I was starting to go to SVA. I started getting printed in Screw, doing goofy cartoons in there. And then we started kicking around some comic strip ideas, just on a whim, and only for ourselves, and to show to our friends. We honestly weren’t thinking about actually publishing stuff or making money by doing comics. We just did it to amuse ourselves, mainly. I don’t know who had the idea to have a black guy go to Mayberry, but that was the first one. We wanted to do parodies of old TV shows. That seemed to make sense at the time. We were both into that stuff, so we both thought that was a natural idea – a black guy going to Mayberry. He scripted it, and I drew it, and it got printed in the Kurtzman’s school magazine, and then it wound up in RAW. It got some good reaction from people we showed it to.

Granted, there weren't many black people in Mayberry, North Carolina, which was somewhat surprising for a small Southern town in the 1960s.  But they were there, just not that visible.

It certainly wasn't like this... except maybe in the Evil Mirror Dimension!

There is a web page that did the research into this rural tele-myth and provided pictures to prove it.  Here are two of them:

For the full article and to see more pictures, click here.

BCnU!

THE CLASSIC TV VILLAIN BLOGATHON - MEDDLIN' WITH THE MONK

"Infamy!  Infamy!

They've all got it in f' me...."

Captain Hook

"Peter Pan"*

It's been said that the role of the villain is always preferred by the actors over that of the hero.  And who can blame them?  It's more fun to play; there are no holds placed on how far over the top they go with the emoting; and usually they have the best costumes.

The villains are great and that's why Classic TV Villains are being celebrated throughout the Classic TV Blog Association this weekend.  

Here's the scheduled line-up:

February 18th
The Cybernauts from The Avengers - bare•bones e-zine
Roger C. Carmel - Captain Video
Boss Hogg from The Dukes of Hazzard - Comfort TV
The Cybermen from Doctor Who - Fire-Breathing Dimetrodon Time
Dr. Smith from Lost in Space - Michael's TV Tray
Jack Cassidy's Villains from Columbo - Once Upon a Screen
Katharine Wentworth (Morgan Brittany) from Dallas - Realweegiemidget Reviews
Bigfoot from The Six Million Dollar Man/The Bionic Woman - Some Polish American Guy Reviews Things

February 19th
Top 5 Rankin/Bass Christmas Villains - Christmas TV History
Dr. Loveless from The Wild, Wild West - Classic Film & TV Cafe
Howard Cosell - Classic TV Sports
Dandy Jim Buckley from Maverick - The Horn Section
Lt. Philip Gerard from The Fugitive - It's About TV
Bette Davis as Madame Sin - Made for TV Mayhem
Boris Badenov from Bullwinkle - Thrilling Days of Yesteryear
The Meddling Monk from Doctor Who - Inner Toob

If you click on the CTVBA's button there to the left, you'll find the hyperlinks for all of the other blogs participating over these two days.

As you can see there at the end of the list, I - Yours Viewly - have my own contribution to the party: The Medding Monk, or just the Monk, the second villain from 'Doctor Who' to be showcased during this blogathon.  (For a show that's been around since 1963, there were bound to be a few bounders to be worthy of attention.)

Like other Gallifreyans - for example The Master, The Rani, The Corsair, and of course, The Doctor (who may or may not be also The Curator) - The Monk is known by that appellation rather than by his birth name. He has been identified as "Mortimus" and I rather like that even if it does come from the audio plays.

From the TARDIS DATA CORE:
Mortimus was a renegade Time Lord who had been a friend of the Doctor's on Gallifrey, until he fled Gallifrey to meddle in history under the alias of "the Monk". (TV: The Time Meddler) According to one account, it was mostly the Doctor who addressed him as such, (AUDIO: The Secret History) although Mortimus once said that most people called him "The Monk". (AUDIO: The Blame Game)

That description of the Monk as an old friend of the Doctor's is a good example of why I would rather disregard most of the information gleaned from sources outside the TV show.  In "The Time Meddler", the Doctor didn't know him, although apparently the Monk recognized him. And the Doctor assumed that the Monk was from fifty years into his Future.

As I said earlier, for the most part I don't want to take into consideration information about the Monk from the novelizations, the audio plays, or the illustrated stories.  But on occasion there is some trivial tidbit that does spark my interest.  But there's just something about that name that I like.

I'm a big believer that names should fit the person who bears it.  (Try switching the names of Laurence Olivier and Buddy Hackett.  It's just wrong!)  And "Mortimus" looks and feels like the perfect name for a monk played by Peter Butterworth.  However, just to be on the safe side, in case another writer comes along to revise his character, I'll accept "Mortimus" as an alias used by the Monk in much the same way as the Doctor uses the name John Smith while on Earth or when he sported the nickname "Theta Sigma" while he was at the Prydonian Academy.  

“The Monk” is not exactly the description of his vocation; however, the rogue Time Lord did favor the robes associated with the title.  (Those robes probably made it easier for him to blend in with wherever or whenever he was causing his temporal mischief.)

Here is the basic gist of the character from Wikipedia:

The Monk is a fictional character in the British science fiction television series 'Doctor Who'. Played by the British actor Peter Butterworth, the character appeared in two stories, "The Time Meddler" and "The Daleks' Master Plan', as an adversary of the First Doctor. They were written and co-written respectively by Dennis Spooner.

Other than the Doctor and Susan, the Monk was the first member of the Doctor's race to appear in the program, and the second Doctor Who villain (after the Daleks) to make a return appearance.

The Monk was the possessor of a stolen Mark IV TARDIS – superior to the Doctor's and with a fully functioning Chameleon Circuit. The Doctor hypothesized that the Monk left the Doctor's then-unnamed home planet, Gallifrey, some 50 years after the Doctor did.

[At this early stage in the history of the series, the name Time Lord and the details of the Doctor's origins had not yet been devised.]

The Monk liked to meddle in history and to change it for his own amusement and for what he considered to be the better: lending mechanical assistance to the builders of Stonehenge; giving Leonardo da Vinci tips on aircraft design; making money by using time travel to exploit compound interest; and, when the Doctor first encountered him, attempting to prevent the Norman Conquest as part of a plan to guide England into an early age of technological prosperity. On that occasion he wore the guise of a monk in order to gain the trust of the 11th-century locals of Northumbria, hence the name by which he became known.

The Monk also showed a childish and petulant side to his nature, although he did have a temper, and he could get annoyed and exasperated easily, usually when he was disturbed during his plans. (TV: The Time Meddler)

O’Bservation: In that description, he reminds me of my all-time favorite TV character, Miguelito Quixote Loveless from ‘The Wild, Wild West’.  (And as a reminder/plug, one of my compatriots in the CTVBA is doing a showcase on the diminutive Doctor….)

The Monk, as played by the late Peter Butterworth, only appeared in two stories as far as the television series was concerned and hasn't been seen on our TV screens since January of 1966.  He has returned several times since in other metafictional universes like BookWorld, the Audioverse, and the land of comics.  But I'm a televisiologist.  It's rather a purified viewpoint but I prefer to deal only with the TV Universe.  TV Land to some, Toobworld (Earth Prime-Time) for me.  So for the most part I'm not going to bring those outside stories into play.

Here are the summaries for the two stories in which he appeared:

THE TIME MEDDLER
From the TARDIS Data Core:
The Doctor, Vicki, and new companion Steven Taylor arrive in Saxon Northumbria on the eve of the Viking and Norman invasions. It is 1066, a pivotal moment in British history. The hand of a mysterious Monk is at work in the nearby monastery, intending that history takes a different course.

Based on this picture, the Monk had a multi-step plan to alter history, in order to avoid the time wasted on Mankind’s advancement during the Dark Ages.

• Arrival in Northumbria
• Position atomic cannon
• Sight Vikings
• Light beacon fires
• Destroy Viking fleet
• Norman landing
• Battle of Hastings
• Meet King Harold.

In my opinion, bringing back the Monk on a recurring basis would have been the best way to keep faith with Sidney Newman's original vision of using the show to teach kids about History.  What better way than to show what the historical facts were if you didn't also show how wrong the timeline could have turned out?

THE DALEKS' MASTER PLAN

From the TARDIS Data Core:

In the year 4000, the Daleks conspire to conquer the Solar System. Their scheme involves treachery at the highest levels and a weapon capable of destroying the very fabric of time. Only the Doctor and his friends can prevent catastrophe — and there is no guarantee they will escape with their lives....

With his second appearance, the Monk was almost incidental to the larger picture, a somewhat comic villain on the sidelines overshadowed by the Daleks and Mavic Chen:

The TARDIS next arrives on Tygus, a volcanic planet where the Doctor has a run-in with his old enemy, the Meddling Monk, who attempts to sabotage the TARDIS in revenge for the Doctor previously stranding him in 11th century England. The Doctor is still able to fly the TARDIS to Ancient Egypt, though he has to stop there for repairs. The Monk follows him, as does the task-force of Daleks and Mavic Chen. The Monk, Sara and Steven end up being captured and used as hostages, and without time to create another fake, the Doctor is forced to hand over the real Taranium core. They are only able to escape with their lives when some Ancient Egyptians attack the Daleks which they describe as 'war machines'. Knowing that the Daleks will now carry out their invasion, the Doctor steals the directional control from the Monk's TARDIS, so that they can return to Kembel and stop the Daleks. The Monk, meanwhile, unwittingly ends up on a desolate, icy planet, and realizes he can no longer control the destination of his TARDIS. [Wikipedia]

The Monk has not been seen in Toobworld for over a half century and I would doubt that he was stuck on that icy world (perhaps the Oodsphere?  Or - this being the interconnected TV Universe - Aracta from 'Battlestar Galactica' - "Gun On Ice Planet Zero"?) since then.  The role would have to be recast, using the Gallifreyan "Get Out Of Jail Free" card of regeneration, since Peter Butterworth passed away in January of 1979.  The show has seen other characters, usually entire species, revived and revised since its return in 2005 - from the devolved Macra to a more believable and detailed look at the Silurian, as well as the return of Rassilon and lovingly, Sarah Jane Smith, with an interesting twist to the sage of the Master.  

It's about time that the Monk was given such consideration as well, since I think he could serve an important function within the framework of the 'Doctor Who' timeline.  Over the course of the show's history, there have been plenty of plot holes, revisions, and those discrepancies which I call "Zonks".  And to make it all tidy, we could claim that it's because of interference by the Monk that these Zonks occurred.

Those two stories in which the Monk appeared would probably have been the template for future jousts with the Doctor – the Monk would have altered the Terran timeline but the Doctor would derail his plans and “make right what once went wrong”.

But it wouldn’t be exactly the same as it once was.

It would be like putting together IKEA furniture – little bits would still be left over from that earlier revised timeline. 

Here’s an evaluation of the Monk from the TARDIS Data Core:

Throughout his appearances, the Monk has generally come across as a 'wannabe' rather than a true villain or hero, with his greater plans and objectives fundamentally undermined by his own inability to recognize his limitations, such as participating in an alliance with the Daleks to conquer Earth because he believed that the Daleks would be defeated eventually.

For all of his grand schemes, there would only be tidbits, scraps of a new timeline remaining to mark that he had tried to make a difference, for good or ill, for the greater good or his own benefit.

And that’s when we can call upon the meddling Monk as the reason those discrepancies could be found in ‘Doctor Who’.  For example: K-9 was left on Gallifrey with Leela, yet when we saw the tin dog again, he was now with Sarah Jane Smith. 

But if you know me, then you know I wouldn’t be satisfied with just using the Monk to clean up production slip-ups in just ‘Doctor Who’ alone.  I consider myself one of the curators of the shared TV Universe and there have been so many Zonks over the years which needed some “splainin to do”.  Nothing major, nothing radical, mostly trivial – befitting a “wannabe” like the Monk.

Like I said, it could be something trivial in the grand scheme of things – a change in a character from one episode to the next, perhaps as simple a change as the character’s name.

Here are a few examples I collected, both from ‘Columbo’:

SGT. WILSON

When we first meet the bumbling yet eager police detective in “The Greenhouse Jungle”, his full name was Frederic Wilson.  However, when we met him again in a later episode (“Now You See Him”), the Sergeant was now known as John J. Wilson. 

I once entertained the theory that John J. and Frederic were twin brothers; they could have even have been that old TV stand-by, “identical cousins”.  But both John J. and Lt. Columbo make reference to having worked together in the past, with the inference being that it was on the Goodland murder investigation.  So instead I’ll make the claim that even though the Doctor was able to revert the timeline, something still happened differently that would cause Sgt. Wilson’s parents to name him John J. instead of Frederic this time around.  Perhaps the rehabilitation of “John J. Diggs” (‘The Dick Powell Theatre’) personally affected them the second time around.  (He might not even have been “saved” in the first timeline.)

CAPTAIN AUGUST & CAPTAIN SAMPSON
This could be a case in which there was a baby in the Sampson family who grew up to be a police captain.  Now the same could hold true in the revised timeline.  However, now the Sampsons had broken up and Mrs. Sampson took her child to be raised by her second husband, who adopted him and gave him the last name of August.  Aside from the name change, I would guess his life played out as it did in the previous timeline.

(The actor involved was Bill Zuckert, who also appeared in the ABC reboot of ‘Columbo’ as a third character in “Murder With Malibu”.  That time he was credited as “Father”, but I think I’d just want to make a clean break of it all with the network change.  Let that character be separate from the other two.)

As you can see, those are trivial changes, making them perfect to be the sad legacy of the Monk… as things stand now.  Certainly those aren’t temporal alterations on the scale achieved by Helen Cutter of 'Primeval', who reshaped American History for one thing, besides causing thousands of recastaways - like the woman who employed ‘Phyllis’ in San Francisco, Julie Erskine, and the fathers of Jerry ‘Seinfeld’ and George Costanza.  But still he could have had a more powerful impact on the TV World than we are aware of from viewing it from the outside looking in.

Remember, the Monk only had two adventures sparring with the Doctor… that we saw.  Within the “reality” of the ‘Doctor Who’ universe, think of all the other times he caused havoc and what might have been altered.

This is the Time Lord who helped in the construction of Stonehenge using an anti-gravitational lift.  He has all of Time and Space at his beck and call to help him rewrite our past.  He's not one to be taken lightly!

In his Peter Butterworth persona, perhaps his first incarnation, maybe he was a let-down as a villain.  But bring him back, regenerated into a new actor (or actress.)  Let’s see what chaos he could pull off in his next lifetime!

Just a side note: Last year I ran a "What If?" post about what the regenerations of the Doctor would have looked like had the US TV networks ripped off the 'Doctor Who' concept.

So let's take it a step further.  What would the Monk have looked like if he had been part of an Americanized 'Doctor Who'?  And what if he had been in for more than just two stories, regenerating along the way?

LAWRENCE DOBKIN

DENVER PYLE

JAMES GREGORY

ALBERT SALMI

BUDDY HACKETT

PHIL LEEDS

TONY RANDALL

Just a little bit o' "Wish-Craft" fun on my part.  Sorry about that, Chief.....

As for who could play the Monk should 'Doctor Who' bring him (or her) back from the Big Hiatus?  When the news broke last summer that Jodi Whitaker was hired to be the 13th Incarnation after weeks of speculation that Kris Marshall might get the nod, I thought there should be some sort of reward for being the distraction needed:

Next year, besides being the 40th anniversary of Peter Butterworth’s passing, it also marks his centenary on February 4th.  I think I could come up with a theoretical argument based on this post for the Monk’s inclusion in the TVXOHOF to celebrate. 

BCnU!

* The header quote is attributed to Kenneth Williams as Julius Caesar in "Carry On Cleo", but it was Danny Kaye's utterance which first brought it to my attention.  And besides that, my source is from the greater Toobworld Dynamic and not the Cineverse.  (According to the IMDb, the movie got it from Jimmy Edwards' radio show "Take It From Here".)  But it's also an apt quote since Peter Butterworth who played the Monk could also be found in the "Carry On" franchise.