A LITTLE BIRTHDAY GREETING FOR MR. HOLMES

 

I saw this meme back on Holy Thursday and I knew where it belonged - posted here on January 6, the generally acknowledged but not officially recognized birthday for the great detective.

Of the three movies listed here for Sherlock Holmes, only one is located in one of the alternate Toobworlds - "Enola Holmes".

As for the two movies set in the MCU, they do have links to alternate Toobworlds, mostly thanks to the 'Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D.'  As for Henry Cavill as Supes, DC Comics was first of the two mega corporations to embrace the multiverse, especially with the crossover event "Crisis on Multiple Earths".  (I'm not going to get into who has handled the multiverse better, however.)

One day I'll have to finally make a decision on which Toobworld Cumberbatch's Sherlock Holmes belongs.  We know it can't be Earth Prime-Time - Jeremy Brett holds that honor!  (I'm leaning towards Cumberbatch appearing as the spirit of Brett's Holmes, trapped in Limbo where he welcomes new Dr. Watsons who share common traits with his original companion by that name.)

STORIES IN THE END ("SO LONG, FARE WELL")

 

I hope you enjoyed this look at one of my favorite TV series.

We’ll see you again next year!

WHOBITUARIES 2024

 

EVE PEARCE - Estelle, ‘Torchwood’ - “Small Worlds”
TIM BARLOW - Tyssan, “Destiny of the Daleks” Parts 1-4
PAUL O’GRADY - Himself, “The Stolen Earth”
JIM McMANUS - Ophthalmologist, “The Invisible Enemy”
MURRAY MELVIN - Bilis Manger, ‘Torchwood’ - “Captain Jack Harkness”
TERENCE HARDIMAN - Hawthorne, “The Beast Below”
JOHN NETTLETON - Reverend Matthews, “Ghost Ship” Parts 1&2
PETER DAY (Special Effects) - ‘The Evil of the Daleks’, ‘Fury From the Deep’, ‘Tomb of the Cybermen’, ‘The Ambassadors of Death’, ‘The Daemons’, ‘The Sea Devils’, ‘The Monster of Peladon’, ‘Genesis of the Daleks’, ‘The Deadly Assassin’, ‘The Sun Makers’
MICHAEL GAMBON - “A Christmas Carol”
BRIGIT FORSYTH - Ruth Maxtible, “The Evil of the Daleks” Parts 1-4 O'Bservation - I'm fairly certain this is far from complete. I'll keep checking the sources....

THE TARDIS JUKEBOX - "PRISENCOLINENSINAINCIUSOL"?

There are now two TARDISes out there in the TV Universe of Earth Prime-Time – one belonging to the 15th Incarnation and the other, newer, incarnation which the 14th Incarnation of the Doctor has at his disposal.  That is, if I’m figuring aright, the being used by Tennant’s third version of the Doctor is the new model.  (And hopefully Gatwa’s Doctor did not create a split personality by dividing up the soul of the TARDIS between the two blue boxes.  Then again, I’m sure there’s a future scriptwriter for the show out there who is already preparing his pitch that each TARDIS has a mind of its own.)

Both of them have the same screensaver running to project the holographic interior (at least for the control room.)  And – looking at the show from an outsider’s point of view as a producer keeping an eye on the purse strings – they will probably stay the same in order to cut down costs.  (Should Tennant ever return to the role of Fourteen, all they have to do is wheel that jukebox off the set and bob’s your uncle.)

Within days of the reveal of the jukebox inside the TARDIS, fans were speculating as to what music should be heard emanating from its speakers.  (Not that I had anything against some of the songs heard elsewhere in the series, but I hope they’re not all going to be in the same vein as the Britney Spears/Spice Girls/Boney M./Rogue Trader selections which we heard in the past.)

To that end, I have a song to recommend for inclusion in the Doctor’s playlist….

"PRISENCOLINENSINAINCIUSOL"

From Wikipedia:
"Prisencolinensinainciusol" is a song composed by the Italian singer Adriano Celentano, and performed by Celentano and his wife Claudia Mori. It was released as a single in 1972. Both the name of the song and its lyrics are gibberish but are intended to sound like English in an American accent.

By the 1960s, Celentano was already one of the most popular rock musicians in Italy, in large part due to his appearance at the Sanremo Music Festival in 1960 and the subsequent success of his song "24.000 baci". "Prisencolinensinainciusol" was released in 1972 and remained popular throughout the 1970s.

"Prisencolinensinainciusol" has been described as varying music genres including Europop, house music, disco, hip hop and funk. Celentano, however, did not have these styles in mind when writing the song. He composed "Prisencolinensinainciusol" by creating a loop of four drumbeats and improvising lyrics over the top of the loop in his recording studio. The song is characterised by an E flat groove in the drum and bass guitar and riff in the horn section. Between the drum loop and the looped horns, not to mention the conversational improvisational "freestyle" flow of the lyrics and the chanting chorus, the song has many elements that predate hip hop, elements later found in hip hop in the mid 1980s and 1990s, respectively.

The song is intended to sound to its Italian audience as if it is sung in English spoken with an American accent, however the lyrics are deliberately unintelligible gibberish with the exception of the words "all right". Andrew Khan, writing in The Guardian, later described the sound as reminiscent of Bob Dylan's output from the 1980s.

Celentano's intention with the song was not to create a humorous novelty song but to explore communication barriers. The intent was to demonstrate how English sounds to people who do not understand the language proficiently. "Ever since I started singing, I was very influenced by American music and everything Americans did. So at a certain point, because I like American slang—which, for a singer, is much easier to sing than Italian—I thought that I would write a song which would only have as its theme the inability to communicate. And to do this, I had to write a song where the lyrics didn't mean anything."

"Prisencolinensinainciusol" wouldn’t just have to add flavor to a scene, an opportunity for the Master to let loose with his funky self.  It could even be integrated into a plot-line for the show.  How?  What if some alien race visited Italy at some point in 1970 or ’71 and implanted that song – its tune and its lyrics – into the mind of Celentano, with the long-range goal of it triggering something dire for the world once the recorded song began to be heard throughout the world?

In recent years, "Prisencolinensinainciusol" has had a resurgence, thanks to YouTube, streaming services, and being used in the soundtracks for episodes of ‘Fargo’ and ‘Ted Lasso’.  So why not in an episode of another show ending with the letter “O”?

One thing I like about this idea is that the backdrop for the story would be Italy.  It gives me the opportunity to do a bit of research as to why aliens would have been in Italy circa 1970-71.

From Wikipedia:
The Reggio revolt occurred in Reggio Calabria, Italy, from July 1970 to February 1971. The cause of the protests was a government decision to make Catanzaro, not Reggio, regional capital of Calabria. The nomination of a regional capital was the result of a decentralization programme of the Italian government, under which 15 governmental regions were concretized and given their own administrative councils and a measure of local autonomy.

Protest in Reggio Calabria exploded in July 1970 when the much smaller town of Catanzaro (with a population of 82,000 against 160,000 in Reggio) was chosen as the regional capital of Calabria. The people of Reggio blamed their rivals' success to "the Red Barons" in Rome, a group of influential centre-left Calabrian politicians from Cosenza and Catanzaro.

Doesn’t sound like something worthy of a sci-fi show, but the genre can adapt to any event in history.

At any rate, here’s the song I want to be included on the TARDIS jukebox….

GRAVITY? SCHMAVITY!

DOCTOR WHO
WILD BLUE YONDER

When the Doctor and Donna met Isaac Newton in 1666, Donna made a joke about “the gravity of the situation”.  After they left, however, Newton couldn’t quite remember what that strange word was that they used.  He eventually settled on using “mavity”.  

As the episode continued, the Doctor and Donna both used that new word, probably not realizing that they had changed History.  (Remember, they were not in his presence when he came up with it.)  In that new timeline, they, like everybody else in the world since Newton published his findings in 1687, had been using “mavity” instead of “gravity”.

EXAMPLE 01

The Doctor:
We could take a look.
Donna Noble:
Or we could stay here, wait for the TARDIS to mend itself so I can get back home. My family is waiting for me!
The Doctor:
Yeah, all right. Yeah!
Donna:
Still, wherever we are, could be worse. We've got air; we've got light; we've got mavity.
Doctor:
Yeah.

EXAMPLE 02
Donna:
But... if we're in space... There's no stars. Where are the stars?
The Doctor:
We could be inside a dust cloud or a... mavity well, or....

EXAMPLE 03
The Doctor:
What is making that noise?
(An alien body comes into view)
There.
(CLANG!)
The captain of the ship. Circling round and round forever. Caught in the gravity field.
DONNA:
Caught in the what?
THE DOCTOR:
Mavity field.

As seen/heard in that instance, the Doctor’s mind can straddle realities and remember the original timeline, as well as the various alternate pathways.  Probably.  (I’m not sure, but I think that has been established in the Past.)

What disturbed me at first was that I assumed the word “gravity” existed long before 1666.

I, as usual, was wrong.

As he was English, I think Newton coined the term based on the Latin roots, not the Old French.  So that would buttress the late 17th Century claim.

Stanford University looked at the etymology and the cultural history of gravity.  Click here if you’re interested in reading it.

Will RTD eventually address the situation to correct the word’s history?  Time travel is O’Bviously well-established in the series’ corner of the TV Universe, so this could be handled in a small patch, a scene even shorter than the one which caused the timeline shift to “mavity”.

But then again, as expansive as his vision has been in the past (and this episode “Wild Blue Yonder” fits that bill!), RTD can get sloppy with details that jar with real science.  So he might just leave it as is and forget about it.

(Remember how a mass shower in the topical application of all medicines blended together was able to cure everybody in that New Earth hospital?)

But until then, wouldn't it be great if other TV shows which should be sharing the same TV Universe as 'Doctor Who' started using the word "mavity" instead of "gravity"?

All the uses of "gravity" in past TV episodes would be locked into the old timeline before the "mavity" revision.

We shall see what we shall view….

UPDATE:
With both "The Giggle" and "The Church On Ruby Road," the word "mavity" was used.  RTD has been known to sprinkle the episodes in a season with a phrase which pays off by the season finale.  First it was "Bad Wolf" and a couple years later it was "Mister Saxon".

So it could be that the use of "mavity" will pay off with a big climactic reveal to cap off Davies' return to the series....

WHO IS MRS. FLOOD? BREAK DOWN THE SURNAME!

There’s a meme-maker out there who has a suggestion for the mother of Ruby Sunday (a backstory revealed in the Fifteenth Incarnation’s first full, televised adventure….)

My opinion?  Doubtful.

I have seen other suggestions out there which think it may be the next door neighbor to the Sunday family – Mrs. Flood.  But they also cite her surname as a possible clue to her true identity.  Most of them believe the name “Flood” is a clue to her being somehow connected to River Song.

RTD is known for the clues he leaves for the viewers.  “Bad Wolf”.  “Mister Saxon”.  And I believe the answer is Mrs. Flood.  But I don’t think it has anything to do with River Song.

I think most of those fans O’Bsessed with River Song as the key are more than likely the type of fans whose knowledge of the series extends only as far back as Eccleston’s relatively brief tenure as the Ninth Incarnation, if even that far!  But RTD is also known for reaching deep into the show’s ancient history to dredge up characters and plot points – the Macra in “Gridlock” and Rassilon in “Last Of The Time Lords” are two examples.  The popular opinion as I write this is that Jinkx Monsoon will be playing the Rani, not seen – at least from our timeline’s perspective – since 1993.

So I think the same will hold true in this case, even if Mrs. Flood doesn’t prove to be Ruby’s birth mother, she still might turn out to be somebody from the Doctor’s past.  Like a former Companion….

The fans who are guessing River Song at least share my belief that her name is the key to her identity.  “Flood.” What is a flood, but a field of water?

I’m thinking it could be that she was once known as Victoria Waterfield before she left the TARDIS and was “adopted” by the Harris Family.

Because the onscreen captions identified “The Church On Ruby Road” as taking place in the month leading up to Christmas 2023, it’s unlikely Victoria could be the mother of Ruby.  It may be a sci-fi/fantasy series, but “there are limits, Mate” and a pregnancy for Victoria in 2004 would have been stretching plausibility.

Setting aside the Ruby's Mother angle, I’ll stick with my claim that Mrs. Flood is Victoria Waterfield… at least until Russell T. dashes my theory to bits….

And even then.

FANFICCER'S FRIEND - THE FURTHER ADVENTURES OF THE CURATOR

 

Fairly recent pictures of Tom Baker living his good life can also work as pictures of the Curator in everyday situations.

And every so often one comes along which can be given a fantastical twist to make it a possibility for your head-canon, including crossovers and reunions with old friends.

Take this picture of Baker with a clowder of kittens. 

Who’s to say that Thomas Kincaide Brannigan isn’t among them as a toddler, somehow plucked out of his proper time-stream?  Sure, several of the Doctor’s past incarnations didn’t like cats, but with each regeneration, they get new personality quirks which differ from their past lives.  And we did see that the Eleventh Incarnation established a rapport with a cat in “The Lodger”….

Or based on this double page magazine photo of several actors who played the Time Lord – from left to right, Colin Baker, Paul McGann, Tom Baker, Peter Davison, and Sylvester McCoy….  What if the Curator summoned a few past incarnations to help on an investigation into the Dark Archives? 

The special short “Time Crash” had some splainin to do as to how those past Doctors would look different because of their close proximity to each other.  So none of the others might question how different the Sixth Incarnation looked from when he was alive.  But what if he wasn’t the Sixth Incarnation?

I’ve always wanted to see Colin Baker return to the series, but since Time had marched on, why not bring him back at a character he played in an earlier adventure?

Commander Maxil.  Colin Baker could have had a steady gig in a recurring capacity as a nemesis to the Curator.  But with the assistance of some of his past selves, the Curator could have foiled whatever Maxil had in mind for the contents of the Under Gallery.

Just an idea….

IT HAD TO BE SAID....

 

COLUMBO MEETS THE DOCTOR - AI STYLE

 

I haven't found many, but there are a few good photoshops out there of Lieutenant Columbo meeting the Doctor.  But greedy bastid that I am, I wanted more.

So I turned to AI.  It's not a perfect system, but I've made a few good examples... as well as a few howlers....

Enjoy....

Columbo and the TARDIS

Columbo meets Himself
Thanks to a temporal glitch?

Suggestive of the Seventh Incarnation,
But is that Columbo or a Goodfella?

Suggestive of the Fourth Incarnation,
But is Paul Reiser playing Columbo?

Columbo & the Twelfth Incarnation?

Not sure....

Columbo with the Tenth & Twelfth Incarnations

What if Anthony Hopkins had been the Doctor?

I suppose it suggests Tom Baker,
But he looks like Lyle Lovett.

What if Ian McShane was the Doctor?
Or is it Christopher Walken?

Another Tom Baker possibility,
But I think he looks like Tom Jones.

Maybe inspired by Rowan Atkinson in
"The Curse Of Fatal Death"?

I think David Tennant inspired both.

Columbo and some alien, perhaps?

I have since moved on to a much better AI program and maybe I'll make up a few examples before this blog-A-thon is over....

THE DOCTOR IS A KEN DOLL! (HE'S AN ACTION FIGURE; HE'S NOT A DOLL!)

2023 proved to be a big year for Ncuti Gatwa.  His role as Eric in ‘Sex Education’ came to an end after 4 seasons and 32 episodes; he was in the mega-hit summer blockbuster of “Barbie” as one of the five central Kens; and with the last episode of the 60th anniversary trilogy celebration of ‘Doctor Who’, he made his debut as the Fifteenth Incarnation of the Time Lord.

There were a lot of Kens in Barbieland, but five central ones – Ryan Gosling as the main Ken, with Gatwa, Simu Liu, Scott Evans, and Kingsley-Adir as his main companeros, with John Cena making a cameo appearance as the Ken of the Merfolk.  Because there were so many Kens, he didn’t really stand out from the other citizens of Kendom until nearly the end – he had a sweet reunion with his Barbie, who was played by his ‘Sex Education’ co-star, Emma Mackey, who looked like she could be Margot Robbie’s brunette sister.

O’Bservation – I was floored to find while writing this post that another of their ‘Sex Education’ co-stars (Connor Swindells) was also in “Barbie”.  He played lowly Mattel office drone Aaron, a far cry from his closeted homosexual school bully in the Britcom.

I would not be surprised if “Barbie” experiences a renewed surge at the box office on re-release, once Whovians who previously had no interest in seeing the movie about a doll learn that the latest Doctor is in the cast….

OFF TO SEE THE MADMAN IN A BOX

Just a fun little meme made by somebody else, turning ‘Doctor Who’ into a production of ‘The Wizard of Oz’…..

Seen here are:

• A Cyberman, one of The Doctor’s greatest enemies
• Dr. Martha Jones, a Companion of the 10th Incarnation who went on to work for UNIT and later married Mickey Smith
• One of the scarecrows who were controlled by the “Family of Blood” in 1913
• Thomas Kinkaide Brannigan, a member of Catkind who was trapped in traffic for years with his human wife and litter of kitlings

So here’s a fanfic story idea….

What if there was a renegade Time Lord, one who might have been driven mad by staring into the Untempered Schism as a Gallifreyan Lad?  Similar to the Celestial Toymaker, he might have taken sadistic delight in torturing his prisoners by forcing them to perform in deadly theatrical productions.  My name for him would be “The Impresario”.

This would be an “UnScene” adventure where the Impresario sought revenge against The Doctor by forcing him and Companions to enact his own adaptation of ‘The Wizard of Oz’.  In order to survive, they have to play out the basic storyline, including singing their dialogue when music is cued up.  (Musical episodes of dramatic TV series were in vogue for a time – among them ‘Psych’, ‘Fringe’ ‘Supernatural’, ‘Grey’s Anatomy’, ‘Buffy The Vampire Slayer’, and ‘One Life To Live’, plus several sitcoms – so why not ‘Doctor Who’*?

Now, two of those pictured here were foes of The Doctor, so they might try to disrupt the Impresario’s scheme in order to ensure the Doctor’s demise.  This is where I now point out that just because Martha is involved, this doesn’t have to be an adventure for the Tenth Incarnation.  This could have taken place during her UNIT tenure or later while working with her husband as a team.  So The Doctor could be any future incarnation.

And I think it would have to be a future incarnation because of the participation of the Cyberman.  What if that was the Brigadier, brought back after death as a Cyberman by Missy?  At least that would guarantee the participation of at least one Cyberman.

As for the Scarecrow, let’s leave it as one of those programmed “soldiers” working for the Family of Blood.  I don’t know why the Impresario would have chosen it – perhaps it was snatched out of its time period by mistake.  Maybe the Impresario meant to grab Tim Latimer but the lad’s premonitions warned him to maneuver into proximity of that scarecrow so that it got scooped up instead.

I like the idea that the Scarecrow would be an adversary out to sabotage the Impresario’s revenge.  It could be how it was dispatched quickly by the Impresario, perhaps by having him ripped apart by winged monkeys.

As for the Doctor… whoever the Incarnation is, I see him/her/they as the musical’s Wizard with the story focused on the friends striving to reach him in order to save him.  (This fanfic story could be considered a “Doctor-Lite” episode, like “Blink” and “Turn Left”.)

I should point out here that there is one Companion who fits into the Oz template and should be included – K-9, playing the role of Toto.  And the Impresario would take on the role of the Wicked Warlock, dressed in black and with green skin.

There should be a flaw in the Impresario’s plot, one which the Companions could exploit.  Maybe the Impresario never foresaw the involvement of Mickey Smith who was scooped up along with his wife.  Maybe he was in disguise throughout the whole journey along the yellow brick road – first as a Munchkin, then as a Winged Monkey, and finally hiding in plain sight under the Impresario’s nose, as one of the Winkie Guards.

When it’s all over and the Impresario defeated, Mickey’s response?  “At least I wasn’t the tin dog!”

Once the Impresario is defeated (“I’m regenerating!”) and The Doctor is rescued, they all enter the TARDIS to go home to their respective time periods.  That’s when The Doctor delivers the final line….

“There’s no place like home!”

So that’s another fanfic idea spurred by a photoshopped meme.

* O'Bservation - Technically, "The Church On Ruby Road" was a musical episode....

QUOTH THE RIVER