O'BSERVATIONS: WUT UP, DRWG?

Now that I'm reaching the end of my look at this first new season of 'Doctor Who' since 1989, it's time to look back at the series up to this point as far as the phrase "Bad Wolf" is concerned.

The online info-lode Wikipedia has this run-down of all the mentions:

"The phrase has turned up in every story beginning with the second one, with one mention in each of the two-parters. The confirmed sightings of "Bad Wolf" are as follows:

The End of the World: The Moxx of Balhoon mentions in a half-heard conversation to the Face of Boe the "Bad Wolf scenario."

The Unquiet Dead: When the clairvoyant Gwyneth reads Rose's mind, she says, "The things you've seen... the darkness.. the Big Bad Wolf!"

Aliens of London/World War Three: A young boy spray-paints the graffiti BAD WOLF on the side of the TARDIS.

Dalek: The call sign for Henry van Statten's private helicopter is "Bad Wolf One"

The Long Game: One of the several thousand television channels being broadcast from Satellite Five is BAD WOLFTV.

Father's Day: A poster advertising a rave in 1987 has the words "BAD WOLF" defacing it.

The Empty Child/The Doctor Dances: The bomb that Captain Jack rides at the end of the story is labelled "SCHLECHTER WOLF", which is roughly "Bad Wolf" (or "Worse Wolf") in German.

Boom Town: A nuclear power plant is dubbed the Blaidd Drwg project, which is Welsh for "Bad Wolf". The Doctor also noticed for the first time that the phrase had been following them around.

Bad Wolf: The corporation that runs the Game Station (formerly Satellite Five) is called the Badwolf Corporation."

Although they don't have it listed, there was another sighting in Parting Of The Ways - and I don't mean the melange of graffiti in the courtyard where Rose has her revelation.

While sitting with her Mum and Mickey in the chips shop, it can be seen written on a flyer hanging in the window right behind Rose's head.

(Check out the Wikipedia entry for "Bad Wolf". They also list the ancillary symbolic references to the term throughout the series.)

Being an adherent of this repeated meme (No, I'm NOT sorry for typing that!), I think the main problem in the end was that the pay-off was overwhelmed by the build-up. One reason so many 'Trek' shows fall back on "techno-babble" is that it's a safety net. If the audience doesn't fully understand what's going on, it's harder to feel let down by the splainin.

Still, it was a fun little puzzle and it might still have ramifications next season. And there is promise of a new puzzle dealing with an anagram that was heard this season. And for that, the prevailing rumor is that it was the word "Torchwood" as heard in the episode "Bad Wolf".

BCnU!
Tele-Toby

O'BSERVATIONS: KATRINA AND THE WEASEL

It's been my experience that every major disaster will eventually see itself dramatized in some way on TV. Sometimes a period of grace is observed, especially if there is a great loss of life which might have made the depiction of the disaster traumatic to the viewers. But it's hard to keep such stories safe from the producers who see the chance to earn a few quatloos in the re-telling.

Dr. Sam Beckett found himself plunked into the Gulf Coast just as Hurricane Camille struck in 1969 on an episode of 'Quantum Leap'. Two years after the 1989 San Francisco earthquake, it was personalized and fictionalized for an episode of the flashback series 'My Life And Times'.

I remember a few days after the collapse of the World Trade Center Towers in the 9/11 attack that there was a letter to the editor of the New York Daily News that nobody better ever DARE make a movie about the tragedy. (I think the feeling was that it would be fictionalized with some kind of love story, a la "Titanic".)

Leslie Mooonves may have been slapped down with the suggested pilot about a couple who met because they both lost their spouse in 9/11. But for the established TV shows, it didn't take long to tie into the event in some way.
Especially with the dramatic series, plotlines were developed in which some connection was made to the events of 9/11. Cop shows investigated terrorist cells; lawyer shows defended and/or prosecuted people who might have had some link to such groups; and many characters lost family or friends in either the WTC or one of the other plane crashes.

Mac Taylor of 'CSI: NY' lost his wife in the tower collapse; Tommy Gavin of 'Rescue Me' lost his cousin and fellow firefighter. As with the Titanic, the roll call of the dead will swell with fictional characters in the future.

I wouldn't be surprised if, as happened with the Titanic, time travellers from some future TV shows end up visiting the WTC before its collapse. In the venue of cancelled Television, Tony Newman and Doug Phillips might have already materialized in the hallways of Cantor Fitzgerald.....

Another milieu that's always popular is the true-life crime story. The woman who used a helicopter to help her lover escape from jail; the celebrity cases of OJ Simpson, Michael Jackson, Woody Allen, and the Menendez Brothers - all have been dramatized for TV.

'Law & Order' thrives on such stories "ripped from the headlines". Meredith Baxter Birney saw her portrayal of Betty Broderick (who killed her husband) spawn a sequel; while the "Long Island Lolita" Amy Fischer - who shot her older lover's wife in the back of the head, only to see her sruvive, - had her crime dramatized on three different networks in the span of mere months.

It's my feeling that with Hurricane Katrina (and the aftermath of damage from the flooding once the New Orleans levees were breached), we have a convergence of both types of stories. We've got the makings for a disaster movie made for Television and a crime story - to be found in the mismanagement and negligence by FEMA to get on top of the situation quickly.

I know that eventually we'll see dramatizations of the events leading up to - and during - the flooding of New Orleans. There will probably be movies of the week, and Sweeps month mini-series, and even individual episodes of such shows as 'CSI: Miami' which will tie into this great disaster.

I think there had to be at least one writer for David E. Kelley's 'Boston Legal' who saw the news story about evacuees being flown to Massachusetts who had to latch onto that for a story pitch.

And considering New Orleans' reputation for voodoo, thanks to the writings of Ann Rice, I wouldn't be surprised if such new shows as 'Supernatural' and 'The Ghost Whisperer' eventually find themselves down in the Delta.....

Many of these dramatizations will probably be about the noble spirit and heroic efforts of ordinary people as they tried to survive and as they tried to rescue not only their loved ones but their neighbors and even total strangers.

But I think the crime story of FEMA's ineptitude deserves to be dissected and displayed in a step-by-step dramatization of what they did wrong. And that lyin' weasel Michael Brown should be vilified in his portrayal. Personally, it would make me sick every time I saw him on TV trying to worm his way out of taking the blame, and I'm angered that he got kicked back home to a desk job in Washington instead of being fired outright for not only his incompetence but for the distortion of his qualifications on his resume.

Such a TV-movie will help the American people understand what happened behind the scenes better than just some talking head splainin it on the news channels. And perhaps it will raise their sense of outrage enough so that such blatant cronyism and patronage can never again prove to be so deadly.

I've got a suggestion for the title of a movie about that Weasel -

'Brownie: One Heck Of A Job'.

It might also give Timothy Bottoms a third opportunity for playing George W. Bush.

As for playing Michael Brown, I'm going to suggest comic actor Jeff Altman. Not only does he resemble the Weasel somewhat, but Altman has had his experience with disasters in the past.

After all, he survived 'Pink Lady And Jeff'.

Just sayin', is all.

At any rate, it's the reality of the situation that needs to be addressed right now. So if you haven't yet made some contribution yet to any of the various relief funds, then please do so.

http://www.redcross.org/ would be a good place to start.....

BCnU!
Tele-Toby

"I never knew the word 'George' could sound so obscene."
David Fischer
'Six Feet Under'

O'BSERVATIONS: MONK'S WONDER YEARS

I found the "half-season finale" for 'Monk' to be fun; a charming outing in which we learned about Monk's "Wonder Years" in grade school. But that doesn't mean I didn't find a couple of quibbles with it.

There were two mysteries running in the episode, as his current case brought forward memories of Monk's solution to a bake sale robbery back in junior high. In the present, Monk helped his former classmate (the same girl framed for the bake sale robbery) when her housekeeper was murdered by home invaders during a burglary.

Have you ever noticed that almost every mystery on Television ends up involving a murder? Do the writers feel the stakes always have to be that high? In some series, sure, it always has to be a murder - 'Columbo' works as a homicide detective, after all; and Ellery Queen wasn't going to be called in for help by his Dad when he was stumped by just a jewel theft. But couldn't the home invasion, vandalism of the painting, and the attack on the housekeeper have been enough.

Yes, it's true that if the housekeeper could have identified her attackers had she lived and there would have been no need for any input from Monk. But if I'm not mistaken, they probably sell ski masks at every sporting goods shop to be found in the San Francisco area. It shouldn't have been too hard for the props guy to supply the two burglars with ski masks....

I've been watching 'Over There' and it looks like the insurgents have no trouble in getting ski masks in the deserts of Iraq.

Besides, one of the burlgars left fingerprints behind on the wall. Maybe they were smudged, I don't know. And maybe I put too much faith in 'CSI" units nowadays, but I think nailing the identity of the burglars would have happened sooner than later.
~~~~~~
My only other quibble with the episode was the time period for the back-story of Monk in junior high. He was supposed to be in 8th grade, and it was supposed to 1972. To me, they got the feel for that era right, especially with the clothing. (Monk's shirt was way too familiar!)

But here's the thing - it would have been perfect if we never knew who Monk grew up to be. See, I'm two years younger than Tony Shalhoub, and I know it's vain to say so, but I think I look it. And the same goes for comparisons with Adrian Monk. In 1972, I was in 11th grade, and there was no way I could buy into the idea that if Monk was in 8th grade, he was born in 1958 (the same age as my brother Bill).

For Monk to be believable as an eighth-grader (so that they could take advantage of a fantastic performance by Grant Rosenmeyer as young Adrian - the kid really caught the nuances of Monk's budding ticks), the episode would have had to have been set in 1968. And that was a quantum leap into the past for the culture, the wardrobe, etc. even though it was only six years earlier.

I'll concede that it's probably just me, basing it as I am on my own view of the character in relation to my own age. But still I found it troublesome, as was the need to murder the housekeeper.

A lot of shows would probably be happy for ust a "few" quibbles like these, but 'Monk' can be of such a high quality in its entertainment that I probably hold it to a higher standard than is warranted.

BCnU!
Tele-Toby

"That dreams and memories sometimes get confused,
Well, that's as it should be.
Because every kid deserves to be a hero.
Every kid already is."
Kevin Arnold
'The Wonder Years'

"BOOM TOWN": O'BSERVATIONS (PART TWO)

I'LL TAKE YOU HOME AGAIN, SLITHEEN
PART TWO
"BLON AMBITION"

With the 11th episode of the new 'Doctor Who' series ("Boom Town"), we were reintroduced to Blon Fel Fotch Pasameer-Day Slitheen.

I put the first two Slitheen episodes ("Aliens Of London" & "World War III") into an alternate TV dimension because of the destruction of Big Ben and Number 10 Downing Street, and the death of the British Prime Minister. When June of 2006 (when those episodes will take place) comes round and no other show set in Toobworld (especially Brit shows like 'Casualty' and 'EastEnders') mention such cataclysms as having occurred, then you'll see that I was right in moving them.

(Forget Toobworld! God help us if those events occur in the Real World!)

But now with "Boom Town", we just can't leave it over there in that alternate dimension, so we might as well ship our dramatis personae all back to the main TV Universe.

There really wasn't any choice in the decision; for no matter what dimension those first two Slitheen episodes are placed, there are too many constraints on the chronology for "Boom Town" to be kept in the same dimension.

The woman who was murdered so that Blon Slitheen could inhabit her skin was Margaret Blaine, an official/operative in MI-5. And yet six months after the bombing of Number 10 Downing Street, she was now the Lady Mayor of Cardiff, Wales. She had a pet project - a nuclear power plant in the center of the city! - near to completion.

And all that after just six months?

When did she find the time to campaign? And how did she do so without the Press snooping for scoop in her background? Surely news of her election would have reached Harriet Jones, backbencher for Flydale North, who knew only too well the dark secret of Margaret Blaine. After all, she saw the Raxacoricofallapatorian strip off the Margaret Blaine skin to strangle Indra Ganesh.

And wouldn't MI-5, as the former employers of "Margaret Blaine", have taken an interest in what one of their own was thinking when she decided to become Lady Mayor of Cardiff?

And then there's the nuclear power plant. Construction - even approval for the construction! - would have taken years.
Trying to squeeze all of that into the same dimension, same timeline, would be similar to squeezing a wet bar of soap in a slippery fist.

Something's gotta give. So I'm moving the main players back over to the main TV Universe.

I'm not just doing this arbitrarily. Don't worry, I've got splainins for all of it.

I'll start with Mickey. The Mickey of the first two Slitheen episodes was the Mickey who always lived in the alternate universe. He had a Rose and the Doctor in his life, so when they showed up again after being missing for nearly a year, he never questioned that they might have been doppelgangers from another dimension. Why should he? Such an idea would have been outside the realm of possibilities for him.

The Earth Prime-Time Mickey never had any experience with the Slitheen family, and for him, Big Ben never exploded. His first exposure to that earlier adventure would have been when the Doctor saw Margaret Blaine's photo on the front page of the Western Mail. What we never got to see was the scene where the Doctor gave the full recap not only to Captain Jack but to this Mickey as well.

(Actually he probably gave the recap only for Jack's benefit and never realized this was not the Mickey he previously praised for his help in defeating the Slitheens. Like I said before, the Doctor could be pretty clueless at times as to where/when he actually arrived in the TARDIS.)

Jack was already travelling with the Doctor and Rose by the time of "Boom Town" and he met them in the main TV Universe. As for Rose and the Doctor, they crossed back over via the TARDIS soon after escaping the destruction of Number 10 Downing Street in that alternate TV dimension.

That just leaves Margaret Blaine aka Blon Slitheen. And it's an easy splainin for her, really: she escaped via her extrapolator "surfboard". Blon used it to escape the fate of her brothers, riding the shockwave of the blast away from the devastation. But when she also used her personal teleport device (which she would use again in "Boom Town") in conjunction with the extrapolator and the explosion, the combined energies thrust her through the dimensional vortex into a new Toobworld.

She probably figured this out for herself soon enough. Once she got her bearings, it might not have taken long to find out that there was already a Margaret Blaine living in this world.... And that would mean having to dispatch her as well in order to maintain the identity.

Margaret Blaine..... In the alternate dimension, she had been working for MI-5 Intelligence. But in the main Toobworld, I think she was instead the Lady Mayor of Cardiff and already holding that office, serving her first term. The construction of the nuclear power plant had been approved and nearly finished long before, perhaps even during a previous administration.

Basically Blon Slitheen was joining 'The Margaret Blaine Show' already in progress.

Once she learned of this other Margaret, Blon would have quickly dispatched her just like she did the first one. (She probably appropriated her skin as well, since the original might have become a little... seedy, after all it had been through.)

And once she learned about the the possible escape the nuclear power plant could offer her, she began her campaign to eliminate all of those who might cause the project to be abandoned before completion.

For all I know, the Margaret Blaine who had been Mayor of Cardiff might have been in agreement to shut down the power plant. But she was killed by Blon before she could sign off on the deal.

With this splainin, we have plenty of time now between the last known sighting of Blon Slitheen in "World War III" and her return to the series in "Boom Town".

Like I said, the Doctor would have been clueless to all of this back-story. Why should he have known? One dimension is pretty much the same as another to him after all this time. And it's been well-established that he never bothers to hang around long after his adventures for the "tidying-up". So he probably never looked into the fact that this world's Big Ben and Number 10 Downing Street never "blowed up real good", and he probably took it in stride that "Rickey" might have been clueless when it came to who Margaret Blaine really was. ("Don't you even know your own name?")

As for Harriet Jones, back-bencher from Flydale North, there could have been alternate reasons as to why she would one day be elevated to the position of Prime Minister in this dimension. And again, it would be the kind of detail the Doctor would probably have ignored once they met again - which they are slated to do in "The Christmas Invasion" tentatively scheduled to air in the UK on December 26th. (If she acts as though she already knows the both of them, then I'll keep that simple: it happened during an unrecorded adventure.)

Of course, if the events of the first two Slitheen episodes do get mentioned during "The Christmas Invasion", then I'll have to start from scratch......

I hope that splainin helps smooth out the kinks in the timeline for 2006! If not, I'd love to hear what you might come up with. I'm always ready to test-drive new theories......

BCnU!
Tele-Toby

"BOOM TOWN": O'BSERVATIONS (PART ONE)

I'LL TAKE YOU HOME AGAIN, SLITHEEN
PART ONE
"ALL POLITICS IS LOCAL"

Those of you cursed with razor-sharp memories will remember that with the two-part 'Doctor Who' story which introduced the Slitheen family ("Aliens Of London" & "World War Three"), I postulated a theory that they had to take place in an alternate TV dimension. This was due to the destruction of Big Ben and Number 10 Downing Street, as well as the murder of the Prime Minister before the episode even began.

It would have been no problem at all for the TARDIS to make such a journey - after all, the name is an acronym for Time And Relative Dimensions In Space. It was supposed to be able to traverse dimensional vortexes as well as travel through Time and the Space in which Earth Prime-Time could be found.

Don't we see it doing just that in the opening credits each episode of the new series? Those wormholes down which the TARDIS tumbles are quite similar to the ones through which Quinn Mallory and his friends would slide to reach alternate versions of San Francisco ('Sliders').

And I don't think the Doctor was even aware that he had left the main TV Universe and ended up in a "mirror universe". Quite frankly, I don't think he knows where he's landed half the time until he's had the chance to look around. Just in this series alone, he's come down in Cardiff of 1869 when he thought he was on his way to 1860 Naples; and he brought Rose back to her Mum 12 months after they vanished, rather than the 12 days he had promised.

No, I think it's the TARDIS who makes most of the travel arrangements for the Doctor. It's not only telepathic but it's also able to foretell the future as well. That's why throughout the long history of the show, the TARDIS found itself deposting the Doctor and his Companions in varirous locations in Time and Space where they could avert one crisis or another.

With that in mind, I decided that the first Slitheen story should take place in the world of 'The West Wing'. If it couldn't be located in the main TV Universe, then why not in the alternate world of TV's best pollitical series?

Well, regular reader "Words Say Nothing" splained why not - even though "Aliens Of London" & "World War Three" took place around June of 2006, 'The West Wing' had already reached that point in time during last season's storyline about the presidential primaries for both parties. And in one of those episodes we saw the British Prime Minister - a woman named Maureen Graty, not Harriet Jones as the Doctor suggested would happen.

Through a few back-and-forth emails, we tried to reconcile the timeline with a bit of juggling, - that Graty became Prime Minister right after the crisis was taken care of, and that there was no sense of urgency before Harriet Jones assumed leadership.

But based on the limited info that's come out so far regarding "The Christmas Invasion", the 'Doctor Who' special (which will be David Tennant's first star turn as the Doctor) it appears that by Christmas of 2006, the back-bench minister of Flydale North would already be at the helm as British Prime Minister Harriet Jones.

That seemed like an awful lot of bother to juggle both series convincingly, so I gave up the notion and decided to move those two episodes of 'Doctor Who' elsewhere.

At first I was tempted to land them in the universe of the new ABC series 'Commander In Chief' which will star Geena Davis as the first female POTUS. Something wicked in me thought that perhaps the show would never last long enough into 2006 to even be a problem. But I didn't want to unnescessarily curse the series, especially since it has so many actors involved whom I enjoy watching (Donald Sutherland, Kyle Secor, Jason Wiles, etc.).

But now I've found two series which form the nucleus for a TV Universe in which the President of the United States is different from George W. Bush, who currently holds the office in not only the Real World but in the main Toobworld as well. These shows are no longer on the air and thus can't cause too much trouble - if any! - for any shows I wish to later add to their dimension's roster.

These two shows were both on CBS just a few years ago - 'The Agency' and 'The District'. 'The Agency' was about the inner workings at the headquarters of the CIA, and it lost its berth in Earth Prime-Time as soon as they introduced Tom Arnold playing the half-brother of the President.

As for 'The District', that series was about Jack Mannion, who was brought in to become the Chief of Police in Washington, DC. In one of its last seasons, the show did a crossover with 'The Agency', and so it became allied with that show in a brand new universe.

Since they are both no longer on the air, and enough time has passed for both the American President and the British Prime Minister to have been replaced in office, it makes for the perfect world in which to house those two episodes of 'Doctor Who'.

It also makes a great world in which to situate the new FOX series 'Prison Break'. As we learned in the season premiere last week, (which takes place in early 2006), Lincoln Burrows is in the Fox River State Penitentiary on Death Row for the assassination of the Vice President's brother. If I'm not mistaken, that man's name was Strickland. "I could be wrong now, but I don't think so."

(As 'Prison Break' is a live-action series, I'm not about to link it to 'King Of The Hill' in which Strickland Propane plays a major role. That show is set in the Tooniverse.)

Even though it looks like the Secret Service and other branches of our government might play a major role in the events leading up to the actual 'Prison Break', I don't think that should be a problem. Again, the President in 'The Agency' and 'The District' could have changed by now and even so, he was never named. (His half-brother had a different surname.) Besides, it's the Vice-President's brother who was murdered, and a Veep could be replaced even faster in that time.

And I think it's highly unlikely that the British Prime Minister should ever be invoked on 'Prison Break', let alone actually seen.

So there's a nice alternate TV dimension starting to bloom, with three series ('The Agency', 'The District', and 'Prison Break') as well as the first two Slitheen episodes of 'Doctor Who'.

That's right - just the first two episodes of that particular storyline takes place in that brave new world. Because even though Blon Fel Fotch Pasameer-Day Slitheen of Raxacoricofallapatorius returned in "Boom Town", I think everybody involved had already returned to the main Toobworld for that adventure in Cardiff.

And I'll provide that splainin in Part Two of this essay, "Blon Ambition".

BCnU!
Tele-Toby

TV CROSSOVER HALL OF FAME - SEPTEMBER, 2005

With the September entry into the TV Crossover Hall of Fame, the pattern for the last few years has been to induct a show's creator or a writer who helped to make the TV Universe that much more interesting by coming up with crossovers or new trivia - locations, products, characters - which link shows together.

But this year, during my year-long birthday celebration, when everything I say goes, I'd like to induct a fictional TV corporation as one of those powers that be.

The UBS Network - "UBS! Where we put U before the BS."

UBS headquarters used to be in Alta Coma, California. Back in the mid-70s, UBS president Bill Nickerson hired talk show host Barth Gimble to move his talk show 'Fernwood 2Night' from Ohio so that they could take it national on UBS as the retitled 'America 2Night'. Nickerson gave Gimble thirteen weeks to become a part or to come apart.

Three years later, UBS reporter Jamie Hamilton stumbled upon the story of a ragtag fleet of spaceships arriving in the solar system. These spaceships, led by the 'Battlestar Galactica', had become home for the cousins of Terran humans over decades, as they fled the tyranny of Cylon robots who had destroyed their home star system.
In the TV Universe, I've yet to find another example of the UBS TV network, but the United Broadcasting System is such a perfect name that I'm sure it will eventually crop up again. TV shows are always needing fictional TV networks and channels to be the homes of the fictional TV shows they've created.

For instance, on 'Over There', which will only have an initial run of thirteen episodes, there has already been video clips seen from several cable TV news channels. These include UKN (United Kingdom News), NEN (National Evening News), and USANews.

Other networks seen have been the WOLF network on 'Murphy Brown', ZNN on 'JAG' and 'NCIS', CZN on '7 Days', 'ANT' (America's Network of Television) on 'Millennium', and BadWolf TV on 'Doctor Who'. So I'm not worried that one day UBS will reappear in Toobworld.

In the meantime, I could also hypothesize that certain fictional shows were broadcast on UBS. And especially with those shows whose parent series are no longer on the air, there's no way I could be proven wrong in that assumption.

The best example would be 'The Alan Brady Show' from 'The Dick Van Dyke Show'. One might assume that CBS, which televised the Van Dyke sitcom, might have laid claim to broadcasting Alan Brady's variety program as well. But 'The Alan Brady Show' aired on Sunday nights at 8:30 pm opposite 'Yancy Derringer' which was a Western that was on CBS.

There's no way CBS would allow 'The Alan Brady Show' to be thought of as airing on either ABC or NBC, so it has to have been on a fictional Toobworld network. So why not UBS?

And there's another theory of possibility as to why we haven't seen UBS elsewhere in the TV Universe. Iz pozz'ble, iz pozz'ble, that UBS was sold and then had a name change to reflect its new identity. We've seen this happen in the Real World. Take Spike TV. It used to be The National Network and before that it was known as The Nashville Network.

I have no qualms in inducting UBS into the Crossover Hall of Fame with that all-important third qualification as a theoretical. After all, I did the same thing with Samantha Crawford, Kay Howard, Paladin, Number Six, and Ted Baxter.

But I do have an actual third sighting for UBS. However, it's from the Cineverse - the movie universe. Still, it's from a movie that was about the television industry and therefore I think I'm justified in invoking my right this year to include it.

UBS was the central location for the action in "Network", Paddy Chayevsky's cautionary (nigh-apocalyptic!) tale of the abuses he foresaw in the broadcasting industry.

The most memorable scene from the movie was of anchorman Howard Beale on the set of the UBS evening news. Beale ranted and raved in what was supposed to be his final broadcast of the UBS news. He told his viewers to get up and go to their windows and shout out "I'm mad as hell and I'm not going to take it anymore!"

How can I resist such an inclusion?

So there you go. I've got three definite sightings, albeit one from a movie, and a theoretical link where it appeared without being named. So I feel very comfortable in choosing UBS as the TV industry inductee for this month's entry into the TV Crossover Hall of Fame.

And I feel very comfortable in putting that BS before U.....

Here are the year's inductees so far:

JANUARY - Lt. Columbo
FEBRUARY - Barney Collier aka Mr. Peters
MARCH - John Drake/Number "6"
APRIL - Ted Baxter
MAY - Detective Kay "Katy" Howard
JUNE - Arnold Ziffel
JULY - Hec Ramsey aka Paladin
AUGUST - Samantha Crawford
SEPTEMBER - UBS Television Network

I've been running the TV Crossover Hall of Fame since 1999, and one day I will devote the time necessary to create a permanent home for it on the web.

If you're interested in seeing the full list (There are over 100 members so far!), then drop me a note at:

Tubeworld@aol.com

BCnU!
Tele-Toby

FROM THE "SITUATION ROOM"

On Thursday's 'Situation Room' on CNN, Jack Cafferty brought up the "elephant in the room" did so today - that the people who were struck hardest were the poor blacks. All we see are poor blacks on rooftops, in the Superdome, etc. The system failed them because there was no method of evacuation provided them - they didn't own cars, they were too sick to move, etc.

(Cafferty referred viewers to Jack Shafer's article on "Race, Press, And The Hurricane" in Slate.com.)

And then Wolf Blitzer says, "We see image after image of these people who are so poor and so black....."

How black do you have to be?

Just sayin', is all......

God help all of those people still trapped in there, and for those who have been lost, Red Skelton said it best:

"May God bless."

BCnU!
Tele-Toby

"MY NAME IS EARL": A CASTING SUGGESTION

I don't know if the producers of 'My Name Is Earl' will ever include the character of Earl's father in an episode of the show. If so, I don't even know if they've hired an actor already to fill the part.

But here's a suggestion I freely toss out into the Void for the perfect man to play Jason Lee's father on this sitcom:

Dabney Coleman.

And I'm not just basing that on tele-genetics. It's Nurture as well as Nature, and there's just something about Dabney Coleman, even setting aside the characters we know him as best, that seems to suggest there is a LOT in common with Jason Lee's Earl......

Just sayin', is all.

BCnU!
Tele-Toby

CROSSOVER OF THE WEEK!

'Doctor Who' is back on Earth!

Fifteen years after the last regular episode, six years after the one TV movie for the Eighth Doctor, we've had a full series of thirteen episodes featuring Christopher Eccleston as the Ninth Incarnation.

The final episode for this year has aired, signaling the end of Eccleston's tenure and marking the debut of David Tennant in the role.

And so to celebrate, most of my essays and all of the Crossovers will be dedicated to the Doctor for the rest of the summer.

Be forewarned: In my essays during this summer salute to 'Doctor Who', there will be spoilers for each of the episodes, especially in regard to summaries.....

Location: Cardiff, Wales
Date: 2006
Enemy: Blon Fel Fotch Pasameer-Day Slitheen, AKA Margaret Blaine

Stopping off in present-day Cardiff to recharge the TARDIS, The Doctor, Rose and Jack encounter an old foe in the midst of hatching a scheme that could destroy the entire planet.
[Thanks to TV.com]

The TARDIS crew take a holiday, but the Doctor encounters an enemy he thought long since dead. A plan to build a nuclear power station in Cardiff City disguises an alien plot to rip the world apart. And when the Doctor dines with monsters, he discovers traps within traps.
[Thanks to The Doctor Who Reference Guide]

CROSSOVER OF THE WEEK
'DOCTOR WHO' - "BOOM TOWN"
&
'DOGFOOD DAN AND THE CARMARTHEN COWBOY'

Sometimes in trying to find a link for a show, I have to resort to one of the most desperate of measures - location, location, location.

It's one of the most basic excuses for linking shows. (Linking as opposed to a crossover is the key; a difference that lets me sleep at night. LOL)

For instance, I could say the venerable 1960s police drama 'Naked City' can be linked to the sitcom 'Taxi' by virtue of the fact that they're both situated in Manhattan. Such a link can serve as a place-holder until a much better link might come along.

Such was the case with "Naked City Taxi", thanks to a crossover, an in-joke, and several fictional locations. Sgt. Frank Arcaro was shot and wounded, and taken to Manhattan General Hospital in an episode of 'Naked City'. Twenty years later, 'Kay O'Brien' went to work at that same hospital after completing her residency at St. Eligius in Boston. (One 'St. Elsewhere' doctor quipped, "She won't last thirteen weeks!")

Dr. Margaret Turner, formerly on the staff at St. Eligius, was interrogated in "The Box" by Detective Frank Pemberton on 'Homicide: Life On The Street'. And Pemberton, along with other homicide detectives from Baltimore, teamed up with their NYC counterparts at the 2-7 precinct. During another case, those detectives questioned a taxi driver at the Sunshine Cab Company, the location for 'Taxi'.

With the 11th episode of the new 'Doctor Who', I found I had to fall back on the location link. There really was no other choice, as the story of "Boom Town" remained quite insular. It focused on a villain last seen in "Aliens Of London" and "World War Three", as well as on the Time-Space rift in Cardiff first seen in "The Unquiet Dead".

It could be said that "Boom Town" serves as Russell T. Davies' valentine to the city of Cardiff, where the series has been filming. There are great location shots of Cardiff Bay's Oval Basin and the Wales Millennium Centre which is dominated by a facade that trumpets a bit o' poetry by Gwyneth Lewis. ("CREU GWIR FEL GWYDR O FFWRNAIS - IN THESE STONES HORIZONS SING.") Plus there's a prominent cameo for the Western Mail newspaper.

So for another show with connections to Cardiff, I chose "Dogfood Dan And The Carmarthen Cowboy".

These two guys were truckers who worked for rival dog-food companies. One carted his load from Cardiff to Hull, while the other one hauled his from Hull to Cardiff. They met in a roadside truck-stop half-way along their route and became friends. And they would spend their meetings regaling each other with overblown tales about their exciting lives and romantic conquests back home.

The thing of it was though, that because they both "embellished" (okay, outright lied about) their backgrounds, neither one of them glommed on to the true identity of the women in their lives. Neither one was ever aware of the fact that by EXTREME coincidence (a force of nature in Toobworld) they were carrying on affairs with each other's wife.

And there wasn't much chance that the wives might realize the connection between their husbands and their lovers, because Dogfood Dan and the Carmarthen Cowboy were lying about their identities to their mistresses as well!

Aubrey Owen (the Cowboy) passed himself as Aneurin, an MP, to Dan's wife Helen; while Dan would tell Myfanwy Owen that he was transporting top secret abnormal loads.

Before this show became a BBC sitcom, it ran as a one-off on the rival 'ITV Playhouse' six years earlier. In that tele-play, Myfanwy was known as Gwyneth - maybe there wasn't a name change.... Maybe she was lying about her identity to her lover as well?

So that might be the way to go for yet another link between 'Doctor Who' and 'Dogfood Dan And The Carmarthen Cowboy'. But it would be an even more indefensible link. Perhaps Myfanwy's use of the name "Gwyneth" was an unconscious manifestation of an earlier incarnation of her soul? Perhaps she had been the scullery maid back in 1869 Cardiff who sacrificed her life in order to close the Rift and prevent the Gelth from taking over our world.

And now Gwyneth Reborn as Myfanwy was finally reunited with the delivery boy she once secretly desired. But whether he was reborn as Dogfood Dan or the Carmarthen Cowboy, I cannot say.

I know..... if that theory was dog food, I couldn't get a starving mutt to swallow it.

Oh well. We still have two episodes to go. So let's keep on trucking!

BCnU!
Tele-Toby

"If you're going to have an affair,
Make sure her husband has a heart condition."
Duckman
'Duckman'

DOIN' HARD PRIME-TIME

O'BSERVATIONS ABOUT THE 'PRISON BREAK' PREMIERE

[WARNING! THERE WILL BE SPOILERS ABOUT THE FIRST TWO HOURS IN HERE!]

Straight off, the casting of this show made this Toobworld caretaker happy. When it comes to tele-genetics, Dominic Purcell and Wentworth Miller are totally convincing as brothers.
~~~~~~
Because Lincoln Burrows is on the Death Row fast track for assassinating the Vice President's brother, we have to unfortunately incarcerate 'Prison Break' in an alternate TV dimension. Bush and Cheney are the elected leaders of this country both in TV Land as well as in the Real World. And I don't even know if Cheney's got a brother.

(I'll have more on the location of 'Prison Break' in the TV Universe in a related post.)
~~~~~~
When Michael Schofield arrives in prison, it's April of 2006. Lincoln Burrows is scheduled to be executed a month later - May 11th.

How convenient that it should coincide with May Sweeps.....
~~~~~~~
One of the supporting players is a prisoner who is supposedly D.B. Cooper. The legendary Cooper stole a fortune/got a big ransom (something like that) and then vanished after parachuting out of a plane over the Northwest woods back in the early 1970s.

I guess the decision to portray an actual personage who's possibly still alive in a fictional drama was probably similar to Ira Levin's decision to use Dr. Josef Mengele in "The Boys From Brazil". If they didn't like it, tough. It's not like they were ever going to come out of hiding to complain.
~~~~~~
Peter Stormare should be getting all the roles which would have gone to the late Brion James. And Vincent Schiavelli should play his older brother on the show.
~~~~~~
The over-abundance of coincidences in Michael Schofield's plan to help his brother escape from prison could jeopardize the audience's willing suspension of disbelief. (For instance, the prison doctor just happens to be the daughter of the governor.)

I don't think we've seen the last of these.....
~~~~~~
The name of the prison is Fox River State Penitentiary. Is this a kiss-up to the network as the name Fox Mulder was once rumored to be?

I suppose if the show had landed on CBS, it would have been Paley Penitentiary.....
~~~~~~~
I'm intrigued by the mystery woman pulling the strings behind the Secret Service plot. She reminds me of Piper Laurie's character in 'Twin Peaks', Bonnie Bartlet on 'Wiseguy', Meryl Streep in "The Manchurian Candidate" - strong, powerful, utterly ruthless, and in charge. And masking it all behind the facade of "Family".

No clue yet as to who's playing her. But then I haven't begun sniffing around the usual info sites yet.

But for some reason, I got it into my head that if she would only turn around, we'd see Patricia Wettig.
~~~~~~~~~
Finally.....

Nothing says "Tune in next week!" like severing a toe!

BCnU!
Tele-Toby