SATURDAY MORNING SUPERHEROES

"Some guy who looked like Batman saved me." 

Roger
'CSI'
"Hero To Zero"

This is one of those references which I would consider being about the real Batman. 

Although the "superhero" in question was tricked out more like Christian Bale in the movies, Roger was a homeless man who probably never saw any of the movies with their fictionalized portrayals of the 1960s crime fighter.  Therefore he must have been talking about the "real-life" Caped Crusader.

Of course, he may not have fallen on hard times until recently.  So it's pozz'ble, just pozz'ble, that he had seen the TV show made about the real Batman and which starred TVXOHOF member (twice over!) Adam West, who bore an amazing resemblance to Bruce Wayne.

See you next time,
Same Toob-time, same Toob-channel!

"THE SWEENEY" SISTER

'WOLFBLOOD'
"THE CURE"

Victoria Sweeney is the head of security for the lycanthropic corporation known as Segolia.  When referred to by her underlings and others in the firm, they call her "The Sweeney".  But always behind her back.....

For the British viewers, it would seem that the nickname is a reference to the TV show from the 1970s which starred John Thaw and Dennis Waterman and which inspired the ambience of Sam Tyler's nightmare world in 'Life On Mars'.  The rough tactics of the members of that team of detectives would suggest that those Segolia employees saw a kinship in Ms. Sweeney to those maverick coppers.

But "The Sweeney" is actually a reference to an actual squad of detectives.

From Wikipedia:
The Flying Squad is a branch of the Specialist Crime & Operations section, within London's Metropolitan Police Service. The Squad's purpose is to investigate commercial armed robberies, along with the prevention and investigation of other serious armed crime. Possibly one of the best known operations of the squad was their foiling of the Millennium Dome raid.

The Flying Squad's work was dramatised in the 1970s British television series 'The Sweeney', and two theatrically released feature film spin-offs, Sweeney! and Sweeney 2, starring John Thaw and Dennis Waterman.

'The Sweeney' is a 1970s British television police drama focusing on two members of the Flying Squad, a branch of the Metropolitan Police specialising in tackling armed robbery and violent crime in London. The programme's title derives from Sweeney Todd, which is Cockney rhyming slang for "Flying Squad".

A further film adaptation, The Sweeney (starring Ray Winstone), was released in 2012.

So there is no discrepancy in calling Victoria Sweeney "The Sweeney".  But you might be in for worse than a Zonk should she catch you doing so!

BCnU!


 

TIDDLYWINKYDINKS - FROM BOOKWORLD TO TOOBWORLD

'AGENT CARTER'
"THE BLITZKRIEG BUTTON"

In order to excuse herself from the others in her resident hotel so that she could get back to her undercover activities, Peggy Carter said that she was reading the latest Agatha Christie novel and had only five pages to go.

This would have to be "The Hollow", which would be known as "Murder After Hours" once it was published in 1946.  It was a classic "country house mystery" which Dame Agatha would later contend that she ruined by introducing Hercule Poirot into the narrative so late in the story.

But of course, that's in the Real World.....

In Toobworld, Agatha Christie was merely fictionalizing the actual Christow murder case.  Even though the events of the book came first and are considered official in BookWorld, in Toobworld we have to accept that the events as played out in the TV adaptation in 2004 were what really happened.  The televersion of Christie (played by Finella Woolgar in an episode of 'Doctor Who') embellished the real life events to fit her story's needs and even invented a character by the name of David Angkatell.  She let the murderer escape death by poisoned tea (although the killer would still likely be put to death by the State) when in the reality of Toobworld the murderer commited suicide.

This is another good example why the Toobworld Dynamic doesn't absorb books into the TV Universe; there would be just too many discrepancies to splain away.

BCnU!

LASSIE - THE OTHER WHITE MEAT

'McHALE'S NAVY'
"THE DAY THEY CAPTURED SANTA"

The character of Lassie was first created by Eric Knight in a short story which he expanded to a novel published in 1940.  The movie version was released in 1943.

One Christmas, during World War II, Commander Quinton McHale and his men decided to bring a little holiday cheer to the children of Miss Parfey's orphanage on Taratupa.  They dressed up as Santa Claus and his oddball assortment of elves and made toys for all of the kids.

In the bedlam which ensued as the children celebrated, one little girl, named Tani, was seen chasing a piglet through the room. 

"Lassie, come back!" Tani cried as she ran after it.

I am no expert on the timeline for 'McHale's Navy', but I think I will claim that the little girl knew of Lassie from the book, which Miss Parfrey probably read to her charges.  America didn't enter the war until December 7, 1941, and by 1945 McHale's squad was stationed in Italy.  The window doesn't seem wide enough for a print of a 1943 movie to have been available for use in a far off destination like Taratupa during a time of war. 

I could be wrong, but the book is a logical and safer choice.

There is no Zonk when it comes to the TV version of 'Lassie', by the way.  Jeff Miller was also inspired to name his collie after the fictional dog, and since that happened most likely in 1953, a decade after the movie came out, I have no problem in claiming he was inspired by "Lassie, Come Home" the movie.

BCnU!

TUESDAY NEWS DAY - FAST TRACK TO THE TVXOHOF

'Chicago P.D.' which is a spin-off from 'Chicago Fire', will now be spinning off a new member of the "Chicago Wolf" franchise via Dr. Ryan Halstead, brother to Officer Jay Halstead.  

Apparently he will be the lynchpin for 'Chicago Med' which Dick Wolf is hoping will go to series, about which I've already posted.  According to executive producer Matt Olmstead, this new character is "a bit of a playboy and a successful doctor, but always off to the next good time.  [He] never really sticks around when things get complicated. We’re finding him in a point in his life when he has to knuckle down and get real about being in Chicago."

The role will be played by Nick Gehlfuss who previously had been in the series 'Shameless'.  After his debut on 'Chicago P.D.', Gehlfuss will be playing Dr. Halstead in an episode of 'Chicago Fire'.  And that's the episode which will serve as the backdoor pilot.

So that means it's pozz'ble, just pozz'ble, that Dr. Ryan Halstead will be eligible for the Television Crossover Hall Of Fame before the year is out......

BCnU!

TVXOHOF, 02/2015 - LITTLE MARTHA

Moving on in our British theme for the 2015 Television Crossover Hall Of Fame, we come to the month of February.  As has been the tradition, February is sort of the Black History month, as it is in the real world.  And we have the perfect candidate who fits into our theme.....

DOCTOR MARTHA JONES

Martha Jones first materialized on our TV screens in 'Doctor Who' during the second year of David Tennant's tenure as the Doctor.  She became his Companion for that season, but left him at the end because there was so much more she wanted to do with her life.

But she could never go back to her previous life; the Doctor had basically ruined her for that by opening up the wonders of the Universe to her.  So Martha went to work for UNIT.

She came back to the show for a two-part episode and later for the two-part season finale in which she played a large important role.  But she also showed up for several 'Torchwood' episodes in which she worked with the team as a UNIT "advisor" on several cases.

The last time we saw her in Earth Prime-Time, she had now hooked up with Mickey Smith, another former Companion and the former boyfriend of Rose Tyler.  By "hooked up", I mean they were working together - seen together in an abandoned factory being attacked by a Sontaran (whom I believe was Strax, but I can't be certain.)  

They could have become lovers, perhaps even a married couple, by the time the Doctor rescued them during his "farewell tour".  (That scene would not have necessarily been happening around the same time as it was broadcast; it could still be in the Future of the Toobworld timeline.)

Who knows?
As Unseen On TV?

But I would hope we someday get to see Mickey and Martha working together again in the world of 'Doctor Who'.  They would make for a great team of leading roles for another spin-off, perhaps as independent agents or working still for UNIT.  "Smith & Jones" does have a nice ring to it....

Still, that's only two TV shows to her credit and we can only count 'Doctor Who' once, even though she came back several times as a guest star rather than as a co-star.  However, Martha was seen again the greater Toobworld Dynamic - she and the Doctor were seen as their counterparts in the Tooniverse for a special one-off, "The Infinite Quest".  

With that, Dr. Martha Jones fulfills the requirements necessary for entry into the Television Crossover Hall Of Fame.

Well Come!

VIDEO SUPER BOWL SUNDAY - BAD LIP READING THEATER

 

 

 

SATURDAY MORNING SUPERHEROES

I don't know if I've given this blog a tip of the hat in the past, but I'd like to introduce all of you in Team Toobworld to "Super Team Family", which celebrates the front covers of comic book team-ups that never were.... BUT SHOULD BE!

Recently, Super Team Family had a cover that teamed up the TV versions (for us, the "televersions") of Spiderman and Batman. In Earth Prime-Time, Spiderman was played by Nicholas Hammond in a CBS series in the mid-1970s. And the one, the only true Caped Crusader was played by Adam West in the 1960s for three seasons and a theatrical release.  

For Toobworld, this is entirely feasible. Although the TV series went off the air in 1969, 'Batman' and his sidekick Robin the Boy Wonder were active in Gotham City through the 1970s and probably into the 1980s as well. So it's pozz'ble, just pozz'ble that Batman may have made the trip to New York City, or Spiderman trekked to Gotham City. (Personally, I think this is a picture of Batman and Spiderman in New York City. It would be easy to accept that Bruce Wayne had to go to the Big Apple on business. But as to why Peter Parker needed to go to Gotham City......?)

This is just another example of Toobworld, "As Unseen on TV". It's what we call the Khan-Chekov Principle, inspired by Khan Noonian Singh's claim in the movie "The Wrath Of Khan" that he had encountered Pavel Chekov in the past. And yet we never saw that happen in the episode "Space Seed". We can be fairly certain that it happened, but unfortunately the audience in the Trueniverse never had the privilege to see it.....

And it's not such a ridiculous idea for Batman to encounter Spiderman in Toobworld. After all, this happened over in the Tooniverse.....

Excelsior!

LITTLE BIG SCREEN - (EVIL) DEAD AIR

'THE LIBRARIANS'
"AND THE LOOM OF FATE"

In the season finale for the series, Colonel Baird and alt dimension Finn Carsen [who had never become a Librarian] jumped from one alternate reality to the next to meet those incarnations of the Librarian.  Each one of them was a counterpart to one of the three apprentice Librarians from Earth Prime-Time:

1) Jake Stone, a derring-do adventurer in an anarchic world of wild magic and constant war
2) Ezekiel Jones, a techno-mage for a world in which the world's population had been possessed by the spirits of the dead
3) Cassandra Cillian, a sorceress whose world had reverted to the Old Ways and the dragons had awakened to rule the skies

Techno-mage Ezekiel's laboratory/stronghold was that world's last bastion against the hordes of the undead who had the place surrounded.  As he gazed out at them, moaning their desire to possess them, Ezekiel muttered:

"Sod off, Deadites."

"Deadites" is a term coined for the "Evil Dead" franchise.  Here's the description from the Evil Dead Wiki:

A "Deadite" is a life-force, person, animal or plant possessed by a Kandarian Demon. They are described as evil demonic zombies and are the main antagonists of the Evil Dead Franchise. Their disembodied forms are rarely shown, notable examples being when the evil was put in the "world of the flesh".

Many times I will take a tossed-off comment in a TV show about some fictional character from a different medium to mean that what was being referenced actually did exist in the TV dimension.  With many references this is easy to enough to make convincing because they are references to characters who existed already in TV anyway - Superman, Batman, Indiana Jones, Methuseleh. 

But in this case, I don't think Ezekiel's epithet is proof that the characters of "The Evil Dead" existed in Toobworld.  For Earth Prime-Time, Bruce Campbell is Sam Axe, not Ash Williams.

I've looked through the other TV shows which have mentioned "The Evil Dead" and none of them treated the movie as if it was part of their world. 

• 'Stargate SG1'
• 'Buffy the Vampire Slayer'
• 'Angel'
• 'Torchwood'
• 'Ghost Whisperer'
• 'The Goldbergs'

In that last one, a video store clerk was wearing an "Evil Dead" T-shirt.  With the others, characters cited the movie title as a short-hand description for the bad guys they were facing.

So this is just a case of Ezekiel being familiar with the movie and basically quoting from it. He was using "Deadite" as a comparison, not actually claiming that these ghouls were possessed by Kandarian demons. 

BCnU!

BOOK 'EM, TOBIO - I AM A CUNNING SERLINGUIST

Near the end of my loooong-gestating novel about the adventures of twin brothers in the TV Universe, I created a race of elves in the Tolkien mode.  (But they would be more at home in a magical sitcom similar to those from the 1960s - 'I Dream Of Jeannie', 'Bewitched', 'My Favorite Martian', 'Mr. Ed', etc.)

And for these elves, the Telvish, I created a language.  Hey, if I was going to mimic J.R.R., I might as well go whole hog!

The Telvish language will be rooted in the last names of actual people connected to the television industry.  Sometimes a person's full name will be used and that would be an archaic term left over from the classic Old High Telvish.

(An example of Old High Telvish would be the word for a huge beast native to Africa and India that has a prehensile trunk and ivory tusks - an allenfunt.)

Almost all of the Telvish words sound like their counterparts in the English language, which will make it easier for the reader to comprehend without time-consuming translations.  (Within the reality of the story, the Telvish and their language were created by one of those twin brothers back in the real world on public access television, using the same reasoning.)

Some of the words in Telvish are exactly the same as in English:

Long   Black  White Garner  Light   Hole  Burns   Day   Butters

The words are not altered in any way to indicate past or future tense if they are used as verbs.  My splainin for that - the Telvish live in the Now.....

Those words could be connected to form another term but there might already be a Telvish term that would better serve the situation.

For instance: a soft white light would be called a glau.  And the scientific phenomenon known as a black hole would instead be known as a sharpton.  (All jokes aside, perhaps degrasse-tyson might have been better for a cosmic singularity, but that's the Telvish word for really good weed, man.....  And except for sharpton, I don't want people to assume the translations reflect on the person supplying the name.)

Only a few Telvish words are actually used in the novel:

• mirren - twin, lookalike
• wendt - to go
• zmed - let's just say you don't want to step in it....

But that doesn't stop me from creating more.  Every time I see an off-beat last name in the credits of a TV show, I write it down.  I may not come up with a translation right away, but eventually inspiration strikes.

The latest addition to the lexicon is duplass, from Jay Duplass of 'Transparent'.  It joins the last name of his co-star Jeffrey Tambor which has been garner a long time ago.  Duplass translates to "deceitful".  (A tambor is a hand-held percussive instrument.)

Here is a list of some of the Telvish words I've documented so far.  I'm not going to supply all of them - the list would go on for a long time and I don't want to lose any followers who got bored!

• arndt - contraction for "is not"
• asner - a real jerk
• beery - a drunk
• burr - cold
• de la tour - a vacation excursion
• duhamel - hoofed desert beast with two humps
• feige - unclear, indefinite
• farwell - goodbye
• fazekas - flippant
• froggatt - amphibious creature
• hamel - hoofed desert beast with one hump
• hartnell - a coronary episode
• ihnat - either "is that not true" (like the British slang "Innit?") or slang for "Are you tapping that?"
• kinsolving - genealogy research
• kwatins - a large amount
• monaster - a holy man
• offerman - assassin
• pertwee - a small child
• rhimes - poetry
• richelmy - the wealthy elite
• snoad - blizzard
• tennant - century
• troughton - to go fishing
• truex - facts

As the book stands right now, the Telvish only make a small cameo at the very end of the book.  But I do have plans to jettison two of the main stories in it and use those as the bases for two additional novels, making a trilogy called "The Toobworld Chronicles".  The Telvish would be a major part of that third book.  (I'd tell you the title, but of the three that's the one I don't want stolen!)

As to when the first novel might see the light of day?  The events of 2014, my annus horribilis as Her Majesty might say, have convinced me I have to get cracking on it.  And my blogmate Robert Wronski, Jr. is a great inspiration....

BCnU!