TRIBUTE TO A STONEY FIGURE

Sometimes it takes me awhile to track down a decent picture for a particular topic here at the Inner Toob. But I'm a patient fellow; I went many years without any pictures at all. Probably not the best thing for a blog about such a visual medium as Television, but there you are.

In January of this year, actor Kevin Stoney passed away at the age of 86. He is perhaps best known in TV for his roles in 'Doctor Who' and 'The Prisoner', both of which were easy enough to find pictorial evidence. But he also came quite close to capturing a berth in the TV Crossover Hall of Fame for two different productions, nearly ten years apart.

In episodes of 'The Caesars' in 1968 and in 'I, Claudius' from 1976, Stoney appeared as the oracle Thrasyllus, advisor to Tiberius while in exile. I'm not sure if I'll ever track down a copy of the earlier mini-series, but I borrowed my brother's copy of the 'I, Claudius' boxed set while I was last home in Connecticut. Although it was in order to get a few frame grabs of Kevin Stoney, it had been too long since I last saw this series. So I've started watching it again tonight.

So here's a picture of the late Mr. Stoney as Thrasyllus. Had he only played the role one other time in some other Roman epic, Thrasyllus might have been a contender for inclusion in the TV Crossover Hall Of Fame.

BCnU!
Toby OB

TODAY'S TWD: PEST IN SHOW

In Toobworld, we know bugs can talk. It's a given over in the Tooniverse - Atom Ant, Fearless Fly, those Raid commercials..... But even in the live-action dimension of Earth Prime-Time, insects and other creepy crawlies have been known to speak up.

But when that termite turns out to be about six feet tall and knows how to drive a get-away car, you have to figure there's more going on in these shots from the latest commercial for Orkin:

You've got to give the guy credit though - he keeps his head in a crisis and doesn't scream like a little girlie-man upon seeng a six-foot-tall termite on his doorstep, asking to use the phone!

This particular pest is probably the lead scout for some invading army of insectivorids on Earth. Maybe it's connected to the Wirm of "The Ark In Space", or the Menoptera and the Zarbi of "The Web Planet" on 'Doctor Who' or those Martian buggies of 'Quatermass'. But no matter where it's from, luckily the Orkin Man was ready to take on that giant termite.
My friends Gene and Ivy aren't so fortunate - they've got thirty holes along each wall in the baseboard as their building's owner fights the real thing. They should have been so lucky to face off against a much larger [and therefore easier to kill] termite like the one in the Orkin blipvert.

BCnU!
Toby OB

THE ART-FULL DODGE

That corner of the Tooniverse in which you can find the sketched inhabitants from such productions as the a-Ha video "Take On Me" continues to exist. And people and things from the live-action main Toobworld can still cross over into their plane of existence.

The latest example is in a new Dodge blipvert, as seen in the picture below.
BCnU!
Toby OB

TODAY'S TWD: HI KARACHI

Right at the beginning of "The Karachi Story", private eye Michael Lanyard (AKA 'The Lone Wolf') said that "The flying time from New York to Karachi is approximately 40 hours."

That was back in 1954. Today the flight duration could be anywhere from just over 16 hours to over 51 hours - at least based on a website I just checked out....

But here's the thing - when Lanyard flew to Karachi, it took him even longer than 40 hours because of flight problems which kept him bogged down in New Delhi.

I'm not the greatest with maps, but if you were flying to Pakistan, wouldn't you be flying East to save time? And if so, wouldn't the plane - which probably had to refuel at least in England - be closer to Karachi than to New Delhi if it developed problems?
Maybe there was some angle to the approach route that kept the plane farther north for a time (due to which countries they were going to be flying over?). Or maybe the flight headed west from New York, across the United States and then down across the Pacific. (Which might splain why some flights even today seem to take 51 hours!)

At any rate, just another bit o' trivia from an old show that I didn't let slip past me.....

BCnU!
Toby OB

DEAR GOSIA.....

生日快乐小女神母亲

Luff,
Toby OB

TODAY'S TWD: LINCOLN'S ASSASSINATION

On April 14th, 1865, one of the most defining and most tragic of events happened in American history - President Abraham Lincoln was assassinated in Ford's Theatre in Washington, DC, as the Civil War was drawing to a close.

Here's how the New York Times headlines announced the news:

President Lincoln Shot by an Assassin

The Deed Done at Ford's Theatre Last Night

THE ACT OF A DESPERATE REBEL

The President Still Alive at Last Accounts.

No Hopes Entertained of His Recovery.

Attempted Assassination of Secretary Seward.

DETAILS OF THE DREADFUL TRAGEDY.

And here's how their dispatch began:

Washington, Friday, April 14, 12:30 A.M. - The President was shot in a theatre tonight, and is perhaps mortally wounded. Secretary Seward was also assassinated.

Second Dispatch.Washington, Friday, April 14 - President Lincoln and wife, with other friends, this evening visited Ford's Theatre for the purpose of witnessing the performance of the "American Cousin."

It was announced in the papers that Gen. Grant would also be present, but he took the late train of cars for New-Jersey.

The theatre was densely crowded, and everybody seemed delighted with the scene before them. During the third act, and while there was a temporary pause for one of the actors to enter, a sharp report of a pistol was heard, which merely attracted attention, but suggesting nothing serious, until a man rushed to the front of the President's box, waving a long dagger in his right hand, and exclaiming "Sic semper tyrannis," and immediately leaped from the box, which was in the second tier, to the opposite side, making his escape amid the bewilderment of the audience from the rear of the theatre, and mounting a horse, fled.

The screams of Mrs. Lincoln first disclosed the fact to the audience that the President had been shot, when all present rose to their feet, rushing toward the stage, many exclaiming "Hang him! Hang him!"

The excitement was of the wildest possible description, and of course there was an abrupt termination of the theatrical performance.

Over the years since Television began, the assassination of Abraham Lincoln has been addressed in many TV shows, mini-series, and TV movies. And not just those of a historical bent, like "The Great Man's Whiskers" and "North & South", but also series like 'The Time Tunnel', 'The Twilight Zone', and 'The Dick Van Dyke Show'.

On February 9th, 1956, 96 year old Samuel Seymour appeared as a guest on 'I've Got A Secret'. (The celebrity guest that night was Lucille Ball.) Mr. Seymour was the last surviving witness to the assassination of President Lincoln, and he was five years old at the time. He had gone with the family of one of his young friends.

All Mr. Seymour remembered of that fateful and fatal night was that a man fell out of the balcony and onto the stage. It wasn't until after they had escaped the pandemonium in the theater did the little boy find out that the President had been killed.

Mr. Seymour lived in Maryland and he died in April of 1956, 91 years after the assassination of Abraham Lincoln.

If you want to see Mr. Seymour's appearance on 'I've Got A Secret', click here or here.

BCnU!

Toby OB

AN UGLY TOON OF EVENTS

The Tooniverse has had many of its own versions of live-action TV series in its dimension over the years. Gilligan, Mork, Fonzie, Punky Brewster, Ed Grimley, Jeannie, Mr. Spock, the Brady Bunch, and Batman and Superman. Their situations may have changed from the original - Gilligan is in outer space! The Brady Bunch hang out with pandas! - but these are their lives in the world of animated cartoons.
'Yo Soy Betty, la Fea' of Colombia, which has a live-action version in at least eleven different countries, including 'Ugly Betty' of the United States (Mexico remade the series twice!), now also has an animated version called 'Betty Toons'.

Like those other animated series mentioned above, the cartoon version of Betty also has a gimmick - the stories chronicle Betty's exploits as a little girl, much like those recent minisodes about Shawn and Gus of 'Psych'.

'Betty Toons' is televised in the USA on the Tele-Futura network on Saturday mornings.

BCnU!
Toby OB

KA DOOM!

According to a new Ford Ka commercial from Argentina, there is a species of monster, looking like some Muppet gone horribly wrong, living in the South American jungles just outside of Buenos Aires.

In the blipvert, a fully-grown male is trying to pacify its colicky infant and resorts to feeding it the many passengers which can be held in a state-of-the-art Ka. The baby monster keeps crying, so the father keeps shaking out the contents of the Ka. It looks like it can easily seat ten humans.

Finally the infant is sated, which leaves just one last human for the adult male to gobble down.

What a great way to sell cars!

It may seem stupid, but hey - if it was broadcast, then it must have happened in Toobworld.....

BCnU!
Toby OB

HOT OFF THE PRESS - 27 YEARS LATER

Thanks to Sleuth TV running old pilots as their morning movies, Toobworld can bring another production into the list of subscribers for the Los Angeles Tribune.

Near the end of "The Chinese Typewriter" that could have launched a series with Tom Selleck and James Whitmore, Jr., we saw the front page of the Trib with a headline about William Daniels' character skipping bond and fleeing the country.

The screen shot adds "The Chinese Typewriter" to a collection of shows that includes 'Lou Grant', 'Burke's Law', and the 'Lookwell' pilot.

BCnU!
Toby OB

BORN TO RERUN: BONNIE, GRETA, EMILY, AND ALICE

In the penultimate episode of the second season of 'Torchwood', we glimpsed "Fragments" of the team's past, specifically how each of them joined Torchwood. (All but Gwen that is, as her story was the basis of the series premiere.)

With Jack Harkness, we saw how he was kidnapped by the two women who ran the Cardiff branch in 1899 - Alice Guppy and Emily Holroyd. Emily was the more reasonable of the two, but not by much; she was just as willing to keep killing the immortal Jack until they got what they wanted - either the location of the Doctor and/or Jack's servitude to Torchwood. Alice was the more headstrong member, shooting a young "blowfish" alien to death just to spare herself the tedium of keeping him in custody.

Eventually they died, perhaps in the line of duty, as did their replacements down through the decades. After some time, the souls of Emily Holroyd and Alice Guppy were reincarnated, which is a common enough experience in Toobworld. And as happened with Ross and Demelza Poldark, they were reincarnated so that they would eventually meet up again. (Ross and Demelza came back as Greg Montgomery and Dharma Finkelstein.)

Now with most reincarnated souls, they should have advanced in some way in their next life; stoked up on their karma to make themselves better persons.

Unfortunately, when Emily and Alice were reincarnated, they hewed closely to the way they operated in the past......
(Seen here: Bonnie, Greta, and Charlie Pace in the Looking Glass Hatch underwater from 'Lost.)

Even their personalities seem to match up - Like Emily, Bonnie was more even-handed and probably could have listened to reason had it not been for Greta. Greta was the blonde who was more than willing to keep beating Charlie until the sea cows came home.

Unfortunately, Bonnie and Greta were dispatched by Mikhael. Hopefully before they are reincarnated again, they'll work on the basic nature of their souls to move on to a better level.'

BCnU!
Toby OB