DV-ARRRRRRRGH!

Well, I'm going to need to re-adjust my DVR schedule for Tuesdays. Good thing I saw 'Fringe' last week at the Paley Centre for Media as part of the FOX premiere party, because I totally forgot to set it up to be recorded.

Not that it would have really mattered though - it would have clashed with both 'Eureka' on Sci-Fi' and 'Gavin & Stacey' on BBC-A. I'm pretty sure G&S appears later in the night, even later in the week, so it shouldn't be a problem to get it on the rebound.

I am bothering to record the last ten minutes though, now that G&S has concluded, because 'Fringe' is worth seeing that much. (And especially this particular last ten minutes!)

BCnU!
Toby O'B

JANE AUSTEN'S TOOBWORLD

Thanks to YouTube, I watched the first episode of 'Lost In Austen' today. That's not a mis-spelling, as it's not a geographical reference to the Texan city. Instead, it's about Jane Austen and the world she created in her books, specifically "Pride And Prejudice".

The wonderful Jemima Rooper, who as the ghost Thelma was the only good thing about 'Hex', stars in 'Lost In Austen' as Amanda Price who is obsessed with the book. After yet another disastrous evening with her dolt of a boyfriend, Amanda is visited by the heroine of "Pride And Prejudice", Miss Elizabeth Bennett. Elizabeth has entered Amanda's modern world via a portal in the bathroom, and she leads Amanda back into her world - only to abandon her there as she takes advantage of the "real world". After that, Amanda has to find her way back while at the same time she must keep the story that she knows so well continuing on the path it should be taking. But that's not so easy when Mr. Darcy and Mr. Bingley are both more interested in her than the women they should be courting....
Of course, the "real world" of 'Lost In Austen' is Toobworld, Earth Prime-Time. And this may be the first example of a character from the TV Universe being transported to the Literary Universe. (I have yet to come up with a code name for this universe. We have Toobworld, the Tooniverse [dimension of TV cartoons], Skitlandia [dimension of TV sketch comedy], and the "Cineverse" [Craig Shaw Gardner's term for the B-movie universe].)

In Toobworld, we've seen characters from the Tooniverse cross over, like Daffy Duck ('The Drew Carey Show') and Superman (Amex commercials). 'Hi Honey, I'm Home' was about Toobworld's Toobworld, in which fictional characters from their TV shows (many of which were the same as ours) living among the "real people". There was a light beer commercial in which you could insert yourself into a badly dubbed martial arts movie just by slamming your beer bottle on top of the TV.

So 'Lost In Austen' follows that same idea, only about a Toobworld character inside a book. (I'm wondering if down the road, Amanda will find herself crossing paths with the characters from other novels by Jane Austen, so that it gets all blurry?)

It's not a new idea. Fletcher Pratt and L. Sprague deCamp kind of started it with the stories about "The Incompleat Enchanter" in which their hero ended up in the worlds of Norse mythology, Spenser's "The Faerie Queene", "Orlando Furioso", and Coleridge's "Kubla Khan". (A second series of stories by deCamp with other collaborators after the death of Pratt sent the original characters into the worlds of "The Wizard Of Oz", Burrough's Barsoom books, "Don Quixote", and Shakespeare's "The Tempest".

Another book with a similar theme was Marvin L. Kaye's "The Incredible Umbrella", in which his hero ended up in a world that was a melange of Victorian literature like "Three Penny Opera", "The Pickwick Papers", and the Sherlock Holmes stories of Conan Doyle.

And it may not be a new idea within Toobworld, either. We could use this premise to incorporate more than one version of "A Connecticut Yankee In King Arthur's Court", for instance. It would be the perfect splainin for those TV adaptations that use a different character to go back to Camelot who is also familiar with the original book by Mark Twain.

And we don't have to worry about making sure 'Lost In Austen' reconciles with the TV adaptation of 'Pride And Prejudice'. Because the world in which Amanda finds herself is based on her vision of what those characters and those locations should look like after reading the book as often as she did. This argument would also work for other variations like the "Connecticut Yankee" model.

'Lost In Austen' is an ITV production. That first episode could be taken down at any time by YouTube, and I don't know if I'll be able to see anymore episodes that way. (One of these days I'll have to become an official member of the bit torrent rebel alliance - not that I'll ever tell Big Brother when I do!) I'd love for BBC-America to pick up this show, and they could promote it for its sci-fi/fantasy aspects. The fact that it's from a rival network in the UK shouldn't be a hindrance, as they're also showing another ITV show, 'Primeval', over here.

As Jane Austen might have written, just sayin', is all......

BCnU!
Toby O'B

TODAY'S TWD: ON THE NINTH OF SEPTEMBER

I'm a bit pressed for time, as I'm more excited about writing about the first episode of 'Lost In Austen' later today. And I'm way overdue for nappies because of that episode and a dental appointment earlier this morning. So today's Tiddlywinkydink is another plucked from the Toobworld Timeline.

Today is September 9, 2008. On this date in the TV Universe:

1969
September 9

Jesus Ortega murders Father Vincent Torrelli in Tallahasee, Florida.

('Quantum Leap')

1978

September 9

Legendary private eye Buddy Faro vanished for the next twenty years.

('Buddy Faro')

Must dash!

BCnU!
Toby O'B

SPOILING FOR A FIGHT?

I'm working on a piece regarding Lt. Columbo in Toobworld, and mention of the character in other TV shows and I've stumbled on a thorny problem......

When is it okay to freely talk about big revelations in TV shows? Or is it never okay to do so?

Looking at it from a movie stand-point, I think it should be punishable somehow if the secret of 'Citizen Kane' is revealed to somebody who's never seen the movie.

But if I did that for 'Lost', 'The Prisoner', even 'The Mary Tyler Moore Show', it would leave me hobbled with my hands tied.

The problem is going to rise up again soon with the new version of 'Life On Mars', about to air on ABC. Those of us who've seen the original can't even speculate about how long the show may run without risk of letting something slip out. (BTW - the original version is one of my ten favorite shows, and it all has to do with Gene Hunt as well as the final episode. Now see? By stating that, have I given anything up?)

Anyhoo, I think I'll be able to work around it for the 'Columbo' piece, we'll see......
BCnU!
Toby O'B

ECHOES: SALOME JEST

Just a tidbit in connection with Angela Lansbury.....

In the 'Murder, She Wrote' episode entitled "Death 'n" Denial", there was a character in the Egypt-based story named Sally Otterburn.

Ms. Lansbury appeared in the movie "Death On The Nile", which was an Agatha Christie mystery starring Peter Ustinov as Hercule Poirot. In the film her character was named Salome Otterbourne....
BCnU!
Toby O'B

TODAY'S TWD: FUNLAND

Because of the closing of Astroland yesterday, the world famous amusement park in Coney Island, I thought I'd tip my hat to another amusement park in Toobworld.....

Thanks to my friend Mark, I'm finally catching up to the Cleary brothers by working my way through episodes of 'Father Ted'. The Channel 4 sitcom added Craggy Island to the locations only to be found in Toobworld. (The real world does have a Craggy Island, but it's in Tasmania, not off the west coast of Ireland.)

Here's how Wikipedia describes the place:

Wholly bleak, desolate and otherwise unpleasant, Craggy Island is not found on any map and contains no places anyone would want to visit. Due to these qualities, it was the perfect place to send Father Ted, Crilly, Father Dougal McGuire, and Father Jack Hackett, - the series' principal characters - as punishment by Bishop Brennan for their individual wrongdoings.

But my favorite bit o' trivia contributed by the show so far has been the traveling amusement park/arcade known as Funland. With Coney Island's Astroland having closed down on Sunday, I thought I'd take a look at this sad little travesty which included the following rides or amusements:

The Whirly-go-round (pictured)

Freak Pointing

Duck Startling

The Chair of Death

[This was my favorite - it was just a park bench suspended by a crane!]

Goading Fierce Man

The Pond Of Terror

The Spinning Cat

[A close second - just a tabby on a record player turntable!]

Tarot Reading

The Ladder

The Tunnel Of Goats

I'd like for the Funland folks to pay a visit to my Toobworld sites of Hiatusport and Twigganum someday.....

By the way, the last time I know of in which Astroland figured in a Toobworld setting was last season in an episode of 'New Amsterdam'. It may have been the only time it figured in a TV show. (Maybe 'Seinfeld'?) And now it's just as much history as that show is.....

BCnU!
Toby O'B

MURDER, SHE ZONKED

"Oh, yeah, I used my last bottle of chloroform
when I was on 'Murder She Wrote'."
Dale
'Greek'

Jessica Fletcher of 'Murder, She Wrote' has been a best-selling mystery author in Toobworld since the early eighties, probably best compared to her contemporaries Glynis Granville ('Glynis' with Glynis Johns - Glynis! Glynis! Glynis!) and Dame Margot Woodhouse, who wrote "Death Rinses Out A Few Things" (from 'Dream On'). Even while the show was on the air, the TV and movie rights to several of her books (under the pen name JB Fletcher) were optioned and sometimes even produced within the reality of Toobworld.

In the decade or so since the show went off the air, it's likely that any mention of 'Murder, She Wrote' is about a TV show based on the works of Jessica Fletcher. If it's Jessica Fletcher herself who is mentioned, then it's because she is that famous an author, like Dame Agatha Christie, that everybody would understand the reference to her name.

Now should Angela Lansbury be mentioned in connection with 'Murder, She Wrote', we can say that she was the actress hired to play the lead role in the TV series based on the works of Jessica Fletcher - who in the real world is played by Angela Lansbury.

Confused yet? If not, I must have done something wrong.

One thing I won't worry about are the references to 'Murder, She Wrote' found in the Tooniverse, like on such shows as 'Daria', 'Family Guy', and 'Tripping The Rift'. They're not of any concern to Earth Prime-Time; that's Earth Prime-Toon.

The IMDb always has a nice collection of references to any particular show under the section "Movie Connections". And from there I was able to put together this list of possible "MSW" Zonks that can be rendered disabled by the splainin above:

"MURDER, SHE WROTE"
"The Nanny: Fran-Lite (#2.1)" (1994)
- Fran mentions avidly watching eight years of the show.

"Married with Children: The Joke's on Al (#10.27)" (1996)
- Lucky: "I've seen 15 'Murder, She Wrotes' that started like this."

"Psych: Meat is Murder, But Murder is Also Murder (#2.6)" (2007)
- Uncle Burton mentions it.

"Roseanne: Another Mouth to Shut Up (#8.20)" (1996)
- Roseanne says to Darlene that she learned from "Murder she wrote" when something is wrong

JESSICA FLETCHER
"Buffy the Vampire Slayer: Smashed (#6.9)" (2001)
- Buffy: (to Spike) Way to go with the keen observy-ness Jessica Fletcher.

"Scrubs: My Night to Remember (#6.11)" (2007)
- [Jessica Fletcher is] one of the girls' names that Dr. Cox uses for J.D.

"Torchwood: Sleeper (#2.2)" (2008)
- Owen asks Gwen, "All right, Jessica Fletcher, who did it?"

ANGELA LANSBURY
"Boy Meets World: The Uninvited (#2.5)" (1994)
- Alan says he was watching Angela Lansbury solve crimes on the couch.

So that quote from Dale in last week's episode of 'Greek' doesn't affect the cohesive integrity of the TV Universe and all is right in Toobworld.

BCnU!
Toby O'B

PRIMEVAL ZONKS

The last couple of 'Primeval' episodes (which have no titles - I hate that!) contained a couple of Zonks, in which they referenced TV shows which should be sharing the same TV dimension with 'Primeval'. And it's my job here at Toobworld Central to neutralize these Zonks and ship them back out through a convenient anomaly.

So let's get cracking!

In order to keep tabs on the location of their friend Connor Temple, Tom and Duncan gave him a gift that contained a modified GPS. And they knew Connor couldn't resist the type of gift....

Connor: Hey a Roswell keyring!

Now, as originally written, the Roswell keyring was meant to be a reference to the TV show from the WB about the alien teenagers in New Mexico who were survivors of the 1947 UFO crash. That's how most of the TV audience probably interpreted that. But those kids and Connor should be sharing the same Toobworld.

So here's my splainin: it was a keyring from the actual town of Roswell, where a nice little industry has grown up cashing in on the crash. Even if it had the show's logo (which I couldn't see), that doesn't have to mean it was about the show. It could just be a logo now used in connection to the event.

Connor: You remember Thursday nights, Battlestar Galactica, Blake's 7?

Two Zonks in one! Connor was trying to jog Tom's memory, to bring him back to being the Tom he knew. (Tom had a parasite growing inside him, which was taking control of him.) Connor seems to be your typical young geek scientist who really loves his sci-fi. It looks like he's going to be a major Zonk irritant as the series progresses.

Okay, first up. 'Battlestar Galactica'......

It's been 28 years since the ragtag fleet led by the Galactica came to Earth Prime-Time. In that time (and unseen by us viewing at home because it all took place after the cancellation of 'Galactica 1980'), the Galacticans have integrated themselves into Terran society and were able to destroy the threat of the Cylon armada pursuing them. They've been accepted more than the Tenctonese of 'Alien Nation' ever could because they looked like and were basically just like the native humans of Earth. The Galacticans probably interbred with Earthlings and if there was any genetic differentiation, it's probably manifested itself as special powers like telekinesis or telepathy. (This could be a splainin for mutants in Toobworld. Not sure about in 'Heroes' as I think Tim Kring has some other splainin for that.)

And in that quarter century since the Galacticans' arrival, their story must have been made public. And is the case with even the most mundane yet major event in our own world, eventually their story gets re-told in the movies, on Television, even in comic books.

So their Thursday night ritual of watching 'Battlestar Galactica' would be a show within a show situation, like 'In Focus' on 'Monk' during its 100th episode. The only thing it had in common with the version we know is the title. More than likely it had different actors - or actors playing characters who already looked like them (just in case actual actor names are ever mentioned) - and the plotlines would be based on the original events of their journey to Earth.

This all refers to the original version of 'Battlestar Galactica'. The new and improved version which will soon be wrapping up its run on Sci-Fi takes place in an alternate Toobworld and Connor would have no knowledge of that.

As for 'Blake's 7', that also takes place in an alternate dimension, in the evil mirror universe, in fact (recently revisited in the season finale of 'The Middleman'). This is because Blake and his rebel band were being chased by the evil Federation.

The 'Blake's 7' mentioned by Connor can't have any connection to that show then, unless - as is the case with 'Star Trek' - someone came from that alternate dimension with the information from its future and decided to cash in by creating a TV show about it.

Instead, 'Blake's 7' is just a title shared by the show we know in the real world. Since no other details were given, it could have been about almost anything else. A special ops team working outside the law to help the little guy. A family dramady about a widower raising his half dozen kids (and the family dog). A biographical drama about the late Colonel Henry Blake and the six people who worked with him in Korea: doctors, a nurse, a priest, and a transvestite. (Sorry, Radar!) Or it could have been a game show even!
In the next 'Primeval' episode, Professor Nick Cutter used a small pen flashlight to shine in Claudia Brown's eyes after she had been conked in the head by a pteradon. And Claudia wanted to know what he was doing.....

Nick: I've absolutely no idea, but I've seen them do it on ER, so there must be something in it.

This is an easy one. WE know he's supposedly referring to the (too) long-running medical series on NBC. But 'ER' is such a generic term, it could be a reality show about an emergency room on the Discovery Channel. Since no mention was made of any characters from the 'ER' we know, that's the choice I'm going to declare against this Zonk!

I'll say this for the 'Primeval' writers - they trust their audience to understand the references. I can't stand those joke references that have to bash the audience over the head with details. If you don't think the audience will get the reference just by mentioning the show's name, it wasn't that good of a joke!

Just sayin', is all.

BCnU!
Toby O'B

TODAY'S TWD: MORE ON BOHR FROM A MORON BORE

In the final episode of 'The Middleman', there was this line among the many pop culture references:

"But that's impossible, Niels Bohr died while building it…"

According to the trivia notes at tv.com for "The Palindrome Reversal Palindrome", this line "references renowned physicist Neils Bohr (1885-1962), who received a Nobel Prize in Physics in 1922 for his contributions to quantum physics. He also worked on the Manhattan Project and among many other contributions, popularized the image and idea of electrons orbiting around the nucleus of an atom."

Here's more on Bohr edited from NobelPrize.org:

Bohr's studies became more and more theoretical in character, his doctor's disputation being a purely theoretical piece of work on the explanation of the properties of the metals with the aid of the electron theory, which remains to this day a classic on the subject. It was in this work that Bohr was first confronted with the implications of Planck's quantum theory of radiation.

He passed on to a study of the structure of atoms on the basis of Rutherford's discovery of the atomic nucleus. By introducing conceptions borrowed from the Quantum Theory as established by Planck, which had gradually come to occupy a prominent position in the science of theoretical physics, he succeeded in working out and presenting a picture of atomic structure that, with later improvements (mainly as a result of Heisenberg's ideas in 1925), still fitly serves as an elucidation of the physical and chemical properties of the elements.

Bohr also contributed to the clarification of the problems encountered in quantum physics, in particular by developing the concept of complementarity. Hereby he could show how deeply the changes in the field of physics have affected fundamental features of our scientific outlook and how the consequences of this change of attitude reach far beyond the scope of atomic physics and touch upon all domains of human knowledge.

From 1920 until his death in 1962, Neils Bohr was at the head of the Institute for Theoretical Physics, established for him at Copenhagen university.

Recognition of his work on the structure of atoms came with the award of the Nobel Prize for 1922.

And my head hurts just from editing all of that. But my buddy Mark can probably figure out what I just cut and pasted.

To paraphrase "The Secret Policeman's Other Ball":

Now I to bed,
To figure out what I just said....

BCnU!
Toby O'B

TASTY TALK

Don't you love the serendipiteevee of tuning into some TV show at the wrong moment, so that an out-of-context statement takes on a whole new meaning.....?

"It's always good to pleasure yourself once a week."
a deep-fried burger lover
'DEEP FRIED PARADISE'

BCnU!
Toby O'B