WEBB SEARCH - LINKING "IRONSIDE" & "THE DORIS DAY SHOW"

'IRONSIDE'

"EAT, DRINK, AND BE BURIED"

"We were driving along the beach road;
I'd had a couple of drinks. 
An old man came up out of nowhere,
I hit him. 
Panicked, just... kept on going. 
The papers said he wasn't badly hurt. 
But... hit and run....  

Goodbye column, goodbye everything...."

Francesca Kirby

Just before she confessed to this, Francesca Kirby established the timeline when she began her splainin as to why she agreed to marry jazz drummer Mitch Kirby:

"Because of one stinking minute almost three years ago."

This 'Ironside' episode was broadcast October 5, 1967.  And as is usually the case for Toobworld, we consider the events of the episode to take place around that same time.  So that means the hit and run happened at some point in 1964.  

There are a couple of real-world  events which we might tie into this Toobworld incident.  It could be that Francesca and Mitch had been out drinking and decided to get out of the city in order to avoid these disruptions to their everyday life.

From Wikipedia:

MAY 2

Some 400–1,000 students march through Times Square, New York, and another 700 in San Francisco, in the first major student demonstration against the Vietnam War. 

JULY 16

At the Republican National Convention in San Francisco, U.S. presidential nominee Barry Goldwater declares that "extremism in the defense of liberty is no vice", and "moderation in the pursuit of justice is no virtue".

But we don't have to have such reasons for Francesca and Mitch to escape the City by the Bay.  They had admittedly been drinking and so decided to take a drive.

I think they headed north across the Golden Gate Bridge and headed up 101, eventually taking an exit to that beach road.  And that's where they hit the old man.

So....  Who was that old man?

At first, when I had the idea for this essay, I thought it would be too arduous a task to find an old man from San Francisco in some TV show set in 1964 who could have been hit by a car and survived with no impact on the TV show.  And I'll be honest - I didn't want to do that kind of work.

So then my knee-jerk reaction was to turn to my favorite show for filling in the blanks: 'Doctor Who'.  Why not do a bit of fanfic in which the First Incarnation of the Doctor and his grand-daughter had landed alongside that beach road?  The Doctor, for whatever reason - trying to escape some alien or even supernatural threat, perhaps - stumbled into the road and received a glancing blow from Francesca's car.  This sent him flying into the bushes and they drove away without checking on him.

I still think it would be a great idea for fanfic, especially having the Doctor visit the San Francisco area before his Eighth Incarnation was there for the new Millennium.  And I'd rather have it be a supernatural threat rather than an alien menace as we too often see in the series.

But then, before I wasted too much time amped up with writing such a Fanficcer's Friend post, it suddenly occurred to me that there was the perfect old man to have escape grievous injury in that hit and run.  But he wasn't seen in a TV show set in the San Francisco area back in 1964.  However, we know he was there.  In fact, he wouldn't even show up in Toobworld until a year after this 'Ironside' episode ended.

Buckley "Buck" Webb
'The Doris Day Show'.

Buck lived on a rural ranch near Cotina in Mill Valley, which is north of San Francisco.  He raised his daughter Doris there, but she moved away after marrying a man named Martin.  After Mr. Martin's death, Doris Martin and her sons Billy and Toby returned to the ranch in order to regain their bearings in Life.

So even though we didn't meet Buck Webb until 1968, he was living north of San Francisco back in 1964.  He could have been on that beach road which would have led to him being struck down by Francesca Kirby.

But why was he there?  Why wasn't he back home on his ranch?

We could go back to either one of those two real-world events and this is where we could tie one of them into the fabric of Toobworld.  I'm going to go with the 700 student rally against the Vietnam War instead of that Republican wankfest to nominate Barry Goldwater.  It is tempting to think about the research in finding significant Republicans who might have been portrayed in Toobworld and who might have been there and then add them to this bit o' fanfic.  

But then again, it is the Republicans....

So instead let's go to the protest rally and make the claim that some of those 700 protesters were TV characters who were radicals and hippies and radicalized students from other TV shows.  For instance, how about Mike Stivic from 'All In The Famiy', who was known back then by the hippie pseudonym of Moondog (as seen in an episode of 'Gomer Pyle USMC'.)

Here's the premise I came up with - ranch hand and itinerant nitwit LeRoy B. Simpson had been in San Francisco on that Saturday, May 2, when he stumbled into the mass of protesters and was considered by the police to be one of the trouble-makers.  With the one call he was granted after he was arrested, LeRoy phoned Buck Webb to come and rescue him.  Much "hilarity" would ensue as the crusty old rancher took on the SFPD in his fight to get LeRoy freed.

(Here's the only defense Buck would have had to present.  "Just look at that, boy; he's an idjit!"  And the cops would have realized LeRoy didn't have the brains to get involved with the protesters.)

"I couldn't be protesting, honest!
I don't like taking tests; I'm anti-testing!"

It would have been later that night by the time they headed home to the ranch.  And as they traveled up the highway, Buck's old truck must have broken down.  Limping along because it was as stubborn as its owner, Buck pulled the truck off the highway and parked alongside the shoulder on a beach road.  In hopes of getting a ride into town to get a tow truck to come out, Buck stepped into the road in order to flag down a car that was heading toward them.

And that's when a drunken Francesca Kirby ran him down.

Buck was a tough old bird and he survived the collision.  And maybe his daughter Doris and her husband came back to visit him with the boys as he recuperated.  Of course the ornery old cuss would have claimed it was nothing more than a glancing blow and that they should stop fussing over him.  

By the time we finally did actually meet him in Toobworld some four years later, it would have been considered ancient history as far as Buck was concerned.  Having his daughter and grandsons back home with an uncertain future would have been a more pressing concern.

"Toby, you're my favorite.
Your brother Billy can suck wind."

And so that's how I'm tightening up the mosaic of Earth Prime-Time.  And with that peace rally, there are even more TV shows which I could probably weave into the fabric.

BCnU!

With all - some - apologies to my own brother Billy.....