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

HOMBRE DEL ACERO

One last post before I call it a night......
While doing some research for that Zonk post about 'Supernova' and 'Superman', I stumbled on this picture of Javier Bardem as the Last Son of Krypton. He played the role on such Spanish TV shows as "La Imagen de tu vida" and its spinoff, "La Tele de tu vida".

I'm thinking this falls into the TV dimension of Skitlandia, and even then, it could be an alternate dimension of that in which Kal-El was raised in Spain....

BCnU!
Toby OB

THE FRENCH CONNECTION

Dr. Mike French is a brilliant astro-physicist at the Royal Australian Observatory in the Outback, as seen in the 2005 sitcom 'Supernova'. According to Tim Draxl who plays the role, Mike's first book was published at the age of 16. It was entitled "From Nappies To Nebula".

Here's his "official" biography:

Mike French is a child prodigy who re-wrote the time space acceleration theory at the age of 11. He also has issues with his mother.

Mike is a genius and should know a thing or two about the way the world works. Sadly he had little time for anything approaching a normal childhood and is a naïve, emotionally repressed 20-something instead. Mike's going through a kind of delayed puberty and it falls to Paul and the team to mentor him through the murky waters.

This includes the proper time and place to goof off and watch old episodes of 'Doctor Who' and 'The Benny Hill Show'......

It will be the contention of Toobworld Central that Mike French is the great-grandson of Nigel "Niles" French, a man-servant who was seen for a few episodes of 'Family Affair' back in the 1960s. Nigel French was brought into the Davis household in New York City to care for the nephew and nieces of globe-trotting architect Bill Davis while the original valet, his own brother Giles French, served at the pleasure of Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth during a world tour. (I'm thinking that was the cover story for a stint with 'Torchwood'. Someday I'll get around to writing that theory up!)

We really didn't get to learn very much about Nigel French in the short time he was on the show. But it's possible that he had been married at one time much earlier in life (He was 64 while in the service of the Davis household) and sired a son to carry on the family name. Giving enough time for new generations of the French line to emerge, I'd say it's pozz'ble, just pozz'ble, that Dr. Mike French could be Nigel French's grandson.

The best part about making the genealogical distance between the two characters so great is that it's unlikely that any mention of Mike's great-grandfather should come up in the 12 episodes that were produced.

One - as in me, er, I - can only hope.

BCnU!

Toby OB

A MILD-MANNERED ZONK

Paul Hamilton:
"If we can prove that God exists, who knows what else is out there?
Ghosts! Angels! Krishna!"
Mike French:
"Superman."
Paul Hamilton:
"Well, that is a stretch, but why not?"
'Supernova'

'Supernova' made its debut on American television last week (at least as far as the local home for Britcoms, WLIW-21, is concerned). It first aired in 2005 in Australia and the United Kingdom. It's the story about a Welsh astronomer doing the fish-out-of-water routine, a la 'Northern Exposure', at an observatory in the Australian Outback.

The second episode, which aired this past Friday, presented a couple of Zonks to be dealt with. The first one can be found in that quote above; the second one was about 'Doctor Who' and is a bit thornier to deal with. (I'll need a little more time with that one!)

For the audience viewing at home, the joke in the Superman reference is that Superman is a fictional character from the comic books, movies, and TV. But within the "reality" of Toobworld, Superman was a living being.

There are a number of Supermen... Supermans... mild-mannered reporters named Clark Kent who are in fact Superman in the TV Universe. Alternate TV dimensions are homes to the Superman of 'Lois & Clark', 'Smallville', even the musical adaptation "It's A Bird! It's A Plane! It's Superman!". And of course the Tooniverse houses all of the animated versions of the Man of Steel.

But for Earth Prime-Time, the main Toobworld, Superman/Kal-El/Clark Kent has only been found in 'The Adventures Of Superman' from the 1950s. That Superman was played by George Reeves.

I've dealt with this topic before, so here are the basics - the Superman of the main Toobworld is dead. My theory is that he died saving Ray Luca and Paulie Taglia from that A-bomb blast at the end of one season of 'Crime Story'. (Kryptonite was in the sand and the atomized particles were thrust into Superman's body by the explosion as he shielded the two gangsters.)

This would splain why Superman wasn't around in Toobworld to prevent so many catastrophes, like the weather machine attacks on Port Charles, New York, in 'General Hospital', the fuel dump explosions on the Moon in 'Space:1999', and because the real life tragedy has become part of Toobworld lore in various shows, the attacks on the World Trade Center.

After his death, the secrets of Superman became widely known to the general public, which is why you can have characters in other TV shows talking about Lois Lane, the planet Krypton, Kal-El's parents Jor-El and Lara, and the Fortress of Solitude.

So in this case from "God, Are You Out There?", the second episode of 'Supernova', Mike's reference to Superman was to the "real" man. He probably meant that we might learn the truth about the destruction of Krypton. Paul must have misinterpreted his interjected comment as meaning that Mike thought Superman was still alive.

Feels a bit flimsy, but it'll work, mate!

Now I've got to de-Zonk that running sub-plot about 'Doctor Who'!

BCnU!
Toby OB

TODAY'S TIDDLYWINKYDINK: WORMWOOD

The United States finally got its chance to (legally) see 'The Sarah Jane Adventures' on Sci-Fi Friday night. The first episode about the former Companion on 'Doctor Who' (who traveled with the Time Lord about thirty years ago) was called "Invasion Of The Bane". The main villain of the piece was named Mrs. Wormwood, who turned out to be a one-eyed alien of the crustacean-like species known as the Bane.

During their first confrontation, Sarah Jane pointed out that the name Wormwood appears in the Bible. It is mentioned in the Book of Revelations as a star that crashes into the Earth and poisons its waters. From the knowing look on Mrs. Wormwood's face, I'm under the impression that she chose the name deliberately. It makes sense, as she came down from the heavens and tried to infect the human population with the Bane genetic material via the soft drink Bubble Shock.

Here's what Wikipedia had to offer about the Biblical version of "Wormwood":

It's only clear reference as a named entity occurs in the New Testament book of Revelation: "And the third angel sounded, and there fell a great star from heaven, burning as it were a lamp, and it fell upon the third part of the rivers, and upon the fountains of waters; And the name of the star is called Wormwood: and the third part of the waters became wormwood; and many men died of the waters, because they were made bitter." (Revelation 8:10, 11)

Certain commentators have held that this "great star" represents one of several important figures in political or ecclesiastical history, while other Bible dictionaries and commentaries view the term as a reference to a celestial being.

A Dictionary of The Holy Bible states, "the star called Worm wood seems to denote a mighty prince, or power of the air, the instrument, in its fall, of sore judgments on large numbers of the wicked." Scofield Reference Notes draws a link between the term in Revelation and Isaiah 14:12, which reads, "How you have fallen from heaven, O morning star, son of the dawn! You have been cast down to the earth, you who once laid low the nations!"

BCnU!

Toby OB

TONIGHT: "ROOM WITH A VIEW" TO BE VIEWED

"A Room With A View" will be given the 'Masterpiece Theater' treatment. Not the 'Masterpiece Theater' of old however - some pixilation was required in scenes of exposed bottoms. There's at least one sex scene, some skinny dipping, and a few suggestions that certain characters are homosexuals. And the ending has been altered, as scriptwriter Andrew Davies has imagined Lucy Honeychurch's life beyond the finale dictated by E.M. Forster in his 1908 novel.

(To reflect the change in the series direction, the show is now called simply 'Masterpiece', and its season divided up into three different categories. We're in "Masterpiece: Classic" now.....)

Here's how the New York Times describes the change: "Forster ended, of course, with Lucy choosing George. Mr. Davies, though, projects ahead to 1922, just after World War I. The details won’t be revealed here, but suffice it to say that Mr. Davies weirdly goes for poignancy and prurience: Lucy is back in Italy, alone, and a minor character from earlier in the story looks as if he might be about to get lucky."

I know nothing about the story, so I hope that wasn't too spoilery. I'm glad for the change, though, because it makes this version wholly Toobworld's.

But this is cool when it comes to "relateeveety": Rafe Spall will be playing George Emerson. His own father, great character actor Timothy Spall, will be playing George's father. Can't complain about the casting for tele-genetics there!

"A Room With A View" airs tonight on 'Masterpiece', on most PBS stations. It was originally adapted as a theatrical film during the mid-1980s which made a star out of Helena Bonham-Carter.

BCnU!

Toby OB