The Young Aragorn Son of Arathorn Chronicles

So are they still making this Lord of the Rings TV series that is supposed to be about the adventures of young Aragorn? If they are, I hope it is actually a detective series set in Middle-earth, where Aragorn uses his ranger skillz of tracking and herblore to solve crimes, a bit like Catfael used to.

Maybe they could pair him up with a several-thousand-years old elf in a classic chalk-and-cheese, rookie-and-veteran double act?
"I'm getting too old for this shit," says Glorfindel. And of course Elrond is their chief, which also works because of the awkward budding romance between rookie Aragorn and the chief's daughter Arwen.

Actually, what I really hope is that they are secretly making a series of Quenta Silmarillion, which could be truly great and genuinely epic if done well. I mean, who doesn't want to see Fëanor fighting a squad of balrogs, or Fingolfin's single combat with Morgoth, or the fall of Nargothrond and Gondolin, or Sauron getting beaten up by a doggy?

Big Gay Longcat reviews The Goodies: Kitten Kong

The most famous and beloved (at least among cats) episode of The Goodies, the original version of Kitten Kong was wiped, in a similar manner to early Doctor Who stories such as The Hall of Dolls or The Savages. Fortunately we still have the special edition from 1972, which won an award, showing that mannys can sometimes get it right... or maybe cats were the judges for the award, as should always be the case, mew.

It starts with the inferior version of the Goodies theme song that they used for the first two seasons. Then Bill is making noms when Tim and Graeme arrive back from the chess match they have been watching. The noms that Bill is making are for Bunter the guinea pig, who Bill is looking after because Bunter is not very well. Bill thinks he is "fed up of his usual diet" of "soggy lettuce and potato peelings" so has made him manny noms instead.

Tim and Graeme are also hungry, so Bill gives them soggy lettuce and potato peelings, lol. The comic reversal inherent in this situation thematically foreshadows what will occur in the second half of the episode.

Bill is being paid £30 for curing Bunter, and this gives Tim the idea of getting lots of animals to cure so they can get even more moneys. They set up a "Goodies Animal Clinic," and this leads in to a montage of Tim and Bill collecting lots of animals, over which the song Needed plays as incidental music - this is an irritating song that was used far too frequently in the first two seasons of The Goodies, and now I need to visit the Goodies Animal Clinic because I am sick of hearing it.

They put all the animals in a big hamper. and there are a number of visual gags about the animals all fighting or noming each other, and Tim wrestles with a massive snake. One of the animals is a tiny and super-cute kitten who mews very loudly, d'awwwww.

Back at the Goodies' office, Graeme has some other animals, including a "bush baby" who keeps sticking to Graeme's hands, making for a lovely running gag, and a vampire bat that is afraid of the dark and who attacks Graeme even though he says it is "lovely."

There are also two doggys that sing, although this is quite poorly achieved by dubbing a manny song over some manipulated footage of the doggys (in a similar way to the notorious double-taking pigeon scene in James Bond), making it one of the few gags that fails to work in this episode. I could have done it better.

However, things move swiftly on as we are properly introduced to the star of the show when Tim brings out the kitten from earlier. Graeme says his name is Twinkle and he is 23 years old.

Bill takes a doggy for a walk on a lead. Tim takes Twinkle out for a walk, also on a lead. And Graeme has a tortoise on a lead, although it doesn't do much walking, in spite of Graeme's best efforts.

They each try to get their animals to do exercise, with varying degrees of success. When Twinkle runs off he pulls Tim around after him, including dragging him along the ground when Tim falls over. This is a great scene, employing a lot of the Goodies' patented sped-up footage and camera trickery to create a number of sight gags. Eventually Twinkle runs up a tree and stays there mewing loudly.

This is the end of part one.

We then see a couple of fake adverts satirising real adverts of the early 1970s. Since the originals are long gone, these would be very badly dated anyway, but the second of them is for "Butch, the tobacco for men" and the joke here is essentially just "lol teh gays" as the punchline is nothing more than the suggestion that the two "butch" mannys (one of whom is Tim) are really gay. While not actively homophobic (it is not saying gays are bad), it is thoughtlessly using the mere existence of gay mannys as a punchline.

The inclusion of this sort of thing in what is otherwise the best ever episode of The Goodies shows that the programmes cannot escape being 'of their time,' with this sort of material having dated even more than the idea of advertising tobacco on TV.

Part two rejoins the plot with Tim still unsuccessfully trying to get Twinkle down from the tree. Bill and Graeme help, first by trying to tempt him down with noms, and then using a ladder. Bill gets Twinkle down eventually, but leaves Tim stuck up in the tree instead, lol.

In the next scene Bill and Graeme are both back at the office when Tim comes in and says he was up the tree for "four days." They show Tim that, in that time, Twinkle has grown to become a giant kitten.

Tim is scared, but we think Twinkle is still super-cute. Later on, Twinkle escapes after Bill puts him out for the night. This leads to an amusing bit of dialogue that also sets up the next bit of plot:

Graeme: "We've got to find him, and catch him before he eats someone he shouldn't."
Tim: "Ah, you mean 'something he shouldn't.'"
Graeme: "I know what I mean!"

They cycle around looking for Twinkle, who has left giant pawprints on the ground. The song that plays over this scene is Kitten Kong which is a favourite among us cats, although I have a suspicion that if it had been used as often as Needed then we'd be just as tired of it.

They find some mannys running away in terror and ask one of them for directions, then they see some doggys running away and do the same with one of them. They hear Twinkle's mewing, and then see him being all giant but still super-cute.

Tim's expression here as he looks back at the camera is particularly good, and helps to cover for the slightly unconvincing back projection.

They cycle back to their office and watch the news, where "Twinkle the giant kitten" is the top story. Michael Aspel reports on "day two of Twinkle's occupation of the city of London."

Twinkle knocks over the Post Office Tower (possibly saving the world from WOTAN, I don't know) in what is arguably the most iconic single image from The Goodies - it would go on the be prominently used in the series' title sequence for the rest of the 1970s - and instantly made Twinkle into one of the most famous cats in the whole world.

Take that, Cybermannys!

Then Twinkle steps on Michael Aspel, lol.

Graeme has an antidote to his "growth mixture" in a giant needle. They disguise themselves as mouses for the next part of his plan.

"I expect this is a silly question, but why are we dressed as mice?"
"Because cats eat mice."

Graeme's right - we do. You can tell he's the clever one.

Twinkle sneaks up on them...

...and then chases them. They turn their trandem into a hot air balloon and fly up to Twinkle. Bill falls off and gets captured in a giant paw, a clear homage to the original King Kong, but then Graeme manages to inject Twinkle and he become little again. Aww. Twinkle's reign of super-cute terror was beautiful but, alas, all too brief.

The Goodies are celebrating when Graeme accidentally punctures their balloon with his needle and they go out of control, then they get stuck on the nose of a plane until it lands.

The next scene sees them back in their office, where they discover mouses have been noming the growth mixture while they were out dealing with Twinkle, and then giant mouses break through the walls to scare them.

The episode ends with them desperately shouting "feed the cat!" as they try to get Twinkle to be giant again so that he can pounce on the mouses, lol.

Cat Science

The Desiree Carthorse Experience

In their second season episode called Gender Education, The Goodies meet a character called Mrs Desiree Carthorse (played by Beryl "Connie" Reid) who is obviously based upon the real-life person of Mrs Mary Whitehouse, only with the character traits for which she was famous being very slightly exaggerated for comic effect.

Mary Whitehouse, and her organisation the National Viewers' and Listeners' Association (or NVLA for short, which isn't a very good acronym really, if you were going to do it properly it should have been called something like the Clean Up National Television Society) had been a thorn in the BBC's side since the mid-1960s, attempting to impose her views on what was and was not suitable for broadcast upon the corporation.

Unfortunately, Mary Whitehouse's views were founded in her extremely old-fashioned, conservative, reactionary religious beliefs, and if they had gone unchallenged could have held up or even reversed the progress that the BBC was making in depicting the liberalising culture of the 1960s, '70s and '80s. For example, as hard as it is to believe now, it was still illegal for mannys to be gay in Scotland until 1981, largely because of bigoted, intolerant people like Mary Whitehouse, and that is why the gayness we see in Blakes 7 is limited to covert, subversive acts such as manly handshakes and meaningful looks, in order to fly under the gaydar of the NVLA censors.

Mary Whitehouse did not attack the Goodies directly - in fact the opposite is true, with her praising the "wholesome, family-orientated humour" of their first season, which the Goodies clearly didn't like because (1) they were actually trying to be subversive, especially with the number of "Lemon Sherbet Dip" style drug references, and (2) they didn't like Mary Whitehouse. This didn't stop them (in fact it probably encouraged them even more) from sending her up in 1971 - a year before Monty Python's Flying Circus would do the same in their 'War Against Pornography' sketch.

This was obviously the moment for the BBC's counterattack against the NVLA, exposing them for the out-of-touch busyboddys they were. Sadly a handful of satirical comedy programmes were not enough to break her power overnight, although it did begin to wane somewhat after about this point, and Mary Whitehouse continued to have political influence over British TV for the rest of her career - including getting one Doctor Who Producer, Phillip Hinchcliffe, sacked for making the series too violent.

Mind you, she's got a point about that cliffhanger at the end of Deadly Assassin part three...

Scratchman

Contains spoilers.

Scratchman was written by Tom Baker. The audiobook is read by him, and as the great majority of the story is told by the Doctor in the first person, there is nobody more suited to do so in the whole universe.

It is so wonderful to hear Tom Baker read the story, and so easy to imagine his Doctor (as he was on TV in the 1970s) acting out the part as described - especially the many occasions when the Doctor is described as smiling or grinning broadly. Just as he proved when he returned for his cameo in Day of the Doctor, Tom will always be able to return to be the Doctor whenever he chooses to. Here he even manages to recapture the style of his early period, circa seasons 12-13, although the humour on display is occasionally more reminiscent of a later era, perhaps seasons 16 or 17 when Douglas Adams wrote for the series.

Appropriately enough for something evoking the early Tom Baker era, the Doctor's Companions are Sarah Jane Smith and Harry Sullivan. While he doesn't exactly do impressions of them, Tom manages to capture their mannerisms perfectly - Harry is characterised broadly, but then he was drawn like that on TV too! In many ways the best thing about this story is the portrayal of and interplay between the three heroes, which keeps it always terrific fun.

The basic plot is obviously based on the myth of Orpheus and Eurydice. After a first act where the Doctor, Sarah Jane and Harry save the Earth from a genetically engineered virus that converts mannys into "scarecrow"-like proto-cybermannys, Harry and Sarah Jane are infected and taken away to another dimension that is the home of an alien called "Scratchman" who claims to be the devil.

The Doctor goes after them in the TARDIS to rescue them and defeat Scratchman, who wants to take over the universe in order to nom it, as he has nearly finished noming his own dimension. Scratchman forces the three of them to play deadly games, which has some similarity to The Celestial Toymaker. Scratchman does this because he gets noms from their emotions, especially fear. He wants to know what the Doctor is afraid of, but the Doctor resists him, and eventually turns the tables on Scratchman.

There is also a framing device where the Time Lords have put the Doctor on trial for his life for interfering, but, despite this having been done before, it works here because it is simply an excuse for the Doctor to tell the main story from his point of view, and so you can, if you like, imagine the Doctor as an unreliable narrator telling a shaggy doge story. And, because it's Tom doing it, this only adds to the fun.

Unusually for an audiobook in my experience, Tom plays all the parts bar one - the Cyberleader is voiced by Nicholas Briggs, with the same voice he uses to play them in the new series on TV. It's a pity that they couldn't have made him sound like the Cyberleader from Revenge of the Cybermannys, to help complete the season 12 feeling. There are a few other moments where the influence of the new series makes itself felt, such as referring to the TARDIS as a "blue box" instead of a "police box," or emphasising the Doctor's role as saviour of the universe rather than someone who gets involved in most of his adventures by mistaik. None of these would be bad in isolation, but the presence of the new series Cybervoices calls attention to them. I can only assume that Tom is a fan, or else his editor is.

The only serious strike against Scratchman is the length. Maybe it is not so noticeable if you are reading the book yourself, but as an audiobook it is 8 hours and 40 minutes long, over 8 CDs, which makes it about 2 hours longer than Trial of a Time Lord. If this had been a TV story or even a Big Finish audio play instead of a novel, it would be considered to be the most padded story of all time - even more so than Frontier in Space! Then again, padding is only really padding when it is boring, and it is such fun to be in Tom's company here that it is hard to hold this against the story, although it may make it harder to revisit the story in the future because of the time commitment listening to it takes up.

I must also conclude that the padding out of the plot to full novel length has taken the story of Scratchman away from its origins as a Doctor Who film script, presumably intended to be about 2 hours long or roughly the same duration as a four-part TV story. Supposedly it was first cooked up as a film idea by Tom Baker and Ian Marter in the 1970s, and they wanted Vincent Price to play Scratchman (which would have been great). I remember reading about this many years ago, probably in Doctor Who Magazine, and somebody had even gone to the trouble of mocking up a film poster to go with it.

The 1970s origins are clear from the setting of the first act, a remote Scottish island where there are no signs of modern technology such as mobile 'phones or internets (which allows the island to be more easily isolated), and where pinball is considered to be a radical new fad among young people by Harry and Sarah Jane. To a modern audience, this setting may as well be as remote as the historical eras that Jamie and Victoria came from.

I recommend reading or listening to this - and listen to it, if you can. We're lucky to have Tom Baker, there really is nobody else like him.

The Plane Makers, Season Three

It may date from 1964 but this is a spoiler warning.

The third and final season of The Plane Makers completes the bridge to The Power Game that followed it. This season involves a lot more intrigue at the level of government - there are no more plots about the 'ordinary' employees of Scott Furlong Ltd, nor their unions, instead it focuses in entirely on the top level of management represented by our antihero John Wilder.

New characters join in on the ongoing struggle for control of Scott Furlong between Managing Director John Wilder and his arch-rival, Chairmanny Sir Gordon Revidge. First among these is David Corbett, played by Alan "War & Peace" Dobie - he is Wilder's new deputy after Scott Furlong takes over his company to get at their military aircraft contracts. Corbett wants Wilder's job - he is a brilliant engineer, very clever and a fast learner, but inexperienced at politics compared to Wilder. Wilder can't get rid of him though, because Corbett's engineering knowledge is indispensable to the military contracts, so the two mannys are stuck with one another.

James Cameron-Grant MP is played by Peter Jeffrey, one of those actors who was in many things, but is probably best known as Count Grendel from Androids of Tara. Cameron-Grant is a young MP (in contrast to Sir Gerald Merle MP, Wilder's old rival from the previous season) and he is ambitious, showing far more interest in his advertising company and arranging himself seats on company boards than in being an MP, which for him is only a stepping-stone to let him achieve his real goals. Although such things were doubtless just as common back in the '60s, this makes him seem like a very modern MP.
Cameron-Grant acts as Wilder's (and our) way in to the Houses of Parliament, ostensibly employed for his advertising firm to do Scott Furlong's Public Relations, he is really brought on board for his connections.

Laura Challis W-words for Sir Gordon Revidge while being sort-of engaged to Cameron-Grant. She is quickly shown to be easily the intellectual equal of either of them but, as would later be the case with Susan Weldon in The Power Game, can only hold a subordinate position due to the nature of the times.
Miss Challis is the main female character of the season, with a complicated relationship to both Wilder and her supposed fiancé, and this means that Pamela Wilder is sidelined - perhaps this was because they got in a new actress, Ann Firbank, who is simply not as good as Barbara Murray was, playing Pamela as more of a stereotype of a jealous wife, while Murray's superior acting always hinted at suppressed emotions and hidden depths.

Every main character is out for themselves, allying with others only temporarily and when serving their own best interests. These alliances shift from episode to episode, with the only constant being Don Henderson's unwavering loyalty to Wilder (not a character trait he started out with, but one that was well-established by the beginning of this season), and there are enough permutations to keep things interesting through the variety of different power plays we see over the course of this season.

The introduction of new characters inevitably means less time for some of the old ones. As well as sidelining Pamela, we see less of Captain Forbes (Robert Urquhart) although he remains present up to the end. Arthur Sugden (Reginald Marsh) is not so fortunate, being written out at the end of one of the best episodes, It’s A Free Country - Isn’t It? With Scott Furlong taking on military contracts from the government, the staff have to undergo clearance checks by the security services and Sugden, with his humble background and links to the unions, is the victim of the security manny's blatant prejudice. Only John Wilder stands by him but, even with his network of contacts in high places, nobody is willing to stick their neck out by going up against the implacable forces of the Secret Service (a theme that would be revisited in the last season of The Power Game). Their decision is final, and Wilder is forced to get rid of Sugden under the cover of early retirement. Given how much of a focus Sugden was in the previous season, seeing him go under these circumstances is heartbreaking, and makes this a powerful episode. (It helps that the security manny makes himself easy to hate by acting like a right cunt.)

As well as featuring the inferior version of Pamela Wilder (Ann Firbank is sort of the Brian Croucher to Barbara Murray's Stephen Greif), the other main way in which this series fails to be as good as The Power Game is the repeated offence of having important characters sometimes appearing in episodes only over the telephone - in other words the actors are not present at all - including main character John Wilder himself, who misses five episodes in this way! At least when this happened in season two it had the excuse of that being a massive 28 parts long and with many of them being side stories about one-off characters, as opposed to here when it is only 13 parts and forming a continuous story arc.

Speaking of the story arc, well... Corbett, Sir Gordon and the others make several attempts, but in the end Wilder is brought down not by any of his enemies but by a mistaik he himself made, a wrong decision (only with hindsight) that anyone in his position could have taken. Corbett then makes a mistaik of his own by gloating, and so giving Wilder the time he needs to make the best of his position - knowing he must inevitably resign, he does so on his own terms, saving the government minister in charge of the contracts from embarrassment (and having to resign himself, like failing ministers used to in ye olde times of the 1960s, unlike what happens today), and with a knighthood and a seat on the board of Sir Gordon Revidge's merchant bank as his price for so doing - the latter only to rub it in Sir Gordon's face that he didn't win.
Yet it is from Wilder's seat on this board that he learns about the situation at Bligh's company in the first episode of The Power Game, just as though the writers were already setting up the sequel series as this one comes to an end.

And with that, we have come full circle...

Tarrant's Valentine

We know that Tarrant and Jarvik used to know each other. Jarvik tells Servalan

"You don't know Tarrant, madam. He's a man."

And after Jarvik dies, not only does Tarrant say of him that

"He was a special sort of man."

Tarrant also sometimes dresses like Jarvik. Compare Jarvik's costume here

to the costume that Tarrant wears in Rumours of Death:

I think we have to consider it a definite possibility that Tarrant and Jarvik used to go out with each other. No wonder they enjoyed having a manly wrestle so much.

I bet Avon was jealous.