Friday, October 21, 2022.
Onward I go to another incarnation of my Weblog. Previous incarnations of Kevin McCorry's Weblog are April 16, 2007-to-September 19, 2015, October 4, 2015-to-May 4, 2018, May 5, 2018-to-June 19, 2020, and June 20, 2020-to-October 19, 2022.
The Blu-Ray release of the 1932 Dr. Jekyll and Mr Hyde is now days away. No new reviews anywhere, though The Bugs Bunny Video Guide is now acknowledging "Hyde and Hare"'s release to Blu-Ray, repeating the caveats already noted elsewhere as regards the cartoon's picture quality. I do not imagine that I will have the Blu-Ray in my possession until several days after Halloween. If I could order it from Amazon.ca, I would have it within a week, but like all other Warner Archive Blu-Ray releases, it is not available at the Canadian branch of Amazon.com. And thus have I had to order it from Amazon.com in the U.S.. With luck, I may have it before the long Remembrance Day weekend. With luck.
I decided to buy The Day After Tomorrow- "Into Infinity" in its North American NTSC release from MPI Home Video. I wanted to see if the picture quality is better than that on the Network release. It is. Less digital "noise", less aliasing. I remember reading somewhere that this production is only archivally retained now on videotape, though I cannot recall if the videotape is PAL or NTSC. If NTSC, that would expain why it looks better on the MPI DVD, not having undergone a NTSC-to-PAL conversion and not needing to be subsequently converted back to NTSC by my player. The MPI DVD may also use less digital video compression, being as it is missing some content (disposable content, in my estimation) that is on the Network DVD.
It is such a pity that the original film elements to The Day After Tomorrow- "Into Infinity" are lost, as I am sure that it would be eye-poppingly gorgeous in High Definition. I think that I can safely say that it is second to Space: 1999 on my list of favourite Gerry Anderson works. Journey to the Far Side of the Sun would come in third place. And then, quite a ways below it, UFO.
All for today.
Friday, October 28, 2022.
My Blu-Ray of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde (1932) is en route to me. The package cleared Canada Customs yesterday. My hope is that it will be delivered early next week. Maybe as early as Monday. Halloween. A perfect day to watch Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde (1932), and the deficient rendition of "Hyde and Hare" on the Blu-Ray disc.
Website updates. All of them to my Era 4 memoirs. Two additional images of the New Avengers episode, "Hostage", a new image quintet with images of Fahrenheit 451, Spiderman- "The Evil Sorcerer", "Canned Feud", "Hyde and Go Tweet", and A View to a Kill, and some new paragraphs remembering December, 1985, including a videotape that I received by mail with the "Collision Course" episode of Space: 1999 thereon, and two episodes of the U.K.'s Clapperboard One interviewing Space: 1999 producer Gerry Anderson, special effects master Brian Johnson, and model-maker Martin Bower. Era 4 has now pulled ahead of Era 2 by some margin with regard to length.
I remember how happy I was to have "Collision Course" in its original episode form, not as part of the "movie", Journey Through the Black Sun, my having "made do" with "Collision Course" as it had been adjusted for that movie, for more than two years. I promptly rented a videocassette machine from Log Home Video in Devon, Fredericton North, combined it with mine, and made a burnished copy of the episode. And this was how "Collision Course" was best represented in my collection of videotape until YTV aired it in spring of 1991. Oh, I also had the SYBIL DANNING ADVENTURE VIDEO of Journey Through the Black Sun. But it was ancillary to the episode versions of "Collision Course" and "Black Sun".
I treasured my videotapes of Space: 1999. Season 1. Season 2. All episodes. I loved both seasons, contrary to the popular opinion of me as a "Year 1"-hater, in Space: 1999 fandom. I am not anti-Season 1. I am against the weaponising of Season 1 against Season 2 and the wielding of Season 1 against ardent appreciators of Season 2 such as myself. I am against the wrongs perpetrated against me by the closed-minded pundits of Season 1, and the Calgary-based imperious leader of the Alpha League fan club, most especially. Him together with his compatriot in my "cancellation", the Reginan, and the louts at the Space: 1999 Mailing List who flung that "cancellation" at me and my indignation with it, as some sort of indictment against my mental fitness. There are some horrible people in the Season 1 "camp". Quite a plurality of them, actually. I cannot overlook that. But if I can divorce it from my history of appreciation and valuing of both seasons, I can sit and watch episodes of Season 1 without resentment hampering my viewing pleasure. It is easier to do this now, with just about every Facebook Space: 1999 group no longer accessible to me (I refuse to join them and can no longer see them, as their discussions are now private).
Cartoon fans who were, in the 2000s, dismissive of "Hyde and Hare" and of my article about it, lambasting it, and all other Friz Freleng works of the mid-1950s, as being scarcely any better than cartoons of the 1960s, and were participants in my "cancellation" in the Internet-based fandom for vintage cartoons, are now complaining about the ancient film-to-video transfer of "Hyde and Hare" used for the Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde (1932) Blu-Ray. This raises an eyebrow on my part. Oh, I doubt most emphatically that those people gained any appreciation for "Hyde and Hare" in the years since I left the Golden Age Cartoons community, but it does stir my irony-noting tendency, and also invokes my capacity for sardonic perspective, to see them complaining that the cartoon they famously denigrated is not looking as sharp as possible. Maybe if those cartoon fans had treated the cartoon better, Warner Archive might have been more motivated to procure the restored, High Definition film-to-video transfer of "Hyde and Hare" from Warner Home Video, which might have also been more willing to be obliging of the request.
I should know early next week exactly how awful "Hyde and Hare" is on the Blu-Ray of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde (1932). I will, of course, provide a thorough review, of both the cartoon and the movie.
My Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde (1932) Blu-Ray was delivered at my door on the morning of Tuesday, November 1. A day too late for watching the Blu-Ray in celebration of Halloween. But I am exceedingly happy to have the Blu-Ray disc in my hands several days before the projected delivery date of November 7 provided by Amazon.com.
The package arrived when I had less than an hour before having to go to work, and I made the most of the time allowed to me to enjoy my latest acquisition before my earning of a living required me to depart my house. I popped the Blu-Ray disc into one of my machines and went first for "Hyde and Hare". Everything said in the review that I read weeks ago, is accurate. The cartoon is blurry. There is aliasing, especially on the names in the credits. The colours are inferior to those on same cartoon in LOONEY TUNES GOLDEN COLLECTION 2. But they were not quite as poor as I was expecting. And the Blu-Ray encode means that the cartoon is not marred with the conspicuous digital video compression artifacts that are very evident on the LOONEY TUNES GOLDEN COLLECTION DVD. Audio also is better than on the DVD, it not being quite so compressed here.
After the cartoon, I proceeded to the movie, watching it with the new audio commentary activated. I watched it as far as Hyde arriving at Variety Music Hall. And then after work, I watched the balance of the movie with the same audio commentary selected, then listened to the Fredric March radio play, and then watched the whole movie with movie audio. All reviews of the movie in its Blu-Ray rendering are also accurate. It looks magnificent. A triumph in film restoration in the digital age. I have had Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde (1932) on VHS videocassette, laser videodisc, and DVD in the past thirty-one years since that visit to Suncoast Video in Bangor, Maine in July, 1991 that first brought me into range of the 1932 Fredric March Hollywood horror movie on home video. And for all of those thirty-one years, I have only known Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde (1932) as a sea of film dirt, hairs, film wear lines, et cetera. Every film frame seemed to have some blemish. Now, with the Warner Archive Blu-Ray, Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde (1932) has been so restored as to look virtually pristine. Contrast levels and blacks are gorgeous. Detail in the image is astounding. And the picture is perfectly stable. No swaying back and forth. There are some missing film frames from splices to the film elements, but unless a Doctor Who Restoration Team sort of miracle can be applied to generate new frames based on information in adjacent ones, these flaws will always be in the movie. The missing frames are lost in the only known retained film elements of the movie's scenes. But they are few and far between. Mostly in the section of the movie focused on Jekyll's work at the charity hospital. And I would add that even the film splices heralding the missing frames are spotless.
The audio is a tad lower than I would expect, but still of a superlative quality. I heard none of the spittle-like sounds of old film.
The new commentary with Constantine Nasr and Steve Haberman is chalk-full of interesting discussion on the themes of Jekyll and Hyde, how various movie versions of it distinguished themselves from the others, what Robert Louis Stevenson wrote in his original draught, and even scenes known to be filmed and cut from the film before release, including one in Jekyll's first manifestation of Hyde in which Hyde trampled a little girl and provided money to the girl's parents to keep them quiet. The commentators remark about the expressive decor in the movie, the increasing ugliness of Hyde coinciding with his augmented brutality, Jekyll appearing to shrink while Hyde looks taller and taller, and, of course, the quality of the restoration. Many, many of their observations on the movie's artistry are very much on the mark, but they are incorrect when they say that Jekyll stays Hyde between persuading Ivy to come with him and Hyde coming into the Soho apartment while Ivy is talking with the landlady. It is very evident that Hyde looks much more advanced in his increased ugliness in the latter scene than in the former one. Every time Jekyll transforms to Hyde, Hyde's features look more repulsive. Therefore, he must have transformed into Hyde a couple of times that we do not see, between the two scenes. This is supported in the dialogue between Lanyon and Poole. Poole says to Lanyon that, during Muriel's absence, Jekyll has come and gone via the back door of the laboratory and that he, Poole, has tended not to see Jekyll for days at a time. So, Jekyll has transformed back to his better self a couple of times at least, for Poole to see him at those times of which Poole speaks. It is a weakness of the movie that we are only told by exposition that Jekyll transformed from Hyde back to himself and back to Hyde again a number of times during Muriel's absence. It would have been more interesting to show at least some of that. Jekyll endeavouring to do some doctor's duties while itching to be Hyde again, and Jekyll wrestling with his conscience and then relenting to the temptation of yet another drink of the potion. Maybe some of that was scripted, or even filmed. All in all, it is an outstanding commentary. I will return to it, I feel sure.
The radio play is amazing. Fredric March was in his fifties when he did the play. He sounds older, distinctly less effervescent as Jekyll than in the movie, while Hyde guffaws exactly as in scenes in the film. The play adheres to the Stevenson novella much, much more than the movie, Jekyll is the middle-aged men envisioned by Stevenson, and there are conversations between Jekyll and Hyde, as March alternates between the two personalities in them, Hyde tempting Jekyll with unrestrained indulgence in sinful pleasure, and Jekyll expressing revulsion to Hyde at Hyde's violent deeds. The Utterson character is significantly more significant than in the movie. And Lanyon dies after witnessing the Hyde-to-Jekyll transition. It is not a perfect audio capture of the play. Another radio station can be heard in the distance. But it is an awesome addition to the value-added material. I tip my hat to whoever supplied it for the Blu-Ray.
Thursday, November 3, 2022.
Sunday, November 6, 2022.
My computer hard drive had a catastrophic failure this past Thursday, and I purchased a new computer at Best Buy yesterday. All told, the transaction cost me upwards of $1100. I pray that this computer lasts longer than its predecessor, which was not operational for even five years, and was increasingly sluggish in the final two years of its use.
Website updates of the past week were all to autobiographical Web pages, the addition to them of images of episodes of The New Avengers. The images of New Avengers episodes "Sleeper" and "Gnaws", long an inclusion in my Era 2 memoirs, are now accompanied by images of the titling of those episodes. Some new images of "Hostage" and a new set of images of "Complex" are now in Era 4, and I added a image of the titling to "Dead Men Are Dangerous" to a collage of images of that episode in Era 7.
If ever there comes a time when I feel motivated to add more Web pages to my Website, one on The New Avengers would be very near the top of the list of possibilities. I have always admired that television series' ingenious formula and its episode structure style (e.g. the use of prologue ending in freeze-frame, and the main introduction with the three heroes uniting into a coat of arms, and the episode title on top of same freeze-frame), music, and many of the story ideas and certain curiously recurring subject matter. I especially love the fantastic nature of several of its episodes (those of Season 1, mostly). It is so sad that the television show's presence on home video is so lacking in quality, even by DVD standards. Network Distributing was planning a Blu-Ray release, but for inability to come to some particular terms, that Blu-Ray release was abandoned. And the primary rights holder, StudioCanal, does not appear to be interested in itself releasing The New Avengers to Blu-Ray to go alongside the existing Blu-Rays of the original Avengers.
Another reason why I like The New Avengers is the number of Space: 1999 actors and actresses In it. Which is to be expected, one supposes, as it was made at Pinewood Studios, its first season before the cameras in the same year that saw the production of Season 2 Space: 1999. Gareth Hunt, who played third lead character Mike Gambit, was in Space: 1999. Other actors, and actresses, in both television programmes were Prentis Hancock, Peter Cushing, Michael Sheard, Roy Boyd, Kevin Stoney, Michael Culver, Stuart Damon, Yasuko Nagazumi, Pamela Stephenson, Peter Porteous, Ina Skriver, Gary Waldhorn, Roy Marsden, Eric Carte, and Jeremy Young.
In some of my more fanciful ruminations of late, I have been contemplating how The Day After Tomorrow- "Into Infinity" might fit into the universe and continuity of Space: 1999. In his book, Space: 1999- The Vault, Chris Bentley posits that the characters of The Day After Tomorrow- "Into Infinity" may be contemporaries of the Moonbase Alphans, venturing into space on the near-light-speed spaceship, the Altares, sometime before the Moon is blasted out of Earth orbit. He notes that the mission of the Altares would have to initiate before Space: 1999's opener, "Breakaway", as the Moon is shown being passed by the Altares after the latter's departure from Earth-orbiting Space Station Delta. Very true, this. The Moon is seen shortly after the Altares left Space Station Delta.
The Ultra Probe in 1996 needed a travel time of eight months to reach the outer Solar System. Light would reach that far from Earth within a range of five to six hours. To go from Ultra Probeship speeds to a drive capable of propelling a spaceship almost as fast as light is a leap that would seem highly improbable within a three-year window. But let one assume that a breakthrough in photon propulsion did occur in the mid-1990s. Would Cellini and his crew have been so enthusiastic about boarding one of the alien spaceships in the "graveyard" if near-light-speed technology were already a distinct possibility on Earth? Okay. Maybe the breakthrough was during the Ultra mission and Cellini and company were not told about it. But this is too short a time, I would think, to have a test craft ready to go, and to be considered safe enough for children to crew it, sometime before mid-1999. And the existence of Space Station Delta, the "jump-off point" for humanity's venture to the stars, is rather problematic. As is seen in both "Dragon's Domain" and "Breakaway", it is the Centauri Space Dock that is that "jump-off point". It and Moonbase Alpha itself. Centauri Space Dock looks quite unimpressive compared with Space Station Delta. If Space Station Delta exists at the same time as Centauri Space Dock and clearly has so much more to it, why not use it for the launching of the Meta Probe in 1999? It must have more facilities, surely, by dint of its size. Moreover, the crew of the Altares, if they were of the late 1990s, would be shuttled in an Eagle to Space Station Delta and not the spacecraft in which they are shown to be transported.
I still very much like the idea of The Day After Tomorrow- "Into Infinity" being in Space: 1999's universe. Indeed, mention in The Day After Tomorrow- "Into Infinity" of the ecosystem of Earth being in a state of advanced deterioration would fit with what was shown to have become of Earth in "Journey to Where". The technology in The Day After Tomorrow- "Into Infinity" very closely resembles that in Space: 1999, though perhaps a decade or two more advanced in some respects. The clothing styles are remarkably similar. As is that of luggage.
So, how might I envisage The Day After Tomorrow- "Into Infinity" being in the Space: 1999 universe? How could I possibly explain the Moon being shown in Earth's vicinity if it is decades after "Breakaway" when The Day After Tomorrow- "Into Infinity" commences? Simple. It is not the Moon but a projection of an image of the Moon. After losing the Moon, the peoples of Earth craved the aesthetic of Moonlight. That and the illumination of the nighttime sky that the Moon had provided. So, after Space Station Delta was built to replace Moonbase Alpha as Earth's supreme achievement, a decision was made to astral-project an image of the Moon in continuous orbit, the source of astral-projection being Space Station Delta as it circles Earth. And now that this one item has been dealt-with, it is quite possible to position The Day After Tomorrow- "Into Infinity" somewhere in the early twenty-first century. Who knows? Maybe someday, the Altares may encounter Moonbase Alpha. Now, there is an idea for story material for fan fiction writers.
It is easier still to place Journey to the Far Side of the Sun in Space: 1999's universe, for there is no sign of the Moon in Journey to the Far Side of the Sun. No mention. No visualisation. Indeed, with the discovery of the other planet, Earth's mirror image, the sight of an alternate, mirrored Moon would be a "tip-off" of the mirrored Earth notion quite awhile before Col. Glenn Ross (Roy Thinnes) comes to his realisation about the mirrored world. As there is no such "tip-off", no sighting of a mirror Moon in orbit around the mirror Earth, one can only conclude that the Moon is no longer in orbit about the Earth in Journey to the Far Side of the Sun. Logical, no?
Journey to the Far Side of the Sun may therefore be posited to occur in a post-"Breakaway" time. A time wherein the governments of Earth all point fingers for the disaster on 13 September, 1999, with the World Space Commission soon becoming everyone's scapegoat, it having been overseer of the nuclear waste disposal programme. The World Space Commission loses public favour and government funding, and is disbanded. With public interest in space exploration still high, old national or regional space agencies begin to reassert themselves. Eurosec reaches dominance outside of the United States, and it is exceedingly security-conscious, as is N.A.S.A., with a Soviet space agency being of a concern. The U.S.S.R. may no longer be an expansionist, West-threatening country, but there are factions in that country that are determined to change this if they attain power. Eurosec chooses to eschew the old W.S.C. systems of technology in favour of new such systems of its own. The Eagle is "mothballed" at all space agencies, as it is most symbolic of the discredited W.S.C.. Work commences on replacing Moonbase Alpha with Space Station Delta, but until Space Station Delta construction is in an advanced stage, it cannot be a "jump-off point" for any exploratory space flights. Therefore, launches of such space flights from Earth, have to be done. So, this is the world as it is in Journey to the Far Side of the Sun in, say, the early 2010s. Sometime thereafter, space agencies converge again, maybe after photon propulsion is discovered, and there are preliminary plans to build the Altares, with everyone determined to work together on the awesome new project. Space Station Delta reaches completion of construction, and it replaces Moonbase Alpha as the "stepping stone" for expansion of humanity into the cosmos. Shortly after completion of Space Station Delta, the astral projection of the Moon starts to be cast.
Some ideas to consider. I am not planning as yet to incorporate any of this into my Space: 1999 Chronology, but maybe if I feel so-inclined, I will do so. Someday.
It is the morning of 11 November, 2022.
Forty-five years ago to this day, my father and I embarked our car for a northbound trek, from Nashwaaksis, Fredericton to the village of Douglastown in New Brunswick's Miramichi region. From the new home that we had made for ourselves, for better or for worse, in a growing suburb of Fredericton, to the small community in which our former home had been situated. From a place in which I had as yet no friends, nor any prospective friends, to the surroundings in which I had had more than a dozen friends and where my closest friend, Michael, had invited me for a weekend stay. Michael was the only friend I have ever had, to extend an invitation to me for being a accommodated guest for a number of days (those people in Calgary and Regina in the mid-1990s are excluded from this as they were not my real friends).
All of the particulars of that weekend are chronicled in my Era 3 memoirs. But I will invoke most of them again here. November 11-13, 1977 being a weekend in which I was with a best friend after nearly three months of being without the company of any friend, and also the weekend on which I first saw the "Dragon's Domain" episode of Space: 1999, with Michael and his family watching it with me, it naturally has a very, very indelible imprint on my memory. I can still visualise everything in that weekend as clearly as if it all happened yesterday. Eyeing the central New Brunswick scenery from the windows of our car as it sped northward on a course of approximately a hundred miles under grey skies. The trees in their late-autumn appearance. The deciduous ones leafless, the evergreens in their most faded colour. Listening with amusement to a radio station's transmission of the Napoleon XIV song, "They're Coming to Take Me Away, Ha-Haaa!" (the things that radio stations played back then!). Eating at the Newcastle Dairy Queen with my father. Having a hot dog there. Reuniting with Michael in front of his place as a light rain was starting to fall. My father bidding adieu to me before he left us to return to Fredericton. Michael and I playing Space: 1999 in his house, most memorably his parents' room, in the afternoon hours of that Friday. The two of us sharing Jiffy Pop popcorn as we watched an episode of Logan's Run called "Crypt" that evening. Watching Coming Up Rosie and Spiderman in between servings of Saturday morning breakfast. Later that morning watching The Life and Times of Grizzly Adams. Listening to my Power Records version of "Dragon's Domain" that I had brought with me, on Michael's living room stereo. Michael and I going with Michael's mother on a sunny afternoon shopping expedition in Chatham. Kraft Dinner for supper as the 6 P.M. airtime for Space: 1999 beckoned. An overlong college football game looking like it was going to cut into the alotted hour for my favourite space television programme and me preparing myself to cope with the frustration of that. And yes, it did occur. Space: 1999 would be joined already in progress at close to 6:05 (curiously, this was the only time in Space: 1999's full CBC television network run that it was joined in progress- in my part of the country, at least). I remember exactly when in the episode that was. When Helena said, "Anything traumatic?" to Tony Cellini.
I remember every sight of the episode that did impact my eyeballs. I remember the awe that I felt at sight of the Ultra Probeship, its interior and exterior, and at sound of the music that I would eventually know was "library track" composition, Albinoni's Adagio in G-Minor. It was a magnificent series of scenes as the Ultra Probeship moved gracefully through space and reached its objective, the planet Ultra, and then "veered off" to investigate something else. I remember being too scared to watch the monster scenes. I remember where in the episode I needed to flip the sides of my "compact cassette" in my audiotape machine. During an exchange of dialogue in Commissioner Dixon's office. I remember the advertisement for CBC coverage of the next day's Toronto Santa Claus Parade, and that being before the episode began its second act, with the Ultra Probeship encountering the "spaceship graveyard". I remember every cut scene in the episode as it was shown that evening. I remember watching The Muppet Show and the "Pigs in Space" segment therein, that aired on CHSJ-TV from 7 to 7:30 that evening. Watching it as I read sections of the novelisation of "Dragon's Domain" that I had brought with me, and the synopsis of the episode in The Making of Space: 1999, which I had also had in my possession for my stay with Michael. I remember the audiotape-recorded interview that Michael did with me with regard to "Dragon's Domain" to fill my audiocassette (God, I wish I still had that!), that being done after The Muppet Show as Lou Grant was airing. I remember Michael sitting with me on the bed provided to me for my stay and trying to assure me that I would not have nightmares about the monster. It was futile, for I did indeed have nightmares, and not just on that one night. And I remember the bus ride back home on a rainy Sunday afternoon. Michael and his mother saying farewell to me as I boarded the bus. Sitting in the middle of the very back seat of the bus. The man to my left periodically wiping condensation from the bus window. Reading my books to pass the time on the more-than-two-hour return to Fredericton on that bus, it stopping at the usual places. Blackville. Doaktown. Boiestown. My parents collecting me at the Fredericton Queen Street bus depot as night was starting to fall. The images of all of these are as vivid in my memory as they ever were. I still have the books and the vinyl record that I had then. And I have the entirety of Space: 1999 on Blu-Ray, including "Dragon's Domain" (with no less than three audio commentaries and a "Making-of" featurette). But people who were part of that weekend are either dead (my parents) or far, far out of reach in the Earthly side of spiritual existence. Michael and I have not seen one another in forty-two years. I have not seen Michael's mother and sister since that weekend (I was in Douglastown again with Michael in May of 1978, but I do not remember seeing any of his family on that occasion). There are times when I find myself wondering if it all actually happened, or was a dream. Sometimes, it feels like my life these past ten, twelve years since my parents' passing, was always my reality. That I have always been alone in my house, devoid of the physical presence within and without the house's walls, of family and friends.
I do not expect anyone to understand such a feeling, as my experience would seem to be unique. It does daunt me to think that it has been forty-five years since that memorable weekend. This is a feeling, at least, to which many a person of my generation, and older generations, can relate.
All for today.
Wednesday, November 16, 2022.
Fredericton is receiving its first late-2022 snowfall today. And there are no warm temperatures in the forecast for melting of the snow. Almost all of Canada is now north of the jet stream, with the country beset with waves of Arctic air. With the price of home heating skyrocketing, it is the worst possible time for Canada to have a longer, colder winter than normal.
I am currently working on an assemblage of Rocket Robin Hood episode title cards, to put in my Era 4 memoirs. They are requiring some digital tweaking to remove digital compression artifacts. The third season episode title cards all have slanted text of variable size, and I lack software for correcting that. I do not remember ever seeing a third season Rocket Robin Hood episode with perfectly set text in its title card. Ralph Bakshi and team may have been working so fast on Rocket Robin Hood that precision work on titles was not "on the cards", the pun be pardoned. All film prints of the episodes may show the same flawed titling.
It has been twelve and thirteen years since the DVD release of Rocket Robin Hood. Even for DVD of 2009 and 2010, the look of Rocket Robin Hood in its imprinting on DVD platters was quite deficient, and was criticised by many a DVD collector at the time. If indeed the best possible masters of the television series were sourced for that release, it would seem that Rocket Robin Hood has not received the best archival care since its heydays on Canadian television. I watched "Who'll Kill Rocket Robin?" last evening, and on my sixty-three inch High Definition television, and it looked exceedingly tatty. Colours having a bleached look. An abysmal paucity of detail on everything other than character close-ups. A pasty mess of artifacts on the blacks that are far from being inky. And portions of the lower frame at top of screen, and of upper frame on at screen bottom. I had over-scan on my televisions of the 1970s and 1980s, to be sure, and it may have hidden the flaws to the film framing, on broadcasts of Rocket Robin on ATV, CHSJ, and MITV. But something could have been done to compensate for this issue. Blackening the bottom and top inches of the frame, maybe, to cover over the flaws.
Oh, I know any new product involving Rocket Robin Hood is a forlorn hope. The world was fortunate to have had a DVD release of it, whatever the picture quality. But on a television screen of current standard, it is light-years away from premium image.
Spiderman, on the other hand, looks magnificent upscaled to High Definition on my home theatre screen. The 2004 Spiderman DVD box set continues to be a winner.
The Golden Age Cartoons Facebook group has been inactive since mid-August. It is a record amount of time for that particular Facebook group to be devoid of activity. I am not going to hazard a guess as to why this is the case. I am just noting the lack of any postings these past three months.
More addendum to my autobiographical Web pages on the subject of Tony. Some weeks ago, I was musing about considering him to be an associate rather than a friend. My thinking since then has gone further along that particular train. I am more sanguine than ever about utilising the associate designation where Tony is concerned. But still, I balk at doing a comprehensive revision of my life's story to make alterations to incorporate my new perspective.
With the benefit of 20/20 hindsight of several decades now, I perceive that Tony's interest in me was not friendship, but close association, association in the appreciation of works of imaginative entertainment. I was perhaps the only person he knew who liked everything that he did, and who expressed that liking in ways that were of appeal and inspiration for him. And we collaborated in the making of audiotape-recorded renditions of our own of Star Wars and other movies, basement clubs dedicated to entertainment favourites, showings on audiotape and RCA VideoDisc and videotape of our favourite works, and we compared collections of toys, books, magazines, bubble gum cards, and RCA VideoDiscs, and conversed on these items at my place and his and while en route to and from school (in school years 1981-2 and 1983-4, and in afternoons in 1979 when he met me on my way to home from school), and we combined videocassette recorders for the copying of videotapes and partook in neighbourhood baseball games. And we did go to several movies together. We did all of this. As close associates. Essential parameters of friendship, "having my back" when I was under verbal attack, i.e. telling my attackers to "back off", being someone with whom I could confide about hurt feelings, being morally supportive at times when I felt beleaguered, inviting me to birthday celebrations when everyone else in his and his brother's social life was invited, speaking of me as friend, buddy, pal, and sometimes being demonstrably affectionate, that is in a tactile way, were all absent. Yes, he resisted the allure of Andre, my sworn enemy, when David B., Eric, and Mike J. flocked to that person of clear antipathy for me. But Andre was not Tony's kind of person. Andre did not care for science fiction/fantasy. He liked sports that were mostly not Tony's cup of tea. So, Tony's continued association with me when the others were leaving me aside, was logical, within the context of an associate. Tony was annoyed with Joey calling at my door in late summer of 1979, but his annoyance was with me putting on pause something on which Tony and I were working, to go outside with Joey for awhile. It was not a friend's jealousy. The concept of that was anathema to Tony.
I did not think any of this back in the day. I considered Tony a friend. Even after he moved to Moncton and returned to our Nashwaaksis neighbourhood a year later and my expectations from him were limited, I still applied the word, friend, to him, in my thoughts. To be sure, Tony was the only person with whom I had occasion for videocassette-recorder-combination. And through him, I had connection to his brother, Steven, and to all of Steven's friends, and thereby had successful runs of video shows and such, and participation in baseball games with four, five, six persons on each team. My association with Tony had practical value. In addition to his having interests kindred with mine.
But, yes, Tony did "let me down" that awful evening in April of 1979. He did so again and again when he was dismissive of me in presence of others. And when he had no time for me on his cousin's August of 1979 visit. And when he had me be one of the last people to sign his ankle cast. And when I was kept away from the birthday parties (do I mention that in my memoirs?). And when he did not tell my detractors on the baseball field, one of them his own brother, to desist from the verbal slings and arrows. On the basis of all of this, plus the lack of any reference to me with the word, friend, or words of the same meaning, I must decline the designation of friend for Tony. Again, I am not about to undertake a revision of several of my autobiography's eras, to incorporate this therein. Not today. But maybe tomorrow. Yes, maybe tomorrow.
I do not remember writing of the non-invitations to Tony and Steven's birthday party, in my life's story. I think that I did make mention of some baseball games turning ugly. But I think that I preferred to skirt that particular matter because my intention back in 2005 in the writing of my Era 4 memoirs, was to cast Era 4 in a mostly positive light, in a largely rosy mental picture. But now, today, I am more inclined to facing and writing about all truths of the eras of my life, including those of which my recall is one of fondness. The majority of the baseball games that I played in Era 4 were enjoyable. Less so when I lost, of course, but if I was respectfully treated in losing a game, I would accept the loss with dignity and concede to having had a good time. And in Era 4's first half, most especially in 1983, I won most of the games that I played. But if I was losing, and was losing in the midst of a slump, my armour had gaps that could be penetrated to hurtful purpose. Such was the case in the latter years of Era 4. Steven, sometimes with the collaboration of Craig and his party, and oftentimes with the participation of one or two of Steven's brigade, would lead the charge to subject me to derogatory taunting, "gaslighting", "rubbing my nose in" my imminent loss as though it were an indictment against my worth or lack thereof as a player of baseball and a person of any respectability in the neighbourhood. I was goaded into departing the game, with disparaging remarks flung at my back. Tony was always, always present during these incidents. And never did he intercede in my favour. He did not come after me after I left the game, to offer consolation. There are no criteria in this for Tony to qualify as a friend. Eventually, Steven and company banned me from participating in their games. Did Tony partake in those? I think so.
It is difficult for me to invoke these memories. They underscore how devoid of real friends that I was in even my best Fredericton years, those of Era 4. No one who was present during those baseball games gone awry and said nothing in my support, should be regarded as a friend. Craig, however, did have a few moments where he did "stand up" for me, putting him in temporary, on-again/off-again friend territory. He was most definitely off-again at those adverse times on the baseball diamond. And Steven could be rather kind to me from time to time.
Why was Steven so nasty to me during those baseball games? It probably had to do with Steven's disliking of Joey and of Joey and I being friends. Probably. Very probably. It was Steven's opinion, I feel sure, that Tony was my friend and my best friend and that Joey's presence in my life as a friend was an intrusion on my connection with Tony. And Steven would not accept Joey being my assistant-partner in a video show. Some days after Joey was such for my showing of Superman in August of 1982, Steven cornered me and expressed his disagreement and disapproval with my opting for close friendship with Joey. No doubt that Superman video show was what sparked Steven to make known to me how unpopular with him my close friendship with Joey was. My not ceding to Steven's stance on the matter of me and Joey, no doubt irked him. Striking at me through the baseball game unpleasantness followed from that, I do believe. Particularly at times I was vulnerable (i.e. when I was losing). And yet, Steven had moments of respect and kindness toward me. Even in the weeks, months, years after my close friendship with Joey had become evident. This may have had some connection with the times of friction for Joey and I, Steven approving of Joey and I being separate from each other. Yes, if my memory serves me correctly, Steven's niceness toward me did tend to coincide with the times when Joey and I were not on best of terms.
My revised perspective on Eras 3 and 4 is that Tony was a valued associate, but far short of the definition of friend. Steven, likewise. Craig by and large an associate only, and almost totally for purposes of playing baseball, with some rare instances of friendship. Joey. He was a friend. A friend who frequently had umbrage with me and my ways, and therefore not guaranteed to be always of favourable bearing toward me. But a friend, all the same. My best friend, certainly, after summer of 1982. And I would say that Tony being just an associate in Era 3, the position of my best friend was open in those years to anyone who was interested in being best friends with me. Joey did not replace Tony, as the best friend position in had been vacant, vacant in Fredericton since 1977, and vacant comprising both Douglastown and Fredericton, since Michael and I had had our "falling out" in 1980. I would say that Joey actually replaced Michael.
Joey was not present on any of the occasions when I was taunted and prodded into quitting a playing of baseball. I think that if he was, he would have been on my side and at my defence. Perhaps Steven and the others knew this and did not trouble me if Joey was present. They did not want to see Joey coming to my defence, and did not want for me to see that, for if I did, the friendship between Joey and I would be closer than it was.
I was able to have a sizable number of quality times in Era 4 under the conditions that existed. I guess that this is what matters, ultimately. If I divorce them from memory of the unpleasant experiences on the baseball diamond and in some other locations, I can, in my mind, put myself back to those quality times and still have a feeling of satisfaction. Like a certain September of 1983 baseball game in which I was team captain, pitcher of decision, and victorious. In which people wanted to be on team Kevin. In which Joey, my teammate and best buddy, "had my back" after someone on our team leapt onto it when our opponents were starting to close the run gap between theirs and ours. If Steven or perhaps even Tony himself, do not like my changing of the designation of Tony from best friend of Era 3 to associate then and in Era 4, I cannot recant that. All that I will say is that their presence in my life as associates had value and was appreciated for the quality times that their presence did foster. And I will also note that they did not disparage Space: 1999 or my affection for it. I appreciate that greatly. Though they did not ever defend it or me for liking it, when it or I were being verbally attacked.
To be sure, the years of my life's third era would have been socially much emptier for lack of the presence of Tony. I would have been totally alone in my following of Cosmos 1999 in 1979 and at most of the movies that I went to see from 1978 to 1982, including The Empire Strikes Back. And I expediently left aside some of Tony's problematical deeds, including those of 12 April, 1979, because I knew this. The bottom line is that I can be appreciative of Tony and others as associates and not friends. But of course, I should desire to have friends, too. Associates alone are insufficient for a thoroughly fulfilling social existence. Which is maybe why I am cold, in the main, toward Era 3.
All for today.
Sunday, November 27, 2022.
Sad news to report. Tim Beddows of Network Distributing, the man responsible for that U.K. company's restorations and releases onto home video media of vintage television programmes, has died at the disturbingly early age of 59. Just three years senior to me, he was. Mr. Beddows' name can be seen on the opening to the "These Episodes" documentary on the Space: 1999 DVD and Blu-Ray sets of Network Distributing and also of North America's Shout! Factory, as Executive Producer of that documentary. Mr. Beddows was the man who green-lit every release of Space: 1999 by Network, including the DVD Special Edition for Season 1 in 2005, the Blu-Ray release of Season 1 in 2010, the Blu-Ray and DVD release of Season 2 in 2015, the complete television series Blu-Ray sets of Space: 1999 under the Network label, and the Super Space Theatre project of last year. I do not believe it to be hyperbolic to say that without Tim Beddows, Space: 1999's only kick of the can in the digital video disc formats of home video media would have been the very deficient releases on DVD by A & E and Carlton of the very early 2000s. Space: 1999 would not have looked as magnificent as it does on my sixty-three-inch television were it not for Tim Beddows. I tip my hat eternally to him and will be forever grateful for all that he has done for my favourite television programme. I would say that Space: 1999 is the crown jewel in all that he achieved in his tenure at Network Distributing. But then, I would, would I not? I am certainly not unbiased. But the restoration of Season 2 and the Blu-Ray release of same was voted the Network effort of the year in 2015. May Mr. Tim Beddows so rest in peace.
I have to say also that I applaud Mr. Beddows' decision to not commission any of Kindred's Space: 1999 Documentary for the Season 2 release. I made the unwise decision to sit through it again last evening. The cranky whinging about Fred Freiberger and the decisions made for second season just goes on and and on and on and on. One person after another. No counter-opinion. Was any effort even made to find one? I could say the same thing for the AlphaCon documentary of 1991. Erwin Stank was there to offer some commentary for Season 2 being funny, and to say that he liked it "a lot" for the "bug-eyed monsters", before remarking that he "grew into" first season some years later, the implication being that Season 2 was nothing but un-serious "kiddie stuff". And outside of him, there was the usual nose-in-the-air derision and the tired, old (old even for then) complaints. But in the old Space: 1999 Alliance, and less so in the monumentally skewed Alpha League, there were some people who had time enough for second season to offer some artwork or fan fiction. And there were in the mid-1990s, when the documentary was produced, still some fans who were complimenting of at least some of Season 2. "Journey to Where". "The AB Chrysalis". "Seed of Destruction". "The Bringers of Wonder". There was a fan club for Catherine Schell as Maya. To be sure, John Hug was quite praising of the production in an interview that he did for Starlog. Kevin Connor has only good things to say for the episodes that he directed. Terrance Dicks was reportedly happy with how the one episode that he wrote, "The Lambda Factor", was produced. And I know that a latter-day interview with Fred Freiberger was not sought, for him to respond to the scathing criticisms, one after the other, in The Space: 1999 Documentary. He was not aware of the documentary's existence until I mentioned it to him. Johnny Byrne particularly comes across in the documentary as an exceedingly bitter old man with scarcely any professional courtesy. Someone told me that Mr. Byrne was critical of how his contributions to the documentary were handled in the editing. I do not know. I do not know if different editing choices would have diluted his clear invective for Fred Freiberger and the twenty-four episodes of Season 2. Bottom line is that there were people other than me (I do not count; I am garbage) who might have been sought for alternative viewpoints on Season 2, in the interest of fairness.
Now, of course, every fan hates everything from the opening of "The Metamorph" to the close of "The Dorcons". The bandwagon against second season became an everyone-aboard steamroller after I left Alpha League in 1995 to many a jeer at my back, the Internet Mailing List became the primary forum for hate for Season 2, and the documentary was held high in the air as the definitive "take" on everything to do with Space: 1999 and its production. That was before the Facebook years, which have to be acknowledged as the nadir of fan discourse. I am happy that most of that discourse is closed to the general public, now that the majority of the Space: 1999 Facebook groups are private.
As I say, I do applaud Mr. Beddows for avoiding use of the documentary's second half (that which lambastes Season 2 and denies the existence of any appreciative following of it) for the Season 2 Blu-Ray set. Of course, value-added content on later releases, those of Shout! and, yes, Imprint, do "pick up the slack" for repudiating of Season 2 and telling of people how awful that it is and how foolish people must be, to want to watch it. But anyway.
I have been doing some work on my Website. New to my autobiography are images of the cartoons, "Wet Hare", "Big House Bunny", and "Mad as a Mars Hare" (in Era 2), images of Rocket Robin Hood title cards and some additional Doctor Who memories of 1986 ( in Era 4), and a new image of Doctor Who- "The War Games" ( in Era 6). There is a High Definition video of "Wet Hare" on Dailymotion in fully restored form ("Wet Hare" was one of the Bugs cartoons left off of the Blu-Ray set of 2020), from which I was able to do a screen capture. After some tweaking to remove digital compression artifacts, I added that screen capture to an existing assembly of images of Bugs Bunny/Road Runner Hour episode nine.
I wish that I had a means of preserving these High Definition videos of unreleased-on-Blu-Ray cartoons and burning some Blu-Rays of my own, but I lack the software and a Blu-Ray burner. Is someone out there in the world doing this? I sure do hope so. Physical media does not appear to have much time left. Companies like Warner Brothers would love for no one to possess physical copies of anything and to have to pay for ephemeral enjoyment of them on an Internet "streaming" service. Only the more steadfast collectors such as myself want to possess their entertainment favourites as personal property, anymore. A day or two ago, I saw some executive saying that people only pay for the enjoyment of the material being watched and not the physical product itself, when they do purchase a DVD or a Blu-Ray. And that therefore it would be allowable for a person to own nothing, enjoy something provided on demand for a single viewing, and be happy with that. No, I most emphatically say. When I buy a Blu-Ray, I am buying it to possess the entertainment as a physical property on my shelf in my home. A sizable amount of my satisfaction in watching that entertainment, comes from the knowledge that I own it. That it is mine. Not unusual, this. It is the mindset of the collector. And I am damned well not going to be propagandised or indoctrinated out of it. I pray that there are enough collectors like me to "push back" against any effort to divest us of our prized possessions. Own nothing and be happy, eh? Bull's excrement! I will never, ever, ever be happy owning nothing.
While I am on the subject of owning entertainment on physical media, there is some Blu-Ray release news to report.
Imprint has announced its February, 2023 Blu-Ray releases, and among them is The Bad News Bears Bears Go to Japan. So, I was right that the last entry in the original Bears series of films would eventually be on Blu-Ray. It was a logical thing to suppose, given that the first two Bears movies were released by Imprint, in 2021 and 2022 respectively. Of course, I will buy the Blu-Ray of The Bad News Bears Bears Go to Japan and retire the DVD that I have had of same since 2002. I do not remember watching that DVD more than twice. The Bad News Bears Bears Go to Japan is, by all objective measure, a dire Bears movie, and a deficient example of cinema in general. Tony Curtis' character is an unlikable donkey's derriere from the start of the movie to the end, and the movie is a protracted rendition of the "old hat" fish-out-of-water trope. A series of unfunny clashes between cultures strung along by a dull, dull Kelly Leak romance. The pacing is leaden. There is almost no baseball played in it. Two of the Bears whose presence was vital to the appeal of the previous movies, Tanner and Lupus, are absent without mention. Which is unforgivable, as Tanner wanting to win the big game for "the Looper" so that the two of them could go to Japan was a major component to the story of the movie prior to this one. And some other bears fall by the wayside, too. Moreover, the Bears winning the game in the Astrodome in the prior movie was said to be rewarded with a game in Japan. The game in Japan ought therefore to be guaranteed. So, why are the Bears looking at start of this movie for a sponsor for them to go to Japan? Why is Lazar (Curtis) their manager in addition to being their sponsor? What baseball coaching experience does he have? The cardinal sin of the movie is that it is boring. There are some beautiful visuals of Japan sprinkled here and there, between a wrestling (yes, wrestling!) scene involving Lazar and a love scene between Kelly and his Japanese girl-friend. But is one watching this movie for a travelogue or for baseball action with a favourite Little League team? As I say, I only watched the DVD of it twice. I never had it on VHS videocassette. I did have it on open-reel audiotape to go with its two predecessors, which I also had on open-reel audiotape. All three having been captured on audiotape from broadcasts on television. I remember doing the audiotape-recording of an ATV Saturday late-night telecast of The Bad News Bears Bears Go to Japan. Unlike the two previous Bears movies, it was not included in my roster of entertainments for Cine-Audio showings. Anyone who might have come would doubtless have "bailed" on it less than a half-hour into it.
Rumour is that the Doctor Who season to be released after Season 2 next month, will be Season 9. Not my favourite of the Jon Pertwee seasons, but definitely one that can benefit from new restoration work combining NTSC video and telecine recordings, as a few other serials of the Pertwee years have. I will welcome it, but as I have said before, with the pace at which seasons are now being released, I doubt that the entirety of the library of existing episodes of Doctor Who will be on Blu-Ray, and I do not believe that Season 13 will be released before Blu-Ray manufacture is suspended. Sometime around 2025, I expect.
All for today.
Wednesday, November 30, 2022.
From time to time, I Google "Hyde and Hare", out of curiosity on whether or not my article on the cartoon is receiving recognition, and also on whether there might be some gorgeous new works "spun off" from the cartoon, its elements, its aesthetic, and occasionally, as this Weblog has shown, I come upon something very impressive, so much so that I choose to acknowledge it and post an image of it to this Weblog. Such is the case today. And without further adieu, here is what someone somewhere has produced. By far, the most stunning cartoon character statuettes that I have ever seen. Outstanding craftmanship!
One imagines the hours of intricate labour that was put into this project. In clear contradiction to the dismissive attitudes of legions of cartoon fans at discussion forums where "Hyde and Hare" is concerned, the Bugs Bunny cartoon about the doctor with the chemically induced split personality, cannot be said not to imprint itself on some people's psyches, to such a degree that such people are motivated to bring that imprinting into some tangible reality. My imprinting begat my article. This person's imprinting has yielded an awesome pair of carved-from-clay statuettes. I cannot laud his or her work more highly than I now do. Magnificent! I wish that I could have one to sit alongside my Funko Pop figures of Bugs Bunny and Mr. Hyde (which still are pristine inside unopened packaging, by the way).
And this superlative work of art is not all that I found in my Google search for "Hyde and Hare".
A Podcast shortly before Halloween this year contained a discussion on Friz Freleng's three cartoon shorts employing the Jekyll-and-Hyde concept. It does meander into some other topics, and one has to be patient and stay with it until the conversation returns to the aforementioned subject, but it is a discourse that brought smiles to my face at numerous times. One of the participants even quotes some of my writing, though not my article on "Hyde and Hare", rather my tribute to Friz Freleng. The discussion on cartoons focuses mostly on "Dr. Jerkyl's Hide", actually. Mention of "Hyde and Hare" and "Hyde and Go Tweet" is tangential to the attention given "Dr. Jerkyl's Hide". The participants do offer some interesting new perspectives on "Dr. Jerkyl's Hide". One of them saw that cartoon recently for the first time, and on a movie theatre screen, yet. He was struck at the core of his soul at how violent and how graphic in violence and intensely disturbing that some of the scenes are, most especially the one wherein the Sylvester monster emerges from a second transformation, i.e. the one that occurs in the private room with the table trunk, and surgically claws a petrified-with-terror Alfie into chunks, and Alfie soon falling to pieces in front of Chester.
Here is the Hyperlink to that Podcast.
Despite proclamations by my detractors at the Golden Age Cartoons discussion forum that I am totally alone and therefore of no value, eminently dismissible, in appreciation for "Hyde and Hare" and the other two Friz Freleng-directed nods to "The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde" (such obvious efforts at "gaslighting" by people who reject the idea that anything not directed by Clampett, Avery, Jones, Tashlin could possibly garner valid, upholdable accolades), there continue to be people who prove that I am not the only person to whom "Hyde and Hare", and the other two, commanded recognition, aesthetic attention, and left some substantial impression.
Why, why, why cannot we have a Blu-Ray with all three of these cartoons? To date, "Dr. Jerkyl's Hide" is not on digital videodisc at all, "Hyde and Go Tweet" is on DVD only in a late 1990s film-to-video transfer, and almost all of its footage used in Daffy Duck's Quackbusters, is on the DVD of that movie. And "Hyde and Hare" is on DVD in Standard Definition and on Blu-Ray in an upscaled 1998 film-to-video transfer.
Sunday, December 4, 2022.
Some warmer weather and some rain has rid Fredericton of the snow that it received in the third week of November. Hopefully, there will be sight of green grass and brown sand for another few weeks, and maybe, just maybe, it will be a green Christmas this year. Before the grip of winter tightens around New Brunswick as it has done in the Canadian western provinces.
I came upon some magnificent art based on an episode of Spiderman (1967-70). Not an episode of the first season, which tends to receive the lion's share of Spiderman (1967-70)'s accolades, but one from Season 2 and the production team of Ralph Bakshi. Here it is.
As 2022 is approaching a close, I thought that I would mention, if I have not done so already, that 2022 marks twenty-five years since I began hosting my own Website. It is a remarkable achievement, maintaining a Website for so long, and continuing to add to it, while others went the way of the Do-Do or have been totally lethargic for many years. I remember very vividly the zeal, indeed the euphoria, that I felt as I pounded off of my keyboard paragraph after paragraph of text, and Web page after Web page pertaining to my favourite entertainments. The words flowed off of my fingers. I do not remember a single instance of "writer's block". And I was actually receiving positive feedback. Some. More than I can say that I ever had in my years of involvement in Space: 1999 fandom. Of course, accolades for my work vis-a-vis good old Space: 1999 were among the least abundant in those times (between 1997 and 2001) of daily incoming Internet communiques. Spiderman and Rocket Robin Hood, and The Littlest Hobo, were the subjects of most of the gratifying communication that I received in those days. I was rather dismayed not to find as much interest in my many Web pages on the Warner Brothers cartoons, which were, of everything about which I wrote, the most mainstream and most popular. In those years, at least. I was not full-time employed then and had ample time to add to my Website and "keep up" with every e-mail. I answered every e-mail, even the ones that scarcely acknowledged my work and asked me for something that I was unable to provide. Ignorant, rude e-mail in regards to my Website was rare. The bulk of the invective that I received was on Internet message forums. Though I did occasionally receive a communication from someone saying that I was wrong to write anything at all complimentary about Season 2 Space: 1999 (oh, of course). I also received an e-mail from someone supporting my campaign (in 2002) for a DVD release of Spiderman, who proceded to tell to me that my autobiography as it then existed, was unsatisfactory in that I failed to adequately outline the experiences with entertainments and social life, that shaped me. His criticism was rather undiplomatic, abrasive. But whether or not my life's story was inadequate in reportage of the formative experiences with entertainments, was a matter that I "took to heart", and I did a thorough revision of my autobiography, rewriting it almost "from scratch", hopefully sufficiently addressing the criticism. I did not arrogantly dismiss it "out of hand", much as it was lacking in diplomacy.
My long tenure on the Internet brought me into conflict with a number of persons and with groups of persons. One of those instances of strife led to my departure from the Internet community of cartoon fans at around the same time (in 2009) that my Internet site provider, Geocities, was abandoning its Website services. For some time, about eighteen months, I refrained from seeking another vendor of Internet space for my Website, and the Website was not available anywhere on the World Wide Web. The denunciations of me and my work in my confrontation with the league of detractors of my favourite cartoons, my work, and me, personally, had been deeply discouraging and upsetting (and for the bulk of the latter half of the 2000s correspondence on my Website had been sparse and seldom containing words of appreciation), and it was not the first time such an incident had occurred. As usual for most of my life, consoling friends were nowhere following the unpleasantness. I was quite unmotivated to seek out another provider of a niche in Cyberspace and return my Website to the World Wide Web. My mother's final words to me brought me to a decision to reconsider, and I eventually put almost all of my Website of old back on the Internet, through Webs.com. Thereafter, and especially after my father's death, I set to work on improving the look of the Website, vastly increasing and improving images. The work on such a project helped me through the weeks of lonely bereavement after my father's passing. And brief time periods of lethargy aside, I have not since then desisted from my Website work. There is almost always some project on the go, or in a queue to begin. I am not the sort of person who builds a Website and then does nothing more with it. The desire to improve, and to strive toward perfection, is always with me.
Alas, these projects combined with full-time work, plus the responsibilities of maintaining a home all by myself, exercise, and the need for some relaxed time in front of my home theatre screen in evenings and on the weekends, has these past ten years drastically limited the amount of time that I have had for correspondence.
I made the mistake some nights ago of watching a group review of the Space: 1999 first season episode, "Ring Around the Moon". I was only about ten minutes into the video before I sighed, fretted, and directed my computer mouse arrow to the top right corner of screen to "close window". I was subjected to some smug jokes about (who else?) Fred Freiberger. Some cantankerous huffing at mention of "All That Glisters", and David Hirsch (who worked with Gerry Anderson on the "Space Report" column in Starlog magazine back in 1978, 1979, 1980, 1981) referring in exasperation to "the stupid rock episode" in some disparaging commentary about the season that evidently no person of any consequence favours. I heard not a single observation on the episode that was supposed to be being discussed, before I decided that I had heard enough. No doubt, it was just going to be a litany of, "At least it isn't 'Year 2', thank goodness," said with regard to quibbles with "Ring Around the Moon".
I am not going to launch into yet another long defence of "All That Glisters". I have done that enough. But what is stupid about it? Really. What is stupid about it? Is Star Trek's living, intelligent rock episode, "The Devil in the Dark", widely dismissed as stupid? Or Doctor Who- "The Stones of Blood"? Living rocks were established in the Space: 1999 canon in "Year 1". In "End of Eternity". Intelligent life without anatomical brains was broached in "Year 1". In "Alpha Child". Possession of an Alphan for procurement of something was also done in "Year 1". In "Force of Life". Is all of this declared stupid in "Year 1"? Of course not. Like it or not (and if not then I do not care to know such a person), Season 2 with all of its otherworldly phenomena, fits in the Space: 1999 universe as it was established in Season 1. Only the style is different, and the different styles can be appreciated as long as one is not blinkered for life to the merits of Season 2. Is it the Dave Reilly character that is the source of the alleged stupidity? So, he's an Alphan of Irish descent with a quirky affection for old Texan lore. So, what? That is part of his character. Did not Barry Morse once say that he wished for there to be more quirky individuality in the characters? Okay. So, Reilly could be something of an arrogant jerk. Some people are like that. And his attraction to Maya and his seeing of Tony as a rival, fuels his tending toward being less than sympathetic as a character. He is an antagonist, and Koenig "puts him in his place". That and his revulsion at discovering what Maya thinks of him. He has some redemption by the end of the episode, becoming a less immodest character. He also seems to accept that Tony and Maya belong together and "backs off". But enough on this. I have defended "All That Glisters" much, much more cogently elsewhere on this Weblog. Suffice it to say that I am way, way, way, way, way past "putting up with" bellicose or smugly comical, derisive commentary on Season 2. I would rather sit in total silence and count the cracks on the wall of my now forty-five-year-old house, than subject myself to listening to, or reading, such commentary.
All for today.
Christmas Eve, Saturday, December 24, 2022. Forty-five years ago, on a Christmas Eve also on a Saturday, I bought a Space: 1999 Moonbuggy toy, at Sobeys, of all places. I was also at my grandparents' place for dinner and a most unusual (for our family) Christmas Eve opening of gifts. And I also brought my audiocassette apparatus with me to capture the sounds of the CBC and CHSJ broadcast of Space: 1999- "The Infernal Machine", in which most of the advertisement intervals were stuffed by CHSJ with Christmas greetings from various businesses. Happily, CHSJ did not truncate the episode in any way with an excess of commercials.
My Doctor Who Season 2 Blu-Ray box set arrived ten days ago, and I have been watching the Blu-Ray discs in that, in what time to myself apart from Website work, that I have had in the past ten rotations of our planet Earth. For upscalings of film recordings of black-and-white television video material of the early-to-mid-1960s, the serials look as good as can be expected, I suppose. No news next on what is coming next on the Doctor Who Blu-Ray schedule. Seasons 9, 20, and 6 are being rumoured. 2023 being the sixtieth anniversary of Doctor Who, I would have hoped to see a fourth set, to compensate for the mere two sets that were released this year.
In a surprise move, Network Distributing has released a fiftieth anniversary Blu-Ray set of The Adventures of Black Beauty. An early 1970s television series that I have been watching in recent years on YouTube. It would be interesting to see how a new remaster in High Definition will look. I have a certain amount of time for The Adventures of Black Beauty. For nostalgia, of course, it having been a television offering during my cherished Douglastown years. And also for its Space: 1999 connections. Charles Crichton and Ray Austin, later to be Space: 1999 directors, helmed a sizable number of the Adventures of Black Beauty episodes. And in The Adventures of Black Beauty there were such Space: 1999 actors as Stacy Dorning and Michael Culver, as second season Black Beauty regulars, and Michael Sheard, Maxine Audley, Geoffrey Bayldon, Leigh Lawson, Patrick Westwood, Peter Bowles, and Stuart Damon, as guest stars. Actors from Doctor Who are even more replete. And the visuals of the English countryside, are gorgeous, as is the music. I have purchased a set and would encourage others to do same. Hopefully if vintage television continues to be lucrative for Network, we might see in 2023 a box set of Return of the Saint, it, too, sporting quite an impressive series of Space: 1999 associations. And being quite appealing as escapist, stylish, action-adventure entertainment.
It will this year be another traditional Kevin McCorry Christmas post-my-father's-passing. A turkey dinner and a quiet day at home watching Blu-Rays and DVDs.
Final day of the Year of Our Lord 2022.
I now have the Adventures of Black Beauty Blu-Ray set and have watched numerous episodes.
Sadly, the restoration for High Definition is not to Network Distributing's usual high standard. Detail is lacking, as is contrast. Colours are faded. The picture has a "washed-out", soft, even blurry look in places, especially in some of the end credits, and blacks are not inky. There is also juddery movement at times, suggesting that I am watching High Definition up-conversions of PAL masters. I am not informed as to the particulars of this particular release. It could be that the original camera negatives of the fifty-two episodes no longer exist, and that all that are extant are 16-millimetre film prints that have seen better days. Perhaps only transfers of them to PAL video. Network may have done some digital clean-up of old PAL video masters (those originally made for DVD from 16-millimetre prints), and this was all that could be done. It is disappointing, to be sure. The first season episodes look better than those of the second. Perhaps different film stock was used for the two seasons, that of the second season being of an inferior quality.
Unlike most other Network Blu-Rays, this set is multi-region. A, B, and C. So, if anyone wants the set and does not have multi-region playback, he or she should be able to purchase it with confidence. Based at least on what the Blu-Ray discs all say. Zones A, B, and C.
There are bonus features. Talking-head interviews, and accompanying clips from episodes, with actress Judi Bowker, actor Stephen Garlick, and some of the production crew. Many entertaining anecdotes about the making of the television series. Alas, neither Stacy Dorning nor Michael Culver participated in the value-added content. And all of the other regular cast members are, sadly, deceased. Amongst them child actors Roderick Shaw and Tony Maiden. Photograph galleries, including one dedicated to merchandise, are very good value. I was not aware that there were Black Beauty paperbacks, Annuals, View-Master packets, and 8-millimetre films.
All for today.
January 1, 2023.
I am going to begin 2023 by criticising the Star Trek episode, "The Trouble With Tribbles". Arguably (for me, at least) one of the more overrated episodes of the original Star Trek television series. I cannot say that I have ever been a fan of it, though for some reason I had an inclination to watch it a few nights ago. It actually has a Blu-Ray disc all to itself and some of its "spin-offs" in later works of Star Trek. How wildly extravagant is that?
"The Trouble With Tribbles", together with "I, Mudd" (which was made immediately before it), is, in my view, the closest that Star Trek ever came to being a situation comedy. Season 2 Star Trek did have a tendency to veer into comedy for its epilogues and some mid-episode conversations, but at least the stakes in those episodes tended to be greater than what is to be found in the premise of "The Trouble With Tribbles". In "The Trouble With Tribbles", we are expected to be concerned about the developing of one Sherman's Planet (or, as it is often jokingly called, "Sherman and Peabody's Planet"; funny!!!). A planet that we never see and only hear about in reference. A planet that is under dispute between the Federation and the Klingons. Big deal! Just find another planet. In "By Any Other Name", Kirk says that there is a multitude of worlds in the Milky Way galaxy that are suitable for colonisation.
William Schallert, in his trademark "sitcom"-esque hyper-fastidiousness, is pressing Kirk to "take seriously" the matter of Sherman's Planet and shipments of grain to it. And Kirk has antagonism played rather light-heartedly with two Klingons, Koloth and Korax, the former portrayed by the same actor who was Trelaine in "The Squire of Gothos", and with scarcely much difference betwen his two roles in effusive acting performance. The Klingons in this episode could not be more comedically "arch" if they twirled moustaches. And they exit at the end of the episode as though they had defecated in their pants. After the Klingon gambit in the episode had been exposed, exposed almost Scooby-Doo-like, some two years before Scooby-Doo was even a thing.
The episode's prologue consists of little more than expository dialogue betwen Kirk, Spock, and Chekov in the Briefing Room, in which Chekov comes across as nothing more than a buffoon who thinks Russians to have been responsible for every great discovery and invention. And we later learn that he believes Vodka to be superior to all other alcoholic beverages. Okay. I can accept a bit of character quirkiness. But what I am noting here is something of a departure from Chekov's usual dependability in the delivery of accurate information.
Two episodic acts end on a comedic note. The second act comes to an end with a barroom brawl. A barroom brawl in Star Trek? Okay. Whatever. Human frailty still exists in the twenty-third century, as was established in Season 1. But the brawl itself is played for laughs, as, too, is its aftermath with Kirk questioning Scotty. And as it is in progress, the focus is on the comedic Cyrano Jones being silly as he downs drinks while avoiding the fracas as much as possible, with accompanying music denoting silliness and "twee-ness" as the act all too slowly comes to an end and the fade to black finally happens. And the third act ends with tons and tons of Tribbles pouring onto a hapless Kirk, as more comedy-expressing music plays.
What of the Tribbles themselves? Cute, fuzzy, adorable. As much as can possibly be conveyed without their having a face and a pair of eyes. But from where did Cyrano Jones acquire them? How come they did not multiply out of control on his spaceship before he came to the Space Station? I suppose that he must have very, very recently procured his samples of the furry creatures. Okay. whatever. We have to accept that just as we must accept that Jones was not aware of how rapidly Tribbles do multiply. Even though it should have been very obvious in almost no time at all.
The main antagonist in the episode is revealed to be the Schallert chartacter's assistant, Darvin, who is a Klingon in human guise, who poisoned the grain intended for Sherman's Planet. The grain is evidently easily replaced, as no one seems to be very protractedly concerned about how the loss of the first grain shipment will impact the development of Sherman's Planet. How is it that Darvin's true Klingon nature was not detected before this point in time? All that McCoy needs to do is to run a medical scanner over him, to determine that he is Klingon. Would not a physical examination have been required before Darvin first boarded a Federation spacecraft? As per standard procedure. How did he acquire and carry the poison? Would it not have been detected on his person, or on the person of his Klingon contacts on the space station? Pretty lax security, considering that Kirk is supposed to be protecting the grain.
But the most cogent indicator of situation comedy, or of farce, yet, is the epilogue. Scotty says that he transported every Tribble on the Enterprise into the Klingons' engine room where, "...they'll be no Tribble at all." And everyone laughs. It is absurd on its face. Why would Kirk be laughing? What Scotty did was unauthorised. And it could be construed by the Klingons as an intrusive, aggressive act. An act of war, even. And after Kirk expresses revulsion at the possibility that Scotty "beamed" the Tribbles into space, what do he and Scotty and the others on the Bridge think the Klingons would do with the Tribbles after finding them in the engine room, multiplying profusely and screeching ear-piercingly? The Klingons would act post-haste to dispose of them, of course. And being that Klingons are ruthless and pitiless, they would have no compunction over killing the Tribbles in the vacuum of space. Scotty condemned them to death as surely as if he himself had "beamed" them into the void. Ah, but everyone has a laugh and the episode is concluded. Concluded most absurdly.
And this is not all on the absurdity angle. Kirk assigned Cyrano Jones to "pick up" every Tribble on the Space Station. "Pick (them) up" and put them where? On Jones' spaceship? Surely by the time that he had "picked up" every Tribble (some seventeen years hence, per Spock's calculation) they would have multiplied to such prolific numbers that even the Space Station could not contain them, to say nothing about the smaller capacity of Jones' spaceship. Ridiculous. Absolutely, patently ridiculous.
David Gerrold became the science fiction "guru" that he is based on this one episode of Star Trek that is demonstrably not unassailable. Mr. Gerrold famously bristled at Fred Freiberger having had the temerity to opine that Star Trek should not be a comedy, and that "The Trouble With Tribbles" was too comedic for his taste. Indeed, "Spock's Brain" aside, third season Star Trek, under Freiberger, made a conscious effort to steer itself toward serious renderings of science fiction/fantasy, with a minimum or no trace at all, of funniness. "Spock's Brain" was a Gene Coon-penned left-over script of Season 2, and Freiberger did declare the episode that came of it to be a misfire. Farce was avoided in all other third season episodes. Even the "space hippies" episode was serious in tone, and sad in its ending. There was in Season 3 the occasional smidgen of humour between Kirk, Spock, and McCoy stemming out of their interesting dynamic as a threesome. "The Tholian Web" had some of that in its epilogue. Likewise "The Lights of Zetar". But most episodes ended on a serious, wistful, sometimes even grim, note. Third season Star Trek "played it straight", as first season mostly did.
David Gerrold did some superlative work, to be sure. His Logan's Run episode, "Man Out of Time", is excellent. Though his arrogance when he was writing for Starlog was irksome, to say the least. I was quite aware of his negative assessment of Space: 1999. I think that his vitriol toward Fred Freiberger was wrong, as, too, was his disdain for Season 3 Star Trek. He could, however, occasionally say things that had merit. I would never say so back in the day, but now I do acknowledge that he was sometimes "on point", most particularly in his observations on the nature of science fiction/fantasy fandom. Several of his criticisms of The Empire Strikes Back were "bang on the money". But all of this aside, the work that won him his fame, is, in my estimation, far short of being the ne plus ultra of the Star Trek canon. Though I am sure there is no shortage of people who will declare Space: 1999 to be execrable drivel while holding "The Trouble With Tribbles" highly above their heads as the pinnacle of scripts for the most praiseworthy opus of imagination ever lensed by the U.S. and British entertainment industries. They will not respect my appreciation for Space: 1999, and I do not feel at all compelled to kowtow to them and their often-sung favourites. And in the immortal words of Mr. Cronkite, that is the way that it is.
As I have said before, there are faults in everything if one is searching for them. People are imperfect. Yet Space: 1999 and most especially its second season are not granted the same allowance to be imperfect as countless other works of science fiction/fantasy are. And not given licence for "economy of detail" while other works receive a "free pass". While this injustice persists, I shall continue to call attention to imperfections in highly esteemed productions.
Oh, and by the way, the comedy of "The Trouble With Tribbles" has fellowship not only with "I, Mudd", but also with "A Piece of the Action". Another Season 2 Star Trek episode. Though the resolution of that episode may not be quite so ridiculous.
Because I have self-awareness and always have an internal dialogue, I can anticipate criticism, or "comebacks" from people having umbrage with my preferences in imaginative entertainment.
My rather biting review of "The Trouble With Tribbles" probably had some people saying, "Well, what about 'Year 2' of Space: 1999? What about 'The Taybor'? Huh? Hmmm? It has a Cyrano Jones-like trader character. Some people consider it to be something of a 'romp'. What about that, Kevin, you hypocrite, you?"
First of all, I do not deny that "economy of detail" might be used to defuse some of my issues with "The Trouble With Tribbles". Darvin might have been able to bribe his way onto a Federation spaceship without the requisite medical examination. He might also have been a skilled enough chemist to synthesise his own poison for the grain without needing to carry the poison on his person until it was time to administer it. He might then have been able to somehow avoid observation by Security of his nefarious activity has he is "carrying out" that activity in the storage compartments. Kirk might have arranged a gigantic space freighter for the Tribbles being "picked up" by Jones. Of course, one has to overlook the fact that the Federation convieniently has life-form-scanning and matter transportation technologies and that every Tribble on the space station could easily be detected by scanners and promptly transported off of the space station and into a hold on the freighter, making Jones' task of "picking up" every Tribble quote unnecessary. This being the case, seventeen-some years of labour by Jones might be more than a tad excessive. Or maybe not. Depends, I guess, on a person's point of view. But "economy of detail", if it is to be used for one opus, must in all fairness be used for another. If Space: 1999's second season is not allowed it, than neither should "The Trouble With Tribbles". Or, if one is allowed it, then so should the other. Mind, it still does not mitigate the absurdity of Scotty's solution to the Tribble trouble on the Enterprise and Kirk's reaction to it.
But what of "The Taybor"? First of all, Taybor is a trader like Jones. And he is fat, gluttonous. Definitely a lover of drink. Like Jones. But he is devious, calculating, and cunning, determined to have what he wants by fair means or foul, whereas all that Jones is, is a swaggering peddler who lacks the motivation to do research on the commodities that he carries and is only criminal by negligence. Not by ill intent. There are similarities. There are differences. I think that this is fair to say. And yes, "The Taybor" does have a scene of the trader drinking, to humourous effect. Even becoming drunk, belching, and "passing out". It is a nod to humour, to be sure. But as the scene of this does reinforce the symbolism of Tony's beer and therefore serves an artistic purpose, I propose to grant to it a pass. And besides, the episode thereafter returns to being "played straight" and stays on that course. Until the convivial spirit of the epilogue, which contains a valuable lesson for Alpha and is not merely a witty wordsmithing based on a patently absurd, unauthorised action, with a laugh all around. The stakes of the episode through the bulk of it are quite clearly germane to the television-series-encompassing predicament of our heroes. The jump drive is the McGuffin that makes Koenig eager to deal with Taybor. At stake is Koenig's wish to secure for his people long-term survival somewhere. Quite serious, that. We have a moment of dejection when Taybor is unable to pinpoint Earth's location based on Alpha's available information, an instance of solemnness at Taybor's comment about the universe being a lonely place to wander in, and a scene of sadness as Maya faces again the fact that her home world of Psychon is gone. The first act ends with Koenig evidently being abducted into Hyperspace by Taybor. Played dead serious by everyone in Command Centre as they see Taybor's spaceship vanish from the Lunar surface. Act 2 ends with Taybor revealing to Koenig what, or, rather, who, he wants in trade for the jump drive, as we see Koenig looking perplexed, revolted, and aggrieved. Definitely not a comedic moment. And Act 3 finishes with Taybor hypnotising Maya and teleporting her and him out of Alpha, evidently intending to bid adieu to Alpha with Maya with him in his spaceship, and, with Hyperspace inaccessible by Alpha's Eagles, he and Maya will be out of the Alphans' reach. Another quite serious ending to an act.
Maya is able to defeat Taybor through trickery, through some dishonesty (she is unable to "lock" herself in a form as she claims to do) as desperate times do sometimes call for desperate measures. She "takes advantage" of Taybor's fixation on beauty and his corresponding revulsion at ugliness. Taybor returns Maya to Alpha and repossesses the jump drive master diagram and all of the wares that he had bestowed upon Alpha in gift or in barter. Koenig observes that Taybor is a "sore loser", Tony describes Taybor as nothing more than a "con man", and Helena states that it is prudent to beware traders bearing gifts. Maya and Tony share some of their good-natured "ribbing" as a challenge to their future together as a romantic couple has been overcome. The ending is effective, rational. It is upbeat, effusive even, but not going for the "sitcom" group laugh over a play on words and an absurdity, as the ending of "The Trouble With Tribbles" chooses to do.
Yes, I know. It is not clear how the Limpet Transmitter attached by Koenig to Taybor's spaceship allows Alpha contact with Taybor's spaceship in Hyperspace. "Economy of detail" is needed here. Technical may have been able to determine the transmission frequency used for Taybor's spaceship to have communication with Alpha from Hyperspace and program that into the Limpet Transmitter. I can "buy that". Besides, I am not sure that it was essential for story resolution for Koenig to talk to Maya through the transmitter. Maya would eventually come to her own conclusion about what she needed to do to thwart Taybor and have him return her to Alpha.
As to the duplicate Maya. How is Alpha able to provide that? Well, it is just a computerised, talking mannequin. Or as Tony calls it, "A waxworks dummy with a computer voice." Surely something like that could be possible in 1999 as that year was envisaged in 1976. Maybe with some help by Maya with her Psychon technical knowledge.
"The Taybor" is not even a favourite episode of mine, but I am very fond of it, nevertheless. It provides some commercial flavour to the stunning aesthetic of Space: 1999 universe, and a fair bit of otherworldly pizzazz in Taybor's merchandise and his beautiful spaceship. I will go for that any day over a Tribble, Mr. Jones. McCorry, out. Wednesday, January 4, 2023.
Another year older. Another year greyer. Another year wrinklier.
My fifty-seventh birthday was Thursday. I am now three years away from being a sixty-year-old. And when I look in the mirror I definitely see my father. As he looked in the mid-1980s when his health started to deteriorate.
I am not a young man anymore. Due to stresses and anxieties of the past three years, I am now looking my age. I used to look younger than my years. Always did until this decade began.
A caveat that I must provide after watching the Adventures of Black Beauty Blu-Rays. I tried watching them on a Region A player. They would not play. No "region code error" message. Nothing. I suspect that there is PAL content on the Blu-Ray discs that my Region A player rejects, and it therefore rejects the Blu-Ray discs in total. One will therefore still need a Region B or multi-region Blu-Ray player to watch these Blu-Rays. At least where SONY models are concerned. Other makes of player may respond differently to these Blu-Ray discs. I cannot say for sure.
I have in recent days been busily working on improving two cartoon title cards on The Bugs Bunny/Road Runner Hour Page, specifically those for "Rabbit of Seville" and "Rabbit Every Monday". The labour continues, but the most recent upgrades to those images are now available on said Web page.
Some interesting news on the subject of the Warner Brothers cartoons on home video. Some 2023 product listings have surfaced showing plans for release of a ten-movie Looney Tunes DVD set and something called LOONEY TUNES COLLECTOR'S CHOICE VOLUME 1 on Blu-Ray. Fans of cartoons are speculating on what will comprise these releases. The most likely scenario is that the DVD set will be reissues of DVDs containing The Bugs Bunny/Road Runner Movie, The Looney, Looney, Looney Bugs Bunny Movie, Daffy Duck's Fantastic Island, 1001 Rabbit Tales, Daffy Duck's Quackbusters, the SpaceJam movies, Looney Tunes Back in Action, and some direct-to-home video movies. The only one of these that I would be interested in buying, on Blu-Ray not on DVD, would be Daffy Duck's Quackbusters. As I have Daffy Duck's Quackbusters on DVD, why would I buy it again on the same home video format? And what of this COLLECTOR'S CHOICE thing? What might that be? The most logical inference, given Warner Brothers' tendency to simply repurpose old glass masters, is that COLLECTOR'S CHOICE will just be reissues of THE LOONEY TUNES PLATINUM COLLECTION. The same Blu-Ray discs right down to the menus. I am not going to raise my hopes with expectation of anything else. With the vast majority of the Warner Brothers cartoon library now restored in High Definition, it would be an easy business to produce compilations of never-before-on-Blu-Ray cartoon shorts. But it would be easier still, to just go back to the existing Blu-Ray glass masters. No need to do any work on menus and so forth and pay for new glass masters. And this is what I expect that Warner Brothers has in mind. I would be exceedingly happy to be wrong.
Loath as I am to go back to defending Season 2 Space: 1999 against hate-filled sorties at various places on the Internet, I feel compelled this morning to comment on some particular assailings of Season 2 that are blighting the comment section of Chris Dale's YouTube video, "Space: 1999's Scariest Moments".
"Yeah, I was a big fan of the show and really looked forward to season 2. At first, the changes seemed kinda cool, but, while season 1, though occasionally wonky, kept up a high level of quality throughout, never compromising its vision, Season 2 just seemed like a sensationalistic, steadily downward slide as it progressed, culminating with the final episode about the, haha, 'Dorcons'."
What gibberish. Fans are so arrogantly confident in the verity of their confounded opinions that they do not bother anymore to furnish substantively articulated examples of what they allege. As to the assertion of this particular indivdual, surely there is no shortage of fans who contend that Season 2 was rotten "right out of the gate" with "The Metamorph", and that it had no vision to be compromised. "Steady downward slide", huh? So, that would mean that "The Seance Spectre" is worse than "Catacombs of the Moon", that "Dorzak" is worse than "The Mark of Archanon", and that "The Dorcons" is the worst episode of all. What is so laughable about "The Dorcons"? Do tell. Of course it does not behoove me to engage in any discussion of anything in Season 2 being worse than something else, or to use pejorative language at all in regards to anything in Season 2. I am just doing so here to show the nonsense in this person's sad excuse for an argument. How is Season 2 any more sensationalistic than Season 1? Quantify it. Give examples. Stop being so Goddamned lazy. Stop assuming that everyone is going to be in agreement and that examples are unnecessary. One could say that focusing on Joan Collins' legs in Season 1's "Mission of the Darians" is sensational. Or that Catherine Schell's outfit in Season 1's "Guardian of Piri" is sensational. Or that Zienia Merton's Stone Age garment in first season's "The Full Circle" and the "horny" reactions of the savages to it, is sensational. Or that "blowing up" just about everything, "killing off" characters, wreaking destruction on a planetary scale, and then doing a reset and restoring everything on some stated-in-dialogue contrivance, done not just once but twice in Season 1, is sensational. Or that explicit gore here and there to "gross out" the viewer, is sensational. One could purport that the gore in Star Trek II- The Wrath of Khan is sensational. I could go on all day. Why "pick on" Season 2 Space: 1999? Why, indeed. What is it in people's collective subconscious that disposes them to everlastingly "dish out" invective targeted at Season 2 Space: 1999?
"That would be Freddie Frieberger, who also was credited with destroying the original Star Trek. My beef with him is that he also destroyed another favorite show of mine when he became executive producer for the last 2 seasons of The Wild Wild West, trying to twist the seminal Steampunk inspiration into a conventional western."
Oh, good bloody grief! For the last "frigging" time. Fred Freiberger was producer of Season 1 of The Wild Wild West and not Seasons 2, 3, or 4. He did not destroy The Wild Wild West. He produced some of the most inceptive episodes; he did not destroy it. Saying that he did destroy it, saying so without bothering to do the most basic of research on the topic, is inexcusable. How, pray tell, could Fred Freiberger have produced the final season of The Wild Wild West in 1968-9 at the same time as he was producing Season 3 of Star Trek? Ridiculous! And does anyone in the discussion bother to correct this person. Of course not. If it slanders "old Freddie", it is perfectly acceptable- even if it is patently false. Do not tell me. Let me guess. This person's truth is not my truth. He experienced things differently, is all. His point of view is as valid as mine. No, more so. Because his has majority backing. Oh, yes. Of course. I am in the minority; therefore, my opinion does not count. Of course, of course, or course. I am being sarcastic here, if anyone does not already know that.
And the statement of Mr. Freiberger destroying Star Trek is at best hyperbolic, if not outright false. I would say the latter. NBC disliked Star Trek and Gene Roddenberry intensely and wanted Star Trek "canned". The television network cancelled Star Trek after its second season and relented under pressure from Bjo Trimble's letter campaign and granted a reprieve to Kirk and company, only to put the television show in a horrible airtime guaranteeing that ratings would be low enough for another letter campaign to have zero credibility in arguing for a continuation of the missions of the Enterprise. Star Trek was condemned by NBC, not by alleged deficient quality in a majority of the third season episodes. I would argue that the majority of Star Trek's third season's episodes were imaginative, entertaining, and true to the Star Trek concept. Examples? "Spectre of the Gun", "Elaan of Troyius", "The Paradise Syndrome", "The Enterprise Incident", "Is There in Truth No Beauty?", "The Tholian Web", "For the World is Hollow and I Have Touched the Sky", "Day of the Dove", "Wink of an Eye", "Let That Be Your Last Battlefield", "The Mark of Gideon", "Requiem For Methuselah", "All Our Yesterdays". These are some of the more accepted ones in some circles. I would contend the same for numerous others. Oh, some story technicalities may be questioned, but as I am fond of saying, this is common to just about everything, if one is willing to cast an equally critical eye over other works.
"Season 2 was so bad that Martin Landau was incapacitated out of it.. or not in a lot of it... and people think the Sybil Danning intros were cheesy? Well, especially with the insipid silicon rock episode that made up things as it goes along, and even worse than the worst science fiction made today (not that it takes much)... horrid episode but still influenced other shows made slightly later that used silicon rock life forms well, by comparison... never cross paths with an Ogri!"
If anything is insipid it is this drivel. Inane, nonsensical drivel purporting itself as sophistication. How in bloody hell is any of Season 2 on the same level of "cheesiness" as Sybil Danning's introductions? Or worse? This is an outright insult of every professional British film industry individual who worked on Space: 1999. The directors, the cameramen, the production designers, everyone. Where was Season 2 ever so lewd as to suggest, in double-entendre, "strapping down" a space cadet to explore "the dark side of the Moon"? Or to say, "This place sucks," in reference to anything? Honestly, I am living in a world of abject, clownish inanity. I feel an infectious, paralytic stupidity trying to seize control of my grey matter, just as I read this rot.
So bad that Landau was not in it? Is this implying that Landau's reduced presence is a result of his umbrage with the quality of the material. That he walked off of the set and refused to work and that the producer, Freiberger, had scripts written around that? Bull's excrement! Episodes of second season had to be filmed simultaneously, as necessitated by the need, because of the delayed timing of Grade's decision to revive Space: 1999, to produce Season 2 rapidly to meet airdates. Hence, some episodes have emphasis on Koenig, and others less so. Some episodes have Helena as the emphasised character, while in others her involvement is minimal. And both Landau and Bain were on holiday during production of "The Beta Cloud" and their characters were incapicitated therein. Whilst Season 2 was in production, "The Beta Cloud" excepted, Landau was reporting to work every day. Even though he was blinkered to the quality of the subject matter, he was a consummate professional and acted to the very best of his abilities.
I am not going to bother responding yet again, at length, to attacks on "All That Glisters". Have not I done that enough? I do not see any quantifiable evidence of Doctor Who- "The Stones of Blood" being superior to "All That Glisters". And as to "All That Glisters" "making things up as it goes along", is such a thing not consistent with how the Alphans would react to a situation in which they are gaining understanding over time? Changing their response to the situation as events proceed? The criticism is much too devoid of provided cogent examples to be given a seal of quality to it, in any case. It is just as much drivel as everything else that I have quoted here. Yet, it prevails as the majority viewpoint. For all time, apparently. Here I am, at age fifty-seven, my hair greying, my face wrinkling, age spots multiplying, as I sit at my computer still writing defences of Space: 1999- Season 2.
Where in "All That Glisters" is it flat-out said that the rock is composed of silicon? I must have missed that. Somehow. Some way.
All for today, Sunday, January 8, 2023.
Sunday, January 15, 2023.
Fredericton is now in the grip of winter. There is now a thick layer of snow, the streets do not have bare pavement, and temperatures are consistently below zero, enough below zero on those rare days of sunshine for no melting of snow or ice under the Sun's rays. Although daylight is gained every day, it is a long, long road until Canadian spring.
I went for a walk yesterday, my pace slow and deliberate as I sought to avoid slipping on the sidewalk or street on the frozen water covering the cement or pavement, and, as I so often do now, I think of yesteryear. I long for yesteryear. Yesteryear of the "old days" of my habitation of Nashwaaksis. The late 1970s and especially the 1980s. Although I freely admit to the 1980s being flawed, very much so, and to there being nothing today in my life socially to show for them, I do miss those days. Deeply. Melancholically. I long and I ache to have them back. I miss my parents so very, very much. Their presence, their devotion to me and to my well-being, their protection, their support, the assurance of their being there for me if I do encounter some tough times. And I miss my youth, my naivete, my idealism, my belief, boorish school peers aside, in my fellow man, and in the institutions of government under the charge of my parents' contemporaries. And the company of friends (or associates), who choose to be with me, "hanging out" with me at my place or theirs or somewhere in the neighbourhood. And an outlook that people were rational, amenable to persuasion when presented with compelling evidence. All of that is gone now. My youth and my naivete are utterly lost. I am thoroughly "red-pilled" and "black-pilled". I find the alternative media personalities of the "red-pilled" variety, to not be cynical enough. Many of them still think that the West has a chance, that there will be a widespread awakening, that 2024 will make a difference in the U.S., that the Poilievre Conservative party will win and rescue Canada from the impending cliff edge, and so forth. I do not believe any of it. Everything that happens suits the oppressive forces pushing the world toward totalitarianism. I have no faith, zero, that I will "get out" of this decade alive.
My cynicism extends also to Warner Brothers and its treatment of the cartoons of Bugs Bunny et al. and persons wishing to increase their holdings of those cartoons on home video. People on the Internet are steadfastly unrealistic on this particular subject. They still ruminate about chronological cartoon releases versus more themed or "best-of" compilations of mostly new-to-home-video cartoon shorts. I just sigh and roll my eyes when I see that. Warner Brothers can be only really be depended upon to consistently frustrate the collectors of the cartoons. The Bugs Bunny Video Guide is reporting that the COLLECTOR'S CHOICE Blu-Ray release looks like it will be nothing more an a reconstituting of the MOUSE CHRONICLES Blu-Rays of the early 2010s. That is another distinct probability, going alongside my previously expressed expectation of the PLATINUM COLLECTION Blu-Rays being "slapped" with a new coat of paint. One way or the other, Warner Brothers doubtless intends to thoroughly frustrate people wanting new-to-Blu-Ray or new to digital-optical-disc cartoons of the 1940s, 1950s, 1960s. As to the movies DVD box set, my hunch was right. A mixing of the cobbled-together-from-vintage-cartoons movies with the SpaceJam and Back in Action fluff and straight-to-home-video latter-day cartoon movies. No, thank-you. Not interested. I would have bought Daffy Duck's Quackbusters on Blu-Ray, but Warner Brothers could not even oblige on that score.
2023 is looking very bleak indeed for further Blu-Ray releases of entertainment of interest to me. So far, only The Bad News Bears Go to Japan and maybe two Doctor Who season sets, neither of which a season that ranks among my favourites. I am thankful for all that I have, mind. Imaginative genres have fared quite amazingly on Blu-Ray. Of the science fiction/fantasy on my shelves, almost all of it has seen Blu-Ray upgrades. And the exceptions include titles that were unlikely to see DVD release, but astonishingly did. Expecting them to reach Blu-Ray is quite unrealistic. Almost preposterously so. I do not expect ever to see Blu-Rays of The Tomorrow People, Logan's Run, or Space Academy. Or the Planet of the Apes television series. Certainly not Spiderman or Rocket Robin Hood. I pray that my DVDs of all of these continue to endure. As I do for the long-term survival of the Moonbase Alphans on Blu-Ray disc.
The Moonbase Alphans continue to recieve a nod by Big Finish Productions in the U.K.. A further volume of Big Finish Space: 1999 audio plays is announced, and one of the episodes to be included in this reimagining of the television series, will be "Dragon's Domain". I will be interesting to me how Big Finish will handle the story and its particulars. Surely, Big Finish can improve on Power Records' rendering of the episode. Already, though, I have misgivings, as word is that the writers at Big Finish are opting to go with Christopher Penfold's first draught, with Alan Carter, not Tony Cellini or Jim Calder, being the commander of the Ultra Probe who encounters the monster. I do not think that this fits the character and the mental state of Carter as he is portrayed in other episodes. Or at least, other episodes of the television series-proper.
I have not bought any of the Big Finish Space: 1999 releases so far. And I think that the first volume is sold-out. So, even if I wanted to start collecting them now, it would be problematic.
This past week, I have added some more cartoon title cards for Season-1-and-beyond Bugs Bunny/Road Runner Hour to the Bugs Bunny/Road Runner Hour supplemental image gallery. The ones for "I Gopher You", "Bugs' Bonnets", "Devil May Hare", "Beanstalk Bunny", and "Hippety Hopper", all of them from CBS airings of The Bugs Bunny/Road Runner Show in the early-to-mid-1980s. They have required much intricate labour to remove ghosting and digital compression artrifacts. And my work on such is still not complete, still in progress. I do not know why, but anything from CBS, no matter what the affiliate broadcaster sourced, has ghosting. Sometimes slight, and oftentimes quite pronounced. I seem to recall it being an issue on WAGM, also. In addition to microwave signal interference. ABC had a much tidier signal in the Bugs and Tweety years. No ghosting and a generally sharper image. Only an instance of interference. WVII has often marked by interference, especially in the summer and early autumn, which was why Fredericton Cablevision eventually dropped WVII from its line-up, replacing it with WXYZ, which is still the ABC signal in Fredericton to this day. At least, I think so. I so seldom watch television or "channel-surf", these days.
All for today. Back to my reveries of life in the past. Before I lost my parents, my youth, my idealism. Before my friends of old "took leave" of me. Before I "ended up" alone and completely vulnerable to whatever nastiness the powers-that-be may (who knows?) decide to "dish out". Heck, I would even prefer the ordeal of involvement in Space: 1999 fandom over this.
Thursday, February 2, 2023.
It is a sunny morning, and the groundhog likely saw his shadow. Six more weeks of winter. Six more weeks, that is, after March 21. In Canada.
And to "drive the point home", Canada's eastern Maritimes will be in the deep freeze this weekend, with windchills in the minus thirties. And snow after that, on top of the snow that fell in January. Almost none of that snow has melted.
Last evening, I watched the Space: 1999 episode, "Devil's Planet". Oh, that wretched entry in the loathsome Season 2! The one during the production of which everyone but Martin Landau walked off the set to protest Fred Freiberger's ineptitude. The one that people were lucky not to see if their broadcaster opted to skip it. I am of course being sarcastic, but I can easily picture people writing such unmitigated horse dung and thinking themselves to be ever so enlightened and clever. There was no walking off the set, of course. That is as much nonsense as claims that Nick Tate was not in the final four or five Space: 1999 episodes or that Fred Freiberger caused the cancellation of every television series to which he contributed. Untruths that go uncontested every time that some dimwit raises them.
I have watched "Devil's Planet" more times than I can hope to accurately count, over the past forty-six years. I watched its two CBC full-television-network broadcasts in 1977 (in snowy March and sunny and hot July of that year). And I saw it in French in July of 1977 and June of 1979. I had it on videotape from early 1986, first from a fourth-generation videotape copy sourced originally from a KICU- San Jose telecast with poor reception in its first few minutes, then from a copy (I do not recall how many generations) of a videotape-recorded U.K. broadcast of the episode with a PAL-to-NTSC conversion and the requisite four percent speed-up, then from my video and audio capture of a YTV 1991 broadcast of it, then from a videotape copy off of laser videodisc, then via its U.K. and North American DVD releases, its Network Distributing Blu-Ray release, and finally its Imprint Blu-Ray release. All told, I must have seen it between one and two hundred times.
In all of the myriad times I cast my eyes and ears over this particular Space: 1999 episode, I had never once found relevance in it to real-life present-day circumstances. Last evening, however, I saw the episode as befitting the predicament of the Western world today. Very strikingly so. Astonishingly so!
Hildegard Neil plays Elizia, a narcissistic, devoid-of-empathy autocrat. Elizia and her inner retinue on alien penal colony Entra are aware of a horrible truth, but it is politically disadvantageous for Elizia for that truth to be revealed to the people under her rule, as those people would become ungovernable. So, Elizia propagates a false "narrative" to retain her power. All is well on Ellna, home planet, says she. So, prisoners at the end of their sentence, or who survived "the Hunt", step into a transference cabinet and teleport to Ellna, on which they die suddenly seconds after stepping out of the transporter. Such is the fate awaiting all who happily and unknowingly transfer to Ellna. And Elizia is cognizant of this. But she persists without compunction in sending released prisoners to certain death and dissemenating false news about home planet, to the other inmates on Entra. Anyone who questions "the narrative" is bullied into silence. Literally whipped into submission. And so Elizia continues to enjoy her hegemony. With her people none the wiser.
Some dialogue between Elizia and her underling, the Interrogator.
INTERROGATOR: "He (Koenig) has seen our home planet (Ellna). He will tell them (the Entran prisoners)."
ELIZIA: "They won't believe him. Their minds have been programmed to think my way."
How is this scenario relevant, or comparable, to what is happening today? People who are truly "awake" or "red-pilled" will be able to see it instantly.
How apt that we had our own "Lambda variant", too. A couple of years ago. "The Lambda Factor" was another Space: 1999 episode, the one that chronologically came a couple of days after "Devil's Planet". And that had a megalomaniac of its own. Carolyn Powell. And I would invoke a line of dialogue from an episode in the same "region" as "Devil's Planet" and "The Lambda Factor". Koenig in "The Bringers of Wonder", shouts to his people, "Look, what's the matter with you? Can't you see you're being manipulated?!!! What's happened to your instincts?!!! Why won't you listen to me?!!! You're all blind!!!!!" These would be choice words today.
Good old Space: 1999. Not only is it of immense artistic and nostalgic value to me, but it relates to real life like never before. Almost as if it were prescient. Or simply that it understood human nature. So much of it was born of the "collective subsconscious". So, I guess that an accurate "take" on human nature is to be expected. Which may be part of the reason why so many people are intransigently blinkered to it. The truth is difficult to face, and it can hurt.
The next Doctor Who Blu-Ray set will be Season 9, as had been expected. It is due to be released in March, barring some new global crisis that may delay it like last year's March Doctor Who Blu-Ray set was pushed back to June. No other news about favourite entertainments on Blu-Ray or DVD.
Sunday, February 5, 2023.
It is the day after Fredericton, and all of New Brunswick, was in the deep freeze, with the windchill factor down to -44 degrees. Luck, or the grace of God, was with me and most other New Brunswickers, in that the power was not lost at any time yesterday.
Today, I am going to ruminate about "gaslighting". It is "going on" all around us now. Many people are noticing it. "Gaslighting" is not a new phenomenon. It has existed for probably as long as people have walked the Earth and that there have been abusive relationships and the desire in some people to control or manipulate others. Now, though, it has ballooned (why am I thinking of balloons today?) into a de rigueur, world-encompassing scourge.
People have been using "gaslighting" upon me through most of the eras of my life. In fact, I have known very few people who have not subjected me to it at some point in time. My long experience with the following of Space: 1999 was a litany of "gaslighting" treatment from imperious know-it-alls. "Whatever it is you think you see in 'Year 2', the chronological patterning of subject matter, the symbolisms, or whatever, is only in your head, Kevin. You're delusional." And when I objected most vociferously to being disparaged by that and by the renewed, and all the more intense repudiations of everything Season 2, and tried to come to an understanding of the cognitive dissonance that awaited me at every turn, it was, "You're overly temperamental, Kevin. You're taking things too seriously." And then, there was, "Kevin has a reputation in fandom for being precious, excitable, and delusional." How are bad reputations made to grow and spread? By people talking, of course. Talking disparagingly with others of a shared interest, about someone. When I reacted with what should be understandable offence to those proclamations of my bad reputation and of what that is said to consist, onward came the accusations of paranoia, of mental illness, along with rejection of all that I ever said and did, and me being declared a garbage human.
It was one long "gaslighting" exercise, that whole experience. Every second that I was with the Calgarian in 1995, it was one "gaslighting" attack after another. What I was seeing in Season 2 was delusion. All of it. I was wrong, wrong, wrong, to profess to any of it, or to object to how second season was being treated. Do not trust my lying eyes and my oh, so faulty intuition and instinct and my distorted sensibilities with regard to artistic expression. Come back to "the fold". "Take my lumps" for being so wrong to have "trumpeted" Season 2 and highlighted some of the flaws of Season 1. Acknowledge my years of wrongness and repent. Be disdainful of Season 2 like all the respectable fans. Or else there is something wrong with me. Something patently unacceptable. Yes, yes, yes. Combined, in our threesome with the Reginan, with repeated attempts to provoke a response to be used against me further. It was "gaslighting" "cranked up" to maximum level. And, really, it was what every other interaction with fans and fandom amounted-to, most especially those on the Internet. Apart from "circle-jerking" to the hatred of Season 2 and of the man with the initials F.F., it is the defining trait of the Space: 1999 fan movement. This is as true now, forty-six years since the cancellation of Moonbase Alpha's transstellar odyssey, as it was through the 1980s, 1990s, and 2000s.
Ah, but it was not the first time that I experienced efforts of "gaslighting". It happened on the baseball field, too, back in the 1980s. If I am in a slump, cannot seem to win a game, this means that I am a lesser person than the others. My nose must be dragged through the losses. There must be something fundamentally wrong with me. I must be "made fun of" for losing, and for evidently being a perennial loser. And if I am hurt by this, by the demeaning attitude flung at me from different directions, that is further evidence of my defectiveness. I must, because of my routine losing and my being oh, so unjustifiably upset with the ever so right barbs of the others, doubt the legitimacy of my existence and my worth to the social fabric of our neighbourhood. This was what was afoot in those incidents. It was "gaslighting", to "get" me to question my fitness to be an integral part of my surroundings, and my value to everyone. So that I will be unsure of myself in my surroundings, always on edge, diminished of confidence, less inclined to defend or assert myself, more easily dismissible. Oh, I know, saying that anything is ever afoot is to invite the old chestnut of the paranoia accusation. Oh, of course, nothing is ever afoot. Nothing ever happens by anyone's ill intent. Of course, of course, of course.
And I was a target of "gaslighting" at school. Every time that someone purported that I was somehow "messed up" not to be rejecting of all things imaginative, and in my not acting like the Fonz or like John Travolta. When someone accused me of asking a stupid question in class. When people bemoaned my nods to science fiction/fantasy. "Can't you like anything else? What is wrong with you?"
Today, the "gaslighting" is, "Don't trust your eyes and ears, your intuition, your instincts." If one hears a distinct, huge increase in emergency vehicle sirens and reads an abnormal high number of news stories of young, fit people collapsing or dying suddenly, one has to reject this. Reject it as a delusion. Or consider it as not having anything, anything whatsoever, to do with the one significant change in world procedures these past two years, the injecting of a substance for which long-term safety data does not exist (it cannot exist but in the passage of real time), and for which there are VAERS reports in the thousands. It has to be something else. It just has to be. Egg yolks, energy drinks, the common cold, anxiety caused by the "un-jabbed" simply existing. Anything but the sacred injection. The only acceptable point of view is that the "jabs" are effective in stopping infection and transmission and have no adverse effects whatsoever, now and for all time. It is only mentally defective people who think otherwise, say the "gaslighters".
The "gaslit" collapse their critical thinking into "the narrative" (not wanting to be branded an "oddball" or, worse, a "conspiracy theorist"). And they join the masses in rejecting all medical professionals who question the safety of the "jabs" as being "quacks", in dismissing all VAERS entries as false, in saying that every expose video is staged and fake, in contending that every YouTube video commenter and social media contributor reporting their own adverse reactions or deaths post-"jab" of people they know, is lying, and in maintaining that other countries limiting or stopping the "jabs" over safety concerns, is "fake news". It is a most effective, widespread exercise of "gaslighting". A cult of the needle has been formed, and it does seem unstoppable. It rejects out-of-hand all contrary indicators or furnishes far, far less likely explanations for any events running contrary. It is only a matter of time before there is someone wielding a "jab" at me in my kitchen. "Take this, or else."
"Gaslighting" was difficult enough to endure when it was done by individuals in service to some "narrative" against a season of a television show. When it has become institutionalised, as a tactic used by government and news media to induce mass compliance with something and to "other" people who do not "go along", it is downright frightening. A real-life nightmare.
Saturday, February 11, 2023.
Beginning today's Weblog entry with some consideration of cartoons in the U.S. network television package of the 1960s and 1970s.
Seventy-eight cartoons are known to have been sourced for The Road Runner Show in 1966-7 and 1967-8. Twenty-seven Road Runner cartoons, twenty-six cartoons of Tweety and Sylvester, and twenty-five cartoons with other characters. When The Road Runner Show was superseded in 1968 by The Bugs Bunny/Road Runner Hour, most, but not all, of those seventy-eight cartoons were carried over into the new television vehicle for the Warner Brothers cartoon shorts. All of the twenty-seven Road Runner cartoons made the transition, as did all of the twenty-six Tweety-and-Sylvesters. A handful of the other-characters cartoons were left behind on the former television programme, at least for The Bugs Bunny/Road Runner Hour's inaugural season of twenty-six episodes. Those as-yet-unlucky cartoons were "Don't Axe Me", "A Mutt in a Rut", "The Mouse On 57th Street", "What's My Lion?", and "To Itch His Own". Two of them are solo Elmer Fudd. There were no solo Elmer Fudd Bugs Bunny/Road Runner Hour cartoons in Season 1. "Don't Axe Me" was Elmer Fudd-without-Bugs Bunny, Elmer instead with Daffy Duck and Barnyard Dog. "The Mouse On 57th Street" and "To Itch His Own" are lacking the Looney Tunes and Merrie Melodies regular characters.
Because these five cartoons were left out of The Bugs Bunny/Road Runner Hour's first season, they were not within my field of view in the early-to-mid-1970s as I watched the Bugs Bunny/Road Runner Hour first season episodes again and again by way of their CBC transmissions. I saw "A Mutt in a Rut", "What's My Lion?", and "To Itch His Own" for the first time while in my grandparents' Skyline Acres, Fredericton living room, watching CBS and WAGM Saturday A.M. Bugs Bunny/Road Runner broadcasts. By then, "What's My Lion?" had a title card with text and no cartoon characters; its Road Runner Show titling (with the group-of-five character array) had been dropped. The other two cartoons sported titles with the group of Foghorn Leghorn, Pepe Le Pew, Speedy Gonzales, Yosemite Sam, and Elmer Fudd, as they had done, I would much later learn, on The Road Runner Show. I cannot say that I have a huge fondness for these three cartoons. "What's My Lion?", I think, is the funniest of the three. "To Itch His Own" is the most stylish of them. "A Mutt in a Rut" is fairly standard McKimson fare in its nod to the television phenomenon, but it repurposes a Jones gag from "Don't Give Up the Sheep", and tries to emulate the sense of morbid dread of Freleng's "Each Dawn I Crow" while lacking Freleng's knack for suspense and tortuous character ruminations of seeemingly impending doom. I did not see "Don't Axe Me" until 1991, when it was on one of the videotapes of Looney Tunes On Nickelodeon that a colleague of my father's had made for me (he had a satellite dish and therefore access to Nickelodeon). I think that I saw "The Mouse On 57th Street" for the first time when it was in an instalment of TVA's Bugs Bunny et ses amis. I do not recall having occasion to see it before then. I am not much of an enthusiast for those cartoons either, though I would prefer watching them over sitting through most 1930s and early 1940s cartoons.
With my picturing above the Road Runner Show title cards to "A Mutt in a Rut" and "What's My Lion?", every title card to the seventy-eight cartoons of The Road Runner Show is available somewhere on my Website. Most of them are at my Web pages for The Road Runner Show and The Bugs Bunny/Road Runner Hour, while some of them can be found either in my autobiography or at this Weblog. And all of them are "clean" (i.e. no television broadcaster logos or "bugs").
Staying on the subject of cartoons. There is some home video news for them. I cannot say that it is particularly gratifying. Warner Home Video has announced a DVD (yes, DVD) re-release of THE LOONEY TUNES PLATINUM COLLECTION. The Blu-Rays of same are out-of-print. What might this bode for the COLLECTOR'S CHOICE Blu-Ray set expected this spring? The fact that the PLATINUM COLLECTION nomenclature is being used this year for a DVD range, it would be unlikely for the PLATINUM COLLECTION blu-rays to be repackaged around the same time under a different name. I therefore think that The Bugs Bunny Video Guide's expectation is the correct one, i.e. that COLLECTOR'S CHOICE will be a reconstituting of the MOUSE CHRONICLES Blu-Ray set. It will not be very much longer before the facts about COLLECTOR'S CHOICE are revealed.
Going back to the subject of "gaslighting" about which I wrote at length when last I did an entry to this Weblog. I ought to clarify that in many cases people subjected me to "gaslighting" attempts but were not always successful. Some of the time, my would-be "gaslighters" found that I was not quite the "easy mark". To be sure, my detractors in school in Fredericton, and erstwhile friends around home, did not succeed in inducing me to doubt myself in my allegience to Space: 1999, or to relinquish that allegiance and "go with the flow". They did, however, manage to make me increasingly wary of broaching the subject, or of talking about it at length, or of having books or other Space: 1999 merchandise on my person. The "gaslighting" in this case was a partial success in that it "shut me up".
Persons endeavouring my "gaslighting" on the baseball field certainly did succeed at causing me to doubt my import to the people around me, in as much as not a single person present was supportive of me. I quit the game to extricate myself from the unpleasantness of the situation instead of asserting myself on the field and giving a verbal whipping to the people who were clearly failing utterly at being supportive and understanding amigos.
No one in the Space: 1999 fan movement succeeded in causing me to doubt for the rest of my days my acknowledgement of the intriguing patterning and symbolism in the subject matter of Season 2 Space: 1999. The evidence is there, impossible to "un-see" once I had become fully aware of it. My detractors, Mr. Calgary and the others, "laid on thick" the "everyone thinks Season 2 is a disaster; Martin Landau thinks so; Gerry Anderson thinks so, the fan movement thinks so; you, Kevin, think otherwise; you, Kevin, are in a minority of one or two; you, Kevin, are in the wrong; nothing you see, Kevin, can possibly be there", with me not budging an inch in my resolve to recognise the "finer points" to the given chronology of Season 2. Naturally, the more malignant refrains of the "gaslighter" then came to the fore. The accusations of mental unfitness for liking the "wrong thing", and for objecting to that "thing"'s brutal treatment and being upset over being slapped with the "bad rep" designation. I did not "cave" to the demands of the Calgarian that I stay in the club writing "fluff pieces" as the excoriated, abjectly penitent "wingnut" while the anti-Season 2 "bandwagon" continues onward at greater and greater pace with increasingly vitriolic slurring. So, instead, after my departure, I was made an example-of as a completely defective piece of bidden-good-riddance-to bad rubbish. Much the same thing happened amongst the Space: 1999 Mailing List crowd. I left the group behind, with the bad reputation affixed to my back, but I did not allow those people to manipulate me into thinking that I am "messed up in the head" and patently illegitimate as an aficionado of Space: 1999. Indeed, I have presented my "case" on this Weblog far, far better than I did back in the 1990s, and many a time successfully "called out" the flaws in people's arguments, and the outright lies that people tell. The "gaslighting" did not work on me in this respect.
Now, I am fully aware of "gaslighting". All of the telltale signs of it. Anytime someone says, "The majority think this way; if you do not, you are wrong in the head." Whenever someone says that ninety percent of the people "stepped up and did their part" for "the greater good", and that people who decline to do so are wrong and are such-and-such and so-and-so (a litany of words ending in i, s, and t). If someone says, "Why do you always talk about such-and-such?". As if I only ever talk about one thing and one thing only. Who does? If someone berates me and/or something that I fancy and then so condescendingly and judgingly says, "You look angry. Or hurt." If someone running a club encourages me to write a column sharing my aesthetic impressions of second season Space: 1999 and subsequently criticises the column in its many subjects and brands me wrong and delusional for my impressions. My much older, better informed, wiser self can now detect it. Instantly, or almost instantly. Mind, this is a few decades late. But anyway.
All for today.
Sunday, February 12, 2023.
I propose to continue with my ruminations on "gaslighting".
"Gaslighting" is causing people to doubt themselves, their perception, their judgement, to cause people to be amenable to joining a "gaslighter"'s way of looking at things. And reject all contrary data. Or "spin" the contrary data to fit the "gaslighter"'s directive. Usually, the "gaslighting" is performed by someone in a position of power or dominance or some majority approval over someone in a subordinate and/or minority position.
"Gaslighting" may not be used just by itself. It can be employed in conjunction with a number of other practices for subverting or quashing another person's belief in himself or herself. The usual range of "invalidator" behaviours. Or bully behaviours.
One has to have a substantial capacity for self-doubt, to be "gaslit", or if not that then a deficit in thinking for oneself, a follow-the-herd tendency. "Gaslighters" will also tend to misconstrue a person's words to make them appear belligerent and/or hypocritical. The wilful misconstruing of one's words was rampant in the Space: 1999 fan movement, even before Season 2 was deemed on the pages of the newsletters to be the bete noire of the crowd. Way back when the location of the yearly convention was the outstanding subject of fan pugnacity.
A sensible person would look at the state of fandom and ask why people cannot just "get along", why they cannot emphasise their common ground instead of their differences, and accept one another's particular interests with the subject matter as having merit. Why is there any need for "gaslighting" at all? There should not be.
I joined the Space: 1999 fan movement in 1984 with an honest-to-goodness willingness to respect everything that people saw in the television series, every dissertation on the television show's merits. It seemed to me then, having gone for a number of years without occasion to watch Space: 1999, that we all should be grateful to have had as much Space: 1999 as we did, and that all mention of appealing content in any and all episodes should be appreciated and cherished. Goodness knows, the 1970s was a difficult decade for Space Age science fiction/fantasy to thrive on television. UFO, The Starlost, Planet of the Apes, Logan's Run, Battlestar Galactica, Buck Rogers. All of these television series struggled to find and retain an audience, some of them not even reaching one full season, and none of them achieving two full seasons. Space: 1999 did achieve two full seasons, and the fan base should be grateful for that. And celebrate that. And be open to new ways of positively regarding either season. Maybe it was incredibly Pollyanna-ish for me to have such notions, but I had not been privy to the amplitude of vitriol of fan reaction in the 1970s to the changes between seasons and the cancellation, and by my reckoning from my own experience, having occasion to see any Space: 1999 was a cause for celebration. I revelled at every videotape-recorded episode to come into my possession. I loved the television show. Both seasons. The spiteful, venom-spitting attitude toward Season 2 in the fan movement could only be a jolt and, given second season's importance in building my love for the television show and my powerful nostalgia for it in my final year of Era 2 Douglastown, be sheer anathema to me and my sensibilities. It confounds me how obstinately, how blinkeredly, hateful that the fans are. And such a phenomenon does speak to something about human nature, a failing in people that I find really quite distressing. And scary. "Gaslighters" do tend to act in accordance with that failing. It is much easier to convince a person to doubt himself or herself and his or her reality when there is a "bandwagon" of vehement scapegoaters nipping at one's heels, knees, shoulders.
And in turn, I do frequently find myself questioning the mental competence of people harbouring a grudge, an inveterate hatred, for more than four and a half decades, with daily expressions of it and virtual pats on the back to others expressing it in the most vulgar parlance. A grudge against a season of a television show and its producer. And an inclination to belittle and slur and "gaslight" anyone who disagrees. Am I "gaslighting", too, as I play amateur psychologist? Am I no better than any of them? I shake my head as I admit that I do not know. There is something quite remarkable about so steadfast and malignant a particular focused-on-a-television-entertainment grudge. I would like to think such a thing to be deviant, because for it to be accepted as normal and even admirable, does not cast the human spirit in particularly good stead. But then, maybe this is "the point". The human spirit is not good. Living in a country in which people were prepared to allow government to "round up" and jail and dispossess people fearful of an adverse reaction to a needle, does not exactly inform a belief in the goodness of people. The fact that the P.M. "ran" in an election lambasting the "unjabbed" population and won a continued hold on power (albeit without the popular vote), also does not exactly edify me.
The human race also seems to be incapable of bettering itself by learning from history. Even after all of the atrocities of the past, people are still receptive to a call to "other" and to hate a segment of the population. Or people vote for someone for his or her looks or surname, overlooking his or her hate-"the-other" rhetoric. And/or because they are promised "handouts" in exchange for their support of a corrupt government. People will "turn against" their fellow citizens rather than hold a corrupt cabal of power brokers accountable. Frankly, I am not sure that our society deserves to survive and to reach the stars.
This all said, do I wish for, do I long for, a return to my optimistic mindset of several decades ago? Of course, I do. But as the saying goes, one cannot go "home" again.
Sunday, February 26, 2023.
Another bitterly cold weekend. Spring may be less than a month away, but I am seeing precious little to show for that in terms of the weather. Daylight is being gained each day, of course, but the weather was better, I have to say, in early January when the northern hemisphere was nearer the winter solstice.
Gordon Pinsent has died at the ripe old age of 92. His was, for me at least, one of the faces of Canadiana. Good old-fashioned Canadiana. That of my parents' generation and its ethical, steady, rational hand. Now, that face has left us, as well as the aforementioned hand. Left us to the "Clown World" of Trudeau's Canada. I will say no more about this, as I will need to delete it. The reference to the "dear leader", at least. I do acknowledge the sad death of Mr. Pinsent, who will always be that ever so dependable policeman in the R.C.M.P. red uniform, Sergeant Scott, in The Forest Rangers. Rest in peace, Mr. Pinsent.
I have been busy with more autobiography updates. Several Space: 1999 images have been added to Eras 2 and 3, expanding existing image collages for 1977 and 1978. There are images of the two Star Trek episodes, "The Galileo Seven" and "The Devil in the Dark", that I saw in Toronto in February, 1978, and an added image of Logan's Run. I desaturated images in Era 4 of the Doctor Who story, "The Ambassadors of Death", to more accurately represent MPBN's airing of it on 10 January, 1987 ("The Ambassadors of Death" was syndicated in black and white, as the BBC had lost colour videotape-recordings of episodes two to seven of that serial). I also made some corrections to text in my Boy Meets Alpha memoirs.
I have found on Facebook, courtesy of one Rob Plouffe, an image of a TV Guide magazine listing for The Bugs Bunny/Road Runner Hour on CBC Television. Here it is.
Look at all of those television channels!
This clipping is from the Manitoba and Saskatchewan edition of TV Guide. The television channels indicated to be showing The Bugs Bunny/Road Runner Hour are as follows. 3 with clear background is CKOS-TV, Yorkton. 4 with clear background is CBKMT, Moose Jaw. 5 with black background is CKX-TV, Brandon. 5 with clear background is CJFB-TV, Swift Current. 5 with lined background is CKBI-TV, Prince Albert. 6 with black background is CBWT, Winnipeg. 9 with clear background is CBKRT, Regina. And 11 with clear background is CBKST, Saskatoon. CBKMT, CBWT, CBKRT, and CBKST were all CBC-owned-and-operated television stations, and the others were CBC-affiliated. No sign of any television station doing videotape-delay of Bugs and the Road Runner. With all of my research to date, that dubious distinction seems to reside solely with CHSJ-TV in New Brunswick.
Big Finish Productions has released onto the Internet the front cover to the upcoming audio drama adaptation of Space: 1999- "Dragon's Domain". Here it is.
I doubt that I will purchase it myself, but I am curious as to how faithful that Big Finish will be to the episode, beyond it substituting Alan Carter for Tony Cellini. One expects that at the very least the Adagio in G-Minor music will be used for the Ultra Probeship outward jouney and Cellini's, or, rather, Carter's, survival flight. Will the producers replicate the sounds of the monster? Do the original elements exist for those sounds, or will they need to be recreated? How more elaborate will the story be? More interaction of crew on the Ultra Probeship? Will the Big Finish Koenig be as close with Carter as a friend as the original Koenig was with Cellini? Will the final confrontation with the monster be prolonged? And how will it be contrived for Carter to survive? I expect that the answers to my questions will eventually come my way.
These are quite strange times to be a fan of Space: 1999. I would never have expected there to be a revival and a "reboot" of Space: 1999 on commercial entertainment media. Oh, there has long been talk in fan circles of a "reboot" in the form of a movie, or another television series. But I always used to dismiss such, as idle flight of fancy- and not a particularly appealing one, I do have to say. To see a "reboot" happening now by way of Big Finish, does have something of a surrealistic quality. It does not seem real. Indeed, I look at this front cover, and this experience does feel to me like I am having a dream, a nightmare, of "Dragon's Domain" coming back into my life to petrify me in an expanded aspect, and with unfamiliar faces. I have had dreams of such nature. This feels like one now. So much of what is happening in the world now, does not seem real. But to there I prefer not to go. If I do, I will only have to delete what I say.
By the way, I once had a dream of there being an added scene to "Dragon's Domain", but not at a place in the episode that one might expect it to be. I envisaged a scene of a car going down a seldom-travelled road in a forested area on Earth, after Dixon has relieved Cellini, Koenig, and Bergman of their posts, the same sad and solemn music used in the episode, playing, continuing to play, as we see the road from a "subjective camera" perspective. The car stops, and Cellini exits it, looks up at the sky, and says something like, "I know you're up there, monster." The imagining of me, of my subconscious, at around seventeen years of age. I have always remembered that, and I sometimes think of it as the Dixon's office scene comes to a close in the episode and the music plays.
Something of interest that I think that I will mention. Recently, I have had occasion to view parts of the movie, War of the Gargantuas (1966). War of the Gargantuas was a made-in-Japan monster movie, starring American actor Russ Tamblyn. On Saturday, May 6, 1978, CBC Television stations in Nova Scotia and Prince Edward Island (them being CBHT- Halifax, CBIT- Sydney, CBCT- Charlottetown) aired War of the Gargantuas as a 1 P.M.-to-3 P.M. matinee, in advance of that day's CBC Television network 4 P.M. showing of Space: 1999- "Dragon's Domain". CHSJ opted to show New Brunswick Liberal Convention that afternoon while Cellini was battling the monster on all CBC Television stations situated outside the frontiers of the unfortunate eastern province without full access to CBC Television. But enough about CHSJ. Why is the airing that day of War of the Gargantuas significant? Because that movie opens with a tentacle grabbing a hapless man on a boat and a giant cephalopod pulling the man toward it, its mouth wide open to devour him. Interesting, no? Why did the CBC eastern Maritimes television stations, or more specifically CBHT, decide to show War of the Gargantuas on that particular day? Might someone have known that "Dragon's Domain" coming out of the CBC central broadcasting centre in Toronto that day for distribution to all regions of the country, contained a tentacled monster, and decided, with knowledge of the similarity in the two items, that War of the Gargantuas would make an interesting companion piece to "Dragon's Domain"? Or was there no conscious consideration involved in the decision, i.e. did the "collective subconscious" assert itself there? Or was it nothing but a coincidence? Who knows? The persons making programming decisions at CBHT back then, are probably dead now. And if they are alive and remember that day, it is highly doubtful that they are reading my Website.
Enough for this day. Until tomorrow, or the day after tomorrow.
March 5, 2023.
Still no information on the LOONEY TUNES COLLECTOR'S CHOICE Blu-Ray set. Its release is now two months away, and still no indication of what the contents are. If it were just a repackaging of THE PLATINUM COLLECTION or MOUSE CHRONICLES, would that not have been revealed before now? Other repackagings of old DVDs have been made known to collectors four, five, six months in advance of release. Jerry Beck is expected to go on a Stu's Show podcast this coming week. Maybe that is when the hope-crushing news will be dissemenated.
Over the past few days, I have been thinking about my autobiography. I have qualms from time to time about mention of friends, associates, and enemies in my life's story, of my being critical in any way of them. I usually assure myself that it is "fair game" if someone did eventually reject me as a friend, to be critical of him/her, as the friendship is dead and I therefore no longer am beholden to that person. Maybe so. But the possibility does nevertheless exist for me to be reprimanded as being petty, and vindictive, as not having the character to "rise above" such a mindset. Even though someone did "take leave" of me, ought I to be forever grateful for that person's friendship and company, however transient, however erstwhile that it may have been, and therefore refrain from any criticism? Might I have upset and hurt people who did think kindly of me despite having dropped me from their present-day life? And therefore am I myself guilty of betrayal of someone and of dealing an emotional punch to them? These are all good questions. And perhaps it is much too late for me to be hand-wringing about them now.
How critical am I of people in my autobiography? In my Era 2 memoirs, I do not believe that I say much of anything in the way of criticism. Beyond that directed at the persons who helped me with a garage project, then "fell out" with me, and returned to "trash" the place. Or my references to the person who talked me into moving a Kool-Aid stand next to the general store and then left me holding the proverbial bag, and dragging the stand back home. To be sure, my memories of friends in Era 2 are all written with affection, even if I do refer to an occasional quarrel. Or regret a rift between us for our "growing apart" post-1977. The only people I do criticise are those whom I knew post-Era 2 who were friends with me for only a short period of time, and from whom I would routinely receive a verbal "slap-down" for wishing to talk about a particular subject of interest to me. Or people who were nonchalant. Or people who were avowedly not adherent to me and denouncing of me, or who sought to undermine my bonds of friendship. And of course, there are the Space: 1999 fans with whom I had an abortive aimable relationship. If a friendship fails, is not criticism warranted? Or if it is, is it best to refrain from publicly stating it?
I have said it before and will do so again. People's behaviour as children needs to be seen as that of a personality under development. No one as an adult is necessarily as flawed as he or she was in a less mature stage of life. A person who has acquired wisdom ought to be able to acknowledge having had faults in early life. And to not have umbrage with a left-behind friend of old "pointing out" some of them. We all have faults in our youth. I did. My erstwhile friends did. I did and said things in my childhood, and even my early adulthood, that I am not proud-of, and that I certainly would not like broadcast, even if my full identity would only be known to the people who knew me and where I lived at the time. I can understand that. But if I were a fully developed personality, with my head firmly on my shoulders, I would acknowledge the faults and say that I did "come a long way". And I would be apologetic for having negatively impacted someone in his or her formative years. Ah, but am I so fully developed, even now? It would be vain of me to say yes to that.
People still have faults all through adulthood. Nobody is perfect. And I still have my faults. Even now, I still have times when empathy for others is not fully present. I still have an acquisitive nature. And I have a temper. But I can acknowledge that I was rather ego-centric and at a loss when understanding others was concerned. I mention this often in my memoirs.
And, again, I did and said things in my youth that I wish that I could change. Not that I was a mean-spirited little brat as a way of everyday life. But in a given year, I might have had six, maybe eight, incidents of a lapse in congeniality and rightness. Or ill-intent for someone from whom I had felt wronged. Someone I might snub or speak disparagingly-of once or twice. I "lashed out" one day at someone for dropping the ball at a first-base play during a game of street baseball. And I lacked the humility to apologise. Essentially, I myself was unpleasant in the playing of baseball, and it may have been Karmic for a lashing-out to happen to me some years later. Of course, the "lashing-out" administered to me was prolonged, more concentrated (i.e. coming from multiple directions). Not only a remark by a single person in a "heated" moment, but a protracted abuse with nary anyone around me to "have my back". But my incidence of bad sportsmanship can only beget the same from others, I suppose
Oh, I have heard it said that, "Kids are jerks." We are all jerks sometimes in the first eighteen years of our lives. As children, we can be, and often are, epitomes of nonsense, lacking as we do the knowledge and the common sense that only experience over time can truly foster. Children can be, and often are, cruel. The children of small-town 1970s Miramichi were markedly less so than those of suburban Fredericton. But it is the province of childhood to learn empathy. I was less developed at that than were others, but virtually everyone in their youth has to learn empathy and its importance as they "grow up", or else become a disagreeable, even sociopathic, person in adulthood.
Where am I going with all of this? I have done a ton of work on my autobiography, and how I was treated by friends and foes, is an integral part of my autobiography. Should I have strived for a greater degree of anonymity for my friends, associates, and antagonists, as I wrote my memoirs? Maybe so. But it is too late now to change that. The autobiography has been on my Website, in one form or another, for more than twenty years. And I do lack the time and the initiative to commit countless hours to a rewrite, and, besides, doing so now would be like closing the shed door years after the horses bolted. I guess that I just have to wear the accusations of pettiness and vindictiveness and the designation of being lacking in concern for the feelings of once-upon-a-time friends and associates. But should I "take down" the autobiography now, after all of the work put into it these many years? It is something that I am considering, though I do balk at that thought of all of my work in the memoirs going off of the Internet.
Time will reveal what decision I make. Suffice it to say now, that I am questioning myself, as everyone needs to from time to time. Who among us wishes to be like the totally-not-self-aware person in charge of the country? I certainly do not.
All for today.
March 9, 2023.
In my Weblog entry for February 12 of this year, I say that, "... I do frequently find myself questioning the mental competence of people harbouring a grudge, an inveterate hatred, for more than four and a half decades, with daily expressions of it..."
Ever ready with accusations of hypocrisy, my detractors would doubtless attempt to counter this with references to my begrudging bearing toward the attackers of Season 2 Space: 1999 and toward my imperious nemesis of Calgary and his ally residing in another Canadian western city. I have my own grudge and should not be criticising others for theirs. So my detractors would proclaim. I suppose that I ought to emphasise the distinction. The people whose grudge I "call out" and upon which I make a lay psychological assessment, is that toward changes in a television show of more than forty-five years ago and toward the producer who implimented the changes as a well-meaning, constructive professional initiative. There was no possibility of a continuation of the Season 1 format, and every change that was rung was done with intent to keep Space: 1999 going and grow its audience. This ought to be accepted. It ought to have been accepted decades ago. It ought to be acknowledged that some people do in fact like or love Season 2, and that some people appreciate it aesthetically. Denigrating those people, either directly or indirectly, is not the action of a reasonable, respectful, decent individual. Neither is "carrying on" with daily invective toward a television producer who has been dead now for twenty years. As for my grudge, it is not quite as old, and is directed at the malignant behaviours of people, and destructive intent toward me, isolating me, branding me, subverting me as a person of repute, repudiating my stature in fandom for my previous accomplishments, and so forth. From them is a directed, personal attack. Against me. In conjunction with their incessant lambasting of the second production block of their favourite television series. A season whose merits are stubbornly unsung, much to my chagrin. Mine is a justified grudge. And besides, I do not spend time every day writing about it. I only occasionally choose to delve into it. Can I "let it go"? Possibly. But not when these people are still leaders of the fan movement, garnering praises for work disparaging Season 2 as their writings had done in the 1990s in the midst of my "cancellation". It is salt in the wound, that. And I just cannot forgive anyone who is not penitent. Which I am sure none of these people are. They hate Season 2. They hate Fred Freiberger. They hate me for my defending their hated season and for my "calling them out" on their behaviour. And for my being the purported cause of the dissolution of a fan club in the 1990s. My grudge can only persist, I am afraid.
I have not forgotten that the Calgarian established and grew his fan club with my support, my help. And it was through that fan club and his presidency of it that he "made a name for himself" and was able to curry favour with several of the already accomplished individuals in the Space: 1999 production and appreciation community, once he had disposed of me, of course. Me and one or two others. We were unwanted baggage, and a complication for him in that the fidelity of some of us to Season 2 was "against the grain" of the people with whom he was keen to ingratiate himself. He has published books while I am a fringe Internet presence. Oh, I did achieve mention on the Shout! Factory Blu-Ray sets. But apart from that, I am well and truly a voice in the wilderness, eminently dismissable for being such. While the man who reviled me to my back, to the hearty approval of the membership of his club, is merrily marching onward with book after book and thumbing his nose at me, lover of the hated season and the "houseguest from hell" (his words). I am sorry. Forgiveness is not possible.
There was no news last night as regards Looney Tunes and Merrie Melodies on home video, from Jerry Beck in his appearance on the Stu's Show podcast. LOONEY TUNES COLLECTOR'S CHOICE remains shrouded in mystery. What I now think is that it may be a newly mastered Blu-Ray, but one containing nothing but already-on-Blu-Ray cartoon shorts. Cartoon shorts from the PLATINUM COLLECTIONs, MOUSE CHRONICLES, and maybe even the Bugs Bunny Blu-Ray set of a few years ago. And perhaps even a large amount of latter-day cartoons of Bugs and company. Cartoons of the 1990s, the 2000s, and ones made very recently. I am so cynical, but experience has given to me more than sufficient reason to be. That excellent Bugs Bunny Blu-Ray set of a few years ago was an aberration. We are not likely to receive another, even though the bulk of the Warner Brothers cartoons have been fully restored in High Definition. Oh, the news will be forthcoming soon now, I expect. And I will report it and lament about it here in this Weblog.
All for now.
Sunday, March 12, 2023.
Some above-zero temperatures and sunny skies in the past few days have melted some of the snow. The air and the brightness of the day feel spring-like, and now that Daylight Saving Time is in effect, it will be light until close to 8 P.M..
The one Space: 1999 Facebook group still available for public view a few days ago showed a picture of the creature of "The Beta Cloud", one of the episodes of good old Season 2. And of course, analogous to a bell and a Pavlovian dog, anything Season 2 inevitably provokes a bellicose series of derogatory comments. And these days, it is not long at all until someone belches forth the standard "Freddie the show-killer" vituperation. In this case, it was the second comment posted. Right underneath someone chiding the episode and its writer, Mr. Freiberger under the pseudonym of Charles Woodgrove, for having Tony Verdeschi open the door to the vacuum chamber after him having trapped the cloud creature therein. The criticism was oh, so matter-of-fact and bellicose as ever in its posturing. And then the subsequent slurring of Mr. Freiberger came forth with all of the delicacy of a rusty, protruding nail. No defences, of course. Of either the episode or the writer and producer. And as usual, I am the only person who provides one. Here at this largely ignored Weblog.
The facts are that: 1) the episode does not proceed in real time; 2) the amount of time that Tony has the creature sealed in the vacuum chamber, is indeterminate, for there is no clock adjacent to the chamber, and there is a cut to another scene after Tony has sealed the chamber and withdrawn its air, meaning that there could be a period of time of five or ten minutes being counted by Tony while Tony is standing aside the sealed chamber with the creature inside of it. Surely the episode is not required to just show Tony standing there beside the vacuum chamber for five minutes. Evidently, there are no cameras inside the chamber. So, in order to confirm that the creature is dead, Tony has to open the chamber and look inside of it. He is expecting to see the creature's dead body. This is logical, no? It has always been how I have regarded the scene. And of course, as we know, Tony is startled to find the creature still on its feet, very much alive (or apparently alive). The vacuum chamber would need to be opened eventually to confirm the creature's death, so that Alpha's skeleton staff could devote its resources toward repelling a further incursion of Moonbase by Alpha's enemies in the cloud, and continue searching for an antidote to the malady afflicting the bulk of the Moonbase personnel. And there was no Security detail to "back Tony up". He had to himself do the job of opening the chamber and looking inside. At this juncture, Tony and everyone else on Alpha are of the belief that the creature is a living thing, and living things cannot survive being in a vacuum. Well, unless they can store oxygen like a camel stores water. But we do not see that yet in the Season 2 timeline. "Space Warp" and "The Bringers of Wonder" do come later. The existence of such a creature is known to Maya, but it evidently slips her mind during the crisis with the cloud. Maybe she has not seen or thought of one of those creatures since she was very young. Maybe her delirium in "Space Warp" triggered her recall of them. I can accept that. I can accept that everyone on Alpha, Maya included, expected the vacuum chamber to kill the creature. Tony, certainly. And after it had been sealed in the chamber for several minutes, the logical inference on Tony's part is that the creature is a corpse and the chamber can be opened with a reasonable safety for him to confirm this.
Of course, I could counter with something similar in Season One. Like Helena failing to deactivate John's commlock in "Collision Course", enabling him to surprise and overcome the Security guards and to escape his quarters. Or Sandra stupidly opening the Eagle door in "The Full Circle", so that Spearman can enter the spacecraft and abduct her. As my former compatriot in the quest to redeem Season 2, Dean, once said, there are as many "lapses" in Season 1 as there are in Season 2. And as I once said in conversation with him, "If you're looking for flaws, you're going to find them." All that these people do with Season 2 is look for flaws, while they give to Season 1 little or no comparable scrutiny. And yet, these are the people whose assessments of Space: 1999 are accepted to be as canonical as the television series itself (well, Season 1, at least, is canonical in their reckoning; there are people, numerous people, numerous people of apparent repute, who contend to this day that Season 2 does not exist and is therefore not canon).
It occurs to me that readers of my Weblog may not wish to read through every single memoir I have on my Website, and even in my memoirs I am not entirely forthcoming about every component to my life experiences. I refer often to aesthetic qualities of Season 2 Space: 1999 that I find compelling and fascinating while balking at elaborating in full detail those qualities. Many of them are associated with the work of Dean, and the sensibilities in appreciating Season 2 Space: 1999 that he conveyed to me, or accellerated in me after they were already there, not very developed, in my noggin. And because Dean claims sole right to reveal countless aesthetic insights about Season 2 whenever he chooses to do so, I am embargoed from being fully extensive in regards to what it is about Season 2 that has kept my allegiance to it as steadfast as it is. That combined of course with my nostalgia for my seminal experiences of Space: 1999 way back in its heyday, in my heyday, the final school year of my Douglastown years and the subsequent summer. It is not just nostalgia that fuels my ardour for the second season of Space: 1999, though there is no way that I would downplay the importance of the nostalgia quotient. It is huge. But it is by no means all that there is to my long allegiance to so loathed a season to a production long forgotten by the bulk of the population.
This month, it has been thirty-three years (thirty-three years!) since I stayed with Dean for a week in Belledune in northern New Brunswick, when he secured my promise not to impinge upon his priority for the revealing of any of the observations of "regionalism" of the Space: 1999 Season 2 timeline and symbolisms in the episodes associated with such "regionalism". I have written in this Weblog and in my autobiography time and time again about my adherence to Dean's way of looking upon Season 2, while striving not to be extensively forthcoming about the details of that. Why? Because in the decades since I met Dean in 1988, he has offered little of his work for publication. And despite this, he, I say again, claims the sole right to reveal observations at his discretion and at whatever pace (whatever pace!) and terminology that he deems proper. And I have to respect that. I did not at some time in the past, and I had quite an ordeal with Dean and with my own feelings of guilt and self-recrimination in consequence in the early 1990s.
The problem is essentially that Dean did not proceed very far in sharing his elaborate analysis of the timeline of second season Space: 1999 in fandom periodicals, or newsletters, while he shared in private communication with me a multitude of detected beautiful "touches" in the episodes of Season 2 and their overarching significance. Things that I knew would, or ought to, exonerate Season 2 and its maligned producer beyond any reasonable question. It ought to vindicate at long last my long-beleaguered attachment and fidelity to Space: 1999. And it frustrates me so tremendously that all of the additional material has gone unrevealed these oh, so many years, while Season 2 and its stalwart appreciators have "come in for" so much scorn and vitriol, both for the season that they admire and them, themselves. Or, to be more specific, me, myself.
But I keep referencing this aesthetic approach to the Season 2 subject matter proffered by Dean and adhered-to by me, and upon which some of my interpretations (e.g. of episode "Journey to Where" and Jekyll-and-Hyde symbolism therein), are founded, without much elaboration, which must no doubt be frustrating and alienating to my readers. But here it is in the proverbial nutshell. I am not going to go again through what I did in the early 1990s and am therefore sworn to keep to myself the bulk of Dean's analysis of Season 2. However, I believe that I can share here all that he did reveal in print in the fan periodicals, with full credit to him for all of that. This is to say, "stuff" that is already "out there".
Dean's premise is that the timeline in Season 2 can be viewed as falling into three discrete regions, regions with particular sets of characteristics. He calls the regions provinces, or, to be more precise, Provinces (the capital p denoting that he does assign names to them; alas, they are names that I cannot share here).
The first province contains:
"The Metamorph";
"The Exiles";
"Journey to Where";
"The Taybor";
"One Moment of Humanity";
"All That Glisters";
"The Mark of Archanon".
In that order.
Dean's methodology for placing the un-dated-in-dialogue episodes, "Journey to Where" and "The Taybor", where they are, were only tangentially referenced in fan club publication. It is rather sophisticated, and I know its details, but I have to refrain from saying anything beyond what he did.
The second province consists of:
"The Rules of Luton";
"New Adam New Eve";
"Brian the Brain";
"Catacombs of the Moon";
"The AB Chrysalis";
"The Beta Cloud";
"Seed of Destruction";
"A Matter of Balance";
"Space Warp".
Dean specified that "The Rules of Luton" and "Space Warp" are boundary episodes, the space storm lasting 42 days referenced by Helena at start of "The Rules of Luton" being one provincial "border" and the space warp in "Space Warp" being another. Dean viewed Luton as being at the very edge of the boundary designated by the space storm. The second province episodes untouched by any boundary are to be considered the numerical episodes of second province, i.e. "New Adam New Eve" being one, "Brian the Brain" being two, and so forth.
And the third province's episodes are:
"The Bringers of Wonder";
"Dorzak";
"The Seance Spectre";
"Devil's Planet";
"The Lambda Factor";
"The Immunity Syndrome";
"The Dorcons".
All told, Dean submitted just three columns to Main Computer, newsletter of the International Space: 1999 Alliance, in the late 1980s and a small handful of columns to the newsletter of our erstwhile ally in Calgary, whose club began operations in 1990. My memory is hazy as to the precise reason for his pull-back from submitting work to Main Computer. We were both highly critical of an increasingly erratic publication schedule for that newsletter, and there had been changes with the editorship of it, leaving us uncertain of what could be expected in times to follow. And in swooped Mr. Calgary with oh, so many promises if we hitched our proverbial wagons to his new movement. Dean and I were both enticed into assisting the Calgarian with the founding of the new club, and Dean discovered very quickly how fair-weather, at best, the Calgarian's obliging nature was, whereas I was rather slower on the uptake. Much to my ultimate detriment. Dean's contributions to the Calgarian were limited to 1990, wherein a "falling-out" between the two of them in early September brought to a most acrimonious end their association, and also to that between Dean and myself (though not for all time henceforth in our case).
But back to what of Dean's work that was disseminated in print to the fans. Specifying the episodes comprising provinces was the most preliminary, most rudimentary, stage of Dean's revelations. He then noted that the first province was one of youth, incipience, naivete, and beauty. Also that the colour, blue, was recurrent, and low temperature conditions, such as with the suspended animation techniques of the Golosians and Archanons, the surface temperature of the planet Vega, and the temperature drop accompanying transference of people and objects in "Journey to Where". He contrasted the low temperatures of province one with the sunshine and warmth and prosperous vegetation of Luton and New Earth and the plasmatic fire storm in province two. And he distinguished the third province as being one of the psychic, of mind-over-matter power, and Eagle crashes. All of the Eagle crashes in Season 2 are in the final third of the season, in province three, with Koenig at the controls in all but one of them (the Eagle crash in the hangar in "Space Warp", which occurs on the province three side of the space warp), and him falling into a time period of unconsciousness either right after the crash or (as in "Devil's Planet") a short while later. These are all observations that were universally recognisable once elucidated. And indeed, I had already noted, before meeting Dean, the emphasis on psychic phenomena in the episodes of late Season 2. I had also noticed aesthetic differences between early episodes and late episodes of Season 2 should they be broadcast in proximity to one another. Dean's approach to analysing the subject matter was not a "tough sell" for me at all.
Dean in subsequent submissions to the Alliance fan club printing press, called attention to some of the more salient thematic or symbological correspondences between episodes of same provinces. Most notably province one, in which they are Biblical in nature. "The Exiles", "One Moment of Humanity", and "The Mark of Archanon" had some of their content explored in this context. Dean said that the name of the planet Golos in "The Exiles" is the Greek equivalent of the Hebrew word, Galuth, meaning "exile". He noted Helena digging her nails into Cantar's face as Zova had done earlier to Helena's clay likeness, as being a poetic justice. A retaliation for a sacrilege. He also traced the etymologies for Zova, for Vega in "One Moment of Humanity", and for some of the names in "The Mark of Archanon", with some consideration of Biblical texts. And in another column, one in the Calgarian's newsletter, Dean did some analysis of "The Rules of Luton", including one of the word origins for Luton as alluding to something being ransomed or redeemed. Knowing, as I do, so much about Dean's approach to regarding the second season subject matter, I might have opted, if I were him, to do something different in some of the preliminary efforts to impress the readers, but still, what he undertook ought to have given reasonable people pause to think that maybe there is more to Season 2 than its all-too-often-jeered-at, most superficial appearances.
How did the fans respond? They did not refute Dean's work, observation by observation. They could not. So, they just chose to avoid considering it. They dismissed it outright. They focused on other matters. Some of them "stepped up" the bemoaning of Season 2. Indeed, this is when fan-penned treatment of Season 2 in fan periodicals really started to deteriorate, and it has been steeply downhill ever since. One fan of some considerable "clout", I do not know who, said that Dean's work was pretentious and flowery, and emphasised that he or she was clearly not in favour of it becoming a regular fixture of the Calgarian's club newsletter. The Calgarian proceeded by "ghosting" Dean (some twenty years before the concept of "ghosting" became commonplace on the Internet), raising Dean's ire, and the clash between them happened not very long thereafter. While I was jubilant over Space: 1999 being back on television all across Canada again at long last, by way of YTV after the letter campaign to YTV that I had spearheaded, Dean and the Calgarian were dealing verbal "blows" to one another, the Calgarian telling Dean to "shut up" when the two of them were "having it out" in conversation on my telephone.
After that, Dean ceased to reveal anything further in print about the "regionalism" in Season 2, and to the best of my knowledge, he has not ventured to do so again, anywhere. And the fan attitudes vis-a-vis second season became increasingly abusive and difficult for me to "take lying down". My "falling out" with the Calgarian and with others was a foregone conclusion, I suppose.
I will say again that I know so much more than was made known by Dean in his writings in the newsletters. Some was said directly to me by Dean in conversation or in correspondence. Some I noticed or deduced myself with prompting by Dean when we were together. And some I arrived-at without prompting, after some consideration extrapolated from insights that Dean had shared. Some of my ruminations were a dead end, as Dean did eventually note. And I "messed up" monumentally by preempting some of his priority. But the general trend is that Dean's analysis of the "regionalism" in the timeline continues to "hold up" to scrutiny, rational scrutiny, and bear aesthetic fruit as more and more things come to light, enhancing, not contradicting, that which has already been detected.
The "clincher" for me as regards the tenability of Dean's analysis was something never broached in any of Dean's published writings. All that I dare say is that not only are there strings of association between phenomena of episodes within same provinces, but clear instances of "rhyming" over the numerical episodes in each of the provinces. Similarities between episodes one of each province, and between episodes two of each province, and so forth. This was most highly definitive for me as confirming the concept of there being patterning to the timeline in Season 2. I have no doubt of it. And as I do acknowledge that none of this was by anyone's conscious design, it can only, in my estimation, be born of Jung's "collective unconscious". I am a firm believer in the "collective unconscious", and, frankly, I have no time for anyone who scoffingly rejects outright this idea. Or dismisses out of hand the idea of unconscious influence in artistic work.
There are things that I have noticed in light of Dean's analysis that may or may not be germane to Dean's elaboration of the provinces theory. I remarked that red seemed to be the prevalent colour of province three. And Dean was complimenting of my acuity, my astuteness, without confirming that I was "on to something".
And one thing that Dean pulled out of me Socratically was the chief, overall nature of province three. I was already leaning in the right direction, and he encouraged me to extrapolate my thoughts further and further until the ultimate conclusion was there, rolling off of my tongue. Once I had fully acknowledged it, there was, is, no way that I can go back to being insufficiently cognizant of it. I now always view the final seven (or eight) episodes through that lens. And I can now appreciate what Michael Butterworth was suggesting, wittingly or unwittingly, in the novelisation of "The Bringers of Wonder". But I can say no more. Frustrating as it is.
But even if Dean had fully published all that he had found, would opinion on Season 2 have shifted one iota? I used to think that it would. I still like to think so. But I am more, much more cynical now. The fog of cognitive dissonance in people is thick as pea soup. And equally as unappetising, frankly. I have always hated pea soup, since being required to eat it in hospital very early in my life. People will reject utterly anything that does not fit their outlook on the world and on their favourite work of the imagination, even if that outlook is blinkered and wilfully poorly informed. But in the interest of a thorough repository of knowledge and of a possible reappraisal of Space: 1999 at some more rational time (if such is ever possible), Dean's work should be published. It is the only thing about him that I continue to respect today. Truly the only thing. I have no desire to see or to hear from him again until the work is thoroughly available for world consumption. And even then, I doubt that my seeing him would "go over well".
Dean and I went along quite a twisty and bumpy road from our first meeting in 1988 onward. We converged again in 1994 and diverged in 2001 quite acrimoniously (and we had another contretemps in 1997, as I remember; sometime around Christmas), and despite numerous overtures by him, I have not been at all keen on trying again. The issues are delicate (I have not mentioned some of them), and the association between us has tended to be quite toxic and detrimental to me in my efforts to cope with my particular lot in life. We are just not a good combination.
But I would be "over the Moon" if it were to become known that Dean's work on analysing Space: 1999 has become a tome, whether critically acclaimed or otherwise. After thirty-three years, do I still consider such to be a possibility? I do not know where Dean's head is at today. Last I saw, a few years ago, he was still making an occasional comment about Space: 1999 on Facebook, some clever remark seemingly disparaging Season 2 while concealing, figuratively, a sophistication in the opposite direction that would go unnoticed by the rigidly literal-minded pundits of Season 1. Dean is just trying to be clever while "trolling" the Season 2-slurring louts. What does it accomplish? I do not know. Nothing at all, I would guess.
I do know also that Dean can "gaslight" as freely as the rest of the fans. It was a good thing that I had my parents with me at the time, or his "gaslighting" might have had me in a most debilitated state of unease about myself and my competence in dealing with the world. I made some mistakes back in my early twenties. People do. Nobody is perfect, then or even in later life. But it was not just those particular mistakes, mistakes to do with Space: 1999 and our aim of fostering improved regard for Season 2, that Dean made sure to remind me of, whenever there was occasion to do so. He also made judgments of me for non-Space: 1999-related decisions in my life that proved to be a dead-end or something of a folly. While of course, he is a paragon of wisdom.
But here I sit, reading non-stop vitriol directed at Season 2 and struggling not to be demoralised by it all. Dean's work largely goes unpublished, and I am not at liberty to reveal all. All that he conveyed to me. All that I arrived-at under his influence.
I was quite long today. But I thought it right to be as elaborate as I can about the way of looking at Season 2 Space: 1999 proffered by Dean and adhered-to by me, following many years of insufficiently developed awareness of something quite wonderful in the less acclaimed half of Space: 1999. Do I wish that Space: 1999 could have been more polished? Absolutely. But it is what it is, and I still love it. Sometimes, that love is so trammelled that watching Space: 1999 is difficult, but nostalgia will invariably resurge, and the love endures.
Wednesday, March 15, 2023.
The Ides of March. I pray that there is nothing ominous about that. It is a disagreeable day as regards the weather. It snowed last night, setting back the advance of springtime dissolution of tall snowbanks. The snow that melted over the past week, has now been replaced by more of the same.
I propose to revisit a number of my lines of thought of recent days, and tie them together coherently when they may appear to contradict one another. They really do not contradict, but I can see how someone might interpret them as so doing, in the absence of some needed qualification of things that I say in them.
I criticise the actions of friends decades ago, and then say that they were personalities in development, and that they need not be the same today as then, and that their prickly or unobliging actions of their childhood are only everlastingly demeaning if they persist in the same path in adulthood, them doing so without any contrition. I also say that my mistakes in adulthood, in my twenties, should not be permanent indictments of my character, and that I wish not to have them used against me. And that my avoidance of Dean for his condemnations of me for my mistakes of my twenties was right. Am I being hypocritical? I will endeavour to "unpack" this.
I said that I made mistakes in early adulthood. Yes. Turning eighteen years of age does not magically render a person incapable of ever erring again. Adults make mistakes. Our world is replete with them, unfortunately. The mistakes that I made were largely born of my deficiency in the empathy department, of the lack of experience that I had with viewing situations from angles other than my own egocentric one. And lapses in discretion arising from that. Is it hypocritical of me to be critical in my memoirs of erstwhile friends of my early Fredericton years when I myself had imperfections? Imperfections in childhood and adulthood. Not if I recognise mine. Recognise them without going neurotically self-destructive. Recognise them constructively.
Everyone is imperfect. We are more imperfect in our youth and can become less so as we age, acquiring wisdom through experience, hopefully learning from mistakes caused by our imperfections. A person can become less imperfect as he or she ages. I think that this could be said to be an axiom. This is until, of course, a person's mental faculties start to decline due to old age. But such is another story. And one that I hope that I and everyone of my and other generations have not entered into, yet.
A person needs to have self-awareness in order to change, to self-improve. To learn from past mistakes and to not repeat them. To grow as a person. And from what I did see, my nemesis in Calgary lacked that self-awareness, and I do not believe that he has had any progress in arriving at a self-awareness. And even if he has, why should he change? He has achieved all that he wanted, by being the way that he was. He has had no need to change, and, again, I do not believe that he possesses the self-awareness for change to be possible. I believe the same to be true for the vast majority of the Space: 1999 fans, because I see how they act, time and time and time and time again, and the affirmations that they receive from one another for acting the way that they do.
Going further back in time to my friends of old in Fredericton. The ones with whom my friendly relations were short-lived. And the ones with whom friendship or association was longer-lasting but eventually came to an end. They had their flaws. I had mine. There was not a single one of us who was without flaw. Do I remember any of my friends acknowledging their mistakes? Back in the day? In just about every case, no. A couple of them tacitly recognised themselves as having been in error and changed course without any comment. But they did not go so far as to say that they had been in error. No, they did not. But, then, neither did I. In some cases, my friends' flaws made friendship impossible. Or their flaws in combination with mine, did so. Or their flaws, together with mine, made enduring, life-long friendship impossible. It is possible for them to have had an epiphany at some point in time and for self-awareness to flourish, and continuous improving to happen in their adult years. But to this day, no one has reached out to me to express regret for friendship "going down the tubes" and expressing a wish to try again. That would be nice, very, very nice, but realistically, it is not going to happen. And I feel confident that any overtures from me would be dismissed. I just do.
The probability is that if they are aware of my autobiography and its mention of them, mention that is not a hundred percent positive, that they resent and hate me for it. But if this is how it must be, then I have to accept that. If they cannot "fess up" to the fact that they had flaws, this is "on them". Humility was not in abundant supply with the vast majority of people I knew after moving to Fredericton. To be sure, it was lacking, utterly, in certain of my foes. The ones who were most condemning of me, who laughed when I fell, who thought nothing of drawing my best friend away from me, who probably delighted in seeing me isolated and alone.
A person's capacity for self-improvement depends on self-awareness. There must also be no "gaslighting". If a person is trying to better himself or herself, the last thing that he or she needs is for someone constantly invoking past mistakes to cause him or her to be very much lacking in self-confidence. And with the lack of self-confidence, he or she "caves" completely to the diktats of the "gaslighter", such that the "gaslighter" wields control, dominates. There are people who do contend that because I make the occasional mistake that I am never right. That I am wrong as a person and unfit for any purpose. Yes, I am occasionally wrong. But I am right most of the time. My tendency to be right does increase when I am cynical. Unfortunately, this is so. And yet, even in my cynicism, I can underestimate how bad that something can become. I knew that J.T. was bad news for Canada in 2015, and I said so at the time, but I did not expect for his stewardship of the country, to be as bad as it has become.
I wish I could have been a tad more cynical when I was young. I might have spared myself some heartache. I might even have "put up" opposition to moving to Fredericton in 1977 such that we did not move. And all of the unpleasant experiences that I had in schools and in neighbourhood in Fredericton would never have come to pass. Oh, I might, or probably, have had a set of disagreeable circumstances or situations had we stayed in the Miramichi area. But now, today, I believe the positives to staying where we were at in Douglastown, would outweigh the negatives. Being without brother or sister and being rather shy, I needed the continuity of an upbringing in the same place.
I was quite imperfect when I was a boy. Of course. Every boy is. And every girl. I was imperfect when we were in Douglastown. And yet, I had friends. I had more friends in the first three quarters of 1977 than I would ever have at any time in Fredericton. Friends have to accept us as we are. Did I accept my friends for what they were? Not always. I admit that. Usually, I did. But sometimes, friends and I clashed, and I was aware of aspects to their character that I wished not to have to experience. And in some cases, friendly relations did erode, as a result. But this is the way of the world. None of this is untrue for people in general.
The tendency in some people, as in Space: 1999 fan circles, to "double-down" on "off-putting" behaviours, and to do so more and more, until becoming utterly obnoxious, fuels my cynicism more than anything else, I would say. They are acting like schoolyard adolescents. And who are leading them? People like the Calgarian. Why should any of them change, when they are perfectly happy as they are, in their group in which there is a cognitive dissonance feedback loop? The more that they congratulate each other for their closed-mindedness, the more cognitively dissonant that they become, and the more that they "circle-jerk". And so it goes.
It is wise to eschew any further interactions with people like them. And with Dean, too. He will "gaslight" me as surely as the sun rises in the east. I do not disregard the mistakes that I made, but there is not, in my having committed them, a lifelong indictment against my worth as a person and my right not to be trammelled. Acknowledge the mistakes, make the effort to self-improve, and "move on". "Leave aside" the "gaslighting" and persons practicing it.
And I will say, categorically, that I am disappointed that over the past thirty-three years, no more of Dean's project has been published. If people like that Calgarian can scribble out a number of published books on the subject of Space: 1999, why cannot Dean author one? If I can build a Website for whatever small readership that it may have, why cannot he at least do the same? Lack of initiative? Belief that somehow, somehow, people will be more accepting of the work at some time in the future?
I think that I have said enough today. I hope that I have brought some comprehensible convergence of a number of trains of thought that I have written of late.
Thursday, March 23, 2023.
A couple of days of spring weather, and now it is back to snow. Happily, temperatures after the snowfalls will be above zero. So, the snow may melt quickly on the streets. On top of the banks of long-existing snow, however, it will only accumulate and delay the seeing of one's lawn further into April.
Spring has for quite some time now been a disappointing season. Last year's spring was a rare exception. The snow was fully gone by mid-April.
I have a Doctor Who Season 9 Blu-Ray box set en route to me now. Here is what the front cover and spine of the set looks like.
Word is that Seasons 15 and 20 will be 2023's other releases of Doctor Who vintage seasons on Blu-Ray. It looks like the BBC is determined to avoid releasing Season 13 for as long as the range continues.
I did acquire the Blu-Ray of The Bad News Bears Go to Japan. Nothing to write home about, the Blu-Ray and the movie. But I now have all three Bears movies on Blu-Ray, as I did way back when, during my days of collecting entertainment on open-reel audiotape.
Okay. I now have something to report with regard to LOONEY TUNES COLLECTOR'S CHOICE. Jerry Beck was a guest on another podcast last evening and said, "If you're an insane collector, you're going to want it." And also, "Something you can't get anywhere else." These were in reference to COLLECTOR'S CHOICE. The discussion at the The Bugs Bunny Video Guide's Facebook outpost, is abuzz with speculation as to what it is that Mr. Beck is hinting-at. People are letting their imaginations run riot. All unreleased-to-DVD-and-Blu-Ray Warner Brothers cartoons? A restored "Beanstalk Bunny". The live-action Looney Tunes movies. Phooey on the last of these. Again, Mr. Beck says, "Something you can't get anywhere else." Those live-action movies are available on numerous home video formats, and with multiple releases to DVD.
How do I "unpack" what he said? Is he suggesting that it will be something that only an insane collector would want, something that only a completist would wish to possess. 1930s cartoons? Daffy and Speedy cartoon shorts? Larriva Road Runners? Or does he mean that it would be so comprehensive and, therefore, so expensive that "insane collectors" will part with their money while the average "soccer mom" will balk at purchasing it?
It is interesting that the restored cartoons have been pulled from HBO Max in advance of this release.
If I would hazard a guess, a guardedly hopeful guess, I would suppose that this will be something like the Bugs Bunny Blu-Ray set of 2020 but with an eclectic mix of characters, the regulars and the minor ones, plus a number of the less recognised "one-shots". If I interpret Mr. Beck's words most strictly, we may see with this release mostly or entirely cartoons never before on shiny digital videodisc or on home video as a whole (videocassette and laser videodisc inclusive). How many cartoons are there that never were released before on any format? Not very many. I doubt that a most strict interpretation of Mr. Beck's words is necessarily apropos here. He probably meant DVD and Blu-Ray only, as regards this material not being available elsewhere.
What cartoons would they be, then? The remaining unreleased, to DVD and Blu-Ray, Bugs Bunnies. The Road Runner cartoons "passed over" in previous DVD and Blu-Ray releases. Some Tweety and Sylvester (maybe, at long, long last, the fully restored "Hyde and Go Tweet"). Pre-1955 Foghorn Leghorn. Overlooked-for-ages cartoons of minor characters such as "The Bee-Deviled Bruin", "A Hound For Trouble", "Terrier-Stricken", "Two's a Crowd", and "A Bone For a Bone". Probably many pre-1948s, but not those with potentially offencive content. At this juncture, I will gladly "scoop up" anything that is released, provided that there are some post-1948s in the mix.
Strange that there is as yet no itemised list. But I will give to Mr. Beck's words the cautious optimism that I have been eschewing since the aftermath of the 2020 Bugs Bunny set. The restoration work is done. All that is required is to put them on Blu-Ray. I do not care if there are no bonus features. And Mr. Beck's words do give to me hope.
Ah, but back to ground level I must go, for it appears, from something else said by Mr. Beck, that the release date of 30 May is premature. We may not see this set until autumn.
Wednesday, March 29, 2023.
The front cover to LOONEY TUNES COLLECTOR'S CHOICE has emerged onto the World Wide Web. Here it is.
And along with the image of the front cover, there has come to light some of the cartoons likely to be in this release. Alas, a heavy, heavy alas, there will only be twenty cartoons, on just one Blu-Ray disc. A further alas for me, is that the majority of the cartoons mooted so far are pre-1948.
Here are the mooted cartoons.
"Beanstalk Bunny"
"Catch as Cats Can"
"A Tale of Two Mice"
"Daffy Doodles"
"His Bitter Half"
These are the titles being bandied about in discussion at Blu-Ray Forum. Word is that they originate with Jerry Beck, which would mean that they should be regarded as high probability. In addition to these five cartoons, it is reasonable to expect something with the Road Runner and Wile E. Coyote, as they are on the front cover. Ditto something with Tweety and Sylvester, something with Foghorn Leghorn, and a cartoon or two with the Three Bears and the Goofy Gophers. As this release seems to be skewing pre-1948 (oh, of course it does!), the only guarantee there may be of a post-1948 cartoon beyond "Beanstalk Bunny" and "His Bitter Half", is the Road Runner and Wile E., for, as every cartoon fan worth his or her salt does know, all of the Road Runner and Wile E. Coyote cartoons are post-1948. As to Tweety and Sylvester, most of their cartoons are post-1948. The odds are in the favour of a Tweety-and-Sylvester post-1948 cartoon. It would be nice to see "The Bee-Deviled Bruin" or "What's Brewin', Bruin?" as the Three Bears cartoon- and not "Bugs Bunny and the Three Bears" (I am so tired of that one). Goofy Gophers could be either pre- or post-1948. Oh, I will buy this Blu-Ray, for "His Bitter Half" and for "Beanstalk Bunny", if for nothing else. And hopefully Warner Brothers will not pull the proverbial plug on the new range before it can reach a volume two, three, or four.
As this will be a Warner Archive release, it will not be available in stores in Canada. And from what I understand, the only on-the-Internet vendor from which it can be purchased in the U.S., apart from the Warner Archive Store itself, is Amazon.com. As is now being stated in numerous niches on the Internet, the release date is indeed May 30. Earlier discussions of a release date much later than that, have evidently been put-paid-to.
Further, it is becoming clear that priority for this release has been given to cartoons never before on home video. This being the case, I would expect the Tweety-and-Sylvester cartoon to be "Trick or Tweet". Possibly "Tom Tom Tomcat", provided the stereotypes of Native Americans in it are not too problematical (I would note that all of the Native American quantity in that cartoon is the Sylvester and Sylvester variants wearing "Indian" attire, in the role of the Native Americans laying siege to trekking pioneers, not actual Native Americans or cariacatures thereof). The Road Runner cartoon in this release could be "Fastest With the Mostest", "Lickety-Splat", "Zoom at the Top", or "War and Pieces". Sylvester solo cartoons "A Kiddies Kitty", "Pappy's Puppy", and "D' Fightin' Ones" would be possibilities. For Foghorn Leghorn, we might see "Henhouse Henery", "Sock a Doodle Do", "The EGGcited Rooster", "Of Rice and Hen", "Feather Bluster", "The Dixie Fryer", "The Slick Chick", and "Mother Was a Rooster". Some Daffy cartoons never before on home video are "Quack Shot", "Aqua Duck", "Fast Buck Duck", and "Good Noose". For the Goofy Gophers, I would expect either "A Bone For a Bone" or "I Gopher You".
I expect "Trick or Tweet" with the proviso that the cartoons on the Japanese I LOVE TWEETY DVDs count as previously-on-home-video material. If I LOVE TWEETY is not so-counted, then the number of potential Tweety-and-Sylvesters rises considerably. As "Hyde and Go Tweet" was on home video on VHS videotape and laser videodisc, and is on DVD from a VHS master, the chances of it being in the first volume of COLLECTOR'S CHOICE, are nor promising. Sadly.
Some other Bugs cartoons on this Blu-Ray disc might be "The Unruly Hare", "Pre-Hysterical Hare", "Wet Hare", "Hare-Breadth Hurry", and "Dumb Patrol".
A question that needs to be asked. Is there to be a follow-up volume is fairly short order? In the late summer or the autumn? Or, as with the GOLDEN COLLECTIONS, do we only have one new release per year? With only twenty cartoons per release, this would not do, particularly as physical media is unlikely to be a seller a couple of years from now, if the powers-that-be have their way.
I am enjoying my Doctor Who Season 9 Blu-Ray set. The serials of Jon Pertwee's third season, are mostly compromised by deficient video quality due to the loss of the original PAL videotapes. The restoration team did its best with the materials (film recordings, NTSC videotapes) that it had. All five of the Season 9 serials have qualities that appeal to me. Story ideas and visuals. And as usual, there is a wealth of value-added material, a sizable chunk of which new to this release.
All for today.
Sunday, April 2, 2023.
The so-called polar vortex has "taken up" permanent residence over New Brunswick and much of eastern Canada. The daytime high temperatures stubbornly will not rise above the mid-single-digits, and the precipitation that falls is snow or ice pellets or freezing rain, falling atop and adding to the ice-filled snowbanks that will not melt. It does not look like there will be snow-free ground until late May at this rate. No matter how much the northern hempisphere tilts toward the sun, no matter how much longer the daylight lasts, no matter how much higher the Sun is in the sky, N.B. stays mired in early March weather conditions. Because our air keeps coming from the northwest, from northern Quebec and Baffin Island. Because the despicible jet stream persists in staying to the south of Atlantic Canada. Oh, until late May, when it will finally slide north of us and temperatures will surge from plus five degrees to thirty. From winter to summer like the flicking-on of a light. Until then, I have to suffer the sight of snow as I walk, drive my car, go about my business. That and the cold northerly winds and snow or ice pellets or freezing drizzle being contemptuously spat into my face.
What happened to the old days when there were strings of days in mid-March when the temperatures went up into the mid-teens, melting most of the snow? When in the first week or two of April there were only pockets of snow in shaded areas and parking lots? When friends and I were outside playing baseball in mid-April? When I was mowing our lawn around April 25?
Now, it stays March here for weeks after March was supposed to have "gone out" like either lamb or lion. The hated month that claimed the lives of my relatives and pets and the relatives of friends, is infuriatingly extended. I wish that I could be in a much cheerier mood this morning. The news is good coming from in-the-know people as regards LOONEY TUNES COLLECTOR'S CHOICE. I continue to watch and enjoy the Blu-Ray discs in the Doctor Who Season 9 box set. And I have successfully added more images to my memoirs. Era 5 now has new images of cartoons on Merrie Melodies: Starring Bugs Bunny and Friends, specifically those of the cartoons, "Chow Hound", "Bye, Bye, Bluebeard", and "Caveman Inki", the last of which I was able to procure off of a High Definition video transfer of a not fully restored film print, that is available on Facebook. Film blemishes aside, it comes close to rivalling anything on Blu-Ray in picture quality. I would advise cartoon collectors to download the video before it vanishes. "Caveman Inki" has been an exceedingly difficult cartoon to find in all of the years since it was in an episode of Merrie Melodies: Starring Bugs Bunny and Friends in the early 1990s. YTV aired it once in 1997 and had to remove it from circulation very quickly after that, complaints about it having been received probably within minutes after broadcast. All of the Inki cartoons are considered politically incorrect, offencive, due to the unfortunate depiction of the Inki character. "Caveman Inki"'s humour, however, derives mainly from its prehistoric setting and a deadpan Mynah bird eluding chase by Inki and a baby lion, and a Stone Age man who "turns up" again and again, collided-into by Inki and the lion. The locations are beautiful, the cartoon animation of dinosaurs, the baby lion, a splitting-open mountain, and the Mynah bird is impeccable, and the "Fingal's Cave" music accompanying the gait of the bird, is superlative. But I do acknowledge the political incorrectness in the design of Inki and in him being a savage hunter in a jungle. And so, in the screen grab that I did for an image, just to have the cartoon represented in some capacity in visuals in my memoirs, I used the Mynah bird, not Inki.
I also expanded my memories of watching and videotape-recording the Space: 1999 "movie", Alien Attack, in early January, 1984. And added some images of the episodes, "Breakaway" and "War Games", comprising Alien Attack to my early 1984 memoirs of Era 4. I have some memories of the YTV run of Space: 1999 that I have not as yet shared in my autobiography. And I shall add those to my life's story in the appropriate places, sometime in the days to come.
Wednesday, April 5, 2023.
The full list of cartoons for the first volume of LOONEY TUNES COLLECTOR'S CHOICE, has now been made available for public consumption. Here it is.
"The Unruly Hare"
"A Tale of Two Mice"
"Daffy Doodles"
"The Foxy Duckling"
"Little Orphan Airedale"
"Doggone Cats"
"Catch as Cats Can"
"Two Gophers From Texas"
"What's Brewin', Bruin?"
"The Bee-Deviled Bruin"
"His Bitter Half"
"A Fractured Leghorn"
"Stooge For a Mouse"
"Cracked Quack"
"A Mouse Divided"
"Plop Goes the Weasel!"
"Beanstalk Bunny"
"Greedy For Tweety"
"Hip Hip- Hurry!"
"Hot-Rod and Reel!"
There are eleven post-1948s and nine pre-1948s in the mix. Happily, most of the pre-1948s are cartoons that I rather like. So, all is good, I suppose. But I cannot help but complain that, yet again, "Hyde and Go Tweet" has been spurned. Why "Greedy For Tweety"? It at least is on one of the Japanese I LOVE TWEETY DVDs. "Hyde and Go Tweet" is not. Neither is "Tweet and Sour", "Tugboat Granny", "Trick or Tweet", and the two Tweety "cheater" cartoons. But what good does me complaining do? It has not worked yet. "Hyde and Go Tweet" has to be the Tweety cartoon most desired on DVD or Blu-Ray, not just on my part but on that of cartoon fans in general. Yet, it continues to be "passed over".
I am happy to see "Hip Hip- Hurry!" on the list. It is a Road Runner cartoon that I have been lacking since I disposed of the VHS videotape, ROAD RUNNER AND WILE E. COYOTE: CRASH COURSE, more than twenty years ago. It pleases me also to see that "Hot-Rod and Reel!" also is listed. Now, I can dispose of the STARS of SPACEJAM: ROAD RUNNER AND WILE E. COYOTE DVD. Many of the other post-1948s listed are ones that a person might expect to see release, after having been "shut out" of the rosters of cartoons released to DVD and Blu-Ray. Nothing really comes as a surprise. "A Kiddies Kitty", "Mixed Master", "There Auto Be a Law", "I Was a Teenage Thumb", "Sock-A-Doodle-Do", "Dog Tales", "Lickety-Splat", "Tom Tom Tomcat", "Pre-Hysterical Hare". Those would have been surprises.
I pray that this Blu-Ray sells in sufficient quantities for there to be a Volume 2, and that in volume 2 there will be more Tweetys, including "Hyde and Go Tweet". And "Dr. Jerkyl's Hide" and "Hyde and Hare", too. Of course I would say that. And so, here I am, so-doing.
Nothing more today.
Thursday, April 13, 2023.
I am now able once again to see Web page traffic, and what I am seeing is rather disheartening. The only Web pages receiving any appreciable traffic are The Bugs and Tweety Show Page, The Littlest Hobo Page, and my Tweety and Sylvester article. And, as usual, the visitors to those tend not to proceed any further into my Website. As is known to readers of this Weblog (of which there are very few), the bulk of my work on my Website in recent years has been to the eras of my life's story. I have loaded those Web pages with tons of images, images not only of places where I have been or of me as a younger fellow, but images of vintage television programming, commercial products of yesteryear, and so forth. Items that ought to have appeal to nostalgists throughout Canada and the U.S.. I did a check, and my Web pages are not being "shadow-banned" at various search engines. People just are not interested these days with looking backward past the pandemic, past the scourge of "cancel culture", past the corrupting of the body politic and the addling of the minds of so many people by a "hard Left" turn of government and media acting in lockstep. Oh, I know that there are greater concerns to people, even people not of the "Leftist" persuasion, than old times and twentieth century entertainment. But I would have hoped that for much-needed escapism people would have gravitated at least in some of their quieter leisure minutes toward things that reminded them of life of long ago. I guess that I have not relinquished fully my desire for some of Generation X to be like me. When, really, I ought to have done. Way back in my school years.
Jerry Beck has supplied the order in which the cartoons of the first volume of LOONEY TUNES COLLECTOR'S CHOICE will appear. And they follow the pattern of the GOLDEN and PLATINUM collections. The cartoons of the various characters will be bunched together, one after the other. The first two cartoons will be "Beanstalk Bunny" and "The Unruly Hare". And then "Daffy Doodles" and "Cracked Quack". Then, "Little Orphan Airedale". Then, "Hip Hip- Hurry!" and "Hot-Rod and Reel!". And so forth. I do not understand why an eclectic blend through the Blu-Ray disc, is off the proverbial table. I would have thought that after the GOLDEN and PLATINUM collections ultimately failed, that there would be a tendency away from procedures of those. I also have an uneasy feeling that the same folly of the previous collections, is going to be repeated. Infrequent releases (I do not call one release per year, frequent). And the second volume veering away from the late 1940s and the 1950s and toward the 1930s and early 1940s, offering a substantially lesser amount of post-1948 material. And the third volume continuing further in that direction. Sales drop. The range abruptly ends. Hundreds of cartoons hoped-for for shiny digital videodisc, abandoned. Of course, the cartoon "buffs" at the discussion forums, are all calling for a concentration in subsequent volumes, upon cartoons of an earlier vintage. The series of cartoons, post-1948 for the most part, of the most recognised characters, be damned. I have an uneasy feeling that Mr. Beck will cede to the cartoon "buffs" yet again. And down the same unfortunate path we will go.
It sure is good that we have the Japanese I LOVE TWEETY DVDs. Without them, the representation of Tweety on digital videodisc would be the least comprehensive, among that of all of the other major characters. When I think of all of the Tweety cartoons not on DVD or Blu-Ray fully restored in North America after twenty years, it is astonishingly high. "Hyde and Go Tweet", "Tweety's Circus", "Tweety and the Beanstalk", "A Street Cat Named Sylvester", "Hawaiian Aye Aye", "Tree Cornered Tweety", "Tugboat Granny", "Tweet and Lovely", "The Jet Cage", "Tweet and Sour", "Muzzle Tough", "A Pizza Tweety Pie", "Trip For Tat", "Fowl Weather", "A Bird in a Bonnet", "Catty Cornered", "Tweet Dreams", "Trick or Tweet", "The Rebel Without Claws", "Tom Tom Tomcat". This is almost half of Tweety's filmography. Is there any other major Looney Tunes and Merrie Melodies personality so high in the number of unreleased-to-DVD-or-Blu-Ray cartoons outside of Japan? And on COLLECTOR'S CHOICE so far, Tweety only has one of his cartoons thereon. Clearly, there is some kind of bias against the little yellow bird. Certainly his cartoons directed buy one Friz Freleng. The asinine contention that all Tweety cartoons of the Freleng oeuvre, are the same and are tiresome if viewed one after the other, is evidently considered orthodox and guiding in the selections of cartoons for home video collections in the U.S. and Canada. One of the contributors to a discussion proclaimed that collectors do not care about completing series of cartoons with the major characters, and wish to see the obscure cartoons predating the emergence of most of the major characters, dominating the releases. Tweety, and Freleng's Tweety in particular, is consistently lambasted as a character is little appeal to serious collectors, hence the overabundance of cartoons of Tweety in the unreleased-on-North-American-DVD-or-Blu-Ray pile. I know that Mr. Beck subscribes to this way of thinking. I remember him famously saying that the DVD focusing mostly on Tweety in GOLDEN COLLECTION 2, was not his decision, that he would have wished for something else.
I foresee no change in Tweety's deficient representation in the digital videodisc home video collections in North America. If there is a second volume of COLLECTOR'S CHOICE, Tweety will be lucky to be on that Blu-Ray disc at all. If he is, it will be just one cartoon. And not "Hyde and Go Tweet". To Mr. Beck's thinking and that of the legions of contributors to the discussions, Tweety's only decent cartoons under the directorship of I. Freleng, have all been released in the GOLDEN and PLATINUM COLLECTIONs. Of this stance, I have little to no doubt.
It ought to be easy for a person to "shoot holes" in the all-too-common disparagement of the cartoon series of Tweety and Sylvester. All Tweety cartoons are the same. Really? Is "Hyde and Go Tweet" the same, in setting, gags, story structure, as "Snow Business"? Is "Tweet Zoo" the same as "Tweety and the Beanstalk"? Is "A Pizza Tweety Pie" the same as "Satan's Waitin'"? Is "The Jet Cage" the same as "Tweet Tweet Tweety"? Is "Canary Row" the same as "The Rebel Without Claws"? Sheer nonsense. Any sensible person ought to be able to note the many differences in these pairs of cartoons. Oh, I suppose that a case might be made for associating "Tweet Zoo" with "Tweety's Circus". Or "Fowl Weather" with "Tweet and Sour". Or "Ain't She Tweet" with "Dog Pounded". Or "Sandy Claws" with "Hawaiian Aye Aye". Scenarios in those may be similar. But the gags are different. And the settings in them are not entirely the same. "Ain't She Tweet" is in Granny's yard; "Dog Pounded" is in a city dog pound. They look different. A circus and a zoo are different. Dr. Jekyll's laboratory and the top of the beanstalk are different. A ship and a train are different. The cartoons do not blend into one another as much as the Road Runner cartoons or Pepe Le Pew's cartoons. Or Foghorn's or Speedy's. And yet, all of Pepe's cartoons are on DVD. Most of Jones' Road Runners are on DVD or Blu-Ray. All of the Hippety Hopper cartoons are on DVD. Almost all of Speedy's cartoons prior to his pairing with Daffy, are on DVD.
The claim also is that Tweety really is not popular because of an annoying voice and a bland personality. These are subjective claims. One could argue that other characters have annoying voices or tiresome mannerisms. Not that I choose to do so, mind. But if one were inclined to not respond favourably, say, to the English accent of Wile E. or the hollering of Yosemite Sam, or Foghorn's loud proclamations, or Pepe's "sweet nothings" and one-track mind, one could disparage those characters, I suppose. Tweety is meant to be cute and vulnerable, and also crafty, feisty, morally admonishing, and a lover of life and all of that life has to offer, while in his gilded cage. He just wants to be left alone to enjoy his excursions with Granny, only to have Sylvester disrupt them at every turn. One ought to be able to identify with that if one has had to contend with a bully over and over again. And Tweety is, in any event, only one component of his cartoons. The other is, of course, Sylvester, and in many cartoons the emphasis is on Sylvester's frustration in not being able to catch Tweety, and his anguish in sustaining grievous injury again and again in the chase, and yet being compelled by instinct to continue the pursuit. The Tweety-and-Sylvester dynamic is most comparable with that of the Road Runner and Wile E. Coyote, but with Tweety being more expressive and Sylvester experiencing much more recrimination and angst. And with the settings and situations being much, much more varied.
But this Weblog has not a readership that can move mountains. I write all of this to "get the words out" for a personal safisfaction in having done so. I have no kindred spirits in the circles of Warner Brothers cartoon aficionados that bend the ears or attract the eyes of Mr. Beck and others. As COLLECTOR'S CHOICE has emerged and speculation on subsequent volumes has ensued, I am seeing the same old arguments trotted out in the usual places on the Internet, several of them by names that do ring a bell. And the all too typical back-slapping of the members of the hive mind. Nobody champions the cause of all of those cartoons that made The Bugs Bunny and Tweety Show and its antecedents a ratings winner on Saturday mornings. No. It is all, "More Clampett and Avery on Blu-Ray, please." Those three" hacks" with names of Freleng, Jones, McKimson, who helmed the consituent cartoons of every Saturday morning, U.S. network television vehicle for Bugs and company, can be forever damned to "also-ran" status, and the people who like their cartoons and desire a full set of them, a full set of the cartoons of Bugs, of Tweety, of Sylvester, of Road Runner, of Foghorn, of Speedy, et cetera, can go to hell.
I do not oppose there being full representation of the pre-1948s. But not if it means incomplete collections of the series of cartoons of the major characters and some of the minor ones. Every major character ought to have had a full release by now. There should be a full set of Tweety by now. There ought to have been one last year for his eightieth birthday. But the outspoken, prolific-on-discussion-forums faction of cartoon fans bemoaned any mooting of such releases, because the post-1948s are oh, so bland, ever so uninteresting, and demanded nothing but the Clampett, Avery, and Tashlin cartoons, with maybe a smattering of other cartoons just to "round out" the release.
They will win the day. They always do. If I complain, I have browbeating by the group made to order. Why not just accept that I am as illegitimate a follower of the Warner Brothers cartoons as I am as that of Space: 1999? Accept that, be happy with whatever it is that I have (until Klaus Schwab and J.T. have their way and I can own nothing), whatever incomplete collections of dismissed cartoons that I do possess, and quietly walk into the sunset into my twilight years as a hermit? With full knowledge that I can never hope to persuade anyone of anything. It was folly to think that I could. Cognitive dissonance prevails. Open minds do not exist. People are not amenable to impression by aesthetic observation and interpretation in written essay. They will only reject out of hand anything of an artistic nature that does not fit their opinion, and declare the person of different outlook, to be irrelevant, or unacceptable, and "cancel" him.
Something Space: 1999-related of late has me in a glum state of mind. Oh, yes, of course. So surprising! There is a listing of Space: 1999 episodes from "best" to "worst" now being flagged on the last Space: 1999 Facebook group visible to me. The first twenty-four episodes are designated "best" and the latter twenty-four are branded "worst". All but two of the episodes in the "best" category are Season 1, and all but two of the episodes in the list of foul distinction, are Season 2. First part of "The Bringers of Wonder" and "Dorzak" of Season 2 managed to show in the list of grace, while "Ring Around the Moon" and "The Full Circle" of Season 1 have been consigned to the roll call of the damned. Yes, "The Metamorph", "Journey to Where", "The AB Chrysalis", "Seed of Destruction", "The Seance Spectre", and "The Immunity Syndrome" are all "worst" episodes together with the usual drowned-in-venom ones such as "The Rules of Luton", "All That Glisters", "The Taybor", "Brian the Brain", "Space Warp", "A Matter of Balance", et cetera. The persons at the group are of course "making hay" of it in typical "circle-jerking" fashion, invoking all of the usual cliches ("monster of the week" and so on), maligning everything Season 2, and doubtless revelling in yet another opportunity to "gaslight" and make miserable the "numbskulls" like me who are waste-of-space human garbage (the sooner the planet is rid of us, the better, right?).
What methodology is used to arrive at this list? Where are the votes tallied? From what Websites? What was the voting base? I did not contribute votes to it, to be sure. Others who are not so rigidly divided along "seasonal lines" in their preferences, were not polled either, apparently. Oh, I have no doubt of the slant of the fan movement. But surely there must be some people who prefer "Journey to Where" to "Missing Link". Or "Seed of Destruction" to "Matter of Life and Death". Or "The Seance Spectre" to "Voyager's Return". Or "The Dorcons" to "Alpha Child". Or maybe not. Maybe the bandwagon with the "hate-on" for second season, has absorbed everyone. Everyone, that is, but me, Dean, and a couple of others.
There is scant joy to be felt in being an appreciator of the second season. I can see why some people would "throw in the towel". It is a miserable existence that I would not wish on anyone. And now I have Season 1 used against Season 2 again, negatively impacting my enjoyment of both. Is not life really peachy?
Anyway, I shall buy LOONEY TUNES COLLECTOR'S CHOICE and watch this new range implode by third or fourth volume (if I am still on this Earth then, that is). So far, it is the only thing of interest to me known to be coming in second quarter of this year.
Tuesday, April 18, 2023.
A string of days last week with high temperatures near plus twenty degrees, has eliminated almost all of the snow in Fredericton. Snow still lingers in shaded areas and in parking lots in which snow was plowed into miniature mountains. I hope that it is not too early to say that the winter of 2022-3 is now showing its back as it passes through the proverbial door.
I have been enjoying a time period of respite from updating to my Website. I am not certain if I will return promptly to adding text and images to my autobiographical Web pages. I am not gratified or motivated by the abysmal traffic statistics for those Web pages. It would depend, I guess, on whether some new possible visual content becomes available, most specifically pictures of places of import from my past, or images of the covers of books, videotapes, DVDs, et cetera., that were hitherto not to be found on the Internet. There is always the possibility of new pictures of places of my yesteryears, though additions to the supply of those at locales on the World Wide Web that had been rather a boon to me in the past, have not been abundantly forthcoming now for some while.
All of this said, I have allocated a little time to adding some images to my Weblog. So that it looks less sparse in the image department. Alas, I cannot say that traffic to my Weblog has been any more encouraging of me to commit substantial time to contributing to it.
But I do have some ruminations to write. Continuing from my laments about the cognitive dissonance blanketing the world.
I have recently heard someone say that the more of an emotional investment that a person has in a point of view, the more steadfast that he or she is in clinging to that point of view in the face of evidence to the contrary. And the more intolerant that he or she is toward persons proclaiming some contradictory observations, intuitions, facts, or reasoning. People who think emotionally are oblivious to reason and evidence toward any hypothesis that runs counter to their thoughts on a particular subject. Cognitive dissonance is a product of that, and it thickens with the numbers of people going along with or outspokenly upholding the preferred outlook or "narrative". Fans of entertainments do seem to me most rigidly attached to how they feel, and most unresponsive, or most vehemently closed-minded, when presented with a perspective not aligning with theirs.
The Space: 1999 Season 1 pundits of hate-filled disregard for Season 2 are emotionally invested in their resentment of forty-six, forty-seven years ago, judge that resentment to be righteous, and have been entrenching that resentment into their world view and in their self-image, for so long, so very long, that there is not a snowflake's chance in Hades that they will budge in any way in their determination to lambaste everything Season 2 and belittle persons who like it. And they are in the presence of others of the same mind who compliment them on continuing to proclaim the most bellicose berating of second season. It was naive folly to assume that any of these people can be reasoned-with, persuaded to cast something other than a damning eye over the twenty-four episodes of the second production block of Space: 1999.
I admit to having the same tendency to be emotional, sometimes at least, about entertainments that captured my imaginative fancy and which were significant components to my best years in my upbringing and to facets of my personality. But with regard to Space: 1999 and its varied style, my tastes are eclectic enough to prevent me from becoming stubbornly adherent in an all-praise-for-this, all-scorn-for that manner, to an outlook branded more than four decades ago. Cognitive dissonance does not impair me as much as it does others. I enjoy both seasons, I see the merit in them both, I acknowledge that they were made by imperfect men and women to a timetable and therefore do have faults (and to argue that one is perfect and the other wholly faulty, is foolish, to say the least). I always was receptive to some new way of looking at the material, such as that advanced by Dean. I may not have warmed to the highest degree to the "Mysterious Unknown Force" concept and associated story arc in Season 1, but I do not reject it outright. Were it not used as a weapon against Season 2, I would be much more enthusiastic about it.
Somehow, the discovery in 1977 that Space: 1999's production had been cancelled, did not affect me as it did so many others. Not that I did not love Space: 1999 at that time. Quite the contrary. I was enamoured with it more than I was with anything else. It had a firm grip upon my imagination. Seeing all of the episodes was imperative. My anticipation in the hours and minutes prior to each broadcast, and my feeling of devastation when denied a broadcast no thanks to CHSJ, were profound. I was seeking most fervently every piece of Space: 1999 merchandise available. I wanted the Space: 1999 universe to be as popular as that of Star Trek. To be sure, the news that production of Space: 1999 had been terminated, coming at me in a newspaper on 23 September, 1977, was distressing. But I knew from previous experience with Planet of the Apes that television shows of an imaginative nature can be fleeting. I knew Space: 1999 to have had two full seasons, many, many more episodes than Planet of the Apes had had, and I was now being provided occasion to view episodes of the first season in English, and many episodes of it that I had not before seen in French. My thrill at having that was already helping me through some of the worst school days that I had experienced, and there was promise, barring CHSJ capriciousness, of many more Saturday hours of fantastic discovery. I was not mourning the demise of the television show as a currently produced product, anywhere near as much as other people were. I came to terms rather quickly with that fact, and was grateful for the forty-eight episodes that there were. I had not hated Season 2. It was through Season 2 that my fandom for Space: 1999 had flowered. It is true that my experience of avidly following Season 1 on CBC in 1977-8 had eclipsed somewhat my earlier experience with Season 2. And then, there was the return of Cosmos 1999 in 1979 beginning with Season 2, and I rediscovered my fancy for Season 2, together with a feeling of nostalgia for it and my seminal viewings of it. While I still craved more occasions to experience Season 1, which I preferred somewhat over Season 2 for a substantial period of time. There is no hostility in me toward either season or toward any episode, character, et cetera. The emotional investment that I have is with the television series as a whole and in my immense fondness for it as a part of some of my best times as a youngster. Of course, it could be argued that this emotional investment impairs my ability to accept other, opposing points of view as tenable. But I have more than emotion in my corner. I have observable facts. I do not have hatred in my soul for the man who ringed some changes. Though I do bear a distinct grudge for the people who used my particular love for Space: 1999 as a mechanism for attack. But I will say again, that I do have observable facts, not mere opinions or unremitting (for four decades) negativity on the question of the two seasons.
And still the attacks continue. Of course they do. There is an emotional investment of the vast majority of Space: 1999 fans in the hatred for Season 2 and having it persist. And should any admirers of Season 2 be "gaslit" or demoralised by it, so much the better. The fewer people that there are who respect second season, the happier the that the majority of fans are.
I have come to a much better understanding of human nature in the past three years, and it is not an understanding that particularly edifies me. Quite the opposite. When people can be made to think emotionally, have cognitive dissonance, and have scapegoats, human nature is very ugly indeed.
This past weekend, I had one of those epiphanies that one has at certain times in one's life. Confronting one's mortality more than ever before and baring one's soul before God, acknowledging every unkind, cruel, or downright sinful, evil word or deed in one's life. It is human nature to sin, so the Lord says. But sins can be forgiven if one is sincerely penitent, and strives to sin no more. I cannot be so vain as to assume that my sins are fewer or less serious than those of others.
As I went through the eras of my life identifying one transgression after another, I was particularly aware of what an awful youngster that I was. Are the sins of childhood less damning than those of more senior years? The punishments that life has meted out to me, would suggest not. In my autobiography, I "gloss over" most of my less esteemed behaviours. And it could be argued that I glorify my actions of the less deplorable sort, while at the same time bemoaning way too much the tendencies or individual deeds of others that impacted me in something other than a positive way. I judge people. And we should not judge lest we be judged. And judged by the same standards that we apply to others. So Jesus did say. All of this is undeniable, for my life's story is a heap of recriminations of other people, while I criticise myself nowhere near enough. I am definitely not sin-free in adulthood, and the adulthood sins are certainly not sins that could possibly be said to be born of ignorance of the Golden Rule, or born of naivete, of diffidence, et cetera.
I was so aghast at myself for the number of failings that I manifest through my life, that I wondered how it was possible that I had anyone at all who liked me. My parents had not any choice, any moral choice, in the matter, but everyone else has ultimately found me to be wanting to an extent that I was no longer desirable company. I questioned the propriety of penning so long an autobiography for a life so replete with blighting, hurtful imperfection in the first person. I "took down" my memoirs and my Weblog for a time. They have been reinstated for now, in deference to the amount of effort in showcasing the visual beauty of so many places and things and imagined worlds, and in putting into words the impressions made unto me by those. And my story does have cultural significance as a "time capsule" of decades of the latter half of the twentieth century, as time that must not be forgotten. Especially now, with the Western way of life under so much attack.
My autobiography needs to come under a much, much more self-critical lens. And I need to "tone down" my statements as regards the faults of other people who came into my life along the way. Most particularly those who chose to keep company with me for significant periods of time. People who thought me interesting enough to spend their time with, and who, in some cases, considered me a friend. I do not relish doing an extensive rewrite of my memoirs. Maybe I need to do that, or maybe a new contextualisation of it all in a critical analysis of it, here in entries in this Weblog, will be sufficient. After all, the autobiography, largely written in 2005 and expanded countless times since then, is a part of my flawed history in and of itself. And history should not be erased. It should be understood and learned-from.
So, what exactly are these sins that I reference? Cruelty. Lack of regard for the feelings of others. Preoccupation with my own point of view and neglect of those of others. Acquisitiveness and perfectionism causing harm to the sensitivity of others. Insufficient sentimentality at times when such was needed, me deferring instead to my desire to have things. A tendency to either "lash out at" or "freeze out" people I thought were spurning me or subordinating me to others. "Caving" to the diktats of a friend, or associate, and hurting someone else. Wilfully retaliating passive-aggressively at people instead of "turning the other cheek". And many more deplorable behaviours. My childhood and early adult years were a litany of them.
I was anything but a perfect, always well-behaved child. Sometimes I could become "carried away" in some fit of pique and, in a deficit in empathy, do some very unkind, even cruel, things. I feel intense remorse about this, and do ask myself what could have "come over" me. Some people, perhaps many people, would say that I was simply "spoiled rotten". An only-child indulged too often by doting parents. And yet also suffering from a lack of self-confidence and a wish to compensate for that by being the centre of attention in my own fiefdom. And becoming very agitated when denied that. Or insecure when I thought I might be challenged as the elder master of my fiefdom. Even being spurned by my cat could send me into a "tizzy". I was not a monster a hundred percent of the time. No. My parents would certainly have intervened punitively had I been that. But neither was I saintly enough to be judging others from a high pedestal. Others had their faults, and I had mine. I could and probably did have more faults than my friends. Douglastown had been a place where I mostly found acceptance and happiness and did not frequently descend into my less benign behaviours (I still did, though, sometimes). The move to Fredericton and frustrations there in "fitting in" and friends being rather less willing than those in Douglastown, to adhere to my preferred items, tastes, mindsets, or activities, with me being of a paramount import, had me "falling back" upon tendencies that one would want to see me transcend, leave behind me, as I developed through my late juvenile years and adolescence. My faults were mostly those of ego-centricity and insufficient empathy, and a tendency to react with intense petulance or bitter brooding (the latter, mainly, from early adolescence and beyond) when not "having my own way", or when feeling insufficiently beloved or admired. Some friends could bring forth the best of my qualities, while others could evoke my less desirable tendencies. If I felt that someone had wronged me, my capacity for either nastiness or sullenness would definitely be triggered.
That was me. It was me in all of the childhood eras of my life, and even some of my adult ones. For much of the time, in the company of people I liked and from whom I wished mutual liking and respect, I kept my darker half in check, or hidden. However, if people knew how to bring my less agreeable self to the fore, and chose to do so to cause me to diminish myself in the eyes of people for whom I had affection, they would do it, if they were unfavourably inclined where I was concerned. Most of my unkindly behaviours were at their most numerous in the years between my ages of eleven and twenty-five. Not a hundred percent of the time, I hasten to say again. But I wish that they could have been manifest far, far less often than they were.
I do reference some of my ignoble acts in my autobiography. I hurt my budding friend, Joey, in 1979 by turning him away at the behest of Tony. And on other occasions entirely on my own, shortsighted direction. And then failed to understand Joey's subsequent actions and spurned him for them. I am guilty of snubbing Joey in later years because I was angry at not receiving priority in his attention, and was hypocritical in my stance because of how I treated Joey in the earliest years of our friendship. I was not always a paragon of good sportsmanship on the baseball diamond. Others were not so, too, and that fostered some of my disagreeable ways in the playing of the Abner Doubleday sport of the four bases and the pitched and hit horsehide. Some of them would go into a game with express purpose of humiliating me with a resounding defeat of me and my team. But I am in no position to judge others for poor sportsmanship. I had angry words for a younger first baseman when he committed an error on what ought to have been an easy play, me, the pitcher, lobbing the ball to him to register an out. When he fumbled the ball, I "exploded" at him in a rage. Of course, the loss of a game did usually result in disparaging remarks flung in my direction, and, not wanting to lose and incur such disparagement, I was most determinedly insistent upon winning. But it was a horrible "meltdown" that most certainly hurt the young first baseman. That was sometime in 1980 or 1981. My frustration with the slump in which I was mired in 1986 and 1987 had me playing with an intensity that was probably quite "off-putting" to the others on the field. I had lack of support from others, it is true, only probable taunts and diminuation of my worth in the neighbourhood. But I ought to have moderated my approach to the game, and if I could not, then ought not to have played at all. Or I ought to have made my participation conditional on there being no disparagement. And I ought never to have disparaged others, at any time in my long tenure on the baseball turf. Almost everyone I knew did not practice best sportsmanship either. But I was the elder among everyone playing. It behooved me to be a good example of everyone-have-fun and it-does-not-matter-if-you-win-or-lose and to not be an abrasive ass or an intensely competitive, un-fun-to-be-around monster.
My most egregious sin of lack of consideration for the feelings of others, was my opting to support the decision to move from Douglastown to Fredericton in 1977. Arguably the course direction most altering and ruinous to my life. In my last twelve months in Douglastown, I was lacking in sentimentality. I was driven more, much, much more, by materialism, acquisitiveness, selfish desires to have things more abundantly, more readily. I thought pragmatically in those regards. Sentimentality on my part for people was sorely in short supply. I had some. I missed my parents and my friend, Michael, when I was staying with my grandparents during the March Break of 1977. And I acted on that with an early return to Douglastown. But the sentimentality would wane all too easily when I was in my home area. Even within the best year of the best era of my life. It was no problem at all for my parents to gain my support for relocating to Fredericton, what with The Bugs Bunny/Road Runner Hour and Sylvester and Tweety on cable television being a consideration, and shopping in large malls a number of times a week, and ready access to fast food from McDonald's and A & W. I failed my friends in not protesting separation from them in the move. I was all-too-prone to relinquish my close, daily, in-person connection with them. A couple of them sought continued contact with me through correspondence, and I followed their lead in that, for two or three years. But I was not inclusive enough or motivated enough in pursuing continued rapport with all of my old friends post-move. My friends of my best years likely were hurt by my lack of expressed opposition to moving, indeed my avowed approving of same. I was probably seen as "walking out" on them. And I failed to "keep in touch" over the years. The 1980s from July, 1980 until 1988 were a time of zero association with people of my Douglastown years. And I only returned to their lives after my Fredericton social existence had fizzled. I cannot blame them for being critical, if they were, of my sudden interest in re-establishing friendship and having a present-day relationship with them again. Sincere though I was that I had at last found my nostalgia for Douglastown beyond the Space: 1999 proxy torch for such that I had carried for the duration of my removal from my former habitat and from my many cohorts there, I think that they may have been wondering, and rightly so, if I would have come back to Douglastown and to them had my Fredericton society not crumbled. It was a sin to not contest the decision to move. Maybe I could have prevented it; maybe I could not have done. But I owed it to my friends to try. And I did not. I failed them. I hurt them. And then, when Michael was critical of me in 1980 when he was staying with me, I failed utterly to humble myself. Rather, I became unremittingly and caustically defensive. And I refused to say farewell to him when we parted. Which my mother assured me that I would live to regret. She was right. And the price of everlasting loneliness that I now pay, is justly, Karmically, mine. If we had not moved, so many of the sins that I would go on to commit, would not have come to pass.
I have said the Lord's name in vain more than I can count. I coveted the possessions of others. I did not always honour my mother and father, arguing with them numerous times, often over my confounded perfectionism in my collecting of videotape. I was like the Don Music Muppet character of Sesame Street "on steroids". "Oh, I'll never get it right! Never, never, NEVER!!!!" Bang!!! My mother struggled to cope with my angry proclamations at the finding of what I judged to be intolerable flaws in my videotape-recordings. And I was short of being understanding and obliging of her. Far short. I have lied. I have gossiped. In one of my fits of outrage over "glitchy" videotape-recordings, I even offered my soul to the devil if I could have a perfect videotape collection of the Warner Brothers cartoons. Perfection was never achieved, and I relinquished my videotapes of the cartoons many years ago, believing that DVD would supersede them and be the means by which a full and perfect collection of the cartoons was possible (well, it is known that that never materialised; so, I guess my soul is safe from the devil's clutches for my horrible offer of a Faustian deal; I do not have a full and perfect collection, which therefore means my soul is not destined for eternal, infernal bondage; at least, I hope that it is not). Most of the sins revealed in this paragraph were in my adulthood. My early twenties. They cannot be excused by being a minor. Not that my Karma is likely to excuse them even if I were.
My acquisitive nature is one of my most devastating failings. No doubt my parents would concur on this. And yet, my collecting efforts did provide something to which to devote attention, "taking my mind off of" the neglect or the spurning of me by longtime friends and my ensuing deficiencies of social life. Was that good or bad? I would have found the isolation so much more unbearable without the home video media collection to occupy my thoughts. But then again, it would have been better if I could have somehow, in some way, regained a firm foothold in my friends' lives. I ought to have tried much, much more to do that, and humble myself as much as I would need to do, to achieve a full rapprochement with friends of Eras 2 and 4 (assuming of course that they had it in their hearts to forgive my wretched misdeeds of the past).
But we had good times, yes. I had good times. The universe was actually going my way for awhile, and I was able to prevail over detractors on the baseball field with humble, quiet aplomb. I had some enormous successes in attracting comers to my video shows. I did some good deeds. I refused to listen to Steven when he tried to "talk me out of" being friends with Joey. And I opted not to tell Joey about it in some bid to "score points". I had people on our street sign a card welcoming Tony and his family home after a prolonged rehabilitation of their house after a fire. The good things that I have done for Space: 1999 have already been specified in my memoirs. There were many days when I did not lapse into my repellent tendencies. Most of my days were free of any deplorable actions. But all-told, I was a flawed individual of only-child upbringing and "spoiled", scarcely empathetic personality for all too long a time.
But I am not so vain, so lacking in self-awareness, to not be able to see this. I am not sociopathically oblivious to my faults and their effects. I do not look back upon my past with rose-coloured glasses. If others, if my erstwhile friends, wish to do so upon their past and judge my autobiography to be offencive in its revealings of their imperfections and our lesser esteemed times together, then perhaps this "speaks to" their capacity for vainglory.
But whoa! Surely this is about me. Well, my behaviours did not occur in a vacuum. True, I ought to have reacted differently to many situations. But the situations were not solely of my creation. The actions of my friends and others elicited responses from me, some of them honourable, others not. Then again, their actions were not in a vacuum either. Actions on my part could to some extent have been were a contributing factor, or maybe the contributing factor, in theirs. And so it goes, I guess.
People reading this will say, probably, that I should not "beat up on myself" over the past. Live in the present and look to the future. In J.T.'s Canada, what future? But I ought not to digress. The fact is that the past and the outcomes thereof are still a dominant component of my life in the present. And there may be, or probably is, a quantifiable impact of my behaviours upon my friends' development and their lives today. I am estranged from my old friends due to the past. With my parents deceased and with me being brotherless and sisterless, my old friends are the only people approximating family, and I lost them because of things that happened in the past. And I feel sure that forgiveness for me is not in their hearts. Nor is there the humility to acknowledge that they were imperfect themselves. No doubt my autobiography, if they are aware of it, is a source of further resentment, animus, even, toward me, in them. And they can live without me very, very well. My import to them is practically nil. They have siblings and other friends who were or are better than I. What incentive have they to extend an olive branch, or to accept one from me? And even if they do, what then? They might see me once. One time. And that is all. Before long, I will be starving for company again. Things might, probably would, be so much different if I had not been such an awful person at critical times of my existence. My solitude of today and all of the "hits" that I incur due to my long attachment to certain entertainments, are evidently my lot in life, my Karmic punishment for my failings of years ago.
But back I go to the question of my autobiography. Does it glorify the history of an egocentric, empathy-poor, sometimes cruel person? And if it does, is that an unfortunate requirement for maintaining the availability of a culturally significant personal history? That I am deliberating thusly is, hopefully, a sign that I am not so far gone as to be damned by God.
Why fuss, why hand-wring, so much over a part of my Website that might, at best, have someone look at one of its constituent parts (i.e. eras) once a week- and even then, maybe only for the images, not the text? Surely my attention is best focused upon the Web pages for the entertainments themselves. I tend to disagree. This is a personal Website, and my love for those entertainments that compelled me to write about them, is a personal thing. And the most personal parts of my Website are the eras of my life's story. Those eras tell how my love for the entertainments came into existence and developed over the years, alongside my social life and all of its highs and lows, and the overall tableau of the Zeitgeist of yesteryears, and all of the entertainment that it fostered, needs remembering. And each of my favourite entertainments were, in their heydays, disseminated within that overall tableau. They ought, partly at least, to be understood in this particular light. And my love for them, also. That, too, needs to be understood. And maybe, someday, there will be more interest in my Website's autobiographical sections than there is now. Oh, I know. It seems unlikely. With the determination of the regime currently in power to erase the past from the collective memory, and people showing scarcely any resistance to that, it is unlikely that there is to be an increase in interest in days gone by, days of the last century. At least not unless there is an awakening among the masses that the current regime is antithetical to Western values. And then a wish on the part of people to look backward for solace or inspiration, in the times of strife as the masses try to throw off of their backs the monkey that was placed there by the "gaslighters". Ah, but I drift again into politics.
But I can absolve myself of some personal recrimination by saying that I did not contribute to the coming to power of the current regime. I did not vote for it in 2015, 2019, 2021. And I tried to persuade others not to do so. What it is doing to the moral fabric and economy of the country, I had no part in, I can say with confidence. And I am aware more than ever before of my shortcomings and strive not to repeat my past sins. "Trying to do better," as Peter Parker said to Dr. Octavius in a recent Spider-Man movie. My survival of the pandemic being without human company in home and workplace and without a diminuation in my resolve to continue trying to do better as I "carry on" living, ought to garner some amount of respect. I have a strength to me that one might not have thought that I had. I cope with being alone every single day. What deficient existence that my life choices have brought me to, I am bearing. It does not mean that I have to like it. Or that I have to meekly sit on my hands while louts like the Space: 1999 fans hurl invective and "gaslight" in perpetuity. Fred Freiberger was a very nice man. He deserves so much better than the hate-filled sorties of the un-endingly choleric pundits of Season 1 Space: 1999. He has been dead now for twenty years, by the way. Twenty years this past March.
There is no doubt that nasty people do exist, and I was one of them all too many times. Having acknowledged that, all that I can do is to strive always to be a better person, even if only in my solitary existence. The autobiography on my Website may continue to exist, but with a proviso. My confessions here have to be applied to the autobiography as it is presented, to frame it in a fully truthful context. It is the autobiography of a very flawed, "spoiled" only-child scarcely comprehending of the perspectives and sensitivities of others, who fell in love with certain works of entertainment and did not let go of that love even as his unwise, even cruel decisions and their consequences put him solitarily in the line of verbal fire for openly esteeming those works.
Thursday, April 27, 2023.
Sunday, April 30, 2023.
And another April is coming to an end. The weather yesterday was splendid, with sunshine and temperatures near plus twenty degrees Celsius. Sadly, the arrival of May is going to be met with a string of rainy days and decreasing temperatures, going down to single digit high temperatures by Wednesday. There are still some mounds of snow in the circles of some court streets and some parking lots.
My third era memoirs have been updated. I did a "toning down", as promised, to erstwhile friend description. And I added images, of the two-part Star Trek episode, "The Menagerie", and of The Muppet Musicians of Bremen and Emmet Otter's Jug-Band Christmas, among my memories of the RCA VideoDiscs. I also did some text corrections in same life era.
I propose to return, briefly, to my long ruminations of two Weblog entries ago. I am going to "walk back", somewhat, my self-recrimination over not "keeping in touch" with my friends in Douglastown. Of course, had we not moved, had we stayed in Douglastown, then this would not be a consideration. But having relocated to Fredericton as we did, I did not maintain a presence in Douglastown and a connection with every friend there. This, however, was not entirely a matter fully in my hands. My parents were not supportive of the concept of me returning numerous times a year to Douglastown and visiting with every friend I had there. Having worked a long week at their jobs, they were not at all keen on the idea of chauffeuring me to the Miramichi region and going with me to every friend's house. Not just because of the time involved in that, but also the cost of gasoline, wear and tear on the automobile, and also a hotel stay, if we were to be there for a whole weekend. As things did transpire, we went to the Miramichi in May of 1978, May of 1979, and April of 1984. On the last of those, I did not attempt to visit any old friend, believing as I did that after having not seen me for so many years, no one would wish to "meet up" with me again then. "People grow apart,", my mother would often say. And after my "falling out" in 1980 with Michael, I did not want to have to go through such a thing again with someone else. Nostalgia had not grown enough yet to counter such considerations, as it would later in the 1980s. In 1978, I had visited Michael when in the Miramichi region with my parents, and in 1979 I visited Evie. My other friends, I did not see again until 1988 or 1989, and in some cases, I never saw them again. In making the move to Fredericton, my parents did, I think, intend a "clean break" and a "fresh start", no looking back on the past. They did not maintain contact with any of their old friends. My mother, I have to say, was very cynical when it came to friendship. She would often say to me that I was not as friend-endowed in Douglastown as I thought, and that the friends I had did not rate me as highly as I believed them to have done. They would easily forget me, she said. So, I should do the same. Still, my parents were willing to pay for postage stamps and stationary so that I could correspond with the two friends, Michael and David F., willing to be my pen pals. And the occasional long-distance telephone call to Michael, and bus fare for one visit with him (in November of 1977, on what I will call "Dragon's Domain" weekend). I doubt that they would be as accommodating if I had substantially more people to write to, talk long-distance with, or go a hundred miles to visit. They might have allowed for one, maybe two more friends. Maybe. They would also have been concerned with the time I would have spent writing letters instead of going outside to play, exercise, and grow a social life in our new surroundings. Maybe two friends was the limit. And I think that they, certainly my mother, fully expected that eventually, a year or two or three down the line, my correspondence with my old friends would peter out, dissolve. The fact that my parents were not supportive of continued in-person connection with everyone in my former home area does mitigate somewhat my recriminations of myself for not being everlastingly stalwart in my old friends' lives. Any time that I broached going back to Douglastown to visit, was the probability of quarrel and acrimony with my parents as they would refuse to consider my suggestion. After awhile, I stopped trying to bend their ears on the subject.
And how often is it that two people maintain contact and an integral presence in one another's lives after one of them moves away from the other, in mid-childhood? I cannot honestly say for sure. I only have a few examples. There were two young boys on my street who were very close. This was back in the late 1980s. One of them moved away, to Ottawa, I think. He came back one time to see his friend again. About six to nine months post-move, I think. And to the best of my knowledge, he never came back again. Eventually, some years later, the other boy moved away too. I do not know what became of either one of them. But back then, before the Internet and social media, I think it unlikely that many close childhood friends stayed "in touch" as best-friends-forever after one of them moved away. Especially in the case of boys. Girls might be more steadfast in this respect. But I really do not know. What I can say is that I have lived in the same neighbourhood in Fredericton since 1977. I have seen so many, many people, male and female, come and go. And with all of the time that I spend outside, walking the streets of the neighbourhood, I never see anyone back in the neighbourhood to see the old stomping grounds and revisit events fondly remembered. I practically never see anyone of my generation perambulating the streets or sidewalks, except for people who live currently in the area. And several of the people of my yesteryears still reside in the Fredericton region. Have they no fondness at all for their formative years and the people and memorable experiences of them? I "beat up on" myself for having had a paucity of sentimentality way back when. But this is a condition that many people have today, apparently. Not that it lacking in others is justification for me having lacked it, mind. But it seems that I am not unique in such respect.
In my estimation, people should never, ever leave the place in which they began childhood, or their school years at least, until they have "grown up", until they have graduated high school. Nobody should ever be forced to begin again somewhere else part of the way in the school experience. And certainly not an only-child. I do not think that my parents sufficiently "thought through" all of the implications of uprooting me at eleven years of age and putting me in a much different habitat. If I ever do see them again, I will say this to them. Or I may not have to, for they may be seeing me typewrite it today.
All of this does not mitigate my culpability in not opposing the idea of moving from the evening on which it was broached. My being instead adherent to materialism. That was a sin.
One of the punishments that life administered to me was my condemnation to be forever solitary, or near solitary, in my particular bond with Space: 1999, and to be bombarded with endless denunciations of second season with implicit, if not explicit, berating of me for allegedly lacking intelligence, discernment, maturity, or mental health, for my being steadfast in my admiration for second season, and my love of it. Just yesterday, I stumbled across another Facebook "thread" of discussion of Space: 1999, at a general television series Facebook group from which a picture of the first season cast had somewhow become visible in the main "News Feed". And sure enough, in no time at all, out spewed forth the usual invective for second season. With Facebook "thumbs up" to the count of seven. And people, one after another, saying that they agree. Does anyone say that he or she disagrees? Of course not. Oh, of course not!!! That would be contrary to the laws of the universe, would it not? Where is this so-called "debate" that I keep hearing about? Where is the other side? Debates are supposed to be multi-faceted in opinions. Not "Season 2 is horrible", and "I agree," "I agree," and "I agree." Followed by, "Okay, this is settled, then, Let's carry on." Until the next opportunity to be vitriolic. Coming in short order.
If Season 2 is so execrable, so devoid of any merit or permissible recognition of merit, how is it that Season 2 can receive the nod of talented artists seeking to do some justice to Space: 1999 in the form of some beautiful artistic rendering?
A Canadian graphic artist name of Patrick Fillion, has invited enthusiasts of the television series of the wandering Moonbase to an alternate world in which Space: 1999 fandom has sufficient size and reach, for there to be professional-looking magazines not unlike Doctor Who Magazine or the ones for Star Trek. With interviews with actors and actresses and in-depth looks at specific episodes in each issue. He has drawn some exquisite front covers for publications in such a magnifiicent and enticing counter-reality, and provided them to fans of Space: 1999 on Facebook. I no longer have access to most of the Facebook groups for Space: 1999, including the one showcasing Mr. Fillion's work, but, happily, some of the Internet "search engines" do connect with images of several of Mr. Fillion's renderings of Space: 1999, a great many of them, I think a majority of them, being those of Season 2. Here is a sampling of his gorgeous work. Eight of the covers.
Breathtakingly beautiful, these are. I could embrace a graphic novel of Space: 1999 in this style. Very easily. If this were an alternate reality, one in which Space: 1999 had kept its original heyday following as Doctor Who and Star Trek and Star Wars have kept theirs, there would no doubt be many graphic novels, to say nothing of other iterations of the concept, including season after season after season of newly filmed episodes. With all due respect to the people at Big Finish Productions, Powys Media, and Blam! Ventures, aficionados of Space: 1999 are far short in their reality of having that which might be available in others. Here, I have to weather the daily assault upon my aesthetic tastes and the worth of my fondly cherished memories. At least the louts did not besmirch Mr. Fillion's labours of love (they have to be that, I would think) for their representations of that season that must forever be unsung. The louts dared not have been that indelicate, I guess. At least not in open discussion beneath the works as they are offered on Facebook. Privately, such people were grumbling to themselves, I feel sure. Grumbling about the waste of such talent on drawings of "Year 2", that abomination that only that garbage-human loser, Kevin McCorry, is so misguided as to fancy.
All for today.
Thursday, May 4, 2023.
Before I begin today's ruminations, I will reiterate my acknowledgement of all of my lesser qualities. I am not writing from an ivory tower of righteousness.
In my long tenure on this planet, I have noted many frustrating facets of human comportment. Sometimes, it amazes me that I have not gone full misanthropic. I think that it is largely the values of my parents and my grandparents and my memories of the good times of my youth that keep cynicism from becoming total in my psyche. Which is not to say that it is not very formidable indeed in my worldview and personality. But oh, do I long for the days when I was not cynical!
One tendency of fellow humans is in my thoughts today. I do nice things for people, and how quickly they forget! It is one of the truths of my life, people not being appreciative of my good deeds for very long at all. I will do something to help someone. They will express some immediate gratitude, usually through a thank-you. And then sometime later, I say something or do something that, for some reason, they do not care for, and then I am judged for all time as unsuitable, my good deeds completely forgotten as though they never happened.
It does rather make one feel less inclined to do good things for people. But I persevere and continue trying to be helpful when I can. God knows that I did the good deeds, and God will admonish people for forgetting about them. So one can only hope.
It is nevertheless most upsetting when people overlook the good that I do. And when they tar and feather me for some later word or action, I am upset all the more. Upset and, yes, cynical. Usually that later word or action is contentious in the meaning behind it, misconstrued, or it was the result of some provocation.
That patently narcissistic twit out in Calgary. I gave to him all of the support and help that I could, to launch his club, establish it, grow its membership. The newsletter column names that he had were largely not Space: 1999-specific and rather hackneyed. I suggested column names that he accepted and put into use. I contributed a quite sizable amount of content for the first newsletters. Including a review of the Season 1 (yes, Season 1) episode, "Mission of the Darians", and a CBC broadcast history. The latter was certainly content that had not been present in the newsletter of the old, Ohio-based club. My submissions to the old club's newsletter had been many. They may not have been acknowledged very much by the newsletter editors, but rank-and-file fans did read them and occasionally commended me for them. My name at that time had some cachet among the fans, and with it known that I was one of the key contributors to the new club, some people likely decided to give to the new club a chance based on that. I had not yet been branded a "'Year 2' fanatic" and an undesirable. Fanatic. I scoff to myself in cynical fashion as I say the word out loud. The word, fan, is short for fanatic, is it not? Maybe the word loses some of its pejorative quality by being shortened. I do not know. But this is a digression. Back to my main course of brooding this chilly, grey, rainy day.
The Calgarian made a name for himself through the club the founding of which my help was no small part. I assisted him in his Ultimate Guidebook project. I continued to provide content for the newsletter right up until the end of my associations with him and his joined-at-the-hip pal in Regina. All of that was discarded like so much rotting rubbish, in the zeal to portray me as a delusional, contemptible enemy to fandom, then, before, and forevermore, which the fans all too readily embraced as the "narrative". I was judged for all time to be a piece of garbage, and still am today.
The fellow in Regina. I helped him too. He was having some problems with a toxic friend in his home city, and I provided him with insights from a book on what causes people to be nasty. I helped him to see that the problem was not any inadequacy on his part, but rather with his often domineering and berating buddy. He was able to manage the invalidations coming from his unpleasant fellow Reginan without any more adverse effects upon him. This was forgotten-about, too. Completely. Utterly. As the Reginan went "all-in" with the Calgarian in my "cancellation" and would not even talk with me on the telephone much less say anything in my defence to the herd. Not even after I had travelled thousands of miles to see him.
My old buddy, Joey. I love him. Even if only in memory of old days. We had good times. No question. But he also, in 1987, forgot all of the kind things I did in friendship to him. One specific incidence of forgetting was that of my help in retrieving the newly purchased bicycle pedals that he had left on a Fredericton Transit bus. That was in mid-August of 1982. I consoled Joey when he was upset over supposedly losing the pedals that he had worked so much to afford to buy. I said to him that all was not lost, that someone discovering the pedals on the bus seat, might hand them over to the bus driver, and that the driver might put the pedals into a lost-and-found department at the bus garage, where my father then worked. We procured my father's help, he found the pedals and brought them home, and I handed them to Joey, who was beaming with satisfaction. It was mostly my father's doing, this beneficent action, but my involvement was not totally insubstantial. Just a couple of weeks later, though, it all was forgotten by my friend, who was "lashing out" at me for some new error of mine. It did not mitigate in my favour. Not at all. It was as if it had never happened. And in 1987, I am sure that it never was a consideration when Joey opted not to have me in his life any longer.
More examples. I helped Tony on his first day of high school, helped him to find his way around the enormous Fredericton High. Forgotten completely less than a year later when Tony was "freezing me out". I consoled my friend, Kevin MacD., after a particularly acrimonious verbal quarrel that he had had with another of his friends. I loved and admired Kevin, and I blanche at the thought of any criticism of him. But he did forget about that time, I feel sure. My own father forgot about my having arranged home care for him, so that he could leave hospital and be home in his sadly invalid condition. He forgot about that months later when, at the behest of outsiders, he was suspecting me of embezzling money from his bank account. It had been a clerical error on his bank statement, but no one believed that until I supplied the documentation. What I had previously done for him was irrelevant. I could go on and on and on, with yet more examples.
I am not a completely awful person. And yet, when I do good things for people, those are what is irrelevant in people's estimation of me. I think that people want to "put me down", dismiss me. So, they concentrate fully on some ostensible infraction on my part as the ultimate determinant of my worth, or lack thereof. I think that this is very close to the truth. If not "spot-on" as the truth.
By the way, interactions with friends on Facebook have been near zero for awhile now, and I can see how many friends look at "My Story" postings and videos posted. Almost none. This is a reliable indicator of to what extent my "Timeline" and "News Feed" postings are looked-at by people of highest importance in my life. A very ungratifying, depressing indicator. And then there is the lowering traffic to my Website, and especially its more personal sections.
So, what keeps me going? Good question. I have no social interaction to which to look forward. No hope that my friends think of me or care about me. That they remember any of the good that I have done. There are times when "throwing in the towel" does seem to be imperative, and only my fear of death is keeping me from doing so. I do question the meaning of life when people have such fickle loyalties, such short memories. And I appear to be condemned to loneliness for the remainder of my days. I sit to watch a Blu-Ray of Space: 1999 episodes, and all that I can do is imagine having people with me watching them, thinking back to days long ago when I had that. When there were people in my life willing to sit with me and watch Space: 1999 or James Bond or Spiderman or whatever. As ever, the past is something in which I find solace. It is the past that keeps me from succumbing to utter despair. I want to believe that God is involved, too, in my ability to "continue on". But I will not know that until my time comes.
Wednesday, May 10, 2023.
May has been largely disappointing so far. Some warm, sunny weather last weekend, but otherwise it has been mainly cold, overcast, and windy.
I am currently working on "sprucing up" my Weblog, adding content to it, to make it more visually on par with my Website's other Web pages, most especially those of my autobiography. I have added numerous images to my all incarnations of my Weblog, and will be working on doing more of the same in the days and weeks ahead. I have a hope that maybe the new images will entice people completely new to my Website, to looking at the Weblog and then proceeding to the bulk of my Website content. The new images are rather an eclectic mix of pictures of places, images of Blu-Ray covers, pictures of deceased actors, an image of a Verbatim DVD+R sleeve, and the usual captures of images from video of favourite works. This is a project that will be ongoing for the next couple of months. I also plan on making the Weblog easier to navigate, i.e. enabling going backward to previous incarnations of it. Whatever there is that I can do to boost the readership of this Website, which has of late been depressing to monitor.
To try to "nip" depression "in the bud", I went to the Miramichi region last Saturday. The Miramichi region including the former towns of Newcastle and Chatham and the former villages of Douglastown, Nordin, et cetera. What is now called Miramichi City, or just Miramichi. I had not been in Miramichi that early in the spring since having lived there. I had forgotten how barren the place looks without foliage on the trees and bushes. A jarring sight, for sure. And it was not very warm. When the wind blew from the northeast (off of the Northumberland Strait), it was downright chilly. But I visited all of my usual places and triggered some flashbacks. Alas, more structures have been bulldozed. There are so many empty lots in Douglastown where gorgeous Victorian-styled houses once stood. It is so sad. While walking about the Newcastle downtown and also that of Chatham, I am also downspirited at how little there is there, now, that is of interest to me. Honestly, if I were living there now, I would be bored out of my mind. All that the eye can see are clothing stores, female vanity places, pharmacies and other health-related shoppes, and restaurants, including a large Tim Horton's. There are many Tim Horton's in Miramichi, but not as much as there are car dealerships. Egad! The people of my former home are very practical; fanciful things, products of the imagination, seem to have literally left the buildings. There are no bookstores, no hobby stores, no collector's memorabilia or comics stores, no electronics stores like the old Radio Shack, and no DVD or Blu-Ray stores. Fredericton may leave much to be desired as a place to live, but it at least has all of these. Mind, the Miramichi region was not always a wasteland for the fanciful and imaginative. In the 1970s when I lived there, there were bookstores (Gallivan's Bookstore, most notably), there was a hobby store, and there was a Radio Shack and, for collectors of what entertainment media existed then (i.e. vinyl records and audiocassettes), a Radioland. But then, in those days, there were young people in the multitudes living there. Children, teenagers, young adults. The people of whom some, some, liked imaginative things. And possibly some older aficionados of things imaginative. Like I am. Today, I rarely see a young person when I am there. Mostly older adults and the occasional baby or toddler.
Oh, there is a Wal-Mart there with a small DVD and Blu-Ray section and electronics section. All Wal-Marts have those. A rudimentary book section, also. And there is a Staples- for what little that there is in inventory there vis-a-vis electronics enabling the enjoyment of the genres of the imagination. That is all. Both of those are in Douglastown near the Chatham Bridge. Newcastle and Chatham are devoid of anything to attract people interested in something other than garments, hairdressing, manicures and pedicures, dining, and pharmaceutical drugs.
Oh, I can still see in my mind's eye the inside of Gallivan's Bookstore. The wooden shelves displaying all of the colourful comic books, including those of Gold Key with Bugs Bunny and his cartoon friends and foes. The racks and shelves holding the paperbacks including the Gold Key Comics digests and some Planet of the Apes and Space: 1999 books. The find of an occasional Famous Monsters of Filmland magazine with some article of interest. Me standing at the counter to pay for my purchase. I can still smell the wood and the carpeting. Now, that building is repurposed for something called River Rehabilitation Services Inc.. Something to do with restoring to full health people with ailments of limb or organ. I am just glad that it is still standing. Buildings in Miramichi burn down all too often. A year or two ago, the Chatham movie theatre, the Vogue, burned to the ground. In one of my more sardonic moments while talking with one of my neighbours in Fredericton, I called Miramichi the tear-down city, the burn-down city, and the car dealership city. Sadly, I am not wrong. The place where so much of my worldview did originate, is rapidly losing all of the things in it that made impressions upon me in my formative years. So many places the sight of which coincided with my experience of The Bugs Bunny/Road Runner Hour, et cetera, now gone. Vacant or filled with a car dealership.
And all of the friends there willing to spend time with me. Gone, too. It was a forlorn hope, I guess, being potentially "cheered up" by going to Miramichi. But it is always worth the try. At least when the weather is warm and the trees have full foliage, I can walk through the village and its more hinterland areas, delight in the peace and quiet in green space, and achieve some rejuvenation in this way. It is always a summer vacation destination for me.
After a couple of days of summer-like weather, it is back to the northwesterly winds and chilly temperatures in Fredericton.
I propose to invoke something that I said a few Weblog entries ago for some clarification. I seek always to be conscious of any potential accusation of hypocrisy following anything that I say. And when I referred to the Calgarian as patently narcissistic, I ought to have been aware that such is an accusation that could be applied to me, in the absence of any immediate effort to contrast myself with him.
I will concede that there have been times in my life, perhaps a multitude of times, whereupon I do tick some of the boxes in the series of defining traits of a narcissist. Ego-centricity and empathy deficit, to be sure. Some people would contend that the very existence of my Website, my autobiography, and this Weblog, is indicative of some amount of narcissism. Ah, but does a narcissist ever lack confidence in social situations as I so often have done? No. Does a narcissist have panic attacks as I had in 1990 and beyond? No. Does a narcissist ever attempt self-improvement in following the advice of a book? No. Does a narcissist even see a need for self-improvement? No. Why should a narcissist self-improve when he or she is perfect? Would a narcissist have written that long admission of fault and sins in my Weblog entry late last month? No. Narcissists never, ever admit fault or wrong-doing. Narcissists can manipulate, deceive, "gaslight", and discard people in their seeking of highest office, without the slightest smidgen of remorse, guilt, or angst. Wronging others in order to "get ahead" is perfectly acceptable to them since the highest offices are oh, so deservedly theirs and should be attained by any means deemed by them to be necessary.
I can, admittedly, check some of those boxes on that list, but my malefactor of Calgary checks them all.
Universal in Australia has "pulled out" of its agreement with the BBC to release Doctor Who seasons on Blu-Ray in the Australasian part of our planet, citing vast reductions in public interest in purchasing physical media. What does this bode for the U.K. releases of DOCTOR WHO- THE COLLECTION? I said before and will say again that I think it doubtful that the entirety of vintage Doctor Who will reach Blu-Ray. The COLLECTION range may only have another year or two before the rug is pulled from under it. We appear to be rushing headlong to, "You vill own nussing und be happy." The demise of physical media falls hand-in-hand with this despicable aim of the disgusting Mr. Schwab and his acolytes, J.T. and that man in the P.M. seat in London. It is depressing news, this, in more than the obvious capacity. Yes, a not-exhaustive collection on Blu-Ray of Doctor Who, is not desirable. But I also do not want a planet whereon the government says that I cannot keep my collection of Blu-Ray and DVD into which I invested my earnings of more than twenty years. To say nothing of all of the money spent on previous iterations of my yearning to possess my entertainment favourites. Laser videodisc. VHS videotape. RCA VideoDisc. Audiotape. I did not undertake all of that to have the ultimate idiots of my country elect an autocrat who confiscates everything from me in my late fifties.
Work continues in adding images to this Weblog. This project will be ongoing through the summer.
All for today, Sunday, May 14, 2023.
Sunday, May 21, 2023. Victoria Day weekend Sunday. And it is raining heavily. I am seated at my computer at 7:43 A.M. typewriting this Weblog entry, having awoken to the sound of the heavy rain more than an hour ago and having been unable to fall back asleep.
Yesterday, in commemoration of the Saturday of the Victoria Day weekend of 1977, I watched the "Space Warp" episode of second season Space: 1999, it having been the Space: 1999 episode telecast on CBC Television on that day precisely forty-six years ago today. It is arguably one of my fondest memories of my Space: 1999 viewing experience in the heyday years of my favourite space science fiction/fantasy opus. I describe that day in detail in my Boy Meets Alpha memoirs. A gloriously sunny day in the midst of what was my best springtime in my Douglastown, Miramichi years. A day on which New Brunswick's CHSJ-TV surprised me by airing Space: 1999 despite all indicators in television guides that it, CHSJ-TV, was planning to preempt the CBC 3:30 P.M. airing of my preferred work of space fiction- and on a day when the one episode, i.e. "Space Warp", to have been skipped in the English-language CBC's initial run of Season 2, was finally going to be transmitted in Canada. Transmitted at last after several weeks of second season episode repeats.
Efforts that Saturday to tune in CBCT Charlottetown on my upstairs television had met with some initial hope followed by dejection. But then, at 3:30, with that same television tuned to CHSJ, the ITC logo appeared and then those planets with Derek Wadsworth's music and then euphoria for me. So many people hate "Space Warp", but I can never forget the joy that it and my unheralded opportunity at last to view it and audiotape-record it that sunny, warm spring day in my best habitat, my parents with me and sharing in my happiness. Happiness that stayed with me for days as I listened again and again to my audiotape and brought that audiotape with me to school, sharing with friends and classmates the awesome news of an unexpected CHSJ transmitting of a previously elusive episode of Space: 1999. So long ago, but so sweet are my memories of it. It and everything and everyone that and who was a part of my life in that most splendid time. Oh, do I wish that it could have continued! I am more convinced now than ever of the tragedy of my life post-1977. Post-move-to-Fredericton.
I especially love the music that plays as Eagle One with the derelict is seen by Alan and Sahn on the Command Centre screen. More than any other piece of music, it invokes the sentiment that I have in my soul for that time, my quality of life then, and all of the people in my life in those good old days. The nostalgia has never been more intense and bittersweet as it is now, as I face day after day after day of loneliness at work and at home.
But enough of this. People judge me to be a "quack" for having any positivity whatsoever on the subject of the worst twenty-four hours of television ever produced. Yes, they are that hyperbolic. And I am quite sure that I am doing for this Weblog no favours as regards viewership, in being so effusive about memories of a naive time before the deluge of animus for every frame of film comprising Space: 1999's second season. I must endure that every damned, lonely day of my life now.
Staying on the subject of Space: 1999, I must report the sad news of the death of Ray Austin, who directed the Space: 1999 episodes, "Ring Around the Moon", "Missing Link", "Alpha Child", "Collision Course", "End of Eternity", "The Troubled Spirit", "Mission of the Darians", "The Exiles", and "All That Glisters", before joining the production of The New Avengers and directing such episodes of that as "House of Cards", "Target!", "Three Handed Game", and "Gnaws". He later plied his trade in the United States, directing many an episode of popular U.S. action-adventure television series. And he worked again with Martin Landau in 1987 when he helmed the production of the first Six Million Dollar Man and Bionic Woman reunion movie. His other work known to me included episodes of the original Avengers in its Tara King season, The Adventures of Black Beauty, and Return of the Saint. He was also seen in front of the camera as he was a stuntman before becoming a director. Most of his work on the original Avengers was in that capacity. May he rest in peace with his other fellow Space: 1999 directors. Charles Crichton. Lee H. Katzin. David Tomblin. Bob Kellett. Tom Clegg. Val Guest. Bob Brooks. Not many of them still living. I think that Kevin Connor and Peter Medak are the only ones left on this Earth.
Work continues on the addition of images to this Weblog. Many earlier incarnations of the Weblog are now blessed with new images, and I will not relent in my work on this project until the Weblog is as image-endowed as the eras of my autobiography.
LOONEY TUNES COLLECTOR'S CHOICE is now less than ten days away from release. Early reviews of it have begun appearing, along with discussions about it at Home Theater Forum, Blu-Ray Forum, and some other places on the World Wide Web. There is some controversy as to the quality of the restorations of the cartoons. Some people are upset that the restorations are not totally new as had been previously announced, but are in some instances "portings-over" of the restorations of the cartoons for HBO Max, with titles and credits of numerous cartoons redone using modern Photoshop software. I am going to reserve judgement until I see the COLLECTOR'S CHOICE Blu-Ray for myself. But I will say that I was and still am quite impressed with the cartoon restorations, done originally for HBO Max, that were used for the Bugs Bunny Blu-Ray box set in 2020. And also those that I have seen on YouTube, Dailymotion, et cetera. Because I was raised mainly on how the cartoons were offered on The Bugs Bunny/Road Runner Hour, The Bugs Bunny/Road Runner Show, Bugs Bunny and Tweety, and so forth, I am not as much a "stickler" for perfect authenticity in original cartoon title sequences as most cartoon fans seem to be. Frankly, I would be quite content to have the cartoons with their Bugs Bunny/Road Runner title cards, or as they were titled on Merrie Melodies: Starring Bugs Bunny and Friends and That's Warner Bros.! (with only the title and credits of the cartoons, no Warner Brothers shield and Merrie Melodies or Looney Tunes cards, and no "That's all, Folks!"). As I age and become more and more aware of the preciousness of time, I can do without having to watch the repetitive Warner Brothers shield, et cetera. over and over again as I watch cartoon after cartoon. Each time, that is fifteen or twenty seconds of my life that I cannot "get back". And I am not bothered by reconstructions of titles. It is done all of the time now for vintage Doctor Who on home video. As long as there are no spelling mistakes and the backgrounds are faithful to the originals, I judge the recreated titles, and recreated credits, to be quite satisfactory.
Because I am not favoured by any studio, I never receive advance copies of Blu-Rays or DVDs. I will doubtless not see COLLECTOR'S CHOICE until several days after release date, by which time I will have been privy to discussion on every facet of the new Blu-Ray. It is almost always thus for me, living as I do in one of the more far-flung parts of the North American landmass. Yes, even though I have maintained for some twenty-five years one of the more comprehensive histories of the dissemenation to the masses of the cartoons of Warner Brothers, I am effectively still a nobody. A fact that doubtless pleases my many detractors no end.
But I have said enough for today, I think.
Sunday, May 28, 2023.
The temperature is expected to soar today to near thirty degrees. A long-awaited taste of the summer to come. It is also going to be windy, which will reduce the feel-like temperature somewhat.
Late May is my favourite time of year. Temperatures in the twenties. No longer a need to wear a coat or jacket. The trees and other plants in full bloom, and healthy and vibrant in that, not dried-out and covered in blotches or riddled with holes, as they often are in mid-to-late-summer. And the smell of lilac. The sweet smell of lilac. And the whole summer ahead to which to look forward. It is not as yet all downhill from here.
It is such solace for my lonely existence, to be able to walk the streets, see all of the green growth, smell the lilac, hear the chirps and songs of the birds, and remember past spring seasons when, unlike now, I had the company of parents, of grandparents, and of friends who wished to ring my doorbell. Without a doubt now, the spring of 1977 towers highly above all others past and present. Indeed, the entirety of my final school year in Douglastown shines as the very best of times for me, and likely will always do so now, with the spring of 1983 (still a fondly remembered one) losing some of its lustre.
This past week, I came upon, at Internet Archive, the full album, from Fanderson, of Derek Wadsworth's music for the second season of Space: 1999, and as I played and listened to the selections, especially Mr. Wadsworth's more relaxed, more mellow, somewhat more emotionally gripping, pieces of incidental music, I felt final third of 1976 and first two-thirds of 1977 come fully alive again in my psyche, and saw in my mind's eye so many of the tenderly recalled sights of my life in those many months of good company, fun, positive stimulus, and zeal for many things imaginative, while in my best habitat, in the village Douglastown along the river Miramichi. Season 2 Space: 1999 was an integral part of that. It was popular there in that place in those months. And 1976-7 was the pinnacle of the time in my life when my interest in and knowledge of one of my favourite works of entertainment, was something for which people sought me out, wanted to be with me, ceding with fullest enthusiasm to all that I had to communicate about one of my favourite television shows. When people were impressed by, not critical of, my keen interest in my favourite television show, Space: 1999. When they joined me in play, with me in the lead, as we indulged our yen to partake in the fantastic encounters of the Alpha Moonbase. It was when I could sit and watch Space: 1999 with the feeling of certainty that many people in my life were doing the same, and enjoying what they were seeing as much, or almost as much, as I was. Space: 1999 was in its heyday. Product based on it might be found in stores in the nearest townships. Episodes hitherto unseen by me and my social circle were airing on television. And as far as any of us knew, Space: 1999 was still in production, and more, much more, was to come. Winter 1976-7 and spring of 1977 was the peak, the zenith, of all of this. It was when I was fully alive and truly optimistic for the future of humanity. My parents and I were together on all evenings and weekends. We were happy. We were a family in a way that we would not be again, after our move to the F-place. And I had friends coming to my place to see me. Daily. Friends choosing to "hang out" with me in the school yard. The music of Space: 1999- Season 2 still has the ability to bring me back in my mind to all of that. Especially when it hear it for a first time in some capacity new to me.
My nostalgia for my final twelve months in Douglastown, I now believe will forevermore tower over that for any other time of my life. When I go for my walks today, I lament to myself the decision in 1977 to move. To any of my in-Fredericton-situated friends of old who might be reading this with umbrage for me feeling the way that I do, stating, rightly, that had I not moved then we never would have met, I say this. Was meeting me really beneficial to you? Did knowing me and "hanging out" with me really enrich your life? I do not believe so. I think that if I had not come to live in Fredericton, that a number of my in-Fredericton friends, Joey, most especially, would have been "better off", had a better life. A happier life. A different and more enjoyable career path, maybe. If I had not moved to Fredericton, I would never have hurt Joey as I did. Or that player on my baseball team I mentioned some Weblog entries ago. Steven and others would never have been so offended at my participation in neighbourhood baseball that they might have been better, kinder, more good-sportsman-like people. Many others, most others, would not have had any significant difference to their lives had I not crossed their path. I really doubt that my being in Fredericton benefitted anyone. The net effect of my being in Fredericton was negative. And this includes, of course, the effect upon me. And I believe that I did hurt the friends I left behind in Douglastown. By all measure now, from all angles, the McCorry move to Fredericton in 1977, was a disaster. A tragedy. The decision that I made to endorse my parents' option to relocate, was the worst one of my life. It was epic and Karmically cursed. My being all of eleven years of age is no mitigation, evidently. The Karmic punishments were swift. Horrible Grade 6 teacher. Awful Grade 6 peers. Full-class detentions. And on Fridays, yet. No cable television, which I had been most keen to have by way of the relocation. And then, eventually, impertinent, caustic, on-again-off-again, ephemeral friends. Friends who could "take me or leave me". Associates who would never utter a syllable in my defence. No sentimentality for me at all in the friends that I meet. Loneliness as my default condition. Such is all that I incurred by saying an enthusiastic yes to my parents because I wanted to again watch Bugs Bunny and the Road Runner for an hour, and to also watch Sylvester and Tweety for a half-hour, on Saturdays. Or go to city malls, to city bookstores, to buy Space: 1999 books whenever I so-chose. The folly of a selfish "brat" of an eleven-year-old only-child of tragically deficient sentimentality and empathy.
And yet, here I am, eagerly awaiting another opportunity to watch Bugs and company, as LOONEY TUNES COLLECTOR'S CHOICE is on course to "hit the shelves" this coming Tuesday. As I say, I do not expect to receive my copy for another week at least. By then, I will know all that there is to know about the Blu-Ray as review upon review of it will be on the Internet. My review will doubtless be superfluous by the time that I will have my copy and will have watched all of its contents. But I will review the Blu-Ray at this Weblog, for my small number of loyal, stalwart readers. Probably sometime in the week starting June 5.
All for today.
The bad news keeps on coming.
Word is that Network Distributing has "gone bust", is in receivership.
Network Distributing is the company in the U.K. that brought, to we aficionados of fantastic future, gorgeous restorations of Space: 1999 (both seasons) lovingly committed to Blu-Ray with a very generous helping of bonus features. The wait for Season 2 on Blu-Ray had been long and gruelling, as this Weblog did chronicle, but when the announcement finally came, I was as ecstatic as I had been back in 1990 when I discovered that YTV would be running Space: 1999, and as overjoyed as I was in 1983 when I had the very first videotape of Space: 1999 from CBHT broadcasts, in my hands. Audio issues with some episodes aside, the Network Distributing release of second season Space: 1999 redeemed that awful year for me that was 2015, and did so most handsomely. It was, for me, the Blu-Ray release of the 2010s decade. Space: 1999's two seasons both received the deluxe treatment from Network, after years and years of frustration with releases to DVD by A & E, Carlton, et cetera, that had left so much to be desired, and after decades of obscurity, if even that, on VHS videotape. I will be eternally grateful for all that Network Distributing did for Space: 1999. True, the current representation of Space: 1999 in my collection is mostly that of ViaVision and Imprint of Australia, which used the Network masters. The Network Blu-Ray releases of Space: 1999 were superseded. But the brilliant work by Network in restoring Space: 1999 is still the dominant factor in my adulation for the Space: 1999 Blu-Rays in my holdings, and the made-by-Network bonuses are of vital import, also, in this. "These Episodes", produced by the late Tim Beddows of Network, is sublime, the greatest Space: 1999 documentary ever. Then, there was the commissioning, by Network, of the Super Space Theatre box set, through which the four Space: 1999 "movies" have their place on my shelves beside the television series-proper.
Mr. Tim Beddows' advocacy for such magnificent treatment of Space: 1999 was key in bringing the outstanding Space: 1999 home video releases to fruition. And the sad passing, just some six months ago, of Mr. Beddows may have portended the demise of the Network company, him being such a "driving force" in its many marvellous projects in bringing archive television to home video, with all bells, all whistles, in the high definition age.
What does this mean for the future of Space: 1999 on home video? I would be inclined to say that it does not look good. At least we still have the Shout! Factory and ViaVision/Imprint Blu-Ray box sets, and will have them until the licencing agreement of those companies with Granada, expires- whenever that is. I expect the Network sets to go to out-of-print status immediately, with the others doing so in a year or two. And as with the days long ago of the Image Entertainment laser videodiscs, it will be eBay and highly inflated prices if anyone wants Space: 1999 on optical media disc. I do not at all relish the prospect of going back to that. I pray that no Space: 1999 Blu-Ray starts succumbing to "disc rot". I have five of the Imprint sets in my collection, together with five of the Network Super Space Theatre sets. I think that I ought to buy a couple more, for safety. And store them at some location other than my home, to safeguard against fire or theft. I dread the prospect of another long, dark time period of scarcity on home video for Space: 1999, and that does seem set to come.
Needless to say, this means that a fiftieth anniversary release of Space: 1999 to Blu-Ray, or to 4K Blu-Ray, is highly unlikely, if not utterly out of the question.
Other items of interest that came forth into the world through Network, among them Blu-Ray box sets of UFO and The Prisoner and The Adventures of Black Beauty, and Blu-rays of Quatermass (1979) or 1988's Jack the Ripper, are also soon to pass into the ether.
What this bodes for physical media of what is called "niche titles", is decidedly unencouraging, also. It is looking, very distressingly, that physical media will not enter a "niche market" phase but will soon die out altogether. Which no doubt will please the "own-nussing-und-be-happy" brigade. I will iterate yet again that I do not believe that the BBC will release all that there is of vintage Doctor Who onto Blu-Ray. And will Shout! and Kino-Lorber also be "shutting their doors" in months to come? People are reporting having difficulty finding Kino-Lorber's DePatie-Freleng cartoon Blu-Rays for purchase. I wonder if this might be a sign of things to come.
I am also sad to have to report that Amazon has not dispatched my LOONEY TUNES COLLECTOR'S CHOICE Blu-Ray yet. Two days after release date, and nothing. No indication that it has even entered the packaging-for-dispatch stage. So, I do not know when I am going to have that Blu-Ray in my possession. What can I say? Bad Karma is the story of my life. And I must not complain about it impacting my attachment to the Warner Brothers cartoons, for it was that attachment that led me to making the grievous choice that set me on the road to Karmic curse back in 1977. I need to be patient, as I was not thus back in the day when my life's future path met its proverbial fork in the road.
All for today, the first of June, 2023.
Sunday, June 4, 2023.
The high temperature yesterday was plus 6 degrees, with a windchill near zero and cold drizzle. Such had to have set a record for low temperature for the day for Fredericton. I have never seen temperatures so cold in June in all of my years of living in New Brunswick. The wind is blowing from the north, definitely, but from where in bloody hell is the cold air coming? Certainly not from Siberia. In the coldest region of Siberia, Yakutia, it is around plus twenty degrees and has been for awhile. And there are no sunny, warm days in the New Brunswick forecast for the week ahead. Just rain and below normal temperature. This weather is almost certainly going to result in a poor harvest this year.
LOONEY TUNES COLLECTOR'S CHOICE is now on its way to me. Amazon finally sent it on Thursday. I do not expect it until late this coming week or early the week thereafter.
Four days and counting of rain and below normal temperatures in New Brunswick, while to the west in Quebec and Ontario, it is hot and the forests are burning. This same wet and chilly weather is expected to persist until Sunday, June 11, at least. New Brunswick is cooler than every other location of the same latitude across the northern hemisphere. And I have yet to see Canada's Weather Network supply a salient explanation for this peculiar meteorological phenomenon. Since when do low pressure systems go retrograde from east to west while also moving from north to south, and then stay stationary over one hapless province for ten days or more? Is it an act of God? What is it?
Happily, my LOONEY TUNES COLLECTOR'S CHOICE Blu-Ray came into my possession yesterday, speeding its way here after being dispatched from Amazon.com two days after release date.
So, what is my verdict? About the same as that of other cartoon enthusiasts who acquired the item before I did. "Beanstalk Bunny" looks magnificent, apart from when Daffy encounters the giant Elmer Fudd for the first time. There, the cartoon becomes grainier and softer. But it quickly recovers, regaining its amazing look and retaining it until after the "That's all, Folks!" notation fades to black. The other cartoons on the Blu-Ray disc boast a picture quality equal to, if not better than, that of the cartoons on the Bugs Bunny Blu-Ray set of three years ago. Colours are as vibrant as, and oftentime deeper, richer than, the ones in the Bugs Bunny Blu-Ray set. They are a resplendent feast for the occular organs. Falling outside of breadth of my acclaim, however, are the credits to "Hip Hip- Hurry!", which look over-saturated and are lacking in contrast. "His Bitter Half" is a revelation; I have never seen it looking so sharp, detailed, and colourful. For many years, I had only held it by way of a Nickelodeon broadcast in 1991. The audio on all cartoons on COLLECTOR'S CHOICE, is clear, lush, resonant. Better than the sound quality on the Bugs Bunny box set. Altogether, it is a superlative achievement for Warner Archive, and I pray that sales are robust and that there are many more COLLECTOR'S CHOICE volumes.
This all having been said, I will comment that experiencing the cartoons in the way in which they are curated on this Blu-Ray disc, is not in accordance with my preferred mode of watching the cartoons of Bugs, et al.. I would much rather watch a Bugs Bunny followed by a Tweety followed by a Road Runner followed by a Foghorn Leghorn followed by another Bugs Bunny, and so forth. And "one-shot" and minor-character cartoons sprinkled into the mix here or there, never two or more of them in a row. The way that I used to watch them on The Bugs Bunny/Road Runner Hour, The Bugs Bunny and Tweety Show, et cetera. And never the pre-1948s and post-1948s blended together. Post-1948s with other post-1948s only. And then a discrete package of the pre-1948s. And collections of the cartoons under some overarching theme, or coinciding cartoons have some subtle commonalities, as was the case on The Bugs Bunny/Road Runner Hour and several seasons of Bugs Bunny and Tweety. But as I am not "calling the shots" and as my preferences are not listened-to by those that are doing so, I have to accept what is provided to me, and be grateful to have that. I am a dozen or so cartoons closer to completing my collection- if that ever will happen.
Work continues on adding images to this Weblog in all of its incarnations. I am averaging three new images a day.
Tuesday, June 6, 2023.
Sunday, June 11, 2023.
Some rare good news to start the day. After nine days of cloudy, cool, rainy weather, Fredericton is now basking once again in golden sunshine. Summer is once more asserting itself, and temperatures will climb today to the upper twenties. And sales statistics at Amazon.com have LOONEY TUNES COLLECTOR'S CHOICE as the seventh highest seller. Not a poor showing at all for a single Blu-Ray disc of some of the less sung cartoons of the Warner Brothers catalogue released by the more "niche" division of the Warner Brothers home video department, i.e. Warner Archive. It is looking promising for the prospect of further volumes. Ah, but will lessons be learned from the failures of the GOLDEN and PLATINUM collections? Will VOLUME 2 commit the same folly as previously done and start "rolling out" the 1930s cartoons while relegating the post-1948s to merely "rounding out the collection" with a few token cartoon shorts? I have an uneasy feeling that the answer to this will be yes. But if sales statistics continue to impress, a second volume will most certainly come, and there will be at least a handful of post-1948 cartoons, potentially some hitherto not on DVD or Blu-Ray, to which to look forward.
The coming into my life of COLLECTOR'S CHOICE has galvanised my interest in the Warner Brothers cartoons and my possessing of them. Yesterday, I went to Wal-Mart and bought a box set of all six GOLDEN COLLECTIONs so that my DVDs of those are new as opposed to being fifteen to twenty years-old, and also to have every DVD in those collections, including the ones of exclusively early cartoons that I initially opted, years ago, not to keep. I may never watch those cartoons again or even for a first time (life being too short). But the completist in me, now in full control of my cartoon collecting impulse, has directed me to incorporate those unloved-by-me DVDs into my collection. And now they are on my shelves. All of the DVDs in proper sequence.
There is some talk of the assets of Network Distributing possibly coming under the stewardship of some other company, one with a name I have never seen before, with an eye to distribution of properties on home video. But at this juncture, such is only rumour. I am asking myself why the Network catalogue of ITC productions is not being absorbed by Granada or ITV for continued sales by them of the material- since the rights to Space: 1999, et cetera, are, in fact, held by them, Granada or ITV. No fan of the ITC properties, I am sure, wants the glass masters for the Blu-Rays destroyed in liquidation. Well, the anti-Season 2 brigade in Space: 1999 fandom would love to see the glass masters for Season 2 shattered into dust. But those people aside, aficionados of the ITC library would wish to have the glass masters survive for more printings of the Blu-Rays and DVDs.
It was a bizarre run of unseasonably cool and wet weather in New Brunswick these last nine days. Depressing, to be sure. But a Godsend, in a way, as the low pressure system that spun in New Brunswick's direction off of Greenland and Labrador and then sat stationary over us New Brunswickers for nine days, did prevent the thick smoke from central Canada forest fires from blanketing New Brunswick and harming the people of the province's breathing and lung health. We and the other Atlantic Canadian provinces were spared the skies of thick orange and the choking partriculate in the air, while the bulk of that was concentrated in the Ottawa region.
Tuesday, June 27, 2023.
Fredericton is in another of a string of several rainy, cool days. This one is expected to last until Sunday.
The new dark age for Space: 1999 is in its beginning stages. Space: 1999- The Vault is now no longer in print, and even picey, from "scalpers", copies of it cannot be found at Amazon Marketplace or eBay. Super Space Theatre is not to be seen as being offered anywhere. And orders of Network's Ultimate Space: 1999, though still shipping from Amazon.co.uk associates, are beset with delays in procuring copies of it for sale. It begins. It begins. Are my now six copies of the Imprint set sufficient for my posterity? Who knows?
Who knows also what is happening at BBC Video? There has been no announcement of a second DOCTOR WHO- THE COLLECTION Blu-Ray set for release this year. The year is close to its halfway mark, and this may be a sign that maybe, again this year, there will be only two sets released. I shake my head pessimistically. At this rate, no way are Doctor Who fans going to have everything on Blu-Ray. I am already wondering if maybe the end has already come for the Doctor on optical disc media.
LOONEY TUNES COLLECTOR'S CHOICE continues to register impressive amounts of sales, but there has been no announcement yet of further volumes.
At present, there is nothing that is definitely coming to Blu-Ray for the remainder of this year. Definitely a new phenomenon, this. There was always at least something to which to look forward, at the midway time point of a given year. This year, there is nothing.
Of late I have continued to work on adding images to my Weblog. And still more will be forthcoming. And I added an image from The Bionic Woman- "The Vega Influence" to my Era 2 memoirs. One that shows a meteorite that conveys an alien intelligence, being looked-upon by Jaime Sommers and Dr. Michael Marchetti in a laboratory at Grand Thule Island Research Station. It is amongst my memories of late 1976 and early 1977. I do not know if I have said so before, but I adore the music in Season 2 of The Bionic Woman, the jaunty music for main title sequences and episode titles, action beats, upbeat melodies, music of scenes of quiet introspection, and the ominous pieces of music. It all is of a very distinctive sound that recalls me so very effectively to being in the 1976-7 school year in my final year in Douglastown in Era 2. I seldom experience the same effect with the Six Million Dollar Man music but for a handful of notable exceptions, mostly in Season 4 and in episodes such as "The Bionic Boy", "Vulture of the Andes", and "To Catch the Eagle".
All for today.
Saturday, July 1. All that this day is for me is the day of the week, the name of the month, and the numerical date. Canada Day is dead to me. Not because I "buy into" the "narrative" that Canada is undeserving of celebration of most of its past 156 years. But because the Canada in which I was raised and the Canada that I thought guaranteed me certain rights and freedoms, no longer exists. Or did it ever really exist at all? A Canada in which people vote for corruption, ethics violations, unending scandals and abuses of power, authoritarianism, absurd investigations of government by friends of the government, "gaslighting", outright lying, news media towing the dishonest government's line without fail, the subsuming of the individual under the collective (a la the former Eastern Bloc of the Cold War, Fascist Italy, et cetera.), the "othering" of people who thought it best not to be injected with a drug rushed to market with no long-term safety data and known short-term adverse effects including death, the Prime Minister denouncing citizens of the country, violent suppression of protests for rights and freedoms, bank account seizure, euthanasia for the not terminally ill, et cetera, et cetera, is not my Canada. It does not warrant celebration.
But I do have a day off from work on Monday. I must be grateful for that. And as it extends a weekend an extra day, so much the better. A day off from work is now the only use that I have for the thing called Canada Day.
Moving onward.
I have come upon a series of images of the issue of TV Guide magazine for August 13-19, 1977 for northeastern Ohio. In northeastern Ohio, there was one CBC Television station, a CBC affiliate in London, Ontario, CFPL-TV, that was received on cable television. It is 10 on black background in the TV Guide listings for northeastern Ohio. And at 4 P.M. on August 13, 1977, CFPL aired the CBC Television network broadcast of Space: 1999- "One Moment of Humanity". As did all CBC Television stations in Canada's eastern Maritimes, at the same 4 o'clock hour in their time zone, my time zone. Below is an image of the relevant page of that northeastern Ohio issue of TV Guide.
In addition to CFPL-TV, independent Hamilton, Ontario television station CHCH-TV, was also available in northeastern Ohio and had listings in the TV Guide issues for same part of Ohio. 11 on black background denotes CHCH. The other television stations in the listings are U.S.. U.S. affiliates of ABC, NBC, CBS, and PBS in Youngstown, Alliance, Erie, Cleveland, Akron, Steubenville, Weeling, and Pittsburgh. And independent television stations in Cleveland and Canton, including WUAB, channel 43, which was a long-time broadcaster of Space: 1999, from the 1970s through the 1980s.
It is always a pleasure to once again see a TV Guide listing for, and episode synopsis of, Space: 1999. Particularly one for a CBC broadcast.
There is a book that a fellow Canadian has written. I have been aware of it for quite some time but only this past week did I delve deeper into it than its front and back covers and the one review of it at Amazon.com. The book is called Breakaway: 1977. And as the title does at once indicate, it involves Space: 1999. But not in the way that one would tend to expect. It is a work of fiction set not within the Space: 1999 universe but outside of it. It is a work of fiction surrounding the broadcasts of Space: 1999 in the 1970s in Yorkton in southeastern Saskatchewan, telling the story of three young people of different personal backgrounds whose respective experience with and enjoyment of Space: 1999 as shown on their local CBC affiliate, CKOS-TV, brings them together and affects their mindsets and their outlook on and reactions to the world of small-city Canada of the mid-to-late-1970s. It is a most unusual sort of oeuvre, this. I had never came across anything like it in the followings of other, more popular productions of the science fiction/fantasy genre. A fictional telling of experiences of fans of a particular outer-space-based filmed work of imagination, and the drama of the lives of such people as they are touched by the showings of such a work.
Here is the book's front cover.
I have only gone as far into the book as the sample pages at Amazon.com have allowed. And I am now intrigued enough by the book to buy it, at a premium price, to read it in full. From what I have seen so far, it has the form of a series of diary entries by three teenagers, recounting many of their experiences at school and around home, some to do with Space: 1999 directly, others tangentially, and others seemingly not at all. All told, it weaves rather a compelling tale of lives of teenagers somewhat older than I at the time, who saw Space: 1999 in Canada under circumstances rather different than those of my personal history. One of them provides a synopsis and impressions of each episode that he sees on CKOS beginning mid-October, 1975. Yes, he is introduced to Space: 1999 via first season, as are the others. I do not know if the author, R.M. Kozan, is writing this from his own memories of the run of Space: 1999 in Yorkton, if the order of episodes broadcasts and their airdates, is true to real-life. If it is, then Breakaway: 1977 it is a story worth reading for this alone. The episodes ran in the following sequence told in the book by a young Roger Kay.
"Breakaway"
"War Games"
"Collision Course"
"Force of Life"
"Death's Other Dominion"
"Voyager's Return"
"Alpha Child"
"Dragon's Domain"
"Mission of the Darians"
This does not match the order of showing of the first season episodes by CBET- Windsor, Ontario, in 1975-6, though almost all of the episodes of the two broadcast sequences are in the same general vicinity. "Collision Course", "Force of Life", and "Death's Other Dominion" do tend to be telecast early in a run of first season. Then, "Alpha Child". "Dragon's Domain", if it had not been aired second, usually comes not long after "Alpha Child". There might be an episode or two separating them, but that is all. And "Mission of the Darians" often comes after "Dragon's Domain". It did on CBHT/CBIT/CBCT in 1983 and 1984.
The preview pages end as Roger is encapsulating the story of "Mission of the Darians". I will need to purchase the book to continue further.
I say that I am intrigued enough to buy the book and to read it in full, but I have some trepidation, as can be expected in one such as myself who has difficulty reading unfavourable commentary about Season 2 of Space: 1999. I expect that the characters in the book will be reacting to the changes to Space: 1999 between seasons, and in their discovery of the television series' cancellation in 1977 harbouring some resentment at Season 2 for its apparent role in the demise of the television series that captured their imagination in 1975. I have a hunch, a strong hunch, that this is the direction in which the book is going. I will need to brace myself for it.
The only review of Breakaway: 1977 at Amazon.com is much more eloquent that I could aspire to be, in describing the book. Here is that review.
| An interesting read about an ambitious quest
R.M. Kozan's Breakaway: 1977 is an ambitious quest to explore the possibilities of the human condition versus the realities of young lives full of hope. The young hopeful lives were those of 8th graders Roger Kay, Samantha Renfield, and Lionel O'Neill- all very intelligent and marginalized for that, all with vibrant and intense mental worlds- and in the case of one of them, too vibrant and intense for them to handle. The reality of their lives was the small city of Yorkton at the southeastern part of Saskatchewan, and St. Joseph's Junior High School. For Roger Kay reality was the humdrum life of an only child in a middle class family, whose slight physique and intelligence made him the target of bullies. For Samantha Renfield it was her parent's strict, conservative, religious upbringing- so oppressive to a young girl intelligent enough to understand women were becoming more and more empowered and wanting to be part of that change. Lionel O'Neill had the most uphill battle: with his family beset by financial woes, his father turning to drink and victimizing his mother, his sisters fleeing their home and only his brother Jerry to care for him, Lionel (or Neil as Roger preferred to call him) also had two very dark secrets hidden away in his subconscious that attacked him unawares. Despite all this these three friends tried to craft better lives together than what was handed them by focusing on the beacon that informed their minds and raised their hopes: the TV science fiction series Space: 1999. Time would tell if these intelligent children locked in the Canadian 1970s could use their formative years cocooned in Space: 1999 episodes and their relationship to transcend obstacles and limitations, find a better life, and carve out a destiny they would be happy to pursue. This was a dense story, with lots of information to sift through, layers of plot and backstory to track, and a very long time frame for its story arc. It made me a very active reader, because I wasn't investing in any one character that passively pushed me along and kept the pace steady- I would comprehend and organize all the information given me to make sense of the plot, side stories, and any back stories. There were the actual events recounted in Roger's diary, which showed how the three friends were coping with their problems and limitations. There were the conversations Roger taped. Depending on who was being taped (with or without their knowledge), they gave me insight on the dynamic of the small group, each character's current obsession, any issues a character was championing, and the various Zeitgeist of that time and place. There were Roger's summaries of Space: 1999's episodes, which I found humbling as a fan of the series- as it turned out, I only really saw the second season! Finally there were excerpts of official documents from the police and courts, as well as accounts from the other characters, that moved the tale by leaps and bounds once I got clues that Roger (whose diary was the main source of information for the story) would not have known. I did not commit to the story just because I wanted to know what happened next. I was engaged because there was plenty happening already, and I appreciated the story enough to work hard on keeping everything straight. This seems like a lot of work, but it actually was very intuitive. Understanding the story was like diving into a deep body of water. The Space: 1999 summaries, brimming with episodic facts and Roger's inferences and insights, were the framework- surface information to launch the rest of the story. Roger's diary was a slightly deeper layer- things he felt, things he hoped for, his subjective view of what took place, set the context for me and helped me get my bearings. My goal however was to get to the "bottom" of the tale- and at the bottom, when the noise and fervor of Roger's writings float away, I found a long quiet story arc of three people born way before their time, who nonetheless struggled both together and in isolation to get past the odds stacked against them in order to find their place in the world. For fans of Space: 1999 and those who remember the 1970s fondly, this tale could be a very enjoyable trove of trivia. But the true beauty of R.M. Kozan's Breakaway: 1977 was the subtle plot that slowly developed in the TV series' background noise and reached a surprise climax. After surprising me, the tale took my hand and continued the arc longer than I expected (another surprise) to let me know that old friends could pick the pieces up and agree upon an end I could feel pleased about. Recommended. |
Compelling, is it not? Much, much more so than my account of my experiences in the heyday of Space: 1999. As is known by my autobiography's readers, my social existence intermixing with or proceeding alongside my following of Space: 1999, was by times rather a drama in itself, with ups and some deep downs. But I must admit that it was not anywhere near as remarkable, as interesting, as the stories of Roger and the others- and I lacked then, and still do, the capacity for writing in so descriptive a way as to pull the reader fully, unwaveringly, empathetically, into my world. My immersion into the Space: 1999 universe was a year after theirs, and not through the gruesome body horror of the likes of "Dragon's Domain" but through the "space opera" of Maya joining the Alphans and the people of Alpha finding time and inclination for sociability and close rapport in their everyday Moonbase Alpha surroundings as the Moon careened into dangers mostly less lethal, less horrific, than those of first season. And yet, there are some relatable things for me in Roger Kay's diary entries. I was physically built the same as him, and emotionally and behaviourally somewhat similar. I was treated much like he was at school. After my moving to Fredericton. Even Roger's mention of weather conditions during some of his discussions of Space: 1999 with his friends, generates in me a feeling of familiarity, my mind's eye able to envision precisely the weather and its effects on the lands and people of Yorkton as articulated by Roger. I am, after all, also a Canadian. Though of a much differently landscaped part of the country, I can identify with how the characters were coping with the sometimes less than ideal weather. The feel of the air, the winds, of autumn in Canada. This is a fairly common experience to Canadians along the latitudes of the country's south.
Ability to identify with characters in this particular book, is doubtless going to be much more appreciable for me than it ever has been for me in my reading of any other work of fiction. I shall buy Breakaway: 1977 and read it this summer while I am on vacation. Bracing myself, as I ought to, for some bumps along the way as the story of Roger and the others proceeds into the 1976-7 television season and beyond.
In the book, the CKOS telecasts of Space: 1999 in 1975 were mostly on Fridays at 10 P.M.. A Space: 1999 airtime I have hitherto been unfamiliar with, and one that would put Space: 1999 as coming after Mary Tyler Moore, M*A*S*H, and Tommy Hunter, and before The National. If CKOS was faithful to the rest of the CBC Television Friday night line-up. I would presume, reading Mr. Kozan's book as being an accurate history of Space: 1999 broadcasts, that CKOS was videotape-delaying Space: 1999 from its showings on CBKRT- Regina. Why? I doubt that CBC-affiliated television stations such as CKOS were receiving the film prints of the episodes, that only the CBC-owned-and-operated television stations, like CBKRT, were awarded that privilege.
All for today.
Sunday, July 9, 2023.
I am now seated in my living room, on a hazy, hot summer morning in the year 2023, typewriting a Weblog entry remembering two weekends of very long ago, the weekends of July 9 and 10, 1977 and July 8 and 9, 1978. It is now 46 and 45 years, respectively, since those two weekends. And yet, I can still visualise them quite clearly.
Of the two, the 1977 weekend is the one that I favour, by far, by light-years. It was the weekend on which my best friend, Michael, accompanied my parents and I on one of our visits with my grandparents in Fredericton. We four had left Douglastown on the morning of the preceding Friday. I can still see in my mind's eye my dining room's window giving view to the bottom of our driveway and the top of Michael's, and the sight of Michael emerging from his driveway with his suitcase, walking the distance to our back door. I can visualise me and Michael in the back seat of the McCorry car as it traversed the approximate hundred-mile distance between the Miramichi region and Fredericton, how happy we were together. Now, after all these years, it does seem dream-like. I have never known any friend since Michael to ever want to travel with me, much less do so. And Michael and I had a superlative time that weekend, going about Skyline Acres and the school playground there, sleeping in the twin beds in my grandmother's basement, watching Saturday morning U.S. television including Sylvester and Tweety and The Bugs Bunny/Road Runner Hour (both by way of CBS affiliate WAGM), singing the Reese's Peanut Butter Cups song together as we walked to the Scholten's 7-11 to buy for us some of those treats, as summer sunshine poured down on us around noon that Saturday. Then, the overcast skies as we two went with my father to the Regent Mall, where I bought from Radioland a Space: 1999 vinyl record of sleeve plastered with photographs mainly from the Space: 1999 second season opener, "The Metamorph", and containing four Space: 1999 stories voiced by people at Power Records' audio recording studio. Michael and I watching the spooky Space: 1999 first season episode, "The Troubled Spirit", in French from 8 to 9 P.M. as a thunder and lightning storm struck Fredericton. Michael was with me in all of my Warner Brothers cartoon and Space: 1999 pursuits, never a moment's admonition over my particular foci of interest. Though Michael did express some amusement at my befuddling discovery that the Power Records Space: 1999 stories used not the voices nor any of the then-familiar-to-me music nor any of the sound effects of the Space: 1999 television series-proper. It was a weekend that I would cherish for the rest of my life, especially when looked back upon by an older Kevin worn-down morally by a seemingly incessant deficient interest of friends in keeping any length of time's company with me, at or around home or on a traveller's road. After leaving Douglastown to move to Fredericton, I seem to have become doomed to being the person with whom people spent a sparing amount of time, if even that, the worthless "booby prize" to anyone who happened not to find better companionship on a summer's day.
There is no doubt whatsoever in my mind that Michael in 1977, was my best friend. Best friend of my Douglastown years. Best friend of all of the years of my upbringing (those of Miramichi region and Fredericton). Best friend of my life. Nobody else would ever travel with me, and write, long-distance telephone call, and visit me, all with a requisite spending of money for doing so. Michael is the one friend to have done all of that. And to have stayed in contact with me for nearly three years after my leaving Douglastown, is significant in itself. How many people kept in communication for that long with a friend who moved away, back, way back, before the age of the Internet and social media? Michael wanted that contact. And I back then, was not as agreeable, shall I say, as I am today. I was a selfish brat. Empathy-deficient to no small degree. Unrestrained in expressing extreme pique when not "getting my way". And yet, Michael liked me and wanted to be with me, at my place for sleep-overs, bicycling by my side through Douglastown, having fun in the garage, transforming it into whatever, and going with me to my grandparents' place a hundred miles away for a weekend. No one else, apart from my parents, has ever wanted that much of me. For most people, I am only acceptable in small doses, infrequent small doses. Because I like the wrong things. Because I am not extroverted. Or simply because I am boring. I do not regale a conversation partner with oh, so erudite conversation about professional sports, Hockey Night in Canada, popular music, or whatever else is judged to be the requisite conversation for males who are not "nerds". I am eminently disposable. And this is probably another part of that Karmic punishment that I have to endure for as long as I walk the Earth. I was willing to leave Douglastown and its people behind in 1977, in deciding to be agreeable to moving to Fredericton. It became my "just desserts" to only find friendship with people who would brush me aside or belittle me without the slightest hesitation.
Oh, but that was such a splendid weekend, that one with Michael in 1977 not long before my life came crashing down in a blaze of rejection and invalidation. And Michael and I eventually "falling out" in 1980, never to see each other again. It is a tragedy if ever there was one for a only-child like myself who needed a friend like Michael to "grow up with" and have as a soulmate through all of the trials and tribulations and losses of adult life.
What of that other weekend? The one in 1978? I had, earlier that week, discovered in TV Guide that there was to be a CHSJ-TV-only showing of Space: 1999 at 5 P.M. on that Saturday (July 8). I deduced that it must be an episode that CHSJ had earlier videotape-recorded from the CBC for some videotape-delay purpose, and that episode could only be "Dragon's Domain" from Saturday, May 6, 1978, when CHSJ was planning to air it at 6 P.M. after the Liberal Party of New Brunswick's leadership convention, which lasted longer than expected, thwarting any plans to that day air Space: 1999. It looked like CHSJ had not dispensed with its videotape-recording of the CBC's May 6 broadcast of "Dragon's Domain" and was now, on July 8, going to show it. I was quite excited, to say the least. It was a day not unlike today. Hazy and hot. I persuaded my mother that Saturday morning (of July 8) to telephone CHSJ-TV for me to ask what episode of Space: 1999 that was going to be shown. She was told only that it was "an old one". Oh, CHSJ. So disinterested. So unavailing. But at least there was going to be a Space: 1999 episode that day on television on CHSJ, even though the CBC Television network was not going to be transmitting one across the country. I was certain in my mind that it could only be "Dragon's Domain". I had my audiotape mechanism at the ready at our living room television speaker as 5 o'clock approached. Coverage of tennis tournament at Wimbledon was in the offering through most of that Saturday afternoon on both the CBC and CHSJ. It was supposed to end at 5 P.M., CHSJ then proceeding to air Space: 1999, the other CBC broadcasting stations in the eastern Maritimes showing something called Disappearing World. But Wimbledon tennis play kept on going and going. I could only sit there in our living room with increasing frustration as minutes ticked past. Was I doomed to having to see "Dragon's Domain" again with it joined in progress (as had been the case the previous November)? But the serving of the tennis balls kept on continuing. Past 5:30. Then, finally, the day's broadcast of action at Wimbledon came to a close. CHSJ evidently thought that joining Space: 1999 in progress that late into its episode, was inappropriate, and instead opted for a musical television programme. Denny's SHO, maybe. I do not know what it was. And I did not care. All that I knew was that I had been once again dashed of my hopes of seeing "Dragon's Domain" from its very beginning. I was angry, bitter, glum. My parents decided to cheer me by offering an evening at the movie theatre to me, and we saw Battlestar Galactica at Nashwaaksis Cinema 2. I had no knowledge that we were seeing the opening episode of a coming television series. It seemed to me to be a cinema movie like any other. And I preferred it to Star Wars, actually.
Michael would soon join me at our place in Fredericton for a weekend. Later that month (July, 1978). We were as close as two friends could be, now living some 100 miles apart.
Two weekends some forty-plus years ago. They are very much in my thoughts this weekend. Oh, how I miss the friendship of Michael! Oh, how I miss the presence of my parents! And my grandparents! And my cat, Frosty! All who or that were a part of my life in those years long before the awful conditions of J.T.'s Canada today. I lament how far gone Canada is. There are countries in western Europe that are somehow able to throw off the shackles of the World Economic Forum. The Netherlands are now free of the Rutte government that was determined to ruin them (the Netherlands) in the cause of globalism and all of the dystopic aims of such. Italy, likewise. Yet, Canada seems to be "doubling down" on its endorsement of the machinations of Mr. Schwab and his elitist goons and his "poster child", J.T., the oh, so anointed one. Conservative- or freedom-minded Canadians continue to be way too optimistic. No way will Canada ever be rid of J.T., but J.T. will be rid of Canada. The complete destruction of the Canadian way of life is clearly the goal, and much as I loathe saying it, Canada has fallen. Canada is a failed state. Its leader is now not defeatable. Losing the popular vote and not garnering enough seats in Parliament for a governmental majority, are insufficient to cause his removal from office. He has retained power twice already after such election results. And he acts so arrogantly, so without remorse in his utter crassness, so without shame in his proclivity for authoritarianism, population restriction, and division of the citizens, because he knows that he is in power for "the long haul". He can do anything to Canadians that he wants. He can bully them into having injections known to have serious adverse effects. He can call them something ending in i, s, and t, if they resist the bullying. He can question whether they should be tolerated. He has enough guaranteed Liberal votes in key parts of the country to insure that he holds the office of Prime Minister for however long is required for Canada to be officially declared null. Bankrupt. Insolvent. Its people nothing more than wastes of space to be disposed-of, either through fatal reactions to a "vaccine" or by medically assisted death. Unfortunately, I seem to have no means of escape. Whatever fate awaits a citizen of the failed state of Canada, I must face- even though I did not cast a ballot for any of what has happened to my country since 2015.
I am aware every summer as I embark upon my vacation that it might be the last year that I will be able to do so. I go into every year with my Website wondering if it might be the last one in which I have a Website. And yet, I persist in expanding or improving my Website, as I have done in recent days.
Website updates are as follows. My Era 3 memoirs have some expansion of memories of watching episodes of The Bionic Woman in autumn of 1977, along with five images of the "Fembots in Las Vegas" Bionic Woman two-parter. I have replaced old images of "Beanstalk Bunny" from a laser videodisc source, with screen captures of that cartoon from Blu-Ray, having done so for all "Beanstalk Bunny" images in "Deconstructing" Bugs: The Bugs Bunny Cartoons of 1955, The Bugs Bunny and Tweety Show Page, and my Era 5 memoirs. And I have made adjustments to the episode titles to Cosmos 1999, so that the capitalising of French words is accurate to how they actually appear in the episodes, and have worked to insure that they are consistent across all of the relevant Web pages at my Website, including The Space: 1999 Page, my Boy Meets Alpha memoirs, Era 2 and Era 3 of McCorry's Memoirs, and all of my television listings Web pages. Also, I have eliminated the comma previously used in all of my references to the Space: 1999 episode title, "New Adam New Eve", and this spans a vast number of my Website's component Web pages, including my Weblog. And most notable of all, all incarnations of this Weblog have many, many new images in them, them including April 16, 2007-to-September 19, 2015, October 4, 2015-to-May 4, 2018, May 5, 2018-to-June 19, 2020, and June 20, 2020-to-October 19, 2022. The new images include those of cartoons of Warner Brothers, Pink Panther Show cartoon title card images, images of Spiderman and Rocket Robin Hood, many, many images of Space: 1999, images of Space: 1999 and The Six Million Dollar Man DVD covers, images of The Empire Strikes Back, The Night Stalker, Space Academy, Galactica 1980, and The Bionic Woman, images of Blu-Ray covers of Soylent Green, Outland, Westworld, et cetera. And so much more. My work of image additions to my Weblog will be ongoing through the summer.
And I propose now to bring this Weblog entry to a close.
Sunday, July 16, 2023.
I am now on vacation from work, and will be until August 21. And of course, my Karma being what it is, my beginning of vacation time is met with rain. Five days in a row of it, in fact. No sunshine. No blue sky.
July 16, and particularly its falling on a Sunday, has some considerable significance to me, for Sunday, July 16, 1978 was the day on which CHSJ-TV aired Space: 1999 at 6 P.M. in lieu of Walt Disney- and the Space: 1999 episode in particular was "Dragon's Domain", videotape-delayed from the CBC Television repeat broadcast of it on Saturday, May 6, 1978. Saturday, May 6, 1978, the day on which CHSJ had been showing New Brunswick Liberal Leadership Convention whilst the CBC was airing Space: 1999- "Dragon's Domain" at 4 P.M.. CHSJ was at last telecasting that videotaped copy of "Dragon's Domain", having been thwarted twice from airing it sooner, due to the longer-than-time-slotted New Brunswick Liberal Leadership Convention on 6 May and, on July 8, an overlong showing of the tennis competitions at Wimbledon.
I do not know why Walt Disney was "unavailable for broadcast" on July 16, 1978, but it was a fortuitous development for CHSJ's videotape-recording of Space: 1999- "Dragon's Domain" from May 6. Which at last went out to New Brunswick on CHSJ. Within seconds of my seeing Moonbase Alpha appear on the screen with a familiar refrain of music, I was leaping into action. I caught glimpses of World Space Commission typeface and Helena at her typewriter, visualisations totally new to me (them having been missed on November 12, 1977 because "Dragon's Domain" had been "joined in progress" that day by the CBC), as I raced to set up my audiocassette machine to do the audiotape-recording of the episode. Within less than twenty seconds, my apparatus was capturing the sounds of Space: 1999 as Tony Cellini was in his living quarters experiencing some swirling lights and the familiar sound of the monster. I beheld the main Space: 1999 introduction bearing the "This Episode" rapid cuts of "Dragon's Domain" scenes, my first time of seeing that. And then, CHSJ went to commercials.
My parents, in our kitchen cleaning the dishes, were stunned by the sudden euphoria and hurried actions of their son together with the familiar music of Space: 1999. "What in blazes is going on?" they were asking. "What the heck is Space: 1999 doing on, on Sunday evening?" My mother minutes later speaking to me her advice that I count my blessing in being given an unexpected opportunity to see Space: 1999 as we watched together the crew of the Ultra Probeship working aboard their spacecraft as it approached the planet Ultra and subsequently a particular spaceship in a strange cluster of spacefaring vessels.
I was scarcely any braver then than I had been on November 12, when the monster scenes were earlier screened on televisions in Canada. But I did have a sight or two of the monster extending tentacles towards its human feed. My mother remarked an aghast statement or two as the monster devoured crew members of the Ultra Probe, and shuddered as she heard it screaming like a banshee as it proceeded to procure its "din-dins".
It must have been exceedingly gratifying to followers of Space: 1999 in northern Nova Scotia with access to CHSJ-TV in addition to CBHT (or CBCT), to have seen "Dragon's Domain" on CBHT (or CBCT) on May 6, 1978, and then have occasion to see it again, on July 16 of same year, on CHSJ. Those people where so very lucky to receive both CBHT (or CBCT) and CHSJ. Such a distinction might have included me if we had continued living in Douglastown and I was able to pull CBCT into our living room as I did on Saturday, August 13, 1977.
For as long as I live, I will never forget the morning following July 16, 1978, an overcast one on Linden Crescent, as David B. was as unbelieving of my account of seeing Space: 1999- "Dragon's Domain" the evening before, as Helena was of Cellini's story of the monster in the episode. Until Mike J. emerged from his house and joined us in the driveway of Eric and said, "Hey, Kevin. Space: 1999 was on Walt Disney last night." Exact quotation. Those were Mike's words, as David's incredulity dropped to the pavement beneath our feet. I had a corroborating witness, though Mike was not strictly correct in his statement. Walt Disney was preempted; Walt Disney had not offered an episode of Space: 1999 as part of its television season episode line-up. But Mike's statement "backed up" my testimony. And I had audiotape-recorded evidence also, though David never did listen to that. There are times when I wonder if he was much of a staunch follower of Space: 1999 at all, or if Space: 1999 (Season 1 only, of course) had just been a passing fancy that had already largely passed before he met me.
This past week, I continued my work on adding images to my Weblog's incarnations. Now that I am on vacation, I propose to have a "break" of some considerable length from Website work in addition to time away from my job. I am not planning to desist from Website updates and Weblog entries for the full five weeks of my vacation; I will probably be back to my endeavours at kevinmccorrytv.ca sometime within the next two weeks.
The BBC has announced another Doctor Who Blu-Ray box set in THE COLLECTION range for 2022. Release date is purported to be mid-September, though nothing official has been said in such regard. It is Season 20. The second of the seasons with Peter Davison as the Doctor. It includes the Johnny Byrne-penned "Arc of Infinity". Johnny Byrne was late of Space: 1999 when he wrote for Doctor Who. Terrance Dicks, a long-time steady hand in the Doctor Who scriptwriting offices, scribed "The Five Doctors", which closed Season 20. Terrance Dicks, who wrote Space: 1999- "The Lambda Factor". Space: 1999 thespians in Season 20 Doctor Who included Paul Jerricho and Isla Blair and Patrick Troughton (as the Second Doctor in "The Five Doctors"). I like most of the Season 20 Doctor Who stories, especially "Arc of Infinity" (which is routinely berated by Doctor Who fans), "Mawdryn Undead", "Enlightenment", and "The Five Doctors", and do wholeheartedly welcome the new Blu-Ray box set of Doctor Who. Here is an image of it.
U.S. Vice-President Kamala Harris said that reducing population is a goal of her administration and then asserts that she misspoke when she used the word, population. That she intended to say, pollution. Maybe so. But it was a "Freudian slip", I would say. I would say that population reduction as a goal is the truth and her subconscious had her stating it, when she intended to say something else. It is the only credible explanation for the continuing promotion of an injection causing cardiovascular damage, autoimmune damage, et cetera, to say nothing of unknown long-term effects. An injection causing death. More unexpected deaths this month include that of an NFL player, one Paul Duncan. Of cardiac arrest. As usual, no mention of the enormous elephant in the room. I so need for this world to stop so that I can "get off", provided that I have a spaceship and a place to go, far, far away from the folly of my fellow humans who just cannot let go of the totalitarian impulse, not even with the lessons of history sitting there in copious texts on the shelves in huge libraries.
Rodney Palmer appeared for a second time at the National Citizens Inquiry on the subject of CBC propaganda. Here is the Hyperlink to it.
Again, I urge my readers to watch the video and to share it.
All for today.
Monday, July 17, 2023.
I have added some pictures of Sesame Street to my Era 2 memoirs. They are pictures of an animated cartoon segment of many a Sesame Street episode, known as "E Imagination" ("E e. See me. Eating a peach. Sitting on an eagle. Chasing a beagle. To the Queen on her knee by the sea."), and Ernie counting noisy sheep. I have always loved "E Imagination", and its nostalgia-triggering power today is formidable. Very, very formidable.
Cloudy and rainy, this morning is. Why am I writing "Yoda-speak"?
I expect summer to work its magic at sparking many flashbacks to olden days and profound levels of most heartfelt nostalgia. Once I am away from the responsibilities of work for a few days, this process can be expected to begin. It wouldst be nice to have some pleasant weather, but nostalgia does not require that. Indeed, sometimes a wistful mood and nostalgia arising out of such, can be fostered very effectively by a string of grey and rainy days.
And if I scroll speedily through an era of my autobiography, my sensory intake of all of the rapidly manifest visualisations, triggers some part of my brain to cause me to feel momentarily like I am back in those past times. Back with my parents. Back with friends. Back in my younger body. Back before my country fell to the J.T. "regime". Back when I felt safe, my rights protected.
I will grant that it is probably tiresome to my readers, for me to keep opining on the political situation in Canada. But I cannot put it out of my mind. I feel an existential dread, a nerve-racking foreboding, a primal fear that the horrors of totalitarianism are on their way to the world just outside my door. Designating some "othered" underclass and then condemning it, questioning whether it should be tolerated, "smacks" of the totalitarian states of the twentieth century's first half. Somehow, deep in my subconscious, even at an age when I was too young to understand the ideologies of political parties, I knew that the Liberals were trouble. I despised the federal Liberals since before I was age thirteen, watching the election in 1979. I could not cogently articulate even to myself why I did. I had an antipathy for the P.M. of 1968-to-1984. The man on whose name the current P.M. pinned his electoral bid in 2015. By my late teenage years, I was leery of the policies being pursued by what I know today as the "Laurentian elite". I also always thought that the a in the word, vaccinated, sounded unsettlingly identical to the a in fascism. And I remarked about such from time to time. People in my life likely thought I was "nuts". I wonder if they still think this way. Oh, probably. They are probably J.T. "junkies". There are an awful lot of such persons around. It is why Canada is in the mess that it is in, sadly.
For now, I have the past to which to escape for five weeks. And I intend to go for that. I will proceed with my usual summertime visits to places of my upbringing, including those in the Miramichi region, and I will watch many Blu-Rays and DVDs of entertainments of my past life eras. I believe that I will today watch Space: 1999- "The Immunity Syndrome", in commemoration of my viewing of it in English on 15 July, 1977 and in French on 22 July, 1977.
This is all for today.
It is the last day of July, 2023. And the start of my third week of a five-week vacation from my job.
It has not been a vacation from work on my Website, however. I have continued adding images to my Weblog's first four incarnations. I have added images and rememberings of Sesame Street to my Era 2 memoirs, along with some references, in those rememberings, to the 1972 animated cartoon television special, Dig, and the cartoons of Warner Brothers. And I have improved vastly on the images heading my articles on "Hyde and Hare", Bugs' 1955 cartoons, and the Tweety and Sylvester cartoons. Indeed, the Virgil Ross limited edition cel, "Scare Hare", has never looked so gorgeous on my Website as it now does on "Hyde and Hare": An Overlooked Masterpiece.
I am sharing on my Facebook Web page every episode of Cosmos 1999 in High Definition, someone at YouTube having mated the Cinelume Productions French audio with the High Definition video from the Network Distributing Blu-Rays. I am sharing one episode each weekday over the course of the summer. I have completed my provision of Season 1 and am proceeding today with the start of Season 2. Oh, that horrible season that everyone who is anyone, deplores and subjects to daily denunciation. My friends on Facebook prefer to neither comment on nor "like-click" anything to do with Space: 1999 that I choose to post. I think that they long ago opted to just ignore anything I put forth to them involving that television show of long ago that mainstream populations have forgotten. Why, then, do I continue to post the material? That is a good question. Forlorn hope, I guess, that someone might finally at least acknowledge that my allegiance of so many years to an entertainment of my youth, is something meriting some positive recognition.
There can be no question as to the power of my nostalgia for the time of my life in which I was introduced to Space: 1999 and when my interest in it burgeoned, amidst the backdrop of beautiful Douglastown, New Brunswick, and amongst a largely appreciative following of it (and its second season, mainly) in that village along the river Miramichi. Douglastown of September, 1976 to August, 1977, was where and when I saw every episode of Space: 1999's second season and where and when my awareness of first season Space: 1999 emerged, with broadcasts of episodes of that first season in French, plus the novelisations of them. I now regard late 1976 and the first half, at least, of 1977 as that time in my life that was closest to ideal. Culminating in the last day of school that June, on which my friend, David F., and I taught space and astral bodies, to the Grade 4 and 5 classes of our school. I had more friends then than I ever have had at any other time. The occasional bad day aside (nothing is perfect in this world), I was happy. The things that I liked were popular, as was I along with them. Would this have lasted if I had stayed there? For how long would it have lasted? I do not know. But nonetheless, it is the one time of my life that I now crave to "get back to", to rejoin and "carry on" with living.
So far this vacation, I have been back in Douglastown a couple of times. And this year, with my sentiment for 1976 and 1977 being so strong, so very strong, I am appreciating being back there more than I have in quite a long time, despite the continuing "thinning out" of my old surroundings. More trees gone. More houses gone. Happily, there are vast fields and woodlands same as they used to be, in parts of Douglastown, including a blend of field and trees a short distance up the Williston Road, to the right of the road and stretching to the hill down to Hutchinson Brook.
And it is so divinely quiet there. Peaceful. None of the persistent sound of emergency vehicles such as that heard in Fredericton. I cannot go for a walk in Fredericton without my ears being blasted and my nerves jangled by the sound of paramedic and ambulance sirens. Douglastown is sparsely populated. This must be why I can find some respite there from all too audible reminders of the accursed post-2020 world. Why are so many people so confounded trusting of the news media? Have they no "gut feelings" at all that something is not right in what the anchor-people are saying, in the blatant lack of both-sides-of-story, objective reporting, in clear refusal to acknowledge reality post-"roll-out"-of-a-certain-injection? I need to escape from the craziness. Even if just for the short while when I can go back in space (alas not time) to where I had my best days.
And I despise it, I will always despise it, when people would sully my fondness for those best days, with assaults upon the television show most prominent in my life then, and the season of it that was being broadcast in English on CBC Television to my great appreciation and that of my friends then. Yes, even though I no longer look at most of the Space: 1999 fan discussion on Facebook, my eyes are occasionally accosted by the invective toward Season 2 and Mr. Freiberger, at other places on the World Wide Web. Beneath a YouTube video, in which there was the usual barrage of one person after another assailing everything coming after "The Testament of Arkadia", someone actually came to the defence of Season 2, saying that he preferred it for its pacing, its action. The hostility received from the preeminent ones for this, was swift. Along the lines of, "You want action, go watch The Dukes of Hazzard. That's more up your alley, dummy." What a bunch of pig's swill! I loved Season 2 Space: 1999 and hated The Dukes of Hazzard. Not all action television is alike. And science fiction/fantasy can have action and still be meaningful, stimulating of the higher brain functions, while still entertaining with fast-paced incidents enhanced with energetic music. What about the action in the Star Wars movies? What about that? Is that the same as the action in The Dukes of Hazzard? No. It is space-based. It has mythological dimensions. And nor is the action of the second season episodes of Space: 1999- Season 2 the same as what is in The Dukes of Hazzard. The action of Space: 1999 is occurring on alien worlds or within technological Moonbase Alpha. Not in some American South "hick town". There is no recurring arch-villain like Boss Hogg, to be foiled again in the latest car chase with twangy guitar music. And to be clear, it is not that I dislike car chases. In James Bond movies, in the espionage world of the Double-O agents, they are sublimely enjoyable. This is down to the writing of the matters at stake, the credible portrayal of James Bond in mortal peril, and the exquisitely dynamic music of John Barry. But I am digressing. Action and meaningful and/or imagination-capturing story are not mutually exclusive. Only a blinkered idiot would argue so. And I am dealing with blinkered idiots. The same sort of people who say that everyone to the political Right of J.T. is a fascist- and all of the other usual i, s, and t words. "Only a Sith deals in absolutes," said Obi-Wan in one of the Star Wars prequels. Indeed. It is not slow-paced and talky and deliberate always intellectually good and action and fast pace always intellectually devoid. But I am dealing with blinkered idiots. And they are legion on the Internet, saying that Catherine Schell ruined (or the word starting with an f followed by up) Space: 1999 on a discussion "thread" meant to celebrate her birthday, or stating "Fred Freiberger show-killer" whenever someone has a positive comment on a third season Star Trek episode (I was wrong about Star Trek fans; they, or a sizable percentage of them, still are of loutish closed-mindedness with regard to the Freiberger season of Star Trek). So few people are able to see through the haze of tired, tired old vitriol and recognise the merit in what was brought to film under the producership of the man named Fred, and acknowledge that what ultimately happened to Star Trek, Space: 1999, and The Six Million Dollar Man cannot rationally be left at the feet of one man. One man who did have incontrovertible success with his work in other efforts.
Enough for today. Back to my vacation.
Wednesday, August 9, 2023.
My vacation continues. So far, I have gone to Miramichi City twice this vacation and am planning to do so one more time. The weather, however, after being bright, blue, and fair for some while, is becoming less and less reliably sunny. I am hoping to go to my old home region for that third time this coming weekend. I have also done my usual round of revisits of Fredericton locations of past significance to me. Skyline Acres, of course. Where my grandparents lived. Saunders Street, also where my grandparents resided. Fredericton High School and surrounding areas, including my routes of old to Wendy's, Burger King, and McDonald's. University of New Brunswick campus, and on it the Harriet Irving Library, and Tilley, Carleton, and MacLaggan Halls, in which the bulk of my classrooms of my Bachelor of Arts years were situated. The Seminar Room for most of my third-year and fourth-year History courses was open, and I entered it and walked around, remembering times of long ago when I was in there. Times of long ago when my parents were living and I was young and decidedly less cynical than I now am. Alas, the English classroom in Carleton Hall on third floor, which used to be open for me to sit in and remember the olden days of my first university year, Mondays, Wednesdays, Fridays on whose afternoons my English class completed my day's schedule and my father was awaiting me in the Bookstore parking lot to bring me home around 3:30, is now sealed with a combination lock. I like to retrace as many of those first year steps as I can whenever I am back at University New Brunswick for a summertime visit. Now, there is one place into which I definitely cannot go.
I went to Lake George where my grandparents' cottage used to be and did a walkabout there on trails and roads on which I was the only person, with near perfect quiet as I moved about, the nearest highway being some ten kilometres distant. And I visited the family grave site for my parents, grandparents, and great grandparents, on Woodstock Road.
And I have also eaten at restaurants many times this vacation. Miramichi City's A & W, Harvey's, and Swiss Chalet, and the Portage Restaurant adjacent what used to be C.F.B. Chatham. Fredericton's Ramada restaurant (which used to be called Paddles), Pizza Delight on Prospect Street, Mary Brown's Fried Chicken, and Swiss Chalet. I am trying to avoid going to southside Fredericton as much as I can, as the construction zones there and in parts of Fredericton North approaching the bridges to the south side of the city, are making going anywhere in a reasonable amount of time, next to impossible.
I am striving to make the most of my vacation time this year, because I have an uneasy feeling that life is going to become difficult over the next twelve months.
It is definitely looking like collectors of Blu-Ray and DVD are going to be facing an era of ever diminishing product. Fewer-and-farther-between releases of items of interest, and more and more out-of-print Blu-Rays and DVDs. The Season 20 Blu-Ray box set of Doctor Who has not as yet been assigned a release date, three releases in DOCTOR WHO- THE COLLECTION this year are looking increasingly unlikely, and fans of Doctor Who are beginning to write of there ultimately not being a full set of COLLECTIONs and opining that emphasis be given on releasing particular seasons, before the COLLECTION range dies. Network Distributing is no more. SONY in Australia has discontinued distributing Blu-Rays there. An American Blu-Ray replication plant has closed, meaning that production runs at other facilities tend to be backlogged, slowing releases down by some considerable margin. The Russia-Ukraine War has for some reason limited Blu-Ray manufacture in Poland, and that is, I think, where the Doctor Who Blu-Rays are replicated. It is all a "perfect storm" for heralding the end of physical media. And is it "own nussing und be happy" next?
Whilst I have been on my vacation, some people have been trying to contact me. By telephone. I feel that I ought to mention that if I hear my telephone ring in such a way as to indicate a long-distance telephone call, my inclination is not to go racing to the back room of my house to lift the receiver and answer the call. Especially if I am in the middle of preparing a meal, eating a meal, or readying to go outside for a walk. Or about to have a bath or to answer the call of nature. As it is, forty-nine times out of fifty, the long-distance telephone calls are junk. Telemarketers. And so forth. I am unlikely to receive a long-distance telephone call from extended family, and my friends prefer to use Facebook, if indeed they wish to communicate with me at all. Most do not. In summation, I say that if a long-distance telephone call comes into my home, my tendency is not to answer it. Though I may sometime later look at caller identification, out of curiosity. And usually, it was a waste of my time doing that. Telemarketer. Or a notation of, "likely spam". Even local telephone calls I tend not to answer, if I do not recognise the caller's name and telephone number. And most of the time, I do not.
The people trying to reach me are from the Space: 1999 fan movement. I have learned this from a Facebook message. Astonishingly, they had me in mind to write some liner notes for some Space: 1999 fiftieth anniversary product. Me. The lowly exile. The Destroyer. The person so hated by fans in general that to this day his Web page for Space: 1999, his Space: 1999 chronology proposals, and his Space: 1999 CBC broadcast history data, have gone unread by them. Anyway, after trying unsuccessfully to reach me by telephone, the people interested in my involvement in their project, decided to go for someone else. I wonder who. Apparently, they now consider it more prudent to do so. If I was at home when they telephoned (I am not sure that I was) and did answer the telephone call, I would have declined their invitation, as I have no wish to enter into the line of fire again, which is certain to be the outcome of any renewed involvement of me in the Space: 1999 fan movement. I am quite sure that the fans are in near unanimity in not wishing to see my name on any product for their beloved television show. Why argue with that? Let the fans have their fifty year celebration with the people they choose to include in it, and with the biases that they will hew to for ther rest of their born days. I wish the aforementioned people joy of it, in whatever it is that they are doing for Space: 1999 at fifty years. Maybe I will purchase it, if I am given the option of doing so. And if the product is respectful of both seasons. But it is best that I stay clear of involvement in any Space: 1999 fan project. And that I stay clear of Space: 1999 fandom in general. I certainly no longer have my parents for moral support when the usual acrimonious outcome happens. And I do wish to be clear. My opinion of the Space: 1999 fan movement and its leadership of thirty years ago and of recent time, has not changed. What brushes that I have un-communicatively, "trollingly" had in the past few years with Space: 1999 discussions on the Internet, in almost no time at all have had me sighing, chafing, saying, "Oh, give me a break!" and reaching for the click function of my computer mouse poised atop an upper-right-corner X. Rapprochement for me and the fan following of Space: 1999 and certain of its leaders, is just not possible. And I should stay well out of it, the fan following.
I give thanks to these people for considering me. Sadly, I doubt that their consideration of me would be appreciated by the fans at large, or by my adversaries and erstwhile chums of long ago. I would rather not put myself in that arena. My writings on Space: 1999 and on my history with it, are here at this Website, and will continue to be so until such time as government decrees that I "own nussing" and that I be "happy" (not!).
Still no news about a second volume of LOONEY TUNES COLLECTOR'S CHOICE, though there is plenty of discussion on the subject at the Blu-Ray.com Forum. It is definitely still "flavour of the day" there. For what that may be worth.
More images have been added to my Era 3 and Era 4 memoirs. Images of Le Mutant, Eight is Enough, Return of the Saint, Star Trek, and Invasion: UFO. Plus a new paragraph remembering Return of the Saint. I have also further upped the image content of past incarnations of my Weblog.
All for today.
Monday, the fourteenth of August, 2023.
I went to Miramichi City again on Saturday this past weekend. While there, I walked around the former town of Newcastle, including a lengthy perambulation along the sidewalks of Old King George Highway and Pleasant Street. I had a chicken strip basket at Newcastle Dairy Queen before moving onward to the former village of Douglastown and my home area in the middle part of Douglastown through which the Hutchinson Brook flows. After I disembarked my automobile parked alongside St. Samuel's Church hall, I began my usual walk along the road between my old home's backyard and the hall, and on the right side of the hall, in a driveway there very close to the driveway of my old friend, Michael, there was parked a vehicle from which someone was removing a small chest to carry into the hall. I recognised the person almost instantly, and for a second I could not believe my eyes. Could it be? It is! There just a few feet away from me was my old friend, Ev (Evie). I called out his name, and he looked in my direction, unsure for a second who I was. When I said my name, he expressed surprise and pleasure at seeing me. It must have been very strange indeed for him to be there in such close proximity to where I used to live, where he used to visit me, and then to see me just appear there in front of the back of my old place, calling out his name. It must have felt to him like something out of a dream. We talked for a good fifteen minutes, at least. About our lives as they currently are. Our health. How we were coping with our mutual advancing years. We talked some about work. We remembered some of our respective experiences in junior and senior high school. We even talked for a few minutes about movies and television, specifically horror movies of the 1970s and 1980s and the original Twilight Zone television series. Ev had some work to do to do some set-up for wedding reception entertainment inside the hall (that was how he came to be there so fortuitiously on a specific Saturday afternoon in August of 2023), and we parted. I could not believe my luck. With my Karmic curse, "lucky breaks" in social life are so rare, so very rare, that when they do happen, I am in awe of them. What were the chances of my "running into" Ev in the small window of time that I was back in Douglastown? Very slim, one would say. And yet, it happened. It happened some months after I was lamenting on this very Weblog the unlikelihood of ever seeing an old friend again. Almost as if it was delivered to me on my request, delivered to me by God, in answer to my expressed need of a reconnect with an old friend from my years of youth, with one of people in the world who knew me back in the day when my parents were living and I was a wide-eyed youngster. The fifteen minutes or so that I spent with Ev have rejuvenated my spirit to some significant degree. I so needed to be with someone from my past. One of the only people who are like kin to me, in my only-child condition. Old friends. And it does need to be in person, as it was back in the old days. So long ago. Interacting on Facebook is no substitute for that.
And for the first time in many years, I really do have a sense of fulfillment in my summer vacation. And its rejuvenating effects on my morale and my "drive" to continue with life as it is for me, are palpable. It is what I need, what I always need, to nourish my spirit, my soul. Social bonding. Comradeship. Being with someone whom I was with in my formative years, the tender and impressionable years of childhood. As it is with sibling-endowed people in the company of brother(s) and/or sister(s). I had been denied this so much, so very, very much for so very, very long a time, that it is like an oasis in a most arid and expansive desert. Not that I expect most people to understand this, of course. Certainly not the people who would judge me after not walking even a millimetre in my shoes, much less a kilometre, or mile (I have not forgotten Imperial measurements; I never will- just as I will never forget all other phenomena of my early years on this Earth).
One phenomenon of one of those years, 1977, was the first serial of a British television series called The Tomorrow People. It was a five-part serial called "The Slaves of Jedikiah", and told of a boy, Stephen Jameson, who was just the fourth Tomorrow Person, or telepath, of twentieth century Earth, to experience "break out" of telepathic abilities. "The Slaves of Jedikiah" was about Stephen's journey from being the average boy on a London street to becoming a super-powered Tomorrow Person capable of "jaunting" (i.e. teleporting), communicating through thought transference, and moving objects with power of the mind, as he meets the three other Tomorrow People to have "broken out", contends with an antagonist, the bearded Jedikiah, determined to exploit his telepathic abilities for some ostensibly sinister purpose, and heroically joins the ranks of his telepathic peers. The Stephen character would be the central focus of viewer attention and identification as The Tomorrow People moved through its first three seasons. The one whose journey as a Tomorrow Person began with the audience's first glimpses of a world in which humans are evolving into "Homo superior" and battling threats to their existence, either from Earthlings or from aliens from outer space.
Stephen was played by a Peter Vaughan-Clarke, who, together with Nicholas Young (of Space: 1999's "The Bringers of Wonder" two-part episode), were the male leading actors of The Tomorrow People through most of its most laudable serials, of Seasons 1, 2, and 3. Nicholas Young played John, the most senior of the Tomorrow People. I saw the balance of the entirety of The Tomorrow People later in my life, by way of a run of it on YTV in 1988-9 and its release on DVD in the 2000s. The Tomorrow People is a favourite television series of mine, though admittedly not in the top tier of my preferred opuses on the television airwaves. The production values do "let the side down" fairly frequently; it, like Doctor Who, is a somewhat less than fully satisfying blend of filmed and videotaped material; and the serials of the last three or four seasons are rather hit-and-miss in their ideas. I think that if I had seen more of it in my most impressionable pre-teenage years, I would have more appreciation of it and affection for it than I do. But it is a production that I do treasure. I think of "The Slaves of Jedikiah" every time that I am in Newcastle in the residential area past the train station as one goes up hill on what is now called Newcastle Boulevard (formerly Prince William Street), because I was in one of the houses there on the Friday afternoon in spring of 1977 when part two of "The Slaves of Jedikiah" aired at 4:30. And outside that house for a short time afterwords, before my mother came to conduct me to our home in Douglastown. It was the house of a colleague of my mother's, as I recall, wherein I was watching Stephen being rescued from Jedikiah's lair, by John and company. I remember thinking that Jedikiah was played by the same bearded actor who was Dr. Shaw in Space: 1999's "The Bringers of Wonder". I think that it was after seeing the end credits for part two of "The Slaves of Jedikiah" that I learned that it was not the Dr. Shaw actor, Patrick Westwood, in the Jedikiah role, but Francis de Wolff. For some reason, I had missed seeing Mr. de Wolff credited in "The Slaves of Jedikiah: Pt. 1".
Why am I remembering The Tomorrow People now, today, in this Weblog entry? I learned on Saturday after returning to home from Miramichi City, that Peter Vaughan-Clarke, the actor of Stephen, has died. Cause of death unknown. He would not have been anywhere close to maximum life expectancy age. Though he played a child of twelve years of age in The Tomorrow People's first season whose first serial was seen for the first time by me at age eleven, he was not close to being a contemporary of mine. And he was not a Generation Xer. He was in his mid-teenage years when he started playing Stephen, and "The Slaves of Jedikiah" was made in 1973. In 1977, he was probably an adult. He was born in the late 1950s, making him a Baby Boomer. Still, all of this said, I feel a sense of having lost a person with whom I feel an identification, his character in The Tomorrow People being the one with whom I was expected to relate. And I did. Whatever his age, his death is way too early. I watched "The Slaves of Jedikiah" last evening in commemoration of him. Rest in peace, Peter Vaughan-Clarke. Below is a set of five images of front covers of Tomorrow People DVDs, including the DVD of "The Slaves of Jedikiah", that I viewed in my home theatre last evening. I am possessor of every one of the DVDs of Tomorrow People. I bought each of them as they were released in the U.K. in the 2000s by Revelation Films. Peter Vaughan-Clarke as Stephen can be seen on the front cover to the DVD of the serial, "A Rift in Time", that is fourth image from left.
Happily, all of the Revelation Films Tomorrow People DVDs are still in print, if anyone is interested in acquiring some of them, or a complete set. Multi-region DVD playback is required for them, though. They are Region 2 and in PAL. A & E in the United States did release Region 1 NTSC DVDs of The Tomorrow People in the mid-2000s, but they are long out-of-print, and I am not sure that every serial was included in that release. And they were lacking most of the bonus content of the Revelation Films DVDs, including the vast majority of the audio commentaries done by Nicholas Young, Peter Vaughan-Clarke, and others. I never bothered buying the A & E Tomorrow People DVDs, having already purchased most of the Revelation Films DVDs before the first A & E DVDs of The Tomorrow People began appearing on my side of the Atlantic.
While I am the subject of out-of-print items, I have some news to report on as regards a certain range of Space: 1999 merchandise. Sad news, to be sure. In a surprise move, ITV, formerly Granada, has denied a licence renewal to Powys Media for Space: 1999 book publication, specifically a range of original novels, reprises (with some modification) of old original novels of the 1970s penned by E.C. Tubb and John Rankine, and Space: 1999 Year One Omnibus and Space: 1999 Year Two Omnibus (comprising the writing of Messrs. Tubb and Rankine, and Brian Ball and Michael Butterworth) output by Powys Media over the past twenty years or so. ITV has not commented on why it decided as it did, and I do not imagine that it will. It is under no obligation to do so. Speculation is abounding among fans of Space: 1999 commenting on this surprise move. Speculation that ITV wishes to have an exclusive agreement with a publishing company of its choosing, one in the U.K., perhaps, to publish some books in recognition of Space: 1999's fiftieth anniversary. But this is only wishful thinking, in my estimation. At this time, anyway- until other information comes to light. Maybe ITV just reckoned a twenty year contract with Powys to have been quite enough, and perhaps wishes not to be burdened with it any further. There is a burden in any contract, the output of which needing to be monitored to be sure of continued compliance with terms and conditions. Maybe ITV just wishes not to be concerned any longer about it.
As I say, it is a sad development. I have my issues with decisions made by Powys for its "take" on the Space: 1999 universe and have made some of those known on my Weblog at times in the past. I have not bought every Powys Space: 1999 book. Indeed, of the paperback original novels, I have only two. The Forsaken and Survival, which reveal Powys' approach to reconciling the differences in, and offering explanation for the disappearance of certain characters between, Season 1 and Season 2. I have disagreement with some of what is proposed, though I do laud the writers for making an effort to bridge the two seasons in their own way. I do, however, believe the two huge Omnibus books to be things of beauty. I treasure them on my shelf. And unless they are removed from me by the World Economic Forum and its stooges in Canadian politics, I always will treasure them. Oh, I expect that they will cost a pretty penny indeed on eBay and other Internet auction Websites like that in years to come. If indeed they will be findable at all at such locations in Cyberspace.
There is also some speculation that ITV may be starting a trend of denying licences for Space: 1999 material to anyone requesting such. This is possible, though it is probably too early to conclusively say so. Big Finish still has the rights to Space: 1999, I believe. As does Gerry Anderson Entertainment. And, as regards Blu-Ray and DVD, Shout! Factory and ViaVision (Imprint). I sure do hope so. Of course, the licencing agreements may not be due for renewal (or non-renewal) for some while yet. However, it has to be acknowledged that the Space: 1999 community of appreciators is currently looking at a darker phase for Space: 1999 in the commercial sphere. Network Distributing is no more, and Network's Space: 1999 Blu-Rays will no longer be in manufacture. Space: 1999- The Vault is no longer in print. And now this. Not exactly a direction of decision that one would expect to witness in the lead-up to the fiftieth anniversary of the Space: 1999 television programme. But is the fiftieth anniversary judged to be of any import, any significance, any lucrative value, whatsoever, by the powers-that-be at ITV? It may not be.
I will of course be following each of these developments, to wherever it is that they may be meant to bring us. But my advice to people is that if they want any of the Space: 1999 merchandise currently on the not-second-hand market, to buy what they can while they can. I now have six of the Imprint Blu-Ray sets. I wonder if this is enough- in case "Blu-ray rot" becomes a routine thing, or some wider catastrophe befalls me, "wiping out" my worldly possessions. One cannot have too many back-ups, stored in different places, of something no longer being manufactured. And I know how unfortunate my life can be where Space: 1999 is concerned.
I have more to say, including a revisit of my stance with regard to the "Mysterious Unknown Force" of Season 1 Space: 1999. I need to qualify, if not retract, statements that I made some while ago on the idea of there being an "arc" including several episodes. After urging people to be more open-minded about patterning, correspondence between episodes, symbolisms, etc, across the given timeline of Season 2, all of that inadvertent on the part of makers of the television programme, I ought not to be bellicose in my handling of the notion of an "arc" in Season 1, whether that "arc" be fully intentional, partly intentional, or not intentional at all. I hope in my rejuvenated morale of late to address this subject in a more positive frame of mind than I had toward it at times in this Weblog's history. But not today. I have been tapping my computer keyboard's keys for more than two hours now. It is time to move on to other items on my schedule for today. Another time, then. Another time, but not another place. I shall be at my computer again doing my next Weblog entry sometime later this week.
All for today, then.
Wednesday, August 16, 2023.
Before I launch into the promised revisiting of my stance on the "Mysterious Unknown Force", I propose to address the matter of change in my writings over time. I cannot say that anything in my mindset is static, because life certainly is not static. Experience informs one's attitudes. Sometimes effecting change to no small degree. At least it should, if one is not utterly intransigent, mind closed and sealed permanently. My writings cover such a vast expanse of time and experience. A huge chunk of a lifetime from pre-school to late fifties. There are bound to be some tectonic shifts in how I see certain things. Staying on the subject of Space: 1999, I began my following of it with favour for Season 2 then preferring Season 1 for several years before coming back in the late 1980s to appreciating Season 2 more than Season 1. The last of these was a result of surging nostalgia combined with meeting Dean and having my awareness of the aesthetic quality of Season 2 given huge "shots" of adrenalin. And to this day nobody has given to me reason to repudiate that awareness and hop onto the Season 1-preferring bandwagon which has become caustic, to say the least, in its momentum in reviling second season and its producer, and deriding anyone bold enough to express a considered positive point of view of it. And I doubt very much at this point in time that anyone ever will give to me such reason. But I have changed my mind in the past as regards preference for one of the seasons of Space: 1999.
And goodness knows, my opinion on the move from Douglastown to Fredericton has gone back and forth from disfavour to favour to disfavour for it. My assessment of certain persons in Fredericton whom I considered friends, has gone through changes, also.
What I am saying, as a lead-in to today's "business", is that my autobiography, first written in 1997 and then rewritten almost entirely in 2005 and subsequently updated numerous times, and this Weblog spanning the years between 2007 and the present, by necessity contains inconsistency. Because my outlook on the world and my thinking on numerous subjects, is constantly evolving, having to incorporate new experiences, new challenges to old attitudes or beliefs, epiphanies about people, things, life. There are bound to be things said by me at some point in time that are upended, with a one hundred and eighty degree turn in my bearing on a subject. No one of any humility stays the same in his or her mindset all through life. Narcissists will, I suppose. But, then, humility in them is lacking. Perhaps utterly. People who pull chin into a stiff neck and pridefully proclaim, "Well, I don't care what anyone says. I still think this way about such-and-such. I am always right, of course, and if I say from the outset and continue to say that such-and-such is trash, then it is so, and you're wrong." The capacity exists for me to do a reappraisal of any work, in the presence of information in that work's favour. Mere opinion, even that of a majority, is not sufficient to sway me. I need more than that. And telling me that what I like and see merit in, is garbage, or that someone involved in the making of it has a vehemently negative opinion of it, is just going to "rub me the wrong way". And if someone, or a group, has only blinkered opinion to put forth, no way will I be swayed. I might even, if feeling beleaguered, retaliate with a fault-finding exercise. As I did with that infamous column in a newsletter in the mid-1990s.
All right. Enough preamble.
The "Mysterious Unknown Force" of Season 1 Space: 1999. Said by many a fan of the Space: 1999 television programme to have been the object of a "story arc" threading through several episodes, a preponderance of them, even, through some masterful conscious design on the part of the team of writers and the Andersons who "set out" to make an artistic epic of Biblical proportions. A grandiose assertion in the view of any person situated outside of the following of Space: 1999, one ought to reasonably expect. Many fans contend that it was the "story arc" of the "Mysterious Unknown Force" that made them fall in love with the television programme and, in having discovered that "arc" all by themselves, they are therefore supremely astute geniuses who are right in their negative assessment of the later season. Right to besmirch the name of Fred Freiberger for forty-some years. Right to turn that name into a pejorative, in perpetuity, for his having wilfully abandoned the "arc". And right to look down nose at, berate, "gaslight", and generally treat like human refuse anyone who objects to their dismissals of Season 2 as garbage or excrement and their assertions that Freiberger eliminated all that made Space: 1999 a grabber of the public imagination.
They claim that it was the "Mysterious Unknown Force" and only that, for which the television show had appeal to them, for why they "tuned in" each week. They wanted to see each week what the "Mysterious Unknown Force" was going to do for the Alphans. That was the "draw" of Space: 1999 for them at their ages of ten, eleven, twelve. So they say. Not the hardware. Not the "cool" spaceships, guns, communicators. Not the special effects of Brian Johnson and his team. Not the reconnaissances to alien worlds depicted through the imaginative production design of Keith Wilson. Not the acting of Landau and Bain and the relationship of Koenig and Russell. Nothing that spanned both seasons of the television series. No. Only the "Mysterious Unknown Force" of Season 1. That and only that. And they are such geniuses to have discerned the presence of a "story arc", and in their having fancied Space: 1999 for that "story arc". And so do they have every right to be disdainful forever of Season 2 for it having abandoned it, and to condemn Fred Freiberger with the vilest of vituperations decades after his death, and declare mentally unsound anyone who dares defend "Freddie the F."
I am afraid that my opinion of the "Mysterious Unknown Force" can be coloured, jaundiced, by my resentment of its weaponisation by fans of preference for Season 1 Space: 1999 against anyone who favours second season or at least loves Season 2 as much as he or she does Season 1. It is the foundation of the intractable obnoxious arrogance of the Space: 1999 Season 1 pundits against which I have been positioned, and from which I have received so much invalidation and rejection. I cannot help but be inclined to feel resentful of it. I have said before and will say one more time that it had no bearing, none whatsoever, on my assessment of Space: 1999 in the years (1976, 1977, 1978) when I first saw the forty-eight episodes and became enamoured with the television series, Seasons 2 and 1 both. When I first saw the "Mysterious Unknown Force" being "pointed out", by David Hirsch in Starlog, I thought it "cool". I was prepared to embrace and respect it. Any new analysis of my favourite television series that casts it in the capacity of art form, was most welcome. But again, my burgeoning affection for Space: 1999, my particular personal history in conjunction with it, was not founded on any recognition of a "story arc" touching many episodes of first season. Impressions of an aesthetic nature on Season 2, yes. Very much so. Fancy for the characters, tunics, jackets, guns, commlocks, Eagles, technology, and so much more. The concepts and depictions of the episodes of both seasons. "Dragon's Domain". Et cetera. My Boy Meets Alpha memoirs expound in full detail on how Space: 1999 grabbed me and made me a fan of it. Never was a "story arc" of "Mysterious Unknown Force" a factor in that.
And I just do not "buy" the notion that the "cosmic intelligence" in "Black Sun" was meant, consciously, by the writers to be the same metaphysical force responsible for stopping the Moon dead near Arkadia and instilling fanaticism in Luke Ferro and Anna Davis. Koenig does not mention the "cosmic intelligence" encountered by him and Bergman in "Black Sun" as he is writing about the events on and near planet Arkadia. Indeed, he postulates that there was a localised, i.e. on Arkadia, force or undefinable intelligence. One that exists on the planet, Arkadia, not in the cosmos as a whole, appearing to Ferro and Davis and instilling in them the determination to colonise the planet. Now, of course, Space: 1999 not being a serial but a series of self-contained episodes, one could scarcely expect there to be a direct reference to events of "Black Sun" in "The Testament of Arkadia" by Koenig and other characters. But Koenig clearly opts for a localised explanation to the events of the latter episode. Not some vastly overarching, indeed overarching-of-everything, "intelligence". And while Ferro and Davis refer to Alpha having been "guided" to Arkadia, they could be referring to the force on Arkadia having done that. To it having reached out across space to pull the runaway Moon to it. Not an omnipotent deity being the agent of Alpha's destiny. Further, no reference is made in "The Testament of Arkadia", by Koenig, Ferro, or Davis, to Arra's prophecy that the Alphans will populate the deepest reaches of space, not even one without a specific reference to Arra herself having stated the prophecy. All that Koenig says as "The Testament of Arkadia" comes to a close, is that faith must be kept in there being a purpose for Alpha. Not a particularly unique-to-Season 1-Space: 1999 belief, this. Most people like to believe that there is a purpose to their lives. What I am saying is that I do not adhere to the idea that Byrne in writing "The Testament of Arkadia" intended to hearken back to "Black Sun" and to have some "cosmic intelligence" of universe-spanning dimension, the one in "Black Sun", be responsible for Moonbase Alpha surviving all of its perils and reaching Arkadia. "The Testament of Arkadia" is a self-contained story. As are the other episodes of Season 1. A force on Arkadia is posited as the metaphysical agency of "The Testament of Arkadia". Spirit of the planet. Spirit of the long-perished Arkadians. Perhaps able to reach out far, far into space and guide the Moon to the planet.
Now, having said all of this, I have to grant that just because there may not have been an intention for an "arc" ought not to mean that one cannot possibly exist. I am of the persuasion that the unconscious, indeed a collective unconscious, can influence creativity in the writing of fiction. Season 2 Space: 1999 is not substantially more serialised, intentionally by its makers, than Season 1. It, too, is a series of self-contained episodes. Though it does refer back to Psychon and Psychon's demise quite often. Koenig and Maya even talk at length about Mentor in "The Rules of Luton". And we have the Status Reports of Helena giving to the episodes of second season some chronology. Detection of patterns in that chronology by Dean, and also by myself under Dean's influence or not, is a valid one in the acceptance of Jung's "collective unconscious", I do contend. So, who is to say that some unconscious instilling of a "story arc" touching numerous episodes of Season 1, is impossible? I cannot. And I should not be bellicose and dismissive of the idea of the "Mysterious Unknown Force" being a thread running through the first season's twenty-four episodes. I should not allow my bitterness towards the "Year 1" pundits to make me as blinkered toward their way of observing the happenings of their favoured season as they are toward mine. Though I can scoff at the notion of the "Mysterious Unknown Force" having been deliberately "mapped out" to intricate degree in story conferences. At the end of the proverbial day, my claim, and Dean's claim, of correspondences between episodes in Season 2 being a given, and their having presumably having been not deliberately conceived, I ought to be consistent and allow for a not-deliberate "story arc" in first season, and respect that "story arc". And if the fans of first season obnoxiously refuse to respect Season 2 for a not consciously instilled "provincialism" and correspondence between episodes, then clearly they are the ones with the problem. I certainly do have enough self-awareness to recognise when I am being unreasonable, hypocritical, or whatever. They lack that.
Having self-awareness can be perceived by some people as a weakness. It is not. It is an essential ingredient for having integrity and for having a sound mind. Too many people, including those in positions of high office, lack self-awareness and are not mentally sound. They are narcissistic, ideologically dogmatic, myopic, incapable of analysing their mindsets for stances of shaky or erroneous foundation, and can easily pull their people and country to very dark places indeed. This is the danger that our world is in, this decade.
Lest anyone argue that my adulation for Season 2 lacks foundation, I say no. The observations made by Dean and by myself are there, as universally recognisable facts. No one can argue against the etymology of words. Or that two episodes have a similarity in their situations. Or that there are allusions to past works of import in Western civilisation thought and philosophy. These are not mere opinions. What I see in Season 2 is not delusional. I acknowledge that little of it was probably by anyone's conscious intent. I doubt that most of what I see in "Hyde and Hare" was intentionally put in that cartoon. But it is there, nonetheless. It has borne the scrutiny of numerous different frames of mind on my part over the past decades. People have made light of it, declared it irrelevant, but they have not convincingly refuted it. Just saying that it is not there, or that a carrot is sometimes just a carrot, is not convincing refutation. On what basis is that refutation proposed? That a "collective unconscious" is hogwash? That creativity is a hundred percent autonomous to the deliberate design of the creator, and that if there is no conscious intent, then there can be no beautiful nuance ingrained subtly in the material? No, I say. No.
This brings me to another item that I ought to address. Subtlety is the essence of art. So, if the "Mysterious Unknown Force" is not "laid out" crystal-clear as a "story arc" including a number of first season Space: 1999 episodes, and is therefore a subtle thing, then so much the better, right? I cannot argue with that. And the detractors of everything Season 2 Space: 1999 cannot argue that the "provincialism" of Season 2 not hitting people in the face but having been detectable only by Dean and somewhat by myself after meeting him, is subtle enough, more than subtle enough, to fit the essence of art, too.
But I do not believe that it was the "The Mysterious Unknown Force" that first drew the fans of Space: 1999 to the television show in its first season's initial run. Like me, they came to the television to see "The Future is Fantastic" hardware, sets, spaceship exteriors, and exotic alien life forms or places. Which Season 2 delivered as did Season 1. They may have balked at the new characters, different styles of music, the instilling of action into story, and an increased emphasis on monsters. But such is a matter of personal taste, not some absolute, supremely authoritative standard as to what must constitute "good" science fiction and its opposite. And their not seeing what Dean or myself see, does not mean that it cannot possibly be there. These first season Space: 1999 fans are not omniscient. Nor am I, true. But do I think that I am more seeing than the blinkered ones in the "Year 1" "camp"? Yes, I do. I certainly do. And I can make a much stronger case for that if I resist the urge to "give in" to resentment of the Space: 1999 first season pundits and not allow myself to become blinkered toward Season 1.
Season 1 can be great for its "story arc", and Season 2 can be laudable for the patternings in its episodes chronologically arranged. It does not need to be a "Year 1" "good" and "Year 2" "bad" deal. And to be consistent in one's views, one cannot embrace the idea of unintended brilliance of "story arc" in one season and reject vehemently the notion of unconsciously crafted patterning in another. And having stated this, in the interest in not being a hypocrite, and in a sincere determination to fully recapture my feeling of affection for both seasons and an unhampered willingness to accept all that is there or may be there in both seasons, I need to recant my earlier hostility, in this Weblog, toward the "Mysterious Unknown Force" as an artistic flourish to Space: 1999's initial, most inceptive season. And to effectively do so, I must decouple my regard for Season 1 from my resentment at the fans of Season 1 for their treatment of Season 2, Mr. Freiberger, me, Dean, and whoever else was targeted by such fans in the past, the present, and the future, and nourish that regard with untrammelled positivity.
It is a struggle that I must face any time that I am subjected to the vitriol of the first season fans as they "pile on" second season whenever an image of something Season 2 is posted to social media. But it is a noble struggle. A healthy struggle. The unhealthy thing to do is to embrace blinkeredness as a way of life.
Of course, I do face a similiar struggle with regard to the pre-1948 Warner Brother cartoons. I acknowledge that. The Clampett-is-all fans of the cartoons of Warner Brothers can be just as resentment-causing as the "Year 1" "camp" in the fandom of Space: 1999. And unlike my following of first season Space: 1999, I do not have a love for the pre-1948 Warner Brothers cartoons, or most of them. They largely did not come into my life in my impressionable years and mostly do not fit my aesthetic tastes where cartoons are concerned. But I must strive not to be blinkered. Otherwise, I may be said to be no better than the haters of Season 2 Space: 1999 or the people calling Friz Freleng a "hack".
And so it is that my writings in my autobiography and Weblog are going to have inconsistency to them. Because my mind is not locked shut. Life is an evolution, and I continue to evolve, my mindset subject to change. As well it should be. I may eventually go back to being agreeable in retrospect as regards the move to Fredericton forty-six years ago. Unlikely though that may seem now to be.
It wouldst be nice for something, some cosmic force, to bring me home. My home in my current consideration definitely being Douglastown of the 1970s. I can certainly appreciate how the Alphans felt at the closing scene to "Black Sun". And I have always loved the Barry Gray music that plays there.
All for today.
Friday, August 18, 2023.
My vacation is coming to an end. Next Monday, I return to work. I cannot say that I am looking forward to doing so. I wish that I could retire now. A forlorn wish, sadly. Especially in Canada of the 2020s. Canada of J.T..
One of the reasons that I do not fancy a return to my job is the matter of reaching my workplace and reaching home. Fredericton has never been such a traffic nightmare. So many key arteries of automotive vehicle movement are beset with construction zones and detours, snarling traffic, creating gridlock, especially at "rush hours". And it does not appear that there is any hurry to complete construction and reopen the roadways. I dread having to face the patience-straining jammed traffic- and yet another year of solitary, lonely work. Just the thought of being alone all day and then going home in November, December, January after sunset to a dark house, depresses me.
But at least I am still alive. With a home to go to, a home that belongs to me. One that I own. With things in it that I own.
I have come upon a recently "gone viral" country music song lamenting what has befallen the lives of working men and women in the 2020s in what used to be the land of opportunity, the seeming annihilation of "the American dream". Applicable, of course, maybe even more so, to the plight of people north of the U.S.-Canada border. Not me as yet. But someday?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sqSA-SY5Hro
Country music is not my taste, but nonetheless this man's song strikes a certain chord within me, even though I am not, yet, facing the same problems "making ends meet" as many other middle class persons (only because my parents provided for me so thoroughly, so diligently, before their deaths; if I did not have the financial stability yielded by the house that I inherited mortgage-free from them and an ability, in the absence of house payments, to accumulate some savings in bank accounts, I would be in straits as dire as many another struggling middle-class Canadian; besides, in any case, what I have could easily be wiped away by a tyrannical government policy) for whom the song is meant to resonate. The song now has twenty million views after having been uploaded to YouTube just a week or so ago.
Good news is that the Doctor Who- Season 20 Blu-Ray box set now has a release date. September 18 of this year. Something to which to look forward in those first lonely weeks back at my job. I certainly hope that another Blu-Ray box set in the DOCTOR WHO- THE COLLECTION range is coming before 2023 passes into the ether. There has to be three sets a year if there is to be any realistic hope of seeing a complete set of Doctor Who seasons in THE COLLECTION range.
Before I return to work, I plan of doing some "catch-up" with e-mail. Or at least with e-mail in which there is discussion at length about my Website and its content Web pages and their subjects, with complimenting of me for my having written the Web pages. Generally speaking, I do not prioritise replying to e-mails not addressing my work to any significant degree and just asking some pointed question about something not on any of my Web pages, or help in providing facts about some television programme of not interest to me or of which I have no knowledge. I no longer have the time to spend answering every e-mail that I receive. If I do, then it cuts into my time available for work on the Website itself, or the time that I have to complete household chores and enjoy my summer days. I am sorry, but this is the way that it is. With the demands of a job and running a household and staying somewhat fit and healthy, I do not have the bountiful amounts of time for correspondence that I had twenty years ago.
And I have said it before and will say it again. If information on one of the entertainments venerated by one of my Web pages, is not on those Web pages, then I do not have it. Why would I withhold information that I do have on any of those entertainments? There is nothing to be gained in asking me questions about Bugs Bunny and Tweety episodes not part of any episode guide on my Bugs and Tweety Page. I do not have that information. If I did, it would be there on the Web page. The bottom line is that I did not see and catalogue every single episode of Bugs Bunny and Tweety. In some seasons of it, the ABC affiliate to which I had access, preempted numerous episodes. And there were some seasons wherein my interest in the television show "flagged" or "fizzled", particularly those some long while after a shuffling of cartoons of the various television-transmission platforms, and I was either not watching or not making note of the instalments shown. Unless someone did catalogue everything and comes forward to me with all of the information, my Bugs and Tweety Web page is going to remain as it is, with an incomplete history of the full run of the television programme.
I propose to return now to my writings of my last Weblog entry and offer some further comment. Now, with my recognising of first season Space: 1999 having some subtle, not-consciously rendered artistry to it, i.e. the "story arc" of the "cosmic intelligence" sewing a thread of import through a number of episodes, it would be logical for a person to ask (I would) why Space: 1999 has so much nuance to it that likely did come out of unconscious influence in creative decision, or sprang forth from a collective subconscious. I mean, why should both seasons of Space: 1999, made with different sensibilities, different objectives, on the part of producers and writers, both have their own particular "brand" (as it were) of unintentional nuance, i.e. the "arc" of the "cosmic intelligence" or the "provincialism" of patterning of symbolically significant subject matter across a given chronology, that of Season 2? Why should Space: 1999 be blessed with such not-consciously-instilled artistic quality in abundant measure, and not some other, more sung work of space science fiction/fantasy?
First of all, I do not "rule out" other works having expression of the "collective unconscious" in them. Indeed, my fascination with many other of the television programmes given a Kevin McCorry-written Web page, has no small component of observation of, say, episodes or constituent cartoons in episodes having corresponding characteristics when seen side-by-side in sequential order of episodes in television series, or assembled together within instalments (i.e. episodes) of cartoons of six or seven minutes. I doubt that much of this, or any at all, was by conscious design. And yet, I see it. As do I also see what is likely not consciously installed nuance to the Bugs Bunny cartoon, "Hyde and Hare", other Bugs Bunny cartoons of year 1955, and the cartoons of Tweety and Sylvester. One might say that unconsciously set meanings in imaginative material is the largest constant across my Website's many interests. And my attention to content of consecutive or same television series episodes having correspondences, is compelled by my having had some previous recognition of intriguingly correspondent characteristics, in same or in many another television series of my keen interest. And so it goes. Such a fascination had its nascency in my early life, whilst I was enjoying seminal or not-long-post-seminal viewings of such entertainment favourites of mine. Bugs Bunny and his cartoon cohorts on television. Spiderman. And so on. Just me noticing that some episodes seemed aesthetically more suited to others of the same "region" in a television show's season, i.e. early-season, mid-season, late-season, or, some not very, very long while into my fandom of the televising of Looney Tunes and Merrie Melodies, my detecting of correspondences in the neighbouring cartoons of an episode of those of consecutive episodes. Or interesting observations of correspondence of subject matter in episodes of Spiderman. But Space: 1999 does seem to be the "grand-daddy" of all of the incursions of the unconscious into creative decision. From Dean's work and what I have gleaned on my own and what the first season pundits like to highlight about their preferred half of the Space: 1999 oeuvre, such does appear very much to be the case. But, again, why?
Something about the premise of Space: 1999 made it a most apt conduit for the expression of archetypes, old words and concepts or patterns of subject matter of meaningful import, et cetera, of "collective unconscious". It could be the notion of the Moon and Earth being separated from each other. The Moon being severed from its orbit around the grounding gravitational influence of Earth and cast deep into the Heavenly firmament. This is unique to Space: 1999. And the Moon having on it a colony of human beings top in their fields of endeavour but, as Landau so often said, not prepared for an odyssey of discovery on a moving object over which they have no control. And then that Moon and its reluctant-star-trekker populace encountering numerous manifestations of "the other". It could have been all of this combined with some peculiar trait of the minds in unison of the group at Gerry Anderson Productions and that group's superlative talent in designing the otherworldly and offering the most elaborate of visual effects. Something caused such minds to be most channelling of the phenomena rooted in the "collective unconscious". Them plus a certain Mr. Freiberger, my interview with whom revealing a keen interest in Greek and other mythology. A producer or scriptwriter may require some conscious adherence to the works of "the Classics" in order to be most highly sensitive to a "collective unconscious" repository of symbols. Mind, I am only speculating. Theorising. The definite answer to the question of, "Why Space: 1999?" is not readily obtainable. But I will contend for the rest of my born days, that there is an aesthetic appeal to Space: 1999 much more sublime than even its most ardent aficionados are consciously aware-of and praising-of. The "cool" hardware and all of the components to the look of it, are a part of the aesthetic appeal, of course. But there is so much more to that appeal than the trappings of the laser guns, communicators, Eagles, tunics, personalities of the characters, and so forth. Even now, I am nowhere close to comprehending it to the fullest extent.
I will return later to these ruminations. I will grant that they are "deep" and may not be of much interest to a plurality of this Weblog's readers. But it is my Weblog, and if I consider a subject to be worthy of being addressed, then it will be addressed.
It is now mid-morning and I have some household tasks to perform before enjoying the final weekday of my vacation of summer of 2023. I propose to close my today's Weblog entry. More will be coming. Of that, readers can feel sure.
Here is a nice "blast from the past" to open today's Weblog entry. CBC Television promotion of some of its Thursday evening line-up in July of 1977. And a 1977 commercial for Radio Shack. This was an advertising "break" in the CFL Football broadcast on Wednesday, July 13, 1977. That was the week on which there was the Saturday broadcast of Space: 1999 episode, "The Immunity Syndrome". Oh, would I love to find a CBC promotion for Space: 1999 from 1976 or 1977! I doubt that I ever will, though.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zmwML70d2AA
And here is a collage of images of front covers of Blu-Rays purchased by me in the decade 2020s.
And next, a report on some further updates to my autobiographical Web pages. All of them have gone thorough spellcheck one more time. Evidently, I had failed to spellcheck a number of my updates to all of the eras of my autobiography over the past couple of years. Many typographical errors were found and corrected. And the odd outright spelling mistake. I am not perfect, after all. Nobody is. And it has been a long while since I was in school. And I was imperfect there, too, for my grades in my courses were never a hundred percent. But just because I am not perfect does not mean that I cannot be correct the vast majority of the time. In spelling and in other capacities. I also strove to put in italics all words not of the English language used in unquoted text. And my Era 4 memoirs have seen some expansion in their recall of Super Space Theatre on ATV in autumn of 1983 and some new reminiscences of CBC Switchback on Sunday mornings, including a memory of a fleeting sight, a most fleeting sight, of the Space: 1999 episode, "Space Warp", being promoted on CBHT before CHSJ-TV cut away from it. CBHT was CHSJ's signal source for Switchback. Also new to my Era 4 memoirs are one image of Space: 1999- "Dragon's Domain" and one image of Cosmos- "Heaven and Hell". Amongst my memories of August, 1983.
Wednesday, August 23, 2023. The significance of the date is not lost on me. Forty years ago, I was acquiring the James Bond movie, You Only Live Twice, on videocassette, on the morning following what may have been the best evening ever that my buddy, Joey, and I ever had, talking past sunset in my basement. Oh, God, do I wish it was 1983 again! If I could only be back then with my current collection of Blu-Ray and DVD, with my parents alive, with my youth, and with my then friends and social existence, I would be in ecstasy.
News. Good and bad.
The good news first? Does such make bad news easier to absorb? Whether it does or not, I will report it first. My Era 4 memoirs have been updated again, to include images of the titling of "movies" of Super Space Theatre on ATV in autumn of 1983. After several searches, I was able to find the images that I was seeking in order to be able to put together a quintet of images of titling of a number of those "movies", starting with the "movie" that launched ATV's run of Super Space Theatre, Revenge of the Mysterons From Mars, and including two of the Space: 1999 "movies", Journey Through the Black Sun and Cosmic Princess. Super Space Theatre was a part of what was a quite remarkable autumn for television for me, that of 1983, and I am happy that ATV's run of it has some image representation in my memoirs. Not that I enjoyed every "movie", though. Only the ones actually set off of Earth, at least partially. I am no fan of the Gerry Anderson puppet works in general, though the ones with a space setting can stimulate some interest in me. I do remember thinking to myself at the time (i.e. autumn of 1983) how juvenile that Thunderbirds is. And I say this as one who does not regard any (any!) of Space: 1999 to be juvenile. Not that there is anything wrong with some fun juvenile entertainment. It could be argued that Rocket Robin Hood was such, before Bakshi, at least. But if I am to indulge myself in some juvenile entertainment, I would much rather watch cartoon drawing than puppets. In the case of Thunderbirds, the Tracy brothers came across to me as boys with toys doing errands for "daddy". Although they were meant to be grown men, their apprarance in their puppet form made them look in my eyes, to be boys. Especially the Brains character. Still, Thunderbirds in Outer Space was, in my view, one of the non-Space: 1999 highlights of Super Space Theatre. The Stingray "movies", on the other hand, were, by my reckoning, low-lights. Stingray did not interest me in the least. Nor did Joe 90. My wait for a Space: 1999 "movie" on Super Space Theatre was a long one. But in November, two of them at last went out on the Sunday-from-8 A.M.-to-10 A.M. airwaves of ATV. With the "movies" on Super Space Theatre is an association in my mind with the Humpty Dumpty Sour Cream & Onion potato chips that I ate as I watched those "movies". Oh, how I loved Humpty Dumpty potato chips! They had a taste all their own. I miss them.
And I am going to miss Parks' Dairy Bar. Word on Facebook is that Parks' Dairy Bar will be closing forever at the end of the day today. For persons not having read (why not?) my autobiography, I will note that Parks' Dairy Bar was the soft-ice-cream-serving establishment on King George Highway in the former town of Newcastle in the Miramichi region of New Brunswick, whereat I had many an ice cream cone, usually chocolate ripple, while there with my parents in the 1970s in the years in which we were inhabitants of the region Miramichi, and which I revisited countless times in the years since we moved out of the Miramichi region, on most of my visits back to Newcastle and Douglastown and Chatham. I had a chocolate ripple dipped in chocolate when last I was at Parks' Dairy Bar this summer. Alas, I will not be able to go up north to Miramichi City today to have a final Parks' Dairy Bar ice cream cone. My last patronage there will be the final one, unbeknownst to me when I was there.
All for today, Friday, August 25, 2023.
It has been some while since I commented on the state of my Website's visitor traffic. I am still unable to access logs of precisely what Web pages are being visited, though I can see where my Website's visitors are located and how many times something (an unspecified Web page or unspecified image) has been accessed by them. Visits by Canadians are notably down by substantial margin. A drop in Canadian traffic on my Website is not unusual in the summer, but I do not recall seeing such a paucity of "hits" by persons of my country. It could be that I am witnessing the effects of recent federal government legislation as regards access to the Internet in Canada. Or it could be that this Weblog's focus of late on Canadian politics has alienated some of my regular readers. Or maybe most everyone who wanted to use my Website for whatever reason, has already done so and sees no reason to return. If that is the case, why bother doing Website updates or writing for this Weblog?
But I am doing updates, nevertheless. I have expanded further my memories of Super Space Theatre on ATV in autumn of 1983 in Era 4, revised some of my text elsewhere in same life era, and, on The Space: 1999 Page, did some change to the images accompanying the "Stormy Passage" 42-day space storm chronology notation, adding one from "Dragon's Domain" to provide some visual representation of the space storm causing Koenig and Russell to relive the events of "Dragon's Domain". Which is how I now see the 887 days-after-leaving-Earth stated by Helena in "Dragon's Domain" overlapping the chronology of the Season 2 episodes. It is the only way that it can, while not outright rejecting anything that Helena says in any episode. By my reckoning, at least. I quite enjoy using the verb, reckon, and its noun variant, reckoning, because my malefactor in Calgary once said that he detested the word, reckon, especially when it is scribed by Space: 1999 book author, John Rankine. Temptation to "stick it" to one of my more disagreeable foes can be irresitible, and pleasure in life, like from spiting one of my most detrimental detractors, maybe should be had once in a while, to counter somewhat the morale-straining effect of so much being wrong with the world. I promise not to utilise the word and its variant too often. Once in every third or fourth Weblog entry, maybe.
Space: 1999 discussion on the Internet is abuzz of late with news of a documentary on the Eagle spacecraft, being produced by a Jeffrey Morris. Participants in the documentary include Barbara Bain, Nick Tate, and Brian Johnson. The documentary is being crowd-funded and is aiming for completion and release in 2025, the fiftieth anniversary of Space: 1999 first being telecast. We are closer, much closer, to it being fifty years since Space: 1999 started production in 1973, but the fiftieth anniversary celebrations are going to be in commemoration of the public's first viewing of a Space: 1999 episode on broadcast television. In 1975. September, 1975 in several countries, including the U.S.. Of course, that did not include me, as northern New Brunswick where I lived, was not to be provided Space: 1999 on a television station of proximity for reception on everyone's television set, until September, 1976. The fiftieth anniversary for Space: 1999 for me would be in 2026. But of what consequence is my experience in the annals of the following of Space: 1999?
One expects that Mr. Morris has the sanctioning of ITV for his project, and that the documentary will use clips of episodes of Space: 1999 along with the interview footage. As the documentary intends to be as much about the response of the public to the design of the Eagle and its role in the episodes of Space: 1999 as it is about the creation and visual effects deployment of the spaceships of Moonbase Alpha, one would think also that there are going to be interviews with fans. I cringe at that, as experience has conditioned me to, but maybe there will be editorial decision to avoid putting on display the worst aspects of the Space: 1999 fan's mindset. I do not know as yet how long the documentary is going to be, whether the interviews in it will be filmed rather than videotape-recorded (film is better), and the means by which it will be made available for public viewing (DVD/Blu-Ray or Internet "streaming"). Will it be part of a fiftieth anniversary release on Blu-Ray of Space: 1999 by a successor to the late Network Distributing? I am wondering if the liner notes that I was under consideration to write, might have been for a standalone Blu-Ray release of the documentary. Maybe so. Maybe not.
The documentary is to be called The Eagle Has Landed. I will report from time to time on the progress of the project. If I am still alive in 2025 and have access to the documentary, I will write a review of it. I do not have cause as yet to hold any negative viewpoint on it, and I pray that I will not have such cause in 2025. I wish the very best of success to its producer and to everyone involved in bringing it to screen.
Still nothing new to report on a second volume of LOONEY TUNES COLLECTOR'S CHOICE. Discussion on the subject of LOONEY TUNES COLLECTOR'S CHOICE has gone dead. No news has come from Comic-Con this year about Blu-Ray or DVD releases of any of the Warner Brothers cartoons. Comic-Con has traditionally been where new releases of Looney Tunes and Merrie Melodies to digital videodisc were announced for a coming autumn. As was the case for all of the GOLDEN COLLECTIONs and the Bugs Bunny eightieth anniversary Blu-Ray set. The lack of any news from Comic-Con does not bode very promisingly.
All for today, Monday, August 28, 2023.
Sunday, September 3, 2023.
Forty years ago today, it was Saturday, September 3, 1983. A day that I remember vividly. I had just, the day before, received my second videocassette from Dartmouth containing Space: 1999 episodes videotape-recorded from CBHT by my benefactor at Video Home Entertainment Centre, Wyse Road, Dartmouth. It had been delivered into my mailbox as I was watching The Edge of Night and my father was shopping. The videotape had on it "Mission of the Darians", "Black Sun", and "Matter of Life and Death".
Saturday, September 3 started overcast. The cloud cover was starting to dissipate around 1:30 in the afternoon as I was summoned outdoors by Kelly, the girl across the street. She was smitten by the eldest of three Australian brothers staying that summer in a house on Linden Crescent West and wanted me to accompany her into the wooded area in the centre of our crescent street so that she could gaze upon the back of the house where the Australians were living, and presumably having me present might make her spying a bit less obvious. My friend, Joey, had just come home from a shopping expedition with his mother. He saw Kelly and myself stepping into the woods, and hurried to join us. I had not seen Joey for a couple of days. Joey asked us what we were doing in the woods, as he was pulling up his blue rugby pants with the usual yanks at the hips and another in the front. Not long after that, Kelly decided to discontinue spying on her love interest, and Joey returned to his home. I had a grass-cutting job to do, on my next-door neighbour's lawn, but before doing that, I put my latest videotape acquisition into my videocassette machine and began watching "Black Sun". My father hastened me to go outside and do the work that I was planning to do. I left the videocassette in play mode, and, as I was mowing the neighbour's lawn, my parents watched "Black Sun". They mentioned having done so after I came inside our house immediately after completing work. It was now fully sunny outdoors. I rewound the videotape and went outside. Not long after that a certain Andrew comes speeding along on his bicycle. He stops at the foot of my driveway and talks about wanting to "get away" from Joey. I had not the foggiest idea what he was "on about". He insisted we go inside my basement, and being ever the obliging one, I conceded to his wishes. Minutes later, we heard my doorbell and he was adamant that we hide. Joey had seen Andrew's bicycle in my driveway and had looked through my basement window and had seen us. My father answered the door and gave Joey access to the basement where Andrew and I were. A boy named Jason was with Joey. Immediately, Joey and Andrew were talking without the slightest trace of animosity. But stupid me did not suspect any nefarious intent in Andrew's behaviour. Joey did another pants-pull-up as he talked with Andrew, scarcely cognizant of my presence. Several minutes later, Joey was asking for me to loan him some money to finance a project that he and Jason were committed to completing. Joey threw his arms around me in his bid to secure an affirmative response to his request. I gave to him the money, which came from the pay that I received for my work on the neighbours' lawn. After tugging his pants upward yet one more time, Joey bid adieu to me as the three boys, Joey, Andrew, Jason, left my place.
After dinner, I saw the three boys again. For some reason, Joey had changed his pants. He was wearing his grey sweat pants. Either the fit of his falling rugby pants that day was becoming tiresome for him, or he had spilled food on them, or something. Not only had Joey changed his pants, but his bearing toward me had distinctly altered. He was cold, irritable, and sharp-of-tongue toward me. Something had happened between my earlier encounter with my friend and then. Something had turned him against me. After that, I did not see Joey again until the following Saturday, when he was not in good humour with me. Seething with anger, actually. Putting two and two together in matters social was not my particular specialty. It is clear as mud to me now what had happened. Andrew had "set me up". He had set a trap for me that I stupidly fell into, on the afternoon of 3 September, 1983. Saying that he was seeking to "get away" from Joey was evidently a deceitful fabrication, and his insistence that we go into my basement and hide, was a scheming ploy. After the three boys had left me, Andrew doubtless wagged his tongue and had Joey believing that the attempt to hide from him was my initiative. Of course, by being obliging to him, I had given to Andrew the rope to hang me. I ought to have outright refused Andrew's request. There can be no denying that there was that afternoon a pivotal incident in my friendship with Joey. We two had been so close, so very close, that summer, whilst Joey was distancing himself from Andrew. And after the afternoon of September 3, Andrew was back in Joey's good graces, never again to be out of them, while Joey and I never were as close again as we had been through the summer of 1983. On many a day in the summer of 1984, Joey did not join me until mid-afternoon, and Andrew was with him, evidently having been with him since morning. In 1983, Joey had begun his summer days with me consistently. Such would rarely ever be the case again.
Oh, there is no doubt that Andrew did something nefarious that day. He "took advantage" of my obliging and all too guileless nature. It could be also that Andrew compounded that with also telling to Joey that I had helped Tony on his first day at Fredericton High School on Tuesday, September 6, my connection with Tony always being something of a sore spot for Joey. Steven probably told Andrew about that, and Andrew relayed such to Joey. Or maybe Steven told Joey himself. I cannot say for sure. But Joey was definitely not his congenial self with me at all on Saturday, September 10. And after how buddy-buddy close he and I had been that summer, it was a jarring change. Oh, a couple of days later, Joey and I were all sweetness and light once more and were teammates in arguably the best baseball game I ever played. But it would never be as good again for us, as it had been in summer of 1983. It would not be until decades later that I finally "clued in" to what must have happened. How it all must have "went down".
That pivotal incident was forty years ago today.
Joey and my times with him in summer of 1983 have been in my thoughts this summer to quite a large extent. And fascinatingly enough, chance, whether it be random or by God's design, brought Joey and I together just over a week ago. I was walking by his mother's home, his childhood home, early in the evening under an intermittent rain from the remnants of Hurricane Hillary, and he was stepping into his car after a visit with his mother. He called out my name, and we talked for between five and ten minutes. We talked about the state of the economy and the damage that J.T. was doing to it (Joey and I are definitely "on the same page" about the J.T. scourge on Canada, though our conversation was focused exclusively on the economic damage of J.T.'s policies). And we talked about Joey's personal life. He and his wife are separated, his son is not talking to him, and he is living in an apartment on Fredericton's south side. He has a new lady friend and has changed employers. We did not talk any about my situation. I do not know where he is at on the matter of "vaccinated"-versus-"unvaccinated", the great rift in Canadian society engineered by our glorious leader and his inner circle, and I thought it best to avoid any talk about that and about the existential fear that I feel. Significant differences, these are, between my life now and what it was when last Joey and I spoke, way back in 2018. I did not mention that I had been thinking about him and 1983. I probably would have done had our conversation continued awhile longer and I would have been fully relaxed, as I usually am after a conversation with an old friend passes the ten-minute mark.
It has been an interesting summer, one that first brought me together with my Miramichi friend, Ev, when I was there on a mid-August Saturday, in Douglastown behind my old place, and then with Joey. It is unusual enough for me to see one old friend again in a summer. But two? What can it mean? It is certain that I desperately needed to be with friends of long ago, friends who knew me when my parents were living and I was in my childhood, friends who go with me that far back in time. And somehow, someone in control of the tides of chance guided me and them into an encounter, as though in answer to my longing. God? Maybe. I like to think that He is with me, that He was with me in making the two reunions happen this summer. Perhaps to strengthen my spirit against tribulations to come.
The Space: 1999 fans with whom I have umbrage, are "at it again". On the only Facebook group for Space: 1999 still open for public view, comments on the second season episode, "New Adam New Eve", are being solicited, and oh, does the venom spew forth! Someone says that "New Adam New Eve" is Star Trek's "Who Mourns For Adonais?", copied verbatim. No, no, no, no. Not verbatim. A formidable force does appear in space ahead of the heroes. Yes, it invites some of them to a planet where it wishes for them to settle. Yes, there is mechanistic source of power for that formidable force. And in neutralising the power source, the heroes defeat their antagonist. Yes, this much is similar. But let me enumerate the many differences. Magus the cosmic magician of "New Adam New Eve", is pretending to be the Almighty God, whereas the "Who Mourns For Adonais?" antagonist is an actual god, the Greek god, Apollo. Magus wants to examine human reproduction to learn the secret of creation; Apollo only wants people to worship him. Apollo is in love with Lieutenant Palamas; Magus has no love interest. Magus induces pair bonding between the Alphans whom he has trapped; Apollo does not put couples together among his captives. There are mutants on New Earth in "New Adam New Eve"; there are none on Apollo's planet. There are cave scenes in "New Adam New Eve" and none in "Who Mourns For Adonais?". Defeat of Magus requires his death and results in a planet's destruction; Apollo is merely divested of his power source and left on a still-intact planet. These are the differences between "New Adam New Eve" and Star Trek's "Who Mourns For Adonais?". There are similarities, yes. But so what? This is the question that would be asked, no doubt, if I were to mention Season 1 Space: 1999's "Guardian of Piri" being comparable with Star Trek's "This Side of Paradise". Cannot Space: 1999 do its own version of a particular trope? As long as it is not a verbatim copy, which "New Adam New Eve" is not, as I have just delineated?
And then there is this delightful pearl of oh, so incontrovertible enlightenment.
"The Second Series is an abomination. Freddie Freiberger- the Serial Killer strikes again."
Ah, Space: 1999 fans. Hyperbolic as ever. "Stroppy" as ever. Closed-minded as ever. Unmellow as ever. Revolting as ever. Comparing a television producer doing his job, to a repeat murderer. And doing so to the "like-clicks" of numerous people. And not a single person offering a word of objection. There are many abominations in the world today. Abominations that make my skin crawl. That terrify me. Space: 1999- "Year 2" is one of the beautiful things that serve as much-needed respite from the abominations of the world of the 2020s. And these people's opinion is not one that is thoroughly informed. It is based on blinkered ignorance, hate, and/or a desire to crush the appeal that the second season of Space: 1999 and memory of its initial run, has for sensitive persons such as myself, even if we are a minority. I ought not to acknowledge it at all, because it ought to have far less validity than the perspective of someone who does notice and appreciate the aesthetic "touches" of second season Space: 1999. And it is a darned sight less amenable to the sentimentality of fellow human beings.
Yes, sir. If you say so, sir. I bow to your wisdom, sir, I will burn my Blu-Rays of Season 2, sir. I will purge from my memory all of my fond recall of 1976 and 1977, sir. I will call myself mentally deficient for ever liking, much less aesthetically appreciating, any of it, sir.
Go to hell, sir. Go to hell for violating the Golden Rule. When you have a taste of your own medicine, a "hatchet job" upon your favourite season of Space: 1999, how do you feel? Gratified? I doubt that. Go to hell for dishonouring the dead. For speaking ill of the dead Fred Freiberger. And doing so without conclusive proof of absolute culpability in the ending of three television series, two of which were earlier cancelled and subsequently on borrowed time (Star Trek) or on a conditional lease of life (Space: 1999) before Mr. Freiberger began instituting any changes, and the other (The Six Million Dollar Man) already running out of bionic steam before the season partially, not entirely, produced by Mr, Freiberger, began. I can assure you that Fred Freiberger is not in hell. You will not find him there. He is in heaven.
Am I going to hell? Maybe. Yes, maybe. I have done wrong in my life. My confession of my wrong-doings of my life is in this Weblog. Readers can rest assured that I am as conscious of them now, today, as I was when I listed them. Even though God may have granted me some precious time with old friends, I am quite certain that my misdeeds do not weigh in favour of my salvation. But these Space: 1999 pundits are so lacking in self-awareness and humility that they cannot see the evil in what they are doing. Yes, it is evil. Comparing a deceased television producer to a murderer. Sneering at, and wilfully slurring and hurting, the sentimentality of others for a time of their life giving to them much solace in an insane world, by calling something a beloved part of that time an abomination. This is... evil. Not as evil, not anywhere close to being as evil, to be sure, as other things that are being done in the world. A trifling evil, where evil does go. But still evil.
I do say, trifling, being as I wish not to appear egregiously hyperbolic myself. But where there is malignant intent, there is evil. And malignant intent there is, in the purveying of hate toward the second season of Space: 1999 and in the cruel invalidation of that season's admirers (few though they may be).
All for today.
Thursday, September 7, 2023.
No small amount of news today.
Thanks to my friend and contact, Michel, a rare Space: 1999 aficionado who, like myself, adores all of Space: 1999, and Season 2 most especially, I now have a broadcast history of Space: 1999 in British Columbia, Canada, for 1976-8. Michel sent to me most of the airtimes for Space: 1999 in British Columbia from 11 September, 1976 to 16 September, 1978. There were some gaps in the data, and such prompted me to finally "take the plunge" and to become a member of the Website, Newspapers.com, through which I was able to view every issue of the Vancouver Sun from September of 1976 to September of 1978. There in front of me was all of the information on Space: 1999 telecasts on CBUT- Vancouver and the then-CBC-affiliated CHEK-TV- Victoria. I laboured at the project and now have a full broadcast history for Space: 1999 on the two broadcasters, CBUT and CHEK. Some interesting information emerged as I was adding data to what Michel had provided. Everything to do with CHEK was revealed in my perusing of the Vancouver Sun television listings.
First of all, like CHSJ in New Brunswick, CHEK was not an absolutely dependable provider of the odyssey of Moonbase Alpha. There were some CBC broadcasts of Space: 1999 that were preempted by CHEK. Happily, CHEK did videotape-delay "Breakaway" on September 11, 1976, to ensure that its viewers could see the premiere episode of Space: 1999, CHEK having had to diverge from CBUT (its CBC Television signal source) earlier in the day, because of a Canada Cup of Hockey broadcast offered by CHEK. Viewers of CHEK saw "Breakaway" in the evening hours of 11 September, 1976, CBUT having aired it in the afternoon at 3 o’clock. CHEK would not be so generous with "A Matter of Balance" on 8 January, 1977, part two of "The Bringers of Wonder" on 2 July, 1977, "The Infernal Machine" on Christmas Eve in 1977, and "End of Eternity" on 20 May, 1978. All of those CBC Space: 1999 offerings were not on the CHEK airwaves. I know. Of all of the episodes that CHEK could preempt, why "The Bringers of Wonder: Pt. 2"? Viewers of CHEK who had missed the initial February run of the two-parter, "The Bringers of Wonder", would not know how Commander John Koenig escaped being smothered to death by an alien jelly or how he foiled the aliens' plans, or indeed what the aliens' plans were. One, wonders, to use rather an apt word, how many CHEK viewers could easily have watched part two of "The Bringers of Wonder" on CBUT on July 2. There may have been some British Columbians who only had CHEK on which to view CBC programming. My sympathies go to them, if indeed they were followers of Space: 1999. I am almost, almost, tempted to replace CHSJ with CHEK as the worst television station, in all of Canada, on which to watch Space: 1999 between the Septembers of 1976 and 1978. But, no. CHSJ still retains the dubious honour. It preempted Space: 1999 more times than CHEK did. And I will wager that CHEK did not insert its own commercials into the CBC airings and lop off thirty-second chunks of episodes for added commercial time. And, besides, the people in the Vancouver Island region of British Columbia and probably most of the inland of the province, probably had access to CBUT. Unlike New Brunswick whose citizens were almost all dependent on CHSJ for CBC Television programming.
The Sun does list Space: 1999 for 4 December, 1976 and 12 August, 1978. On the latter of these two dates, Space: 1999 was preempted in my part of the country due to a Papal funeral delaying scheduled coverage of the Commonwealth Games for several hours. CBC opted to eliminate Space: 1999 (and its episode, "The Testament of Arkadia") that day to ensure that viewers of the Games saw as much of them as possible, once the funeral was done and broadcasting of the Games could begin. I have to assume this to have been true across the country, that nowhere in Canada did Space: 1999 air that day. Until such time as someone comes forward with reliable memory of having seen "The Testament of Arkadia" on August 12, 1978.
As to 4 December, 1976, the status of Space: 1999 that day has been shrouded in mystery for me, and may always be so. CHSJ that day aired the Empty Stocking Fund telethon all through the afternoon and into the evening to 8 P.M.. If there was any Space: 1999 on CBC Television that day, CHSJ preempted it. I have no knowledge of there being a CHSJ videotape-delay of a 4 December, 1976 showing of Space: 1999. CBHT- Halifax, CBIT- Sydney, and CBCT- Charlottetown were listed in the December 4-10, 1976 issue of TV Guide as intending to air Space: 1999 on 4 December, 1976 at 2:30 P.M.. A repeat of "The Metamorph" was what was indicated on 4 December by TV Guide for CBHT, CBIT, CBCT.
But I know for a fact that "The Metamorph" was shown on the next Saturday. Saturday, December 11. I know it because I saw it on CHSJ that day. And its intervals consisted almost entirely of CBC advertisements (most for upcoming CBC programming of the December 11-12 weekend and the week thereafter). This meant that the December 11 appearance of "The Metamorph" was not a result of a CHSJ videotape-delay process. CBHT being CHSJ's CBC signal source, it had to also be showing "The Metamorph" on December 11. As the CBC was not likely to air the same episode two weeks in a row, The Metamorph" could not have been shown on CBHT (and CBIT and CBCT, for which CBHT was signal source) on December 4.
So, what was? I do not know. For a time, I thought maybe a repeat of "Breakaway". But I was told by someone that there had been no Space: 1999 on CBC Television in Quebec on December 4. And probably not anywhere else in the Eastern Time Zone that day. And although Space: 1999 was listed to be shown on December 4 in the prairie provinces, it was scheduled right after an NFL Football broadcast slotted at only two and a half hours. NFL football games practically never finish their four quarters in under two and a half hours. Usually, they extend past three hours and largely into a three-and-a-half-hour length. I expect that such was the case on December 4, 1976. Meaning that Space: 1999 would have been preempted in the prairie provinces on December 4, 1976.
As for British Columbia, the schedule that afternoon (of December 4, 1976) was NFL Football slotted in an unrealistic two and a half hours, then Curling Classic (which was sixty minutes in length), then Space: 1999. I expect that if NFL Football had gone to nearly three and a half hours, as it probably did, CBC in British Columbia would have followed NFL Football with Curling Classic in full (CBC always gave priority to sports over fictional television shows) and "bumped" Space: 1999 off of the day's roster.
I do not think that Space: 1999 aired anywhere in Canada on 4 December, 1976. I do not know what aired in its place that day on CBC Television stations east of Manitoba. But it was not shown in Quebec and, I tend to think, anywhere else in the Eastern Time Zone and the Atlantic Time Zone of Canada. The repeat of "The Metamorph" originally planned for 4 December was delayed to December 11, and "The Exiles" which TV Guide designated as initially intended to be aired on December 11, was not to have a repeat airing on CBC Television in the 1976-7 broadcasting season. As "The Testament of Arkadia" was denied a repeat in the summer of 1978. Until such time as someone comes forward to dispute this, it is what I am opting to "go with" in my history of Space: 1999 on CBC Television.
The broadcast history for Space: 1999 on CBC can be found on The Space: 1999 Page. Which is now being designated on my main Web page as having been updated.
Now that I have a Space: 1999 broadcast history for CBUT and CHEK, what is next for my chronicling of Space: 1999 on CBC? Maybe a broadcast history of Space: 1999 for Alberta or Saskatchewan. However, I am for now giving priority to a British Columbia CBC broadcast history for The Bugs Bunny/Road Runner Hour. Indeed, I am working on that now and am very near to completing it. Some of the Vancouver Sun issues are missing at Newspapers.com for 1970, but newspapers for Surrey and Langley are filling the gaps. I expect to have the British Columbia CBC broadcast history for The Bugs Bunny/Road Runner Hour completed later today.
Many, many thanks to Michel for providing information and for sparking initiative in me to further my CBC broadcast project for Space: 1999, and to make the necessary moves toward availing myself of all of the information on the World Wide Web beyond the Google News Archive repository of newspapers, whose limited information was gleaned fully years ago.
Another interesting thing of note. On March 11, 1978, CBUT and CHEK aired Space: 1999 in the morning. At 11 A.M.. The only time during the full-CBC-Television-network run of Space: 1999 from 1976 to 1978, that Space: 1999 aired on a Saturday morning anywhere in Canada, to the best of my knowledge. And, yes, "War Games" is an episode of Season 1 of Space: 1999, not Season 2. No, I say again, no, Season 2 episodes of Space: 1999 were broadcast on Saturday morning on CBC Television, to the best of my knowledge, which is very substantial. Space: 1999 fans may "take to the bank" this particular statement. Or at least those who are not stubbornly adherent to the notion that Season 2 is fit only for Saturday morning television and was aired on such in Canada, on the decree of some person at the CBC who supposedly was of the oh, so orthodox opinion that "Year 2" is "kidstuff".
It is bull's excrement, people, such assertion. How many more CBC broadcast histories must I have on my Space: 1999 Web page to convince people that in Canada, Season 2 Space: 1999 was judged appropriate for viewing on Saturday afternoons (late Saturday afternoons, mostly) or evenings? Family, not children's, viewing hours. Not Saturday morning. The horrible effects of Psyche on intelligent beings subjected to it, Zova torturing Helena, beer brewing and consumption, Taybor's grabbing of Maya's leg, the "killing sickness" and blade-wielding of the Archanons, Magus' pair-bonding intentions and the sight of mutant results of his machinations, dead bodies on Planet D and Ellna, naked alien females behind chlorine vapers, the dead body of Lustig with blood on the hands and blood coming out of the mouth. And the seductive dance of "One Moment of Humanity" and Zamara calling on Zarl to, "Make love..." to Helena, which was trimmed by CBC for the repeat of that episode in 1977 and caused the episode to be skipped completely by CBC eastern Maritimes television station CBHT in 1983-5 when Space: 1999 was repeated, on Sunday mornings. None of this is appropriate for Saturday morning "kid vid" in North America. Anyone saying that it all is, is not with a firm grasp on reality. They fit the "one-can-short-of-six-pak" designation applied to me for appreciating Season 2 and objecting to decades of arrogant vitriol flung at it.
It is all well and good to note that Season 2 departed from the extent of body horror utilised in first season. Season 2 steered away from the "uber-darkness" of science fiction-horror into which Season 1 had immersed itself in a number of its episodes. But just because something is not going to the ultimate degree into the "dark", Lovecraftian field of the human imagination, does not mean that it is at the other extreme of befitting-of-juveniles-only, rainbows and lollipops, violence-free "pap" deserving only to air on Saturday A.M. between Circle Square and Barney the Dinosaur. If something is not "dark", then it is childish? To say so denotes, it seems to me, an abject simpleton's logic, or the thinking process of a small child.
I am aware that some broadcasters in the U.K. aired Season 2 Space: 1999 on Saturday morning. Some of them aired Season 1 Space: 1999 on Saturday morning. To this, I can only say that such a decision "speaks to" the mentality of persons responsible for television programme management at certain television stations in the U.K.. A mentality as, if not more, questionable as that of the "Season 2-is-for-kids" Space: 1999 fans. Maybe it is judged to be acceptable in the U.K. for young children to see men die violently with blood coming out of mouth, or to see the body horror in first season Space: 1999, at times when they are in their pyjamas and eating Fruit Loops. I judge that to be wrong, as many television network executives in the U.S. and Canada would opine that it is wrong. Oh, I know that there is no shortage of people who think that anything science fiction/fantasy can only be of appeal to, and be made for, children. Maybe such persons were in the Programme Manager job at the specific television stations in the British Isles. As long as there is no profanity, nudity, or explicit sex, science fiction/fantasy should be in the "kiddie slots". So they think.
It is possible that there was an attitude at some U.K. television stations that anything produced by Gerry Anderson is in the same league, as it were, as Thunderbirds, and therefore suitable for Saturday morning viewing. This is possible, also.
But enough on this particular subject. For now. No doubt the anti-Season 2 ravings of the fans of Space: 1999 will pull me back to it soon enough.
All for today. I will revisit some of the items about which I wrote in my last Weblog entry. I feel that they merit additional commentary. Hopefully this coming weekend.
Saturday, September 9, 2023.
It was a busy week for me, this past one. Not only was I back to working full-time at broadcasting but I was labouring at broadcasting histories for Space: 1999 and The Bugs Bunny/Road Runner Hour. Whilst I am in the free one-week trial at Newspapers.com, I ought to do the most that I can do, with it. I am not planning to become a paying member to it. When the seven days are done, that is all.
I completed the broadcast history for The Bugs Bunny/Road Runner Hour for British Columbia CBC Television stations CBUT and CHEK. It can now be found at The Bugs Bunny/Road Runner Hour Page. I have not much comment to make on the subject of CBUT and CHEK and Bugs and the Road Runner. CHEK preempted the television show an the odd rare occasion. All in all, the western provinces British Columbia and Alberta (I have more to report as regards The Bugs Bunny/Road Runner Hour and Alberta) were the places to be in Canada for watching The Bugs Bunny/Road Runner Hour. Fewer preemptions by the CBC itself, and less joinings in progress due to Bugs and the Road Runner following a live sporting event (football, baseball, hockey).
I did not rest on laurels after finishing the broadcast history for Space: 1999 on CBUT and CHEK. I went full steam ahead and followed that with a broadcast history for Space: 1999 in Alberta. For the CBC-owned-and-operated CBXT- Edmonton and CBRT- Calgary and Red Deer CBC-affiliated CKRD. Some interesting findings in the doing of the broadcast history for Space: 1999 in the province of the Rockies, the Badlands, Drumheller, and prairie plains. People in Alberta saw Space: 1999 at either 4 or 5 P.M., with very few deviations from those two airtimes. It was usually 4 P.M. during the months when Hockey Night in Canada was a CBC juggernaut, and 5 P.M. in the balance of the months of the year. Unlike in New Brunswick where Space: 1999 was most of the time an after-dinner viewing experience, after or around sunset in the winter months, in Alberta the viewing of Space: 1999 was before dinner in the winters as the sun was setting or close to doing so. It is just a hunch, but I think that this meant that the watching of Space: 1999 in Alberta was less of a family affair than it was "down east". Housewives preparing dinner in the kitchen, with husbands assisting them. The youth of the family would be watching Space: 1999 in living room, not with their parents with them in so-doing. Oh, I suppose that some fathers might have stayed in the living room after watching sports or country music, long enough to watch Space: 1999 with son(s) and/or daughter(s) before going to the kitchen to help the wife with dinner preparation. And some families had dinner at 6 o'clock or later. I would think, though, that there were fewer households in Alberta where parents and children watched Space: 1999 together than in provinces in eastern Canada.
I would also hazard a guess that ratings among youth would be lower in Alberta than in parts of Canada east, as youngsters were outdoors playing between 4 and 5 o'clock, having begun doing so earlier in the afternoon and wishing to maximise their fun in the daylight before having to go indoors for dinner, with the sun falling on the horizon. On those Saturdays when it was not storming or bitterly cold outside, at least. Only the juveniles and teenagers more committed to the watching of television on their first day of the week free from the responsibilities of school, would be in living rooms watching what was on the floor model colour television. And some would be watching something other than Space: 1999. In some parts of Alberta, The Bugs Bunny/Road Runner Hour still could be seen post-1975, on the CBC's rival broadcasters, sometimes in direct competition with Space: 1999. I am inclined to think that Alberta, and British Columbia, too, were not where the highest multi-generation viewership numbers for Space: 1999 could be found.
But for viewers of Space: 1999 served by Red Deer's CKRD, I have a profound sympathy. Assuming that they could only see Space: 1999 on CKRD, were unable to "tune in" CBRT or did not have CBRT on cable television. One of CKRD's preemptions of Space: 1999 was of the highly unusual 10 P.M. airing of "The Testament of Arkadia" on February 25, 1978. As "The Testament of Arkadia" very probably did not enjoy a summertime repeat in 1978 anywhere in Canada, followers of Space: 1999 in Red Deer without CBRT access, would have been denied any occasion to see "The Testament of Arkadia" during the CBC full television network run of Space: 1999. "The Testament of Arkadia" was also one of the most elusive episodes of the French-language version of Space: 1999 on Radio-Canada. To some Space: 1999 enthusiasts of central Alberta, "The Testament of Arkadia" would have been an episode seemingly perpetually out of reach. And the disappointment on 12 August, 1978 as "The Testament of Arkadia" was scheduled but not shown as a summertime repeat by the full CBC television network, would have been most acute. Devastating. I can picture myself having the temper tantrum to end all temper tantrums, had I been a citizen of Red Deer on that summer Saturday in 1978. People there might not have seen "The Testament of Arkadia" until it was shown on YTV in 1990. I do believe that the time has come for me to put CHSJ in second place among the worst television stations for watching Space: 1999, CKRD now having the dubious honour of occupying the number one spot formerly held by CHSJ. As bad as CHSJ could be where Space: 1999 was concerned, at least all episodes could be seen at least once in CHSJ's hegemony in most of New Brunswick. Oh, not so fast, Kevin. CHSJ did preempt the most CBC broadcasts of the odyssey of the Alpha Moonbase. Only two CBC broadcasts of Space: 1999 went un-shown by CKRD, those of "The Testament of Arkadia" on 25 February, 1978 and "Earthbound" of 19 November, 1977, whereas CHSJ preempted six. And then there is the matter of CHSJ's mischief in the setting of commercials. I doubt that CKRD was like CHSJ in "sticking" ninety seconds of commercials into a sixty-second advertisement interval. I will call it a tie between CKRD and CHSJ for being the worst Canadian broadcasters in the field of Space: 1999 provision. Until such time as I come upon a CBC-affiliated television station that was worse.
The broadcast history for Space: 1999 in Alberta, can be found on The Space: 1999 Page.
I will note further that Alberta can be counted as another province in which not a single Season 2 episode of Space: 1999 was broadcast by the CBC on Saturday morning. "Stick that in your pipe and smoke it," say I to the people contending "Year 2" to be a Saturday morning phenomenon in Canada. Wrong again, they are. Oh, I know, and they know, they full well know, that they were pulling out of their posterior the statement that "Year 2" was shown on Saturday mornings in Canada.
I have more to say about subjects of my Weblog entry of September 3, but I am feeling rather tired this morning after a busy week and have errands to run. Maybe tomorrow. Yes, maybe tomorrow.
Oh, how could I have forgotten? It consumed most of my time yesterday. There is now a full CBC broadcast history for The Bugs Bunny/Road Runner Hour in Alberta, also. Like the one for British Columbia, it is now to be found at The Bugs Bunny/Road Runner Hour Page.
It has occurred to me to do CBC broadcast histories for Space: 1999 and The Bugs Bunny/Road Runner Hour for Saskatchewan, also. Alas, the availability of Saskatchewan newspapers at Newspapers.com looks like that it is not going to be as abundant as it is for those of British Columbia and Alberta. The Star-Phoenix of Saskatoon looks like it may be my best bet, assuming the television listing supplements are present for every Friday issue of the newspaper. From what I have seen, airtimes match those in Manitoba. So, a Saskatchewan CBC broadcast history may only be of interest in what individual CBC-affiliated television stations may have done with particular episode showings, i.e. which ones were preempted or videotape-delayed. The CBC Television broadcasters in Saskatchewan include CBKT- Regina, CBKST- Saskatoon, CKOS- Yorkton, CKBI- Prince Albert, and CKSA- Lloydminster. The Star-Phoenix does not have listings for CBKT. I will need a Regina newspaper for that, I suppose. And this may be a problem. One will see.
Saturday, September 9, 2023. Supplemental.
I have completed a Space: 1999 CBC broadcast history for the province of Saskatchewan. It is now available on The Space: 1999 Page.
My first assumption of airtimes in Saskatchewan being same as in Manitoba, has been proved false. Clearly, CBKT and CBKST had their own allocation of CBC signal separate from that accorded to CBWT- Winnipeg.
More CBC affiliates not having shown "The Testament of Arkadia" in 1976-8, have come to light. CKSA- Lloydminster, Alberta/Saskatchewan, CKOS- Yorkton, Saskatchewan, and CKBI- Prince Albert, Saskatchewan all eschewed a 10 P.M. airing of Space: 1999- "The Testament of Arkadia" on 25 February, 1977, the only showing of it on the CBC Television network betwixt Septembers, 1976 and 1978. Western provinces were not the place to be for Space: 1999 enthusiasts wanting to see every episode. Unless they had access to CBC-owned-and-operated CBKT, CBKST, CBRT, and CBXT.
Actually, come I do to think of it, CKOS is known (thanks to R.M. Kazan for the knowledge) to have aired Season 1 of Space: 1999 in 1975-6. So, "The Testament of Arkadia" likely aired sometime in the Yorkton area at least once in the year before Space: 1999 became a full CBC Television network attraction. This spares CKOS from being in contention for worst Canadian broadcaster of Space: 1999. As to the others aforementioned, I do not know Space: 1999's status on those in 1975-6. I do know that CBKT did air Season 1 Space: 1999 in 1975-6- and it is probable that all of the CBC-affiliated television stations in Saskatchewan had access to it through the CBKT signal that was no doubt their source signal for all CBC television programming. Maybe they all did air Space: 1999 in 1975-6. Either at the same time as on CBKT, or on videotape-delay.
But I ramble. All for today.
Rainy Tuesday, September 12, 2023.
News aplenty today. For persons interested in broadcast histories.
Where to begin? How about chronologically in order of broadcast?
The Bugs Bunny/Road Runner Hour. There is now a broadcast history of The Bugs Bunny/Road Runner Hour for Saskatchewan CBC television stations, at The Bugs Bunny/Road Runner Hour Page . I have also found television listings in a northern British Columbia weekly newspaper called The Quesnel Cariboo Observer, for no less than two CBC-affiliated television stations in Canada's westernmost province. They are CKPG- Prince George and CFCR (later called CFJC)- Kamloops. And with those television listings, I added to the existing broadcast history for The Bugs Bunny/Road Runner Hour in British Columbia.
I have to offer a caveat. Newspaper television listings tend to be inconsistent over a lengthy period of time, sometimes offering schedules for certain television channels and sometimes not. There may even be a protracted period of time, a span of several consecutive weeks, in which listings for one television station disappear. And some weeks, no television listings at all, none whatsoever for any television station. There are Saturdays where no data was to be found for one or both of the two CBC-affiliated broadcasters aforementioned in this paragraph. So, I just had to go with probability and assume no preemption of Bugs and the Road Runner on the television station for which data was missing. And some weeks, there were conflicts between the data on the two television stations as regards airtime. When I was presented with those, I usually opted to adhere to the CBUT data, being as CBUT was probably the CBC programming signal source for CKPG and CFCR. There were a couple of exceptions where it looked like a last-minute adjustment of the listings for CKPG and CFCR had occurred (the typeface size or straightness suggesting a superimposing over an earlier listing), those cases being ones where I abandoned the CBUT data and went with CKPG and/or CFCR, if the newsprinted information for the latter two broadcasters was not in accordance with that of the former one. Based only on "gut feeling". Maybe I am right. Maybe I am wrong. After all of the water passed beneath the bridge since then, I doubt that anyone is going to come forth with conclusive proof of my verity or my falseness. It would be so nice if I could have an absolutely reliable source of data, or for all newspaper listings to match. But one cannot have everything. Best guess, I suppose.
Space: 1999. After completing a CBC broadcast history of Space: 1999 for Saskatchewan for The Space: 1999 Page, I decided to do a broadcast history for Cosmos 1999 in Quebec. I had at my disposal (by way of Newspapers.com) The Montreal Gazette and The Montreal Star to use for data for every broadcast of Cosmos 1999 by Radio-Canada in 1975, 1976, 1977, 1979, and 1980, on CBFT- Montreal and CBVT- Quebec City. CBFT aired every broadcast of Cosmos 1999 on Radio-Canada. Naturally, as it is the originating television station of Radio-Canada, as CBLT- Toronto is for CBC English. CBVT opted out of airing Cosmos 1999 on its Monday evening transmissions in 1979. Interesting. I had been under the impression that only CBAFT in the eastern Maritimes had been so gauche as to refuse to show Cosmos 1999 at any time in the many years of broadcast Cosmos 1999 on CBC French. I have some sporadic listings at my disposal for CKSH- Sherbrooke (by means of The Sherbrooke Record and La Tribune), and, alas, none for CKRT- Riviere-du-Loup and CKRS- Saguenay. What I do know is that CKRT is said to have been little more than a re-broadcaster for CBFT, probably offering not much more than its own station identification. So, if Cosmos 1999 was on CBFT, it is reasonable to assume that it also was on CKRT. As for CKRS, I am going to assume that it being Radio-Canada's primary receiver of television programming for northern Quebec, it deviated very little, if at all, from CBFT. I am ready to be corrected.
In my research for Cosmos 1999 on CKSH in Sherbrooke, I discovered rather a precious jewel. A confirmation at last, at long last, of what I had long suspected. For 1977's Saturday, October 22, at 5 P.M. my time (Atlantic Time), TV Guide magazine had listed Cosmos 1999 to air between Univers des Sports and Bagatelle on Radio-Canada stations CJBR- Rimouski and CBAFT-Moncton. There had not been any Cosmos 1999 on Radio-Canada in nearly two months, since "La Mission des Dariens" had been telecast at 8 P.M. on Saturday, August 27. The Cosmos 1999 TV Guide listing for 22 October did not specify any episode. No synopsis. I did not know what episode that it was. And all of the newspaper television listings in New Brunswick simply had "A Communiquer" at 5 P.M. on Saturday, the 22. 5 P.M. that Saturday was not an opportune time for me to watch cable television at my grandparents' house, and I needed, then, cable television to watch anything on CBC French; the paltry rabbit ears on our television in our new Fredericton home, were insufficient to receive the CBAFT signal. And "A Communiquer" being in the newspaper television listings, it was not a certainty that Cosmos 1999 would be shown that day. I chose to focus my attention fully on that day's 6 P.M. provision of Space: 1999 on CBC Television and CHSJ. While I was eating dinner with my parents before they left our place shortly before 6 o'clock to visit my aunt and her family (and me remaining at home by myself to watch and audiotape-record the Space: 1999 episode, "Another Time, Another Place", between 6 and 7 P.M.), I wondered if indeed Cosmos 1999 was being shown, and what episode was in the offering. For many years over several decades, I have suspected that if an episode of Cosmos 1999 was transmitted that day on Radio-Canada, that it was "Le Domaine du Dragon". Because "Le Domaine du Dragon" came after "La Mission des Dariens" in the run of Cosmos 1999 in 1979 extending towards that year's ending. In late 1979, CBAFT was no longer disseminating Cosmos 1999 to the people of the eastern Maritime provinces. But that is another story.
"Dragon's Domain" also came after "Mission of the Darians" in episode novelisations (in the book, Astral Quest) penned by John Rankine. This I knew in autumn of 1977.
Suspecting as I have that "Le Domaine du Dragon" aired at 5 P.M. on October 22, 1977, I have long had it positioned there in my broadcast history for Cosmos 1999 for the eastern Maritimes. Every newspaper television guide from places far and wide in Canada to which I have breen privy, has either said "A Communiquer" or "T.B.A." for 5 P.M. (or 4 P.M. Eastern Time in Quebec and Ontario, or other airtimes further west) for Radio-Canada television stations on October 22, 1977. That is, until now. La Tribune in Sherbrooke had television listings for late afternoon of 22 October, 1977, and here that is.
Eureka! My suspicions of many decades have been "borne out". The suspicions were quite logical, yes. There was also an unusual airtime late that same month, on Monday, October 31, for "Le Testament de l'Arcadie". It aired as a Halloween treat, I guess. But CBAFT opted not to show it, and, again, it would not have been receivable in my home, then, in 1977, being as we still lacked cable television for seeing CBAFT (even if CBAFT did air it, which I am quite sure that CBAFT did not). But I digress. "Le Testament de l'Arcadie" came after "Le Domaine du Dragon" in December, 1979. And it comes after "Dragon's Domain" in Astral Quest. It was logical to assume "Le Domaine du Dragon" to be before "Le Testament de l'Arcadie" in 1977. Just as it was logical for it to come after "La Mission des Dariens". But now, there is no doubt. Cosmos 1999 did air that October Saturday in 1977, and the episode was "Le Domaine du Dragon". It was for the best, I think, that I did not see "Le Domaine du Dragon" that day. Much better for me to have first experienced it not in French but in English. Three weeks later. And while I was staying in Douglastown with my best friend, Michael. On 12 November, 1977.
It would be interesting, so interesting, to go back in time and watch "Le Domaine du Dragon". to see how Radio-Canada handled the episode. What scenes would have been cut? And to experience what it would have been like to see Cosmos 1999 at 5 P.M. on a Saturday. Such had never been an experience known by me.
With my discovery of The Quesnel Cariboo Observer, I have added to the broadcast history of Space: 1999 in British Columbia, putting listings for CKPG and CFJC (formerly CFCR) into the history. CKPG and CFJC had to be using CBUT as their CBC signal source. The unusual 11 A.M. airtime for "War Games" on 11 March, 1978, already noted for CBUT and CHEK, was shared by CKPG and CFJC. As was the case with listings for The Bugs Bunny/Road Runner Hour, I found conflicting information between CBUT and the CBC-affiliated broadcasters in northern British Columbia. I have decided to amend my listings for CBUT and CHEK to match the ones for CKPG and CFJC in a few instances, including the airing of "Breakaway" on 11 September, 1976, and that for "The Exiles" on 25 September, 1976. Why? Why not opt for CBUT data and rule the others as wrong? Because, in the case of "Breakaway", every broadcaster of CBC Television programming in British Columbia besides CBUT, including my two new discoveries, CKPG and CFJC, are listed as having "Breakaway" airing at 9 P.M.. That is, CHEK, CKPG, and CFJC listings saying that "Breakaway" was to be seen at 9 P.M., CBUT being alone is showing "Breakaway" at 3 P.M.. CBUT being the signal source for the other television stations, it must have shown "Breakaway" at 9 P.M.. I cannot imagine three CBC-affiliated television channels all videotape-delaying Space: 1999 from 3 P.M. to the same airtime of 9 P.M.. They had to be airing it concurrent with CBUT at 9 P.M.. As for "The Exiles" on September 25, CKPG and CFJC were listed as telecasting Space: 1999 that day at 5 P.M.. Which was the then-regular airtime allocated for Space: 1999 on CBC in British Columbia. The Vancouver Sun listing Space: 1999 at 6:30 P.M. that day, makes no sense. There is no compelling reason for it to have aired that late. No live sports event that could have delayed it to the evening. No live political event, either. And the 5 P.M. listing that day for CBUT says only T.B.A. (To Be Announced). I am "going with my gut" and placing "The Exiles" on September 25 at 5 P.M.. Unless someone has clear memory of having seen "The Exiles" at 6:30 that day and comes forth to correct me.
My free trial at Newspapers.com ends today. I have expanded the broadcast histories of The Bugs Bunny/Road Runner Hour and Space: 1999 as much as I can with the information available at Newspapers.com. I will not be continuing with Newspapers.com as a paying member.
Also expiring not long from now, is my membership at Fanderson. It might already have expired. I do not know. All that I wanted from my membership in Fanderson was the DVD of The UFO Documentary and The Space: 1999 Documentary (plus "Message From Moonbase Alpha"), which I procured a year ago. If there was to be any incentive in the newsletter, F.A.B., for me to continue being a member, it was squandered utterly in the last issue thereof, the one that I received a few weeks ago. A "Flashback" article on the final Space: 1999 episode, "The Dorcons", which was little more than a "pile-on" by reviewers proclaiming the usual antipathy for second season Space: 1999, all of the episodes thereof including the one being focused-upon in the article, and the producer of it, dead now for more than twenty years. No fandom for "The Dorcons" be found there in the article. Just repudiations or denunciations. I care not to congregate with people who do not share my affection for all of Space: 1999. I wonder if I should look upon the article as a thumbing of the nose at me as I leave the club a year after I joined it. Not a conscious, deliberate one, I hasten to add. Then again, who knows? Maybe it is. But either way, so be it. I went, I saw, I obtained what I sought to obtain, and I left. Such is my year's long membership in Fanderson. If my DVD rots, I might return for a replacement. If I am not "own(ing) nussing und be(ing) happy" by then. Or dead.
I still intend to revisit subjects of my September 3 Weblog entry. But not today. Hopefully later this week.
Thursday, September 14, 2023.
Fourth day in a row of overcast, rainy weather, and there is Hurricane Lee heading the way of Atlantic Canada on the weekend. On Saturday. Why do hurricanes or post-tropical storms seem always to come to Atlantic Canada on Saturdays? Arthur did, in 2014. And I can think of a few others that did. I had best stock my larder with plenty of peanut butter, crackers, nachos, and whatever else I can think of, that does not need refrigeration or preparation with heat. And keep as little as possible in the refrigerator and freezer, in case power is out for days, as it was during and after Arthur.
I am aware of yesterday's significance. "Breakaway Day", Septembers 13 are called every year by the aficionados of Space: 1999. With appreciation and amusement, I watched yesterday a brief address to Space: 1999 fans by none other than Mr. Brian Blessed. He is amazing. Some actors' voices change as they age. But even at age 86, Mr. Blessed sounds as he did as Dr. Cabot Rowland and Mentor. And, of course, Prince Vultan in Flash Gordon. This is one of those rare occasions when Mr. Blessed did not regale us with, "Gordon's ali-i-ive?????!!!!" Actually, after listening to him again in the video, I would say that he sounds more like Vultan in the video than he does Rowland or Mentor. But then, I guess that he has reinvoked Vultan much more often over the years than either of his two Space: 1999 roles. He is more practiced at reprising Vultan, I guess.
Here it is.
https://www.facebook.com/GerryAndersonOfficial/videos/142754398907178/
This is the first time that I have heard Mr. Blessed reference his work in Space: 1999. He usually has much to say about Flash Gordon and some of his non-science fiction/fantasy work. It brought a smile to my face on an otherwise dreary day.
On the subject of Space: 1999, I have more Space: 1999 Page updates to report. My friend, Michel, came again to my aid, to guide me toward some Internet-based archives of Quebec newspapers with which I was able to procure information on Cosmos 1999 showings on numerous Radio-Canada affiliate television stations in "La Belle Province", including CKRS- Saguenay, CKSH- Sherbrooke, and CKTM- Trois Rivieres. I think that my broadcast history for Cosmos 1999 in Quebec is as comprehensive as it can possibly be, given what sources of information are available. There was a large amount of videotape-delaying "goin' on" with broadcasters in Quebec. It does seem to have been more of "a thing" there than with CBC Television affiliates in other provinces. In 1975 and early 1976, whilst Cosmos 1999 was being telecast by Radio-Canada out of Montreal on Mondays at 5 P.M., CKRS was videotape-delaying it to Thursdays, and CKSH and CKTM were videotape-delaying it to Saturdays. Saturdays in late afternoon, usually 5 P.M.. Which was in a broadcast season before the English CBC chose 5 P.M. as the airtime for Space: 1999 for much of the country (starting September, 1976). Interesting. When Cosmos 1999 was a Saturday evening attraction on Radio-Canada in 1976-7, CKOS videotape-delayed it to Wednesdays. CKSH and CKTM opted in 1976-7 to air Cosmos 1999 at 7 P.M. Saturdays as it was being transmitted by CBFT. With the 1979 Monday evening and 1979-80 Wednesday afternoon broadcasts of Cosmos 1999 on Radio Canada, CKSH and CKTM went back to videotape-delaying it to late Saturday afternoons. CKRS opted out of airing it at all in 1979 and 1980. My assumptions about CKRS were wrong. It did diverge from CBFT. Very often. I do not know about CKRT- Riviere-du-Loup, but I have seen it said that CKRT was little more than a CBFT re-transmitter. I will go with that.
La Presse had quite a sizable television guide supplement. At least as good, and sometimes even better than, TV Guide magazine, with regard to providing extensive information about many television programmes. Episode synopses were common. Especially for the broadcasters of television programming in the French language. Even Bagatelle had descriptions of the contents of its episodes. In as much as what cartoon characters were included in each episodes, Bugs Bunny among them. Episode titles were given for Declic, French version of Vision On. There were synopses for The Adventures of Black Beauty on English CBC, and many for a television show called The Lost Islands in 1976, which Space: 1999 eventually replaced. I have absolutely no memory of The Lost Islands. Not a one. Even though The Lost Islands filled the time slot that used to be allocated to half of The Bugs Bunny/Road Runner Hour and the half-hour Bugs Bunny Show. However, I did avail myself of the information on its episodes in the La Presse listings, adding episode titles for The Lost Islands to my television listings project. I did same for episodes of The Adventures of Black Beauty. And Declic. And some episodes of Phyllis, too.
What of Cosmos 1999? Well, La Presse had episode information for almost all of Radio-Canada's run of Season 1 Cosmos 1999 in 1975-6. Some people have long claimed that "Un Autre Royaume de la Mort" was the second episode aired by Radio-Canada, after "A la Derive", in September, 1975. But La Presse said that it was "Collision Inevitable" that aired second. Which is consistent with all other Radio-Canada showings of Season 1. I am hewing to La Presse in this instance. I am puzzled at La Presse's announcement of the episode airing on November 17, 1975. La Presse said that a repeat of "Collision Inevitable" would be broadcast that day. I would tend to think that day's episode to have been "L'Enfant d'Alfa", because it fits there, between "Le Maillon" the week earlier and "Le Dernier Crepuscule" the week after, "L'Enfant d'Alfa" always airing between the two of them on subsequent Radio-Canada airings of Season 1 episodes. And nowhere else in 1975 and early 1976 is there a mention of "L'Enfant d'Alfa" in the La Presse television listings. Why would Radio-Canada air "Collision Inevitable" twice and "L'Enfant d'Alfa" not at all, in 1975-6? Unless there were problems of availability for "L'Enfant d'Alfa" on November 17. Maybe the film print was damaged. Or maybe there was something about the episode that caused Radio-Canada to judge it inappropriate for a 5 P.M. airtime. Unless information to the contrary comes to light, I will concede to La Presse being correct about "Collision Inevitable" airing a second time in 1975. On the other hand, I find myself inclined to reject a Cosmos 1999 episode synopsis in La Presse later in Radio-Canada's 1975 and early 1976 engagement with Cosmos 1999. La Presse in late December, 1975 and early January, 1976 had a synopsis for "Le Dernier Adversaire" two weeks in a row. I am assuming the one on the second week to be an error. Someone neglecting to update the Cosmos 1999 listing with synopsis for "En Desarroi", which came after "Le Dernier Adversaire" on subsequent Cosmos 1999 Radio-Canada runs. There are also clearly erroneous prognostications for "Tout ce qui Reluit" and "Les Exiles" in November, 1976. Those episodes are known to have aired on Radio-Canada in December of that year. On December 11 and 18, to be exact. Not long after the erroneous indications of "Tout ce qui Reluit" and "Les Exiles", La Presse stopped printing Cosmos 1999 episode synopses, and would not resume doing so until the repeat airing of "La metamorphose" in January, 1979. Most episodes aired in 1979 and 1980 had synopses in La Presse.
I propose now to bring to a close my work on Space: 1999 Canada broadcast histories. It is not a comprehensive compilation of data. There are at least two CBC-affiliated television stations in Alberta, one in Medicine Hat and one in Lethbridge, for whose television programming schedules I have no information source. I have zero sources of information for Newfoundland. None. I saw a few television listings for the Yukon, in which airtimes seemed to accord with those of CBUT. None for the other northern territories. And the biggest television market in Canada, the Greater Toronto Area and the rest of the Great Lakes region of Ontario, is sparse with regard to available information. I could deduce a 1976-8 Space: 1999 broadcast history for CBLT, as it was the originating television station for CBC English, but the information would in all likelihood be identical to CBOT- Ottawa on every week, CBOT broadcast history being already available. Any work that I might someday do for Toronto and the Great Lakes region would include a huge number of television stations. I would need to expand the template that I currently use for data, to contain all of the information.
The same would apply to CBC broadcast history for The Bugs Bunny/Road Runner Hour. If I were motivated to continue expanding that.
Now, I am going back to September 3, and forty years further back to September 3, 1983- the day of the incident that diminished me in the eyes of my best friend, Joey, and which caused things between us to never again be the same as they had been prior to that day. I may not be unduly dramatic, as it were, or unduly melodramatic, to say that the seeds of the dissolution of my fourth life era were sown on that day. Andrew was a master operator. I have to give to him that. In reading my account of the day, one might be inclined to ask how it was that Andrew knew that Joey, together with Jason, would be coming my way. He had to have known that to put his trap into motion. Either he encountered them when they were heading toward my place, asked them where they were going, then said, "See ya," to them and then sped as fast as he could on his bicycle to my place; or he overheard them talking about going to see me, them not seeing him doing so, and then decided to hurry to my place to be there before them. It was not my impression that they had seen Andrew earlier, but they might have. Either way, Andrew must have thought fast to "cook up" his scheme. Or maybe, just maybe, he had been planning it for some time and was waiting for the right moment, the right circumstances. I can picture him going to Joey's front door, hearing Joey and Jason in Joey's backyard talking about going to see Kevin for financial backing for their project, and then slyly sneaking back to his bicycle before Joey and Jason could see him, the wheels in his head very much turning as he bicycled out of Joey's driveway and down the street in the direction of my place. It is possible that Joey and Jason saw him on his bicycle speeding down the street in the direction of Kevin's place. Which, together with seeing Andrew's bicycle in my driveway, indicated to Joey that Andrew was with me. Andrew spun his yarn about wanting to hide from Joey, and the rest is my lamented history.
Oh, there is no doubt now in my mind how expert that Andrew was at creating division through the telling of half-truths, omitting certain facts that do not go along with an agenda of "breaking up" two friends. Like our hiding from Joey being his idea, not mine. And even cleverer, pre-meditated sabotage of good relations. There are people in the world who thrive on what is often branded as disturbing of fecal matter (I will not use the s-word often colloquially used in the branding). I have known all to many of such people. People who remoselessly generate suspicion, enmity, ill-will between two buddies, and profit from doing so in securing the highest esteem of the one person of the divided duo with whom close rapport is desired. Andrew wanted best friendship with Joey. I was in the way. I was an obstacle. I had to be removed. It is clear as mud to me now. And Andrew "got" what he wanted. Joey favouring him over me. From then onward.
For all of my faults, for all of the wrong that I have done, one thing that I can say about myself, one good thing, is that "breaking up" pairs of people through outright lies or statements of kernels of truth being wilfully distorted, twisted, or certain facts being cleverly omitted, or pre-meditated deception followed by selective "blabbing", is not my modus operandi. I think that I can safely say that I have never done it. The thought of doing it did not occur to me. There may have been clear potential benefit in doing it, but I guess that my mind was not devious enough to concoct a scheme for causing division in two people and then "cosying up" to the person with whom I wished to have closer relations. I have been victimised by it many a time, to be sure, but never did do it to others. This is one virtue that I have. Maybe the only one. Of course, I could be so naive that I would fail to notice it being done to me, and was unaware for quite some time of its power as a weapon, a weapon that could be used against people who were keeping me from having a closeness with someone that I wished to have. As I say, I did not detect for a long, long time, the hand of Andrew in the diminishment of my rapport with Joey in September, 1983. If I had a mind to do it, I could have retaliated and used something, or "made up" something, to cause a split between Joey and Andrew. But I did not. Even if the thought would have occurred to me, I doubt that I would have done it. If my sense of right and wrong, such as it was, were not sufficient to stop me, I would have been wary of being "found out" as the person of nefarious deed. I would have been denounced for that, most definitely. Also, the guilt in my conscience would have been intense, I expect. Perhaps too much to bear. I would be having physical manifestations of such guilt. As I had in 1991 with regard to my faux-pas with Dean. If I were cunning enough to do it without being "found out" as the dastardly quantity and denounced by the people whom I was seeking to divide (and I am just not that cunning), and were able to benefit from it, pangs of conscience would have me in a downward spiral of emotional distress. Some people do not have such conscience, though.
I propose now to ruminate some on the Golden Rule. On September 3, I said this: "Go to hell, sir. Go to hell for violating the Golden Rule. When you have a taste of your own medicine, a 'hatchet job' upon your favourite season of Space: 1999, how do you feel? Gratified? I doubt that." I can anticipate the condemnations of hypocrisy on my part, from people who judge my Season 1 Space: 1999 "nits" column in 1995 to have been a case of me not doing unto others as I wish to be done-unto. I do not deny that that particular column was a mistake. I have said so. Not back in 1995 when my malefactor in Calgary was seeking my disrepute and my ostracisation while he, in his narcissist's perfection, sat in his ivory tower. Never, ever admit fault when someone like that is imperiously wielding the sword of denunciation over one's head. But I do now acknowledge it being a mistake. An understandable mistake. A provoked mistake. It was by no means a preemptive strike. The preemptive strikes had been launched again, again, and again by the detractors of "Year 2" and were becoming more and more frequent, more and more bellicose, more and more galling, before I threw the Golden Rule aside. Those people did need some taste of their own medicine. And when they had it, did they like it? Of course not. So, they were not doing unto me as they wished to have been done-unto. They were in violation of the Golden Rule before I was. Indeed, I joined Space: 1999 fandom in 1984 bearing no hostility, no potential Golden Rule violation, to anyone. My Golden Rule violations came after those of other fans. After. I know that Jesus said to always turn the other cheek and not engage in conflict with those who violate the Golden Rule. Do not retaliate. But, then, if there is no counter-move, then the people proclaiming my favourite entertainments to be wretched, have "won the day", and all subsequent days. And they won either way, I know. Whether I contested them or not. What did I gain, then? Nothing? No. Not nothing. I gained the peace of mind in knowing that I tried. I tried to foster a more open-minded frame of mind on the matter of Season 2. It would have been worse for me mentally if I had "copped out" and made no effort at all. Of course, it might have been better for me not to ever have been privy to the bellowing of the fans of Space: 1999 against everything made at Pinewood Studios' L and M Stages in 1976. I would have had even better peace of mind had this been the case.
Golden Rule violations are a sin. They are evil. Yes, I have done evil in my Golden Rule violations. But surely it is more evil to not acknowledge Golden Rule violations and to "double down" on them. Or for people in a group to celebrate and "circle-jerk" one another for doing them. Non-stop. Every day. Oh, the refrain is that they are simply saying the truth, and they will declare as delusional anyone who is in disagreement with their proudly-adhered-to forty-six-year-old blinkeredness. Are there entertainments that I dislike? Sure there are. But I am not typewriting my dislike of them three-hundred-and-sixty-five days every year, and "like-clicking" all others who do. And I am willing to be persuaded that there is merit in what I do not like- provided that what others like is not preemptively used as an object of strike at something that I like. Space: 1999 fans do that. Bob Clampett fans do that (and are doing so now in the Blu-Ray.com Forum's discussion on LOONEY TUNES COLLECTOR'S CHOICE). Others do that. People who dislike Ralph Bakshi's Spiderman episodes do it. I could persist all day today with this particular subject. But my "point" has been made. I think, satisfactorily.
It has likely occurred to my readers that the fellow in Calgary is one of those fecal matter disturbers. He did quite "a number" on the relationship between the Reginan and I. And who knows who else? When I criticise him in response to this and his actions with regard to me in general, am I trying to disturb fecal matter? No. Just trying to show that he is not the paragon of perfection and righteousness as he purports himself to be. That indeed he warrants criticism more than I do, because he chose to put himself in the top position of a fan club and to denounce a rank-and-file member who objected to the obvious enmity for the second season on the newsletter pages and, as my stay with him clearly showed, in the leadership of the club. Clearly, appreciators of Season 2 who wish not to be belittled, provoked, and/or "gaslit", do not belong in the club. And I left. I was going to be "cancelled", and I forestalled that, by exiting first. One might say that I still was "cancelled" in absentia. Fair enough. But I did not give to anyone the satisfaction of knowing that I was reading the denouncements and "caving" to them and grovellingly agreeing to be the "village idiot" henceforth. No. I have enough dignity not to give to anyone that.
And, yet, I am allowing the Calgarian, the Reginan, and others of the Alpha League club to live rent-free in my mind for the rest of my life? If they are, then they do not dominate my everyday thoughts. I go through many days, most days, without thinking of them. And they have not crushed my love for Space: 1999. Though there are times when I am not sure of that.
I see that the people at the Roobarb Forum are planning to recognise the fiftieth anniversary of Space: 1999 by reviewing all forty-eight episodes. Oh. dear lord. Give to me the strength to avert my gaze, to stay away, far away, from the particular discussion "thread" at said Roobarb Forum.
All for today.
Sunday, September 17, 2023.
There was heavy rain and brisk winds yesterday in New Brunswick as Hurricane Lee passed over Canada's eastern Maritimes. Power in my area had four momentary "wink-outs" in the morning. Fortunately, no prolonged outage of power. In a lull in the rain and wind, I was able to go outside for a late afternoon stroll.
I chose not to attempt any work on my Website yesterday, in case power was lost before I could save whatever it was that I might have been doing. Today, however, I do have some Weblog entry-writing to do.
Since my expanding of the CBC broadcast history section of The Space: 1999 Page, traffic at that and at this Weblog has increased significantly. They are now my two most frequently accessed Web pages. People are looking at them. And I definitely feel motivated to do more with them. But the motivation would be in me, regardless, as once I undertake to create or grow a project, I am not satisfied if, for whatever reason, I have to stop before completing what I "set out" to do. I strive always to be thorough.
Unsatisfied as I therefore am with my broadcast histories for both Space: 1999 and The Bugs Bunny/Road Runner Hour as they currently stand, I have used two Internet search engines in an intensive search for archives of newspapers that might cast light upon the broadcasting information that I seek for CBC Television affiliates in Medicine Hat and Lethbridge, plus some others, others of whose existence I have this past week discovered, they being CFTK- Terrace, British Columbia, CJDC- Dawson Creek, British Columbia, and CHBC- Kelowna, British Columbia. And I have also become aware of the existence of CKRN- Rouyn-Noranda, Quebec, an affiliate of Radio-Canada. In order to have a fully complete Space: 1999 or The Bugs Bunny/Road Runner Hour broadcast history for British Columbia and Alberta, or a totally comprehensive Cosmos 1999 broadcast history for Quebec, I need information on broadcasts of the two, or rather three, television programmes on these television channels.
I "came up empty" in almost every search. I was able to find a few issues of The Val d'Or Star for 1979, wherein there are to be found listings for CKRN. From those listings, I learned that CKRN had no interest in Cosmos 1999 and a disseminating of it to people of Quebec's northwest and the Timmins region of northeastern Ontario. At least not in winter, spring, and summer in 1979. CKRN did not align with the Monday evening Radio-Canada airings of Cosmos 1999 and did not opt for videotape-delay of the odyssey of Moonbase Alpha. Nowhere on the CKRN schedule in 1979's first eight to nine months could Cosmos 1999 be found. At 7 P.M. on Mondays, instead of Cosmos 1999, CKRN was showing La petite maison dans la prairie. Little House On the Prairie in French. Oh, am I grateful not to have had to live in or near Rouyn-Noranda! That would have stung most piercingly, most acutely. It would have been galling in the extreme. Not being able to see Cosmos 1999 because the Radio-Canada broadcaster in my part of the world favoured the Ingalls family.
For me, Little House On the Prairie was the anti-Space: 1999. It was quite unspectacular, set in quaint surroundings on old Earth, on the American frontier. It was not about grown men in spaceships going to fantastic alien worlds; it offered little girls running around fields on prairie flatlands. It was set in a time when modern technology was almost non-existent. It was a television show for girls and women desiring down-to-Earth emotional domestic family situations, not fanciful boys of the widest range of imagination, and men who retained a broad scope of appreciated speculative fiction. Boys and men who were not "moved" by multitudinous showings of familial emotion. My mother liked it and would watch it, and I would sometimes watch it with her, often feeling like I was sullying myself in doing so. Michael Landon was effervescent and likeable in Bonanza, but in Little House On the Prairie, he was doleful, quiet, and "off-putting". Many of the episodes were like a train wreck that I could not look away from, much though I wanted to, as it was illness, fire, or whatever other misfortune, for Charles Ingalls, his wife, and girls, melodramatically played to the hilt by the ensemble cast of actors and actresses. Even those people who like to lambaste Season 2 Space: 1999 as being melodramatic, will have to admit that Little House On the Prairie was the epitome of melodrama in prime-time series television. It lacked the testosterone-powered man-versus-man gunslinging excitement of the pulp Western of which Bonanza was one. It was a family (i.e. husband, wife, daughters) melodrama set on the fringe of, if not entirely outside of, the reaches of the Western genre. Oh, yes, there were occasional illnesses and fires in Space: 1999 and numerous other science fiction/fantasy opuses of the 1960s and 1970s, but the impacts of them did not linger in full sight of viewer in all subsequent episodes. And thank goodness the viewer in those cases was not forced to hear a catatonic Mary humming "Rock-a-Bye, Baby" over the course of of a two-parter. I am still traumatised by that.
Oh, how I would have suffered knowing that I was missing Cosmos 1999 on its return to the television airwaves of Radio-Canada, on account of the CKRN programme manager having a "thing" for "Little House..."! Week after week. For all of the nine months that Cosmos 1999 graced Radio-Canada's Monday evening line-up. I do not know what CKRN did with the Wednesday airings of Cosmos 1999 post-September, 1979. It is likely that the programme manager would have eschewed it then, also.
I cannot imagine a television series I would less like to see supplanting Space: 1999 or its French-language iteration. Not even The Dukes of Hazzard, my having expressed hating that as I have. No. CKRN does rather "take the cake", I would say, when it comes to doing the worst for followers of the runaway Moon on television screens of planet Earth.
And I am afraid that this is to be the limit of my knowledge of broadcasts of Space: 1999 and Cosmos 1999 in Canada outside of my broadcast histories for those currently on my Web page for Space: 1999. More to my liking, from a few early 1970s issues of The Val d'Or Star, I have found that people of the Rouyn-Noranda and Timmins part of the world, did see the CBC Television showings of The Bugs Bunny/Road Runner Hour. At least the imagination and the otherworldliness in that, was not anathema to the people responsible for selecting television programming for the good people of the Timmins and Rouyn-Noranda region. Alas, I have nothing approximating a full broadcast history for The Bugs Bunny/Road Runner Hour on Timmins CBC Television affiliate, CFCL.
While I am on the subject of otherworldliness in Warner Brothers cartoons, I propose to respond to some criticism that I have come upon, of the Bugs Bunny and Marvin Martian cartoon, "Mad as a Mars Hare". It was but one paragraph in length but made the most use of the words that it did utilise, to declare "Mad as a Mars Hare" as a cartoon of no possible interest to anyone. A cartoon wherein absolutely nothing happens, allegedly. The worst Marvin Martian cartoon by a billion trillion parsecs. This is said beneath an image from the cartoon, an image of the Neanderthal Rabbit Bugs about to crush Marvin with one hand. So, nothing happens, eh? Does Marvin turning Bugs into a Neanderthal Rabbit not count as something happening? Does Bugs earlier accidentally disintegrating Marvin constitute a non-event? I love it when Marvin says, "Being disintegrated makes me very angry. Very angry, indeed." Just the way that he says it. Especially the, "Being disintegrated..." part.
I will admit that "Mad as a Mars Hare" is not as action-packed as "The Hasty Hare". There is not a lengthy chase scene as there is in "Hare-Way to the Stars". Bugs does spend much of the time talking and gazing upon an un-Earthly environment. He does that, also, in "Haredevil Hare". But unlike the rather dull Lunar surface in "Haredevil Hare", we are treated to the lands and sky of Mars as envisioned by Chuck Jones and his team in their most devoutly visually expressive era. In "Mad as a Mars Hare", we finally see the Martian surface, the surface of Marvin's home world. Very bleak and uninviting. Daunting, even for our heroic bunny, who is reluctant to set rabbit's foot upon it and has to be lured out of his rocket by the chief focus of his baser instinct, the carrot. Bugs says that Mars makes Siberia look like Miami Beach. It is, I think, one of the most salient nods to the otherworldly in all of the Warner Brothers cartoons. And the sublime art design of the devoid-of-vegetation red soil, the green, grotesque mountains in the distance, and Marvin's intensely prolongated telescopic apparatus, is combined with music that is ominous and austere. I remember on my first viewing of "Mad as a Mars Hare" feeling uneasy, disconcerted, by the cartoon from its first scene to the scary end, with Bugs turned into a monster. And at the same time captivated. By the Martian scenery. By the look of the rocket, especially its lower exterior shown parked on the planet's sand. The scale of the rocket was impressive in the film frame. The look of the cartoon ought to be impeccable. And the sound is no slouch either. One of Bill Lava's better musical scores.
And "Mad as a Mars Hare" hearkens back to "Hyde and Hare" in having Bugs metamorphosed into a horrible thing at cartoon's end. And also in invoking symbolism of the carrot, what Bugs' baser instincts do crave, sometimes very much to his detriment. There is an admirable chunk of characterisation for Bugs in "Mad as a Mars Hare", one that adds credence to my study of "Hyde and Hare" and the role of the carrot in that. Indeed, the carrot in "Mad as a Mars Hare" splits open to reveal a flag saying "Earth", consolidating my contention that the carrot represents Bugs' mother world, the world to which Dr. Jekyll is known to say that man's primitive half has a dim, animal connection. I love very much the title of "Mad as a Mars Hare". It is a play on the expression, "Mad as a March hare." Mars is the word in French for March, a fact of which I am sure that Jones was cognizant, his Pepe Le Pew cartoons demonstrating his awareness of the French language. Not only this. The actor who played Jekyll and Hyde in the most famous movie of the Stevenson "bogey tale", was Fredric March. I am not certain that the last of these was a conscious reference by Jones. Whether it is or not, ought to be of no consequence. It is there. "Mad as a Mars Hare" recalls "Hyde and Hare". How very apt that it has in its title a hint of a recurrence of the Jekyll-and-Hyde trope. Bugs turns monstrous as he does in the Freleng-directed encounter of Bugs with Dr. Jekyll. The carrot in that is very problematic for Bugs, as it also is in "Mad as a Mars Hare". It pulls Bugs into a scenario that ends with a transformation into an embodiment of baser nature. I love it when there are artistic correspondences between cartoons or episodes of television shows. Of course, as I am all too acutely aware, this is lost on all too many people who are professed fans of the cartoons or television shows. But I will end my defence here on this note. "Mad as a Mars Hare" warrants aesthetic attention by the truly serious-minded Warner Brothers cartoon aficionado, contrary to a particular critic.
The DOCTOR WHO- THE COLLECTION- SEASON 20 Blu-Ray box set is being released this coming Monday. There is no indication that it is being made ready as yet, to ship to me. It feels like ages since I last purchased a Blu-Ray. I think that LOONEY TUNES COLLECTOR'S CHOICE VOLUME 1 back in May, was my last Blu-Ray purchase.
I have good news to start today's Weblog entry.
Volume 2 of LOONEY TUNES COLLECTOR'S CHOICE has been announced for November 28! November 28, 2023! Twenty-five cartoons will be on the Blu-Ray disc this time. No announcement as yet as to what the cartoons will be. But if just half of the twenty-five are post-1948, and all of them not "double-dips", "triple-dips", etc., I will be happy. The characters on the front cover are Sylvester, Tweety, Bugs, Foghorn Leghorn, Porky, Daffy, Wile E. Coyote, Road Runner, and Elmer. The characters shown on the front cover may provide an indication as to what cartoons are on the Blu-Ray disc, as had been the case with the first volume. I expect that one will know before very long what the Blu-Ray's contents are. I will report and comment further as more information emerges.
Not only this, but George Feltenstein has said that there are plans to go to four volumes, the fourth being made available in 2024. This depends, of course, on sales for the second volume this year, and the third volume next year.
I dare not jinx myself by speculating as to the cartoons selected for release this time. Or raising hopes within myself as regards particular cartoons that I have long sought on DVD or Blu-Ray.
Here is the front cover to LOONEY TUNES COLLECTOR'S CHOICE VOLUME 2.
Moving onward to another subject, I propose to address my writings of my last Weblog entry. Having said that Little House On the Prairie was of appeal to girls and women desiring emotional domestic family situations, I feel that I ought to give qualification to that statement. And also to my statement about Space: 1999 more likely to be of interest to imaginative boys and men.
I do not intend to amend previous statements about Space: 1999 being entertainment for families. Little House On the Prairie was so, also. Families watched both television shows in their living rooms. Husbands, wives, sons, daughters. I am not denying that. Nor do I deny the existence of female fans of Space: 1999. I have known some. They definitely exist. And male fans of Little House On the Prairie exist, also, I have no doubt- though I have not known one, personally. However, my belief, my contention, is that the primary intended audience for Little House On the Prairie was female. The protagonist of the television series is a girl who grows into a woman. Melissa Gilbert's Laura character. The books from which Little House On the Prairie did spring, were authored by a woman, Laura Ingalls Wilder. And I would expect that the vast majority of the readers of those books were girls. They were marketed to girls, I feel sure. The end credits of each episode were mated with visuals of little Laura shambling down a grassy hill, demonstrating that Laura was the character around whom the television series was oriented. And indeed, among the people I knew during the heyday, as it were, of Little House On the Prairie, the people, the only people, I knew to speak at all appreciatively of "Little House...", were female, and I believe that it is fair to think that to be representative of the population as a whole. But families watched it together, I am sure. It was slotted into a family viewing hour on NBC in the U.S. and on television stations in Canada. Indeed, it was.
The fan following for Space: 1999 and most other works of science fiction/fantasy of the 1970s, was predominantly male. I cannot see how such can be denied. One need only look at the letters section of Starlog magazine back then, to see verifiable proof of it. And even today, the membership of the Roobarb Forum, focused as it is upon fantastic opuses of the imagination, is largely male. Females exist in fan movements for Space: 1999, Star Trek, Doctor Who, Star Wars, etc.. Yes, they do. But is it the hardware, the building designs, the hand-held instruments, the episode or movie concepts, the iconography, that appeal to the girls and women, or is it the characters and romantic connections between the characters, and the sex appeal of the male leading character or characters? I had best exercise the better part of valour and leave this question rhetorical.
I will say that ladies who do speak to me of having, or having had, an appreciation for, say, Battlestar Galactica, Man From Atlantis, and Doctor Who (twenty-first century Doctor Who), have said, in first reference to whatever one of those television programmes is being talked-about, that they fancied the actors for their looks, and/or the "will-they-or-won't-they?" aspects of the storytelling. But I know that these are anecdotal. I do not talk with very many people now, and have not for some time, and certainly not a copious number of female followers of a work of imagination. Back in Little House On the Prairie's day, I was privy to a far larger pool of viewer opinion. At schools. But by and large, though, the people within the fan followings of fantastic entertainment, who are most conversant in the concepts aspect of the imaginative opuses, and the nuances and meanings of the concepts, are male. From what I have seen and heard. And I have lived a long time and been cognizant of fan discussions for no small percentage of the time that I have lived.
I mean no offence to the ladies in my readership. I am only stating what I know from my experience. And I do acknowledge, so as to be in full assurance to my readers that I am a reasonable person, that nothing relating to the human condition on this planet is absolute. There will always be exceptions, notable exceptions, to any observation about people.
But stating a difference in the primary intended audience for Little House On the Prairie and Space: 1999 need not detract from my contention that Space: 1999 was offered as family entertainment. Not children's entertainment. Not adult-only entertainment. Family entertainment.
I should add that whatever my personal opinion on Little House On the Prairie may have been back when I was a teenager, and whatever it still may be now, Little House On the Prairie was clearly a wholesome family television show. Melodramatic, yes. But wholesome. No one swore. There was no explicit sex. Traditional family values were very much in evidence. And Little House On the Prairie was arguably a Christian television show. The Bible was cited many times. Religious people could recommend Little House On the Prairie to their offspring. And I have to say that there is a need, a desperate need, for entertainment of such a type today. And there is a need, also, for a television show of imaginative scope equivalent with that of Space: 1999, to counter the all-too-narrowed perspective of Earthlings today.
Amazon.co.uk has notified me that DOCTOR WHO- THE COLLECTION- SEASON 20 is now coming my way. It was dispatched on Sunday. I should have it by early next week.
All for today, Tuesday, September 19, 2023.
Friday, September 22, 2023.
A long, gruelling week at my job. Mostly due to the fact that the ordeal of going to work in the mornings drains me of mental energy before the my day's long work shift even begins. These past two days, I have left home for work almost a half hour earlier than normal, hoping to avoid the bottlenecked and glacial traffic. And yet, somewhere in the city core, no matter what the hour, there are places of congested, slow-moving traffic. All on account of a city government that thinks nothing of scheduling construction at key locations in the arteries of traffic all at the same time. Construction projects that even after a full summer of their being in situ, still are far from completion.
I have news that will be of interest to persons interested in broadcast histories for Space: 1999 and The Bugs Bunny/Road Runner Hour. I have found an archive of issues of The Kelowna Daily Courier and, with it, have now broadcast histories for the two aforementioned television series, for CBC-affiliated CHBC- Kelowna, British Columbia. They can now be found in the British Columbia sections of my CBC broadcast histories of both of same television series, at The Space: 1999 Page and The Bugs Bunny/Road Runner Hour Page. I must add a caveat. The television listings in The Kelowna Daily Courier were not consistently included in the archived issues of that newspaper. And on some Saturdays, no archived issue at all. On Saturdays when I was without any listings from which to pull data, I had to go with probability as to whether there was no preemption by CHBC and airtimes matched those of CBUT and the other British Columbia broadcasters of CBC Television signal. From what I have seen, CHBC was a more dependable source for CBC broadcasts of Space: 1999 and The Bugs Bunny/Road Runner Hour then the other non-CBC-owned-and-operated CBC Television stations in British Columbia. Fewer preemptions of the CBC Television network broadcasts.
And with further research today, I have found Medicine Hat News wherein there are television listings, and in them, schedules for CBC affiliate CHAT- Medicine Hat for all of the years between 1969 and 1978, the years of interest to me as regards CBC Television showings of The Bugs Bunny/Road Runner Hour and Space: 1999 across the Canadian landmass. There are also 1969-75 listings for Lethbridge's CISA, which, until 1975, was CBC-affiliated. I am now working on adding CHAT to the Alberta CBC broadcast history of Space: 1999, and CHAT and CISA to the Alberta CBC broadcast history of The Bugs Bunny/Road Runner Hour.
I have not stopped looking for newspapers listing telecast schedules for the other CBC Television affiliates in British Columbia and other western Canadian provinces, and Radio-Canada affiliates in Quebec. The research work is still in progress. I have not "given up". Indeed, when it comes to Space: 1999 and the CBC airings of Season 2 thereof, I am a man on a mission. I want to put something to rest conclusively, with full authority from a totally researched and thorough knowledge of every single transmission of Space: 1999 in Canada, from the CBC-owned-and-operated broadcasters to the privately owned, CBC-affiliated television stations in all of the less metropolitan corners of the Great White North. I want to put to rest the notion that in Canada, Season 2 Space: 1999 was a Saturday morning attraction in its first run, and first rerun. Airing in the "kiddie slots". I have already determined that every CBC-owned-and-operated television station and most of the privately owned CBC-affiliated television stations, aired second season Space: 1999 in the afternoon or early evening. All episodes, first run and in first rerun. But as long as there is a possibility, a remote one, of a CBC-affiliated television station videotape-delaying even one Season 2 episode of Space: 1999 to Saturday morning, I cannot quash the notion of Space: 1999- Season 2 airing on Saturday morning in Canada as the lie that I judge it to be. Of course, even if a single obscure CBC Television affiliate in one of the less travelled parts of the country did videotape-delay Space: 1999- Season 2 to Saturday morning, it would still not be strictly accurate to state that Season 2 aired in Canada on Saturday morning. It would only have done so in one particular part of the country. Not in the country as a whole. Not by a long chalk. My "gut" tells me that nowhere in Canada did second season Space: 1999 have a Saturday A.M. telecast in the full CBC Television network run. Likewise Cosmos 1999 on Radio-Canada's 1975, 1976, 1977, 1979, and 1980 provision of the television programme. Probability tells me so, too. But I want certainty before I conclusively reject the idea as a falsehood, a wilful lie.
It is in my opinion a wilful lie. Any fan who watched Space: 1999, or Cosmos 1999, in Canada back in the heyday of the spectacular space opus of Gerry Anderson Productions, should have a dependable memory of seeing Season 2 in the afternoon or evening all through the distribution on television airwaves of second season Space: 1999 and its French-language rendition, across Canada. And them having that memory means that their saying anything to the effect of the second season episodes of Moonbase Alpha's odyssey having a Saturday morning airtime, is not honest. And if a person has no dependable memory, research would not come amiss before making any assertions. If they lack confirmation but make assertions nonetheless, those assertions have to be regarded as at best ignorant. At best. And at worst, outright wilful deception, for the purpose of disparaging second season as per routine procedure for a particular group of obnoxious people. And has in its telling a wish to be given approval by "the herd" for being oh, so apparently definitive in "pigeon-holing" second season as the fare of the "kiddies". Many Space: 1999 fans in Canada remember their following of their favourite television series, even the season of it that they like least, in the initial runs of it on television. Yet, none of them, not a one, came forth to at least ask if the person stating the Canada Saturday morning airtime for Season 2, is sure of what he or she is saying. Nothing is said whatsoever as to the person's assertion being contrary to remembered airtimes. So, he or she "gets away" with it. As the collective purports as truth the statement that in Canada, by omission of any qualification, all of Canada, Season 2 was broadcast on Saturday morning, is therefore "kid stuff", admirers of it being childish, or mentally deficient, and unworthy of any credence as an appreciator of the "finer points" of the television show, Space: 1999. It is a lie. I am determined to prove this beyond any possibility of refutation.
Onto a different subject. One that I do not believe that I have ever mentioned in my Weblog, though I do make reference to it in my autobiography. The "dream season" of Dallas. My Web page on Dallas' 1985-6 "dream season" is receiving a very large amount of visits of late. It is topping or close to topping the list of accessed Web pages at my Website on many a day lately. One of my lesser efforts on my Website, my Web page for Dallas 1985-6 is. I wrote it as a lark, as I remember, in 1997 after watching the whole of Season 8 (DVD Season 9) of the saga of the Ewings of Texas, in the summer of that year. And yet, it is one of my most visited Web pages. I would guess that there is still, today, quite a large fan base for Dallas. And also that maybe Dallas is enjoying a run on television somewhere.
I read a comment recently about the controversial opting to "toss away" Season 8 Dallas and the vehicular murder of Bobby Ewing ending the preceding Dallas season, as a Pam Ewing dream. A person said that maybe Dallas's timeline somehow encountered a Marvel Cinematic Universe branching in the flow of space-time, yielding two separate sequences of events, that branching surrounding Katherine Wentworth's decision to commit vehicular murder in the driveway of Pam Ewing. In one of the two separated timelines, everything transpires as it does in the Season 7 finale and in Season 8 until the cutaway from an explosion at Ewing Oil building to Pam waking in her bed. And then continues indefinitely after the explosion. The timeline of Dallas' sister television series, Knots Landing, has Bobby dead from 1985 all through to its final episode in 1993. That is a discrete flow of time in which Season 8 Dallas and whatever temporally follows it from the revenge of Angelica Nero against J.R. Ewing, Pam's marriage to Mark Graison, etc., proceeds forward. Sensible? I would say so. Bobby's murder by Katherine was not negated in Knots Landing. It is part of a timeline that is as authentic as the one that the producers of Dallas opted to go with from September of 1986 through to May, 1991, the one in which Bobby was not killed.
Presumably, in the latter timeline, Pam had a subconscious foreboding that Katherine might be lurking and dreams an extrapolation of that, Katherine killing Bobby by hitting him with her car. She may also have suspected in her subconscious that Mark Graison is indeed still alive and may return to her life, and dreams that. The Mark Graison in the Bobby-lives, post-dream timeline may decide to stay out of Pam's life after learning that she and Bobby will be remarrying. And the Katherine of the Bobby-lives timeline presumably abandons her plan to commit vehicular murder and leaves Pam's place before Pam and Bobby step outside.
So, the dreaming Pam may have correctly envisaged some, not necessarily all, of the same events of Season 8. Maybe only her reuniting with and marrying Mark and something to do with Sue Ellen. Because in addition to Katherine killing Bobby, all that Pam mentioned about her dream was marrying Mark and something involving Sue Ellen. She does not mention Sue Ellen and Jamie being the victims of bomb explosions, which was what happened in the Season 8 finale before Pam was shown awakening. Surely, if Pam dreamed the explosions, she ought to awaken with those events of the dream most recent and most clear in her memory. Pam may only have dreamt of Sue Ellen having her ordeal with drinking alcohol to excess and going through detoxification and then regaining her sobriety. We can reject the idea that Pam knew of the existence of Angelica Nero and the Marinos Shipping gambit, the Ben Stivers character, Ray and Donna adopting Tony, and most of the other phenomena of the timeline in which everything in Season 8 actually happened. She may have been aware of Sue Ellen's alcoholism relapse and its causes before the divergence in time, and her subconscious extrapolated Sue Ellen's ordeal transpiring much like it did on the Season 8-really-happened timeline. Of course the Sue Ellen in the timeline post-September, 1986 did not lapse into being a back-alley "boozer", as circumstances led her into a different direction. And it is possible that Pam dreamed a completely different sequence of events for Sue Ellen. Who knows?
Both timelines have validity. And one can imagine what happened after the bombings in the timeline of Season 8. I like it. I prefer it to my explanation offered on my Web page for Dallas' "dream season".
No further news as yet about LOONEY TUNES COLLECTOR'S CHOICE VOLUME 2.
Sunday, September 24, 2023. It is my late father's birthday today. If he were still alive today, he would be ninety-five years-old.
I cannot say that my day today is starting on a pleasant note.
So, what is unpleasant for me today? Is it news of another "jab" mandate? Or the cartoons on LOONEY TUNES COLLECTOR'S CHOICE VOLUME 2 being revealed as nothing but pre-1948s? Or was I so imprudent as to gaze upon hate-filled sorties of the Space: 1999 second season revilers on Facebook this sunny September Sunday? Answer the third of these? B-b-b-b-bingo! As Guardians of the Galaxy's Star Lord would say.
There is a jackass (and I have no hesitation in using that word) at the publicly visible Space: 1999 Facebook group now lobbing short-sentence-long denunciations of second season into the group to, all too predictably, stir the nest of vipers into venom-spitting "pile-ons" against anything and everything to do with Season 2. And so the assailing of Season 2 Space: 1999 is unleashed afresh upon the world by the oh, so enlightened and exceedingly mature and sophisticated ones.
And there is no concern, of course, about the feelings of people for whom Season 2 was a cherished component of a happy time in childhood and unto whom Season 2 has brought much imagination-stretching aesthetic stimulation. After forty-six years, the detractors of the latter twenty-four episodes of Space: 1999 are as "stroppy", as obnoxious, as ever, and they will not relent from typewriting the vilest assaults possible, upon the second season, its producer, and, by extension, persons, however few, who appreciate the Space: 1999 episodes from "The Metamorph" onward.
Here is one of the "threads" of discussion started by said jackass and some of the most galling responses. Followed by what I have to say. I am quoting verbatim, including missing periods (missing from sheer laziness on the part of the oh, so erudite one) and the refusals (also from sheer laziness, I would guess) to press the shift key to capitalise.
"I don't even think landau got the 2nd season"
"Probably not. He was a serious actor who wanted to work on quality film and television, not mindless childish crap. By then the series was just a pay check."
Yes, yes, yes. The old Landau chestnut yet again.
Mindless, eh? Who is this person to judge something as mindless? I have it on good authority that Season 2 is not mindless. Good authority including my own. Good authority involving the chronological patterning and archetypes and symbolism in Season 2. So, there. In the estimation of the person to whom I am responding, the people who like that particular something, are judged to be mindless, too, presumably. Ah, yes. The usual comparisons of Season 2 with excrement. Lack of any concern for the feelings of others. Doubtless if challenged on that score, the person would say that if people are hurt, they deserve to be, and she (this person is a she) is all too happy to daily excoriate anyone who is so misguided as to perceive any quality in, or have any love for, that which she despises.
So, Landau was far too serious an actor to sign onto doing an entertainment for children? Oh, really? Was Landau not in Pinocchio, playing Gepetto? Yes, he was. It was the reason why I did not meet him in 1995 when I attended the Command Conference convention in Los Angeles; he was in Europe acting with Jonathan Taylor-Thomas in Pinocchio at that time. Pinocchio was a movie for children. And that was after, I say again, after, Landau won the Best Supporting Actor Oscar for his role in Ed Wood. Landau also voiced the Scorpion for the 1995-8 Spider-Man television series that aired on Saturday morning on the FOX television network, in a programming line-up branded as FOX-Kids.
The second season of Space: 1999 was not made solely for children. It was made for families to watch together, as they did late Saturday afternoons or early Saturday evenings in Canada. And also in places in the U.S.. This is a fact. Not some blinkered, hyperbolic, bellicose rant against a season that a person resents forty-six years later, for it having been the one without a "follow-up".
"Martin Landau understood the Second Season... he just hated it."
No. If he hated the second season, then he did not understand it. Landau did not understand it, or a person like me. And that is his failing. Wherever he is now, and I feel sure that is heaven, despite his having provided encouragement for the Season 1-only brigade of Space: 1999 fans to bullyingly belittle, "gaslight", and potentially push toward deep depression and self-destructive behaviour, persons of fidelity to second season, he has seen the light. He now understands what it is about the second season of Space: 1999 that has merit. He now knows that second season Space: 1999 is the ultimate vessel for expressing of the archetypes of the collective unconscious.
"I doubt he hated all of it but he did clash with Freiberger on some of the scripts, most notoriously, 'All That Glisters'. He didn't like the characters being reduced to apparent idiots which is what that particular script largely accomplished."
Notoriously? Still with the harsh, vituperative language, I see. Has anyone moderated his or her stance on the differences between the two Space: 1999 seasons these past forty-six years? Anyone?
How are the characters idiots? They land on a planet believing that they have found Milgonite. They find a rock formation that appears to be Milgonite but does not register as such on scanners. Out of scientific curiosity, the Alphans bring a sample of the rock back to the Eagle. They are scientists. They came to a planet in search of Milgonite that their sensors detected and found something strange. Of course, they want to know more about it. Why it looks like Milgonite but is not. And they still assume it to be a rock lacking sentience or power to attack. There are no sensor readings to suggest otherwise.
They bring a sample of the rock back to their Eagle. In the Eagle, the rock sample, on an examination table, suddenly attacks Tony through the lens of a large microscope. Helena does a cursory examination of Tony and pronounces him dead. Minutes later, Helena determines that Tony is still registering brain activity despite being in cardiac arrest. Koenig's first impulse, while distraught at hearing from Helena that Tony is dead, is to command that the rock sample be ejected from the Eagle. He later changes that when he reasons that the rock sample may be dangerous to stand close to or touch. Sensible enough. Certainly not stupid.
Helena and Maya convince Koenig that the answer to Tony's condition is in the rock sample. Tony cannot be rushed to Alpha, they say, as the solution to restoring Tony fully to life, might be in the rock, in the sample of the rock and the main rock seam on the planet's surface. Also quite sensible. And Tony cannot be moved away from the rock sample, nor from the medical instruments in the Eagle, as it may be either or both of those upon which his being alive may ultimately rely. Tony and the rock sample must stay where they are, while Koenig and team try to find the answer to the rock's "hold" upon Tony. Koenig reluctantly agrees to allow Helena to stay with Tony and the rock sample in the Eagle. She is a doctor. Tony is her patient. Helena is to remain in the Eagle, hopefully far enough from the rock sample to not herself be in danger from it, while Koenig and the others go onto the planet's surface, and to the main rock seam, to try to find the solution to the current predicament.
Koenig and company examine the rock fluid, and determine that the rock is a living organism. The rock sample in the Eagle proves itself able to animate Tony, which is a new discovery of Koenig and company, and they struggle to understand the implications of it, and of the rock fusing parts of itself together. What does the rock want? Koenig and his team grapple for a time for the answer. Is this not what intelligent people do?
Koenig and party discover that they are "cut off" from Alpha and cannot launch their Eagle from the planet. Not until they fully resolve the mystery of the rock. The situation becomes ever more serious, as there is a deadline, with time "running out", for safe return to Alpha, and Koenig is willing to undertake risks that he might not have before been willing to consider undertaking. He allows Maya to change into a rock to try to communicate with the alien quantity now holding the group of Alphans hostage. He allows Tony to be stunned with a combined laser energy from two stun guns.
The rock reveals what it wants. Water. Koenig rightly deduces that the rock sample will use Tony, and later Dave Reilly, to bring the rest of the rock seam to the Eagle to be fused into the rock sample, and the Alphans are able to dehydrate and weaken the rock sample so that they are able to regain control of the Eagle, free Reilly from the rock's "hold", discard the rock from the Eagle to the planet's surface, and "take off" for Alpha before the deadline is reached. They also in their humanity seed the clouds of the planet to produce rain, giving to the rock what it wanted. Well? Where in this scenario are Koenig and company idiots? Yes, after Tony has been animated by the rock sample to walk out of the Eagle and Helena says that she is scared, Koenig says to Helena that she is safe "in there" until Tony is found. He was just trying to be comforting to Helena, whether or not what he was saying was accurate. With Tony out of the Eagle and walking the sands of the planet to some unknown, possibly sinister, purpose, being in the Eagle is probably safer for Helena than being on the planet's surface by herself whilst the others are searching for Tony.
I am so tired, so damned tired, of having to defend "All That Glisters". Somehow it has become the go-to episode for lambasting by the nest of vipers.
"Martin said at one point, as unhappy as he was with Freddy's script approvals, it wasn't worth boycotting the episodes just to make a point, given the impact on his fellow cast members and crew."
Ah, yes. The same old story about Landau being unhappy with Freiberger's script decisions. He was an actor. Not a writer. And he was not infallible as an actor. For all of the talk of second season Space: 1999 being beneath his contempt (and me, too, I suppose, for daring to express appreciation for it), Landau sure did have quite a few parts in the late 1970s and early 1980s that were embarrassing to watch him portray. He accepted those parts and did them. I cringed when I watched him in The Death of Ocean View Park, Meteor (a movie that I quite like, but not for Landau's performance), The Fall of the House of Usher, and The Harlem Globetrotters On Gilligan's Island. He did not acquit himself particularly well in those, tending to go quite "over the top". The vast majority of Landau's work post-Space: 1999 was not of the calibre that I would have expected of him. Not until Ed Wood. Though he was rather effective as the "arch" Lyle Stenning in The Return of the Six Million Dollar Man and rightly was nominated for an Oscar for his acting in a supporting role, Abe Karatz, in Tucker: The Man and His Dream. I still appreciate Landau very, very much for what he contributed to both seasons of Space: 1999. I do not idolise him like I did in my youth. He was a man, capable of being in error. And he was in error with regard to the second season of Space: 1999. This, I know, and no intensely derogatory rants of grousing, pugnacious, anti-social Space: 1999 fans are going to cause me to think otherwise.
"I have seen an interview where Martin says, 'I was never happy with that second year.' I saw series 2 first, repeats on both ATV and Anglia in 1978, so this will always be my favourite, I did not see series 1 until 1982 repeats on LWT."
Uh-huh. A person who considers Season 2 to be favourite but does not refute something said against it. Such only serves to buttress the smugness and the obnoxiousness of the enemies of Season 2. Yes, I saw Landau say that. It is in The Space: 1999 Documentary. Apparently, the tendency of fans to be hyperbolic "rubbed off on" him, or he was hyperbolic before he first became aware of Space: 1999 fandom. Never happy, eh? Surely there must have been some episodes, or scenes in some episodes, that were to his liking. "The Immunity Syndrome". "The Seance Spectre". "The AB Chrysalis". Episodes with Koenig at the centre of the action, doing and saying all that he needs to do to preserve his people and the Moonbase in which they reside. "The Lambda Factor" gave to him an opportunity to flex his acting muscles and bring added depth to the Koenig character. Likewise, the scene with Maya on the hilltop in "The Rules of Luton". I find it difficult to believe that he was unhappy with every single scene in every single Season 2 episode.
I say again. Martin Landau was not perfect. Sylvia Anderson did not paint a flattering picture of him. It is known that he had Giancarlo Prete dismissed. Sylvia Anderson said that he bristled at Nick Tate being given lines of dialogue, and judging from how he was with Giancarlo Prete, I believe this. It has also been said that Landau "ixnayed" the original script for "Dragon's Domain" in which Carter's heroism was "played up". I believe this, too. His criticism of Koenig's action of stunning Cantar in "The Exiles", is easily reasoned to be wrong. Okay. He had come to regard Season 1 as the Space: 1999 that he wished to do. Fair enough. He had a right to his opinion- even if he could be said to have been arrogantly unreasoning in his constricted-imagination dismissals of many an episode of Season 2. The hectoring, cruel, heartless fans who would wield his opinion as a weapon. Those people have earned my resentment and my intense dislike.
As for Martin Landau, I still love the man, despite his errs. I wince at what I have typewritten today, as I could be accused of being disrespectful of a deceased man. I ought not need to write any of this at all. But he is being used as a weapon. And I do need to mount a defence against the weapon. If that necessitates "calling out" Mr. Landau for some of his faults, then so be it. It is being written in defence, not offence.
Landau did not like Space: 1999- Season 2. Harrison Ford has little positive to say these days about Star Wars. He holds Star Wars in contempt. He only agreed to return to Star Wars, in 2015, if his character, Han Solo, was "killed off". "Killed off" after being written as a failure as a husband and father. Does this mean that Star Wars is objectively not worth considering? Because one of the leading actors holds it in contempt? No.
"Second season stunk"
Lout. Ignorant lout.
"I did not like Maya"
And I do not like you, sir. This, by the way, is the same individual who started the "thread" proclaiming his ever so erudite and considered opinion. I do not like you, sir. And were I in a world wherein people I know would side with me and would not give credence to an opinion such as yours and not use it to dismiss me as human garbage, I would say that I do not care. I ought not to care.
There are other "threads" that go down similar tired, venom-laden lines, all started by the aforementioned jackass. And he is going to continue until he is banished from the group, or told by a huge number of people to "zip it". I expect a long, long wait for that.
A comment in one of the other "threads".
"As it was, they brought in Fred Freiberger, who'd single-handedly brought down The Time Tunnel, The Six Million Dollar Man, and The Bionic Woman, and of course who'd destroyed Star Trek. And that was when all the silver suited aliens started turning up hungering for Alpha's nuclear powered life support systems, or lusting after Maya's brainstem or whatever."
Oh, so now Fred Freiberger is blamed for the demise of The Time Tunnel and The Bionic Woman, is he? Despite being noted nowhere as having been on the production crew for those. Not even an episode writer. What mental gymnastics are required for Freiberger being the cause of the cancellation of television shows in which he was neither producer nor writer? Too many for the assertion to be regarded at all seriously. I could say that the person is lying through his teeth, and I may be right. As usual, no one refutes the falsehood being pushed. Which makes it appear true. And no. It is not an incontrovertible fact that it was Fred Freiberger who was the reason why Star Trek was not renewed for a Season 4. Also, Star Trek was not destroyed. It went onward to become an animated cartoon television series, several series of novels and short stories, and a series of movies. The word, "destroyed", is hyperbolic when used regarding NBC's cancellation of Star Trek in 1969. And did The Six Million Dollar Man have any more life in it after five seasons? And as Freiberger and Richard Landau split the production duties on Season 5 The Six Million Dollar Man, how can someone be sure that it was Freiberger's contributions and only those that caused the end of the television programme of the bionic man?
Where are the silver-suited aliens in "The Beta Cloud" and "The Dorcons"? I must have missed them. The Dorcon soldiers are in suits. But they are not silver. And what is so wrong about an episode having aliens in a universe of scarcity, desiring something from Alpha? How does this equate with "destruction" of Star Trek? Or the "bringing down" of The Six Million Dollar Man? Also, to be a verb tense pedant, I would add that the end to The Six Million Dollar Man, and The Bionic Woman came after that of Space: 1999, not before. The way that the commenter writes it, he makes it read like Freiberger "brought down" The Six Million Dollar Man, and The Bionic Woman before being brought into the production of Space: 1999.
I have other things to do today and will not exhaust my entire Sunday responding to the ravings of these people. I have done so enough, to be satisfied that I have done my part in showing these fans of Space: 1999 to, as usual, be a "wrong-headed" and despicable lot.
Tuesday, September 26, 2023.
A brief Weblog entry today to report a few things.
Three of the cartoons on LOONEY TUNES COLLECTOR'S CHOICE VOLUME 2 are now known. They are "Hare-Breadth Hurry", "One Meat Brawl", and "A Hound For Trouble". None of these are cartoons to have been on Blu-Ray or DVD before. This bodes promisingly for a banquet of not-previously-on-digital-videodisc cartoons in the twenty-five selections of cartoon shorts for the second volume in the new Warner Brothers cartoons new home video range.
And DOCTOR WHO- THE COLLECTION- SEASON 20 is now in my hands. It arrived yesterday afternoon at my door. "The Five Doctors" looks as sharp as can be possibly be expected at present for something upscaled to High Definition from a PAL video source. Filmed material in it looks especially striking. I am gradually watching the serials and extras in the box set as this week progresses.
And I have done several revisions of my September 24, 2023 Weblog entry, as I want my wording to be as effective as it can be, in responding to the assaults upon Space: 1999- Season 2, defending "All That Glisters", and "taking to task" certain people for statements that fly in the face of known facts.
All for today.
Wednesday, September 27, 2023.
All right. The full complement of the cartoons to be on LOONEY TUNES COLLECTOR'S CHOICE VOLUME 2 has been made known as of last evening. Here it is.
"Behind the Meat-Ball"
"Brother Brat"
"Catty Cornered"
"Cross Country Detours"
"Daffy's Southern Exposure"
"Ding Dog Daddy"
"The Eager Beaver"
"Fair and Worm-er"
"Fin'n Catty"
"From Hand to Mouse"
"Ghost Wanted"
"Greetings Bait"
"Hamateur Night"
"Hare-Breadth Hurry"
"A Hick, a Slick, and a Chick"
"Hiss and Make Up"
"A Hound for Trouble"
"I Wanna Be a Sailor"
"The Leghorn Blows at Midnight"
"Lickety-Splat"
"One Meat Brawl"
"The Penguin Parade"
"Rabbit Rampage"
"The Rebel Without Claws"
"The Wacky Worm"
I do not expect that the cartoons will be in this alphabetical order on the Blu-Ray.
I should preface my commentary on this development by stating that there are, I know, far, far more serious matters in the world now than a Blu-Ray disc of Warner Brothers cartoons. I know this, all too well. But I do have something to say about the news last evening, how I feel about it. What I think of it. And I am not going to stifle how I feel. What I think. My Weblog probably does have some readers who want to know what I have to say about what information has been revealed about the upcoming new release of the cartoons of Bugs Bunny and his cartoon cohorts. They are probably expecting it and waiting for it, coming to this Weblog in search of it. And I will deliver it.
Seven post-1948s and eighteen pre-1948s. Looks to be fair, right? Oh, of course it is. The cartoons on LOONEY TUNES COLLECTOR'S CHOICE VOLUME 1 were almost evenly divided pre- and post-1948, but that was not fair. The post-1948s have to be relegated to being a smattering, to "round out" the collection. Sarcasm.
Oh, I know that this rumination from me was predictable to anyone familiar with me and gazing last evening upon the list of cartoons. I have been lamenting the favouring of the pre-1948s over the post-1948s in cartoon choices for shiny audio-visual media disc since the GOLDEN COLLECTION days. This time, I am going to say that I am going to be somewhat less than strident in expressing my dismay, my frustration, my pique. Because I have resigned myself to the fact that I am Karmically cursed. Karmically cursed since my move in 1977 from Douglastown to Fredericton. And being as I am so, possessing a complete, perfect collection of all of the Warner Brothers cartoons that I want, is just not my destiny. Being able, in 1977, to watch and audiotape-record every Saturday the CBS broadcasts of Sylvester and Tweety and The Bugs Bunny/Road Runner Hour was, to me, the foremost of the considerations in making the move. The move that caused hurt to numerous people and set me on a course to the hurting of others. Karma is relentless and pointed in punishing me for deciding to approve the move. I wish to possess all of the cartoons of my liking in a perfect presentation, and I cannot have that. Karma will not allow it. I was also difficult to live with in the early 1990s as I was seeking a collection of the Warner Brothers cartoons on VHS videotape and not restrained in expressing my vexation at not achieving perfection in my videotape-recording endeavours. My mother did suffer in those years as a result of my loud proclamations of anger. Karma is not going to allow that to go unpunished without relent. It is just not my destiny to own a full collection of Bugs, Tweety, Sylvester, Road Runner, etc., and a faultless, High Definition-sharp "Hyde and Go Tweet" and "Dr. Jerkyl's Hide". I need to be resigned to the fact that "Hyde and Go Tweet" and "Dr. Jerkyl's Hide" and dozens of other post-1948 cartoons will not ever see release fully restored on DVD or Blu-Ray, that I will never be able to pull "Hyde and Go Tweet" and "Dr. Jerkyl's Hide" off of my shelf and watch them in High Definition on my television.
As I see it, as long as the pre-1948 cartoons exist and as long as Warner Brothers has the home video rights to them, there never will be a Blu-Ray or DVD release of a fully restored, pristine-looking "Hyde and Go Tweet" and "Dr. Jerkyl's Hide". And there will never be a fully comprehensive release on Blu-Ray or DVD of all of the cartoons of the major characters. The persons responsible for assembling the contents of the Blu-Ray discs or DVDs, will always adhere to the cartoons of before 1948, and most particularly those outside of the cartoon series of the major characters, or even most of the minor ones (the Goofy Gophers, Ralph Wolf and Sam Sheepdog, Charlie Dog, Hubie and Bertie, Claude Cat, etc.). The coming release is indicative of this beyond reasonable doubt. I expect that COLLECTOR'S CHOICE VOLUME 3, if there is a COLLECTOR'S CHOICE VOLUME 3, will have as little representation of the post-1948s, possibly even less.
I allowed myself to entertain hope, after COLLECTOR'S CHOICE VOLUME 1, that I might have "Hyde and Go Tweet", "Dr. Jerkyl's Hide", and others fully restored, in High Definition, after all. I will not ever again allow myself to think so. The fact has to be faced, now and always in all of my remaining time on Earth. The people curating the cartoons to be released on Blu-Ray and DVD do not share my opinion on what was the more aesthetically significant time period of the Looney Tunes and Merrie Melodies. They do not regard the popularity of the vessels on network television, i.e. The Bugs Bunny Show, etc., of exclusively post-1948 cartoon shorts, as being worth considering when assembling the content of Blu-Rays and DVDs of the Warner Brothers cartoons. They are not of the opinion that collectors of the cartoons are interested in having every cartoon of the major characters, in possessing every classic cartoon that there is of Tweety, Sylvester, Road Runner, Foghorn Leghorn, Bugs, Daffy. They believe that is the "one-shots", and the cartoons of minor characters, that the buyers of home video media, are most desirous-of, before a particular range on home video of the cartoons, is ended. They regard the "Bob Clampett-is-God" and "Friz Freleng-was-a-hack" and "there-are-only-fifteen-good-Tweety-cartoons" brash minority to be all that there is of fans who are to be stalwart purchasers of the Warner Brothers cartoons- beyond that supposed voice crying out in the wilderness, me.
Jerry Beck did say that if it were "up to him", there would not have been a Tweety-dominated DVD in GOLDEN COLLECTION 2. Tweety cartoons should, presumably, be few and far between, by Mr. Beck's reckoning. And what is the status today of Tweety on DVD and Blu-Ray in the U.S. and Canada? Today, the majority of the Tweety cartoons, most notably those of the 1950s and early 1960s, remain unreleased on DVD and Blu-Ray in North America. Which happens to accord with the attitudes toward Tweety and the Friz Freleng 1950s cartoons in discussion groups. On the part of the most communicative members of the groups. But are they representative of the majority of people desiring to own a collection of their favourite cartoons? I would say not. Why?
We are now in our third range of digital videodisc releases of the Warner Brothers cartoons under the decision-making auspices of Mr. Beck and Mr. Feltenstein, the previous two being THE GOLDEN COLLECTION and THE PLATINUM COLLECTION. Both of the previous two ranges of digital videodisc stopped short, very short, of their initial goal. Stopped due to declining sales. After an initial volume sporting many a post-1948 cartoon, most with the major characters, those post-1948 cartoons being very much in the majority on the optical media discs of the first volume, and that initial volume garnering impressive sales statistics, the powers-that-be opted to push the post-1948s more and more toward "rounding-out-the-collection", very clear minority status, giving the nod more and more to cartoons of the early 1940s and the 1930s. "One-shots" were prioritised, and the beloved major characters had reduced prominence. Whereas the episodes of The Bugs Bunny/Road Runner Hour and The Bugs Bunny and Tweety Show almost never had "one-shots" one after another, and episodes were dominated by the major characters, the compilers of the DVDs and Blu-Rays opted for "one-shot" after "one-shot", relying on the "star" characters on the DVD or Blu-Ray set covers to draw the buyers into making purchase, and then subjecting those buyers to DVD or Blu-Ray discs heavy with obscure cartoons. It is no wonder that a sizable portion of the customer base decided to stop spending money on the DVD or Blu-Ray collections. And Warner Brothers decided to "pull the plug".
The same people who brought THE GOLDEN COLLECTION and THE PLATINUM COLLECTION to the world, are the ones who are putting together the cartoon compilations for COLLECTOR'S CHOICE. Evidently, they learned nothing from the failures of the previous ranges and are determined to repeat prior practices. Favouring the pre-1948s almost two-to-one over the post-1948s and choosing to reduce the prominence of the major characters in deference to the "one-off" ones, or the ones with a handful of cartoons. Calling series of cartoons with major characters to be "formulaic" and therefore insufficiently creative to be of interest to collectors. This is the folly that contributed, more, I would say, than a recession starting in 2008, to the demise of the GOLDEN COLLECTION. And to that of the PLATINUM COLLECTION, too, years later. GOLDEN COLLECTION sales were declining long before the recession began. What can I say? People do not learn. They keep repeating their mistakes. It is a sad fact that I have had to cynically acknowledge. I wish to God that I do not have to acknowledge it.
Repeating the same failed practice over and over again and expecting a different result, is, in Einstein's view, the definition of insanity.
It is entirely possible that there may be an element of spite involved in the repeated neglect of "Hyde and Go Tweet" and "Dr. Jerkyl's Hide" in the selections of cartoons for DVD and Blu-Ray these past twenty years. My Website has been on the Internet now for more than twenty-five years. These people have to be aware by now, by long before now, of my existence. Me, my Website, my viewpoints, and my criticisms of decisions made vis-a-vis the Warner Brothers cartoons on home video. The probability is that they are aware. And if they do not like me being critical of choices that they have made, it is possible that they are withholding the cartoons, "Hyde and Go Tweet" and "Dr. Jerkyl's Hide", from DVD and Blu-Ray because I want those cartoons. Am I the reason why these two cartoons are not yet on DVD and/or Blu-Ray? Oh, I should not overestimate my importance. To do so is to invite the most clamourous accusations of personal vainglory. But they have to be aware of me. They just have to be. Not only do I have a Website, but I have also partaken in discussions about the home video releases of the cartoons, discussions that it is a very good bet that they read. Would they be inclined to do something such as withholding two cartoons out of spite? I would prefer to think not. I very heartily want to think not. Yet, can I "rule out" the possibility? No.
But for twenty years now, twenty years since GOLDEN COLLECTION VOLUME 1, "Hyde and Go Tweet" has been ignored in the selecting of cartoons for fully restored glory on digital videodisc. Despite it having "made the call" for inclusion on the GOLDEN JUBILEE 24 KARAT seminal, trailblazing series of VHS videotapes in the mid-1980s and it being on the LOONEY TUNES AFTER DARK laser videodisc in the first "wave" of laser videodiscs of Bugs Bunny et al. output by Warner Brothers Home Video in the early 1990s. People other than myself have been calling for it to be on DVD or Blu-Ray, fully restored as are all of the other cartoons in the ranges of Looney Tunes and Merrie Melodies on DVD and Blu-Ray. There is much "Hyde and Go Tweet" fan art to be found on the Internet; to find such, one need only do a Google Search for "Hyde and Go Tweet". "Hyde and Go Tweet" has been requested as often as "Beanstalk Bunny", I should think. And "Beanstalk Bunny" received the nod last COLLECTOR'S CHOICE. Now, two Blu-Ray discs into the new home video range for the cartoons of Bugs Bunny et al., and still no sign of "Hyde and Go Tweet". Or "Dr. Jerkyl's Hide". Why was "Dr. Jerkyl's Hide" not paired with "Tree For Two" for a complete Spike and Chester in the second volume of THE PLATINUM COLLECTION? Surely that made sense? So, why was it ignored? Spite?
At this juncture, I am abandoning the hope that I allowed myself to entertain, and I will never entertain such hope again. The people responsible for COLLECTOR'S CHOICE are determined to continue minimising the presence of post-1948 cartoons in new releases, for collectors, of the cartoons, and to emphasise the pre-1948s. If there are post-1948 cartoons that I need in VOLUME 3 (assuming that there is a VOLUME 3), I will buy VOLUME 3, and with clenched teeth at the probable meagre presence of post-1948s on that Blu-Ray disc. I very much doubt that the range will reach a fourth volume. The pattern of the GOLDEN and PLATINUM COLLECTIONS is being woven again.
As Porky once said, "I know my destiny. I acquiesce." I am destined never to have a complete collection of my favourite Warner Brothers cartoons, and never to have the three most impactful Warner Brothers cartoons in my life in best possible quality to watch on Blu-Ray whenever I wish to, and to have to think that I brought it on myself because of decisions and behaviour of mine in the past, and possibly because I did not "keep my pie-hole shut" with my reactions to releases of the Warner Brothers cartoons to DVD and Blu-Ray over the past twenty years.
Thursday, September 28, 2023.
More on the subject of LOONEY TUNES COLLECTOR'S CHOICE VOLUME 2 and the cartoons chosen to comprise it.
Reading my Weblog entry yesterday, I found myself wincing. Because I can see how my writings must read. I lament about my Karmic curse caused by my decision forty-six years ago and other behaviours in years thereafter. I say that I am being denied "Hyde and Go Tweet", "Dr. Jerkyl's Hide", and numerous other cartoons of 1948 and years subsequent that I desire to have for a complete collection of Warner Brothers cartoons of my fancy. Denied because of my bad Karma. Does this mean that I am contending that the state of representation of post-1948 cartoons on DVD and Blu-Ray is because of me and my transgressions? Oh, how vain that must sound! Am I implying that the Warner Brothers cartoon library on planet home video revolves around me? Am I saying that other people sharing my taste in cartoons, people who may be very much in the majority in Warner Brothers cartoon fandom, as I believe that they are, are being denied those cartoons in their collections because of me and my detrimental errs in early life that brought a Karmic curse upon me? Yes. Yes, I guess so. Yes, I guess that my being to blame, is indeed the case. Under the Karma construct, this would be the way of the world. Others must go without something because of Karmic punishment upon certain individuals who want that same something, that something that Karma decrees that the certain individuals cannot have.
If this is indeed true, as I think that it is, then my decision to move in 1977 plus my behaviour in the early 1990s, is still hurting others. And my Karma must therefore mete out further punishment upon me for that hurt. I am extremely sorry, profoundly sorry, monumentally sorry for bringing frustration and denial of completion of personal collections, to people whose liking of the cartoons is much the same as mine. It is not at all fair that those people must be denied High Definition restored presentation of their favourite cartoons because of the decision and actions of some stupid, "spoiled" boy in 1977 and some ill-tempered, perfectionist young man in the early 1990s.
But the blame is not solely mine. The compilers of the DVD and Blu-Ray collections bear their share of the blame. The choices are theirs. They have free will. Yes, they do. As did my parents and I back in 1977. They are imposing their preferences over the buying public. They are doing so in full knowledge that they are going to be preventing some portion, I believe the largest portion, of the patrons of the cartoon releases, from owning fully restored, High Definition versions of their favourite cartoons of directors Jones, Freleng, McKimson, Davis. Cartoons that were disseminated to the public on network television for forty years and which imprinted the minds and influenced the sensibilities of millions of people.
As I see it now, today, LOONEY TUNES COLLECTOR'S CHOICE is a last-ditched effort of Mr. Beck and the people in his circle, to have on physical media all of the pre-1948 cartoons that they favour, before physical media "goes belly-up". If things go according to plan, they will have all that they want, and I and people whose taste in cartoons are same as mine, will be without a full collection of everything that we want. Oh, the curators will throw a handful of post-1948s on the Blu-Ray discs of VOLUMES 3 and 4 if those volumes do see the light of day, just so that they can put pictures of Bugs, Tweety, Sylvester, Road Runner, Wile E. Coyote, Daffy, and Foghorn Leghorn, in their 1950s looks, on the covers to entice collectors of the cartoons of the major characters into reaching into wallets for money to purchase the products, while flooding the Blu-Ray discs with obscure cartoons of pre-1948 vintage, the cartoons that the Beck clique want released. It might work as a gambit this time, with VOLUME 2. Maybe. If most buyers are not fully cognizant of the Blu-Ray's contents. I do not expect that such people will be as willing to part with their money again for a multitude of cartoons with "one-off" characters or less familiar outings of one or two major characters in less refined form. We can be certain that the curators will try, though. For the volumes that they are planning. VOLUME 3 will be maybe twenty pre-1948s and five post-1948s. With 1930s and early 1940s cartoons galore. Which five post-1948s? Who knows? But they will not be "Hyde and Go Tweet" or "Dr. Jerkyl's Hide". Those cartoons are off of the release roster. Forever.
Yes. I guess that I am much more strident, more "riled up", today on the subject of the second volume of LOONEY TUNES COLLECTOR'S CHOICE than I was yesterday. The clique of anti-post-1948 Warner Brothers cartoon pundits on the usual discussion forums on the Internet, in their praises of the cartoon selections for VOLUME 2, have fired my blood with the same indignation that I felt those many years ago over the cartoons chosen for later volumes in the GOLDEN and PLATINUM COLLECTIONs. I have to pull myself back to the feelings of resignation, of acquiescence, that constituted my comportment yesterday. The pursuit of a collection of Looney Tunes and Merrie Melodies that are of aesthetic interest to me, is futile. I am so very, very sorry that I have brought futility to the quest of people of the same taste of me, as regards ownership of the cartoons of Warner Brothers. Karma can be cruel. Oh, how it can be cruel!
Saturday, September 30, 2023.
And September is on the verge of passing into the ether.
I was hoping to go once more this year to Miramichi City for a day's visit to my former habitat, sometime this month. But what happens but a crack formation in my car's front windshield after I hit it with my right middle knuckle while swatting at a fly? I am going to need to have that front windshield replaced at a cost of hundreds of dollars. A trek to Newcastle, Douglastown, and Chatham is now beyond my budget this month and next. And November and December are not months when I am interested in going anywhere.
I have more to say about LOONEY TUNES COLLECTOR'S CHOICE.
Yes, more yet. Some people who think as I do, have started to "push back" against the standpoint that the contents of VOLUME 2 are precisely what ought to be released. That standpoint now being paraded all over discussion forums on the Internet as the only orthodox one and the basis of yet another much-vaunted consensus. The post-1948s and persons wanting those having to wait until the proverbial cows come home, and the plug is finally pulled on physical media by the moguls at Warner Brothers, for the cartoons that they want, to complete their collections. A few people have voiced their dissatisfaction with the choices of cartoons for VOLUME 2, and their concerns for what those choices might bode or result in, and quite predictably, they have been verbally slapped down, by some of the same persons who held forth the condescending attitude toward me over the years, in the cartoon fan movement on the Internet. Yes. The same people. Same people, same, "Aw, shaddup!" rejoinders. "Shut up, don't be an emo butt-hole, and be happy with what we're given." More or less, this is what is being said. No one has disparaged as yet any specific post-1948 cartoons. Just the attitude that Jerry knows best, that the cartoons of pre-1948 are most desired by legitimate fans and are what the majority of collectors want most. The cartoons post-1948 of the major cartoon characters are just "formulaic pap" directed by the overrated Chuck Jones, the dull-as-dishwater "hack", Friz Freleng", and the director-who-should-have-stayed-an animator, Robert McKimson. Such is the gist of the remarks of the enthusiastic plaudits given the content list for VOLUME 2. As had been the same one of the approval for the two-to-one representation for the pre-1948s over the post-1948s in the GOLDEN and PLATINUM COLLECTION days. Same old. Same old. As the old saying goes, there is nothing new under the Sun.
I am happy to see some criticism of the VOLUME 2 contents, about them being largely not cartoons with the "star" characters, about them being obscure cartoons from a time when the cartoon studio was throwing new characters of all shapes and sizes at the screen in hopes that one of them would surge to popularity. Most of them failed to "gel" with the tastes of the public and did not spark a cartoon series. The cartoon series with the major characters, ought to be dominating this volume and, later, VOLUMES 3 and 4. There should be at least five Tweety cartoons in VOLUME 2, a couple of Sylvester-without-Tweety cartoons, two Road Runners, four Foghorn Leghorn cartoons, five or six Daffy Ducks, and at least three Bugs Bunny cartoons. With some Goofy Gophers, Ralph Wolf and Sam Sheepdog, and an odd Elmer solo cartoon for good measure. And the post-1948s should dominate as post-1948 was the portion of the oeuvre wherein most of the "star" characters flourished, in cartoon series of considerable length. The criticisms are worded quite eruditely. A darned sight more so than some of the slap-downs. I am happy to see some people of my persuasion saying something to give to the "other side" of the divide, a "voice" in the discussion. At the end of the day, the people who hold sway over the cartoon choices, will win. They will have all of their desired cartoons right before Warner Brothers and Warner Archive proclaim that it is the end of physical media and, "That's all, folks!"
They told me to be patient and wait in the GOLDEN COLLECTION years. And when the GOLDEN COLLECTION ended prematurely at a VOLUME 6 loaded with pre-1948 cartoons, sporting a whole DVD disc with cartoons of the 1930s, and proffering many, many "one-shots", they said, "Oh, well. Chin up. Maybe next time." Then, it was PLATINUM COLLECTION time several years later. Abortive end. My desired cartoons brushed aside for pre-1948 cartoon-heavy volumes. "Oh, well. Them's the breaks. Chin up." Could I please be spared the bull's excrement this time? No, of course not. But can I avert my eyes so that I do not need to see it? I will try to do just that.
I look upon the High Definition version of "Dr. Jerkyl's Hide" available on the Internet presumably procured from HBO-Max, marvel at the rich colours and the blend of sparse light and foreboding shadow in a most atmospheric and quite creepy cartoon, of the sort that Friz Freleng excelled in when he opted to explore the possibilities in Robert Louis Stevenson's "bogey tale", and I feel the pit in my stomach that comes from knowing that this cartoon will forever be denied to me in anything other than a DVD-R copy of an old VHS videotape (from the one and only time that "Dr. Jerkyl's Hide" was put on home video by Warner Brothers). Jerry Beck, by the way, had no involvement in that videotape, to the best of my knowledge. I do not think that "Dr. Jerkyl's Hide" was ever a favourite of his. It certainly did not "make the grade" for inclusion on the Columbia House series of fifteen LOONEY TUNES: THE COLLECTOR'S EDITION videotapes for which Mr. Beck was curator of content. And its lack of history on DVD and Blu-Ray, for which Mr. Beck chose the cartoons to form the "playlist", adds to that.
I still salute Jerry Beck for the job he did with the Bugs Bunny Blu-Ray box set of 2020. Of course, I do. Unlike many people, my gratitude for good things done does not have an expiry date. Without Mr. Beck's input into the Bugs Bunny Blu-Ray box set, Warner Brothers would most certainly have inflicted upon the buying public a menu of nothing but "double-dips", "triple-dips", "quadruple-dips". Nearly all of the Bugs Bunny cartoons then-hitherto missing from the DVD and Blu-Ray ranges of the Warner Brothers cartoons, were green-lit for inclusion in that 2020 Blu-Ray set. Granted, that Bugs Bunny set was one of some missed opportunities. It could have been even better than it was. But I am thankful to have all that I have of Bugs that I do have, and I have Mr. Beck to thank for that. It is so galling to see him revert back to the largely unavailing to collectors of cartoons post-1948, person that he had been before 2020.
If the pre-1948 cartoons with the less refined look to "star" characters and a surfeit of predicaments with obscure characters that never went beyond a single cartoon short, are truly what the majority of collectors want, why not put pictures of less refined-looking major characters and the obscure characters of the "one-shots" on the front cover of the Blu-Ray? Instead of 1950s renderings of the "star" characters of the Saturday morning network television show? How about it? Could it be that the people making the decisions know that the Blu-Rays would not sell in appreciable numbers in such event? Would that not be an admission that they are releasing what they want, what a clique of discussion forum participants want, and not what collectors at large want?
All right. I have said enough about LOONEY TUNES COLLECTOR'S CHOICE. Let the proverbial chips fall where they may. I am destined never to have the three most impactful cartoons in my life, in my collection in High Definition. Nor numerous others. So be it. I have "said my piece", and now I will "shaddup".
My Fanderson membership has now expired and I am exiting, the door hitting me on the way out with that "pile-on" upon "The Dorcons". So ends my brief post-2020 foray into the lion's cage of organised fandom, me obtaining what it was that I wanted and hurrying as fast as I could for the escape passage.
All for today.
Friday, October 6, 2023.
Weather has been rather pleasant this week. Temperatures near twenty degrees Celsius, and consistent sunshine and blue sky. And a less demanding work schedule enabling me to go outside to enjoy the nice weather, before the inevitable deterioration of weather to the onset of that awful season whose name I prefer not to state.
The clement, warm weather has been a blessing that I choose to count. And I have more such to mention, as I seek to pull away from my rather protracted and perhaps immoderate lamentations over the debacle-for-post-1948-Warner Brothers-cartoon-enthusiasts that is LOONEY TUNES COLLECTOR'S CHOICE VOLUME 2.
I accept the destiny that younger me has set for myself. My collection of Looney Tunes and Merrie Melodies of my preferred section of the filmography of those cartoons, will be incomplete, And this is just the way that it is. All in all, I have not done badly where collecting my keenly adhered-to entertainments of favour, is concerned. I have Space: 1999 in an "ultimate collection", on Blu-Ray. I have most of my science fiction/fantasy favourites on Blu-Ray. And those that I do not have on Blu-Ray, I at least have on DVD. My 2004 DVDs of Spiderman are stable, perdurable. As are my DVDs of Rocket Robin Hood. I have all of the cartoons of the Pink Panther, Inspector, and Ant and Aardvark on Blu-Ray. I have Blu-Rays of everything from James Bond to Inspector Clouseau to The Flintstones to Star Blazers to many a Universal fantastic hero or heroes television programme. Almost every non-science fiction/fantasy movie that I have long had in my holdings on audiotape, videotape, etc., is sitting on my shelves on Blu-Ray. And Doctor Who is now more than fifty percent on Blu-Ray. It now looks very unlikely that the DOCTOR WHO- THE COLLECTION Blu-Ray range will ever see completion (now that the BBC appears to have confirmed only two DOCTOR WHO- THE COLLECTION season sets per year to be the norm in years to come), but at least I will have on DVD what is not on Blu-Ray. I can look upon my collection of DVD and Blu-Ray with a sizable amount of satisfaction, as the culmination of fifty years of interest in building a personal library of favourite entertainments (going all of the way back to 1973 and my first audiotape-recording ever of The Bugs Bunny/Road Runner Hour). I have all of the books that I used to collect, also, having re-purchased them last decade. And then some. A number of the companies that brought to me such wondrous possessions, have gone the way of the Do-Do, or lost the rights to distribute certain product. But I capitalised on the opportunities to acquire items within the window of time in which they were available.
There are certain things that I am not meant to have. Not just a full collection of personal Warner Brothers cartoon favourites but also the Mattel Space: 1999 Eagle. That, too, will forever elude me. So be it. I have what the Karmic forces of the world, or the Almighty God, is willing to permit me to possess. And, no, I am not going to meekly and mildly allow a cabal of evil, narcissist megalomaniacs to divest me of any of it. I spent years and years and years of effort and sacrifice of immediate, ephemeral gratification, and a number of potentially meaningful associations with friends, in order to have what I have, a testimonial of the love of an individual Generation X Canadian for opuses of the imagination. As, too, is this Website, my autobiography, and this Weblog. And I did not do all of this to have some goose-stepping, jowled, decrepit German moron and his eternally youthful string puppet whose name in English is Hole of Water, remove it all from me. To have them steal all that I acquired over the course of my life. What I have can have no meaning to them other than to gratify their desire to own everything while the lowly serfs are happy owning "nussing". I will fight tooth and nail to keep what I paid for with the monies from my labours, and from those of my late parents, who intended for me to have our house and everything in it that we rightly own by all of the values and norms of Canada as it has existed since 1867. The Canada that my father served in the military to protect from Communism during the Cold War. The populace of my country, the country of my birth, the country of which I am a citizen (not a settler, not a coloniser; a citizen) did not vote for Communism, or fascism, to be our county's mode of governance. Governance modes such as those, were never stated clearly, by name, in black and white, on the platform of any of the electable political parties. A transition to either of the two most foul flavours of totalitarianism, is therefore not legitimate as a democratic decision, and it will be the right of every decent human being on the planet to refuse to recognise it.
But not to "get ahead of myself". I am content with what I have. If Warner Archive does throw a handful of post-1948 cartoons onto a pre-1948-cartoons-heavy Blu-Ray, I will buy it, to augment my collection in whatever way possible. I acknowledge that the post-1948 cartoons selected will not ever be inclusive of the two cartoons that I want most. Whatever the cause may be, of this frustrating situation.
And I have my memories. And my researches. To divest me of those, Mr. Squab, I mean, Schwab, will need to start erasing Internet data, including that on The Wayback Machine, and the brains of human beings. Oh, I have no doubt that he would like to do so. But the last of these may be rather more onerous a task than he probably expects. At least with especially stubborn people such as I. Memories of the 1970s, and of the 1980s, will not easily be effaced from my grey matter.
I have found another clipping from an issue of TV Guide magazine indicating one of the CBC Television showings of The Bugs Bunny/Road Runner Hour. It is this time from an edition of TV Guide for the Seattle region of Washington State, in which there are listings for CBUT- Vancouver and CHEK- Victoria of Canada. Here it is. Notation of the scheduled broadcast of The Bugs Bunny/Road Runner Hour on November 27, 1971 on the two CBC television stations of southwestern British Columbia. One of them owned and operated by the CBC and the other affiliated with the CBC.
The C beside the listed television programmes denotes colour. In 1971, TV Guide was making the distinction between colour and black-and-white television programmes when listing them. The practice would persist through at least the entirety of the 1970s, though some while after 1971, the option was to indicate black-and-white and not to bother specifying colour any longer. By the time in 1976 when I was starting to peruse TV Guide, the displaying of "BW" beside black-and-white television programmes and no indication of colour, had become standarised with TV Guide. Television shows like Leave it to Beaver, The Little Rascals, and The Honeymooners of course had "BW" beside them in the TV Guide listings.
I am thankful for what I have. My DVDs and Blu-Rays. My books. My Website. The house in which I live. What quality of life that my parents strove to provide for me, for me to have while they were living and after their deaths. The friends that I did have. The friends that I do have. Even though I seldom, if ever, see them. Life could be a "whole lot" worse. And I have no doubt now, that there are people, powerful people, who would like to cause it to be a "whole lot" worse. I must at least be grateful to have in the moment, what I do have.
And this is an apt Weblog entry for a preface to the Thanksgiving weekend, though I did not, consciously at least, intend for it to be so when I "set out" this morning to write it.
Thanksgiving Monday, 2023. While outside walking today, I had in my thoughts the Thanksgiving Monday of 1982, when I was playing an afternoon baseball game at Park Street School field before I saw my father at the foot path to Linden Crescent summoning me home for dinner, and a 4:30 episode of Spiderman on CHSJ-TV, it being "Sting of the Scorpion"/"Trick or Treachery", from a faded, splice-riddled film print. I videotape-recorded the Spidey episode as I awaited turkey supper.
The autumn of 1982 was a lovely one, I recall. Warm, mild weather. Friends, associates, and I played baseball until at least late October, and evening games of hide and seek. I came home on the weekday afternoons eager to videotape-record Spiderman. That was when I had most of the Spiderman episodes on videocassette for the first time, largely through CHSJ's broadcasts of the web-swinger. I was also proud possessor of Star Wars on videotape, and visited by neighbourhood youth desiring to see it. Ah, those were the days!
News. News. News.
The documentary on the Space: 1999 Eagle, titled The Eagle Has Landed, has, through its crowd-funding campaign, attracted the intention of some rather wealthy investors. It has the funds to go into production next week. Producer Jeffrey Morris has said that the documentary will go far beyond mere talking heads. New visual effects are planned. The set of the surface of planet Piri will be recreated. Why that? Why not Texas City? Or the Grove of Psyche? Or...? Texas City would be perfect as a location for fans on twenty-first-century Earth to be talking about the spacecraft of the runaway Moon.
Sanctioning by ITV is now confirmed, and one expects that the documentary will contain footage from the episodes of Space: 1999.
The Eagle Has Landed is quite an exciting development in the nearly fifty-years-long history of Space: 1999. This being said, the fact that the documentary involves fans of the television programme, fans who are fuelled by a malignant hatred for the latter half of the forty-eight episodes and for the man who spearheaded those latter twenty-four episodes, and disdain for persons like myself who are aesthetically appreciative of the latter twenty-four, does have me in a condition of justifiable foreboding. The poison of that hatred has been present, though perhaps not overtly in some cases, in just about everything made in celebration of Space: 1999 over at least the past thirty-five years. And there are certain people known to me who would be inclined to denounce Season 2 to the world at large on motion picture celluloid, without any need of a dropping of a hat. I have an uneasy feeling that they will be in the documentary, causing my stomach to turn frenetic somersaults at the sight of their faces, as they smugly proclaim second season and its producer to be the accursed cause of the grounding of the Eagle post-1977.
What can I say? I am forever corroded by my "brush" with such people. I wish I were twenty-year-old me, who would be thoroughly "over the Moon", reservations zero, over the prospect of a professionally lensed documentary on some component of my favourite science fiction/fantasy opus. But my situation is what it is. The life that I have lived, is what it is.
Anyway, I will continue to observe the progress of this project, and despite early suggestions of a slant toward Season 1, I will continue to reserve my judgement, as best I can, until my eyes behold the documentary. In 2025, that still appears. I will continue to report news about the documentary, to what small amount of readers that my Website and this Weblog do have.
I have found what may be a fault on my Blu-Ray of the broadcast version of "The Five Doctors" in the DOCTOR WHO- THE COLLECTION- SEASON 20 box set. Twice now, at a certain place in the middle of the "making-of" documentary, my Blu-Ray player has frozen and powered itself down. It could be my Blu-Ray player that is at fault. But if it is, why is that particular place on the Blu-Ray disc so problematical? Is there an error there for which my player cannot compensate? It could be that with there being fewer Blu-Ray manufacturing facilities and the existing ones under higher demand, that production is being rushed and defective Blu-Ray discs are going to be more common.
Allan Asherman has died. Mr. Asherman was the author of The Star Trek Compendium, what was the definitive book on the original television series and the movies of Star Trek on the shelves of bookstores in the 1980s. My late friend, Sandy, had a copy of it, and I bought one, too. Its pages are all black-and-white. Every episode has at least one photograph. And unlike Bjo Trimble's Star Trek Concordance, there are not just synopses of the episodes, but production information and critical commentary. I find myself in disagreement often with that commentary. Mr. Asherman was of the routinely expressed opinion that Season 3 was the lesser of the three Star Trek seasons, and that Fred Freiberger was to blame for the cancellation of the television series in 1969. The falsehood that Mr. Freiberger helmed the final season of The Wild Wild West may have been initially launched by Mr. Asherman on one of the pages of his book. But I should be appreciative of the existence of any book detailing the episodes of a science fiction/fantasy television series, and respectful of a man who has left this mortal coil. Rest in peace, Mr. Asherman.
Here is an image of the front cover of The Star Trek Compendium.
Website updates. I have revised the preamble to the CBC broadcast histories section of The Space: 1999 Page, adding information on telecasting of Space: 1999 and Cosmos 1999 in Canada by broadcasters other than CBC Television and Radio-Canada, after CBC Television and Radio-Canada had ceased to have broadcast rights to the spectacular television show about Moonbase Alpha. And I have added some improved images of "Dr. Jerkyl's Hide" to my Era 2 memoirs and The Bugs Bunny and Tweety Show Page.
All for today.
Saturday, October 14, 2023.
The bleak autumn weather, almost constantly overcast, with dark patches of cloud, and cold, chilly intermittent rain, is now upon New Brunswick. And it is all downhill from now until December 21.
I have some Website updates to mention. I have added images of the episode of The Flintstones, "High School Fred", and of Starlog issue 32, to my Era 3 memoirs. Along with some additional text remembering having seen "High School Fred" one day at lunchtime in our new Nashwaaksis, Fredericton home. I have done some further improvement to the preamble to the broadcast histories section of The Space: 1999 Page. And I have expanded somewhat a couple of paragraphs on The Pink Panther Show Page.
Traffic statistics for my Website are, I would say , not as gratifying as they were a month ago. Most of the visits enumerated for my Web pages are, I think, visits by robots. Googlebot, mainly. Actual flesh-and-blood visitors to my Website, are abysmally low at present. Even for the traditionally most popular Web pages, those for The Bugs Bunny and Tweety Show and The Littlest Hobo. Right across the board, "hits" to the Web pages are fewer, much fewer, than usual. The diminishing of visitor traffic is causing me to feel less and less motivated to write further for my Website, and this Weblog. I am considering discontinuing the writing of Weblog entries. Putting this Weblog to rest. Leaving it to be an archive of past ruminations, observations, news, etc., and not spending any more of my depleting time, on writing for it.
Before I bring today's Weblog entry to a close, I propose a display of front covers of issues of Gold Key Comics' Looney Tunes from December of 1976 through to spring of 1978. Although Space: 1999 had captured my foremost entertainment of interest designation as 1977 was "getting underway", I remained a loyal buyer of the Looney Tunes series of comic books through 1977 and some months into 1978. My purchases of those comic books spanned the divide between my life in Douglastown and my existence in Fredericton post-August, 1977. Though I must say that I do look back upon my collecting of the Looney Tunes comic book, and those of specific Warner Brothers cartoon characters, as a phenomenon of my Douglastown years. To be sure, my fondest memories of going to a store and buying them, and putting them in exhibition in whatever project that I had going, are all those of my days as a resident of Douglastown, living in that gorgeous house with the impressive separate garage. Of course, Looney Tunes comic books were dominated by the major characters of the cartoons. as well they should be. The persons responsible for releasing of the Warner Brothers cartoons to DVD and Blu-Ray ought to "take note". If success and long life of the latest home video range for the cartoons, is a significant consideration for them. People buy something designated as Looney Tunes based on the major characters and the desirability of possessing the characters' "doin's" to a maximal number.
Here are the comic book covers.
Oh, and another thing. Some while ago, I said that the letters section of Starlog in the 1970s consisted of communication of predominantly male letter-writers. Predominantly, not exclusively. Definitely not a fifty-fifty split of the two genders. But not 100 percent male and 0 percent female, either. I had a look this morning at the old Starlogs in my holdings and have seen numerous letters from females. But the majority of them were from males. Especially in the early issues. The issues printed during Space: 1999's heyday. My initial observation does hold.
A number of the letters from females were expressing fandom for certain actors. It was always acknowledged that Tom Baker (Doctor Who) had a sizable following of women. And I see that Harrison Ford (Star Wars, Indiana Jones movies) did, also. I will note this without further comment.
All for today.
Tuesday, October 17, 2023.
Sad news. Actress Hildegard Neil, who played Elizia in Space: 1999- "Devil's Planet", has died. She was married to Brian Blessed, whose acting credits include the Space: 1999 episodes, "Death's Other Dominion" and "The Metamorph". I have had the sad task of adding Ms. Neil to the In Memoriam section of The Space: 1999 Page.
Also, I have added some images to my Era 2 memoirs. They are of the cartoons, "Lickety-Splat", "Pre-Hysterical Hare", "Sahara Hare", "Frigid Hare", and "Shot and Bothered". I also improved on an image of "Two's a Crowd". They can be found within image collages in the rememberings of January, 1974 and August, 1975.
An astonishing and exquisitely gratifying thing happened this past weekend. A classmate of mine from Grade 3 and only Grade 3 (he came to Douglastown in 1974 and left in 1975) reached out to me to make contact with me, both through the Douglastown Elementary School Alumni group at Facebook and through Facebook Messenger. Though having known me for a short time nearly fifty years ago and having not been in contact with me in all the years after we parted way back when, he remembered me! He remembered my name. He remembered my having liked the Road Runner. He remembered conversations with me in the schoolyard, and subjects of those conversations. I remembered him, too. But then, it is in my nature to do so, particularly when it comes to people who were friends with me. For people to remember me after so long a separation, is not something that should be realistically expected. And yet, a sizable number of people who knew me in Douglastown when I lived there, do remember me. People who have not seen me since I left Douglastown in 1977 and with whom I have not had contact through the late 1970s, the 1980s, the 1990s, the 2000s. I had another Facebook reunion with another of such a person back in 2014. He, too, remembered my name, my interests. And he remembered his particular association with me so very long ago. My most recent renewed contact even says that he had always remembered me as his "best friend". His words. Oh, this is what I needed to hear to pull me out of a malaise of low morale. To say that I am heart-warmed by this, is to vastly understate it.
It does seem like my five years in Douglastown, and the person who I was in those years, made quite an impression on some of the people who knew me. Perhaps a majority of them. Such that they retained detailed memory of me and their connection with me, retaining it for several decades. Memory and fondness. Yes, these people do write fondly of their interaction with me, and of me, personally. It is most remarkable. Especially after the futile struggles that I have had to make a lasting impression upon anyone whom I have met and with whom I have become friends, in Fredericton. It must be said that my presence in Fredericton has had quite the opposite effect upon the people there, that it did in Douglastown. I fail to make lasting impressions upon people. And if I do make an impression, briefly lasting or otherwise, it is usually negative. And no fondness for me. None. I am typically easily put out of sight, out of mind. Easily forgotten.
Somehow, the me who I was in my Douglastown surroundings between 1972 and 1977, flawed though he was, self-centred and lacking in empathy though he was, diffident though he was for much of the time he was there, nonetheless had the liking, the respect, the everlasting place in the hearts and minds of persons there with whom he interacted. Whereas the me whom the environment of suburban Nashwaaksis and that of the schools and streets, and baseball fields there, did mould, has garnered scarcely any corresponding response from the many more people he has encountered, post-1977. Certainly not the refurbished Kevin of the 1990s and beyond. The original me, thriving in the surroundings of the Miramichi region village of Douglastown, was a person of value in the esteem of a number of people in that place. A memorable person. A good person, in the thoughts of the people who knew me. That is the person I need to find in myself. To channel. To grow from.
I went astray. Astray in agreeing to leave Douglastown, severing connections there with a number of people who did think highly of me. Astray in my reactions to the circumstances wherein bad Karma had situated me after I had resettled in Nashwaaksis. I need to find my way back to the person who I was. And combine that with the maturity and the wisdom that I now possess. Without laboured efforts to purport myself as something that I am not. I am not an outgoing person. I am not an extrovert. Synthetic extroversion does not "wear well" on me, if my frustrations at finding latter-day friendship is any indication. Whatever can be done to neutralise the Karmic curse that I brought upon myself, should be done. Maybe this is what brought my old friend from Grade 3 and I together at this time. This and the fact that he talked at length about Christianity with me back in the day. I seem to need an awareness of Christianity now more than ever, with the evil that has metatasised in the world.
I have watched some videos on the Internet this week to which I wish to call attention. One involves Jeffrey Morris, producer of The Eagle Has Landed, in a discussion of notable episodes of Season 1 Space: 1999, most especially "Dragon’s Domain". It is in the same series of Internet videos that included David Hirsch proclaiming Season 2’s "All That Glisters" as stupid. But I gave to that series of Internet videos another chance. Because I was interested in what Mr. Morris has to say. I am happy to report that he is not one of the rabid detractors of anything and everything post-start-of-opening-credits-to-"The Metamorph". There were some appreciative comments from him on "The Bringers of Wonder" and the music of Derek Wadsworth. I am feeling somewhat less trepidatious about the documentary being helmed by Mr. Morris, than I did before watching the video. And I enjoyed the discussion on "Dragon’s Domain". Many astute observations made about the episode, and many aptly stated comments about the effect that the episode had on young viewers. I am supremely grateful not to have been one of those eight- or nine-year-olds who watched "Dragon’s Domain" before being privy to any information on what was going to happen. It must have been traumatic in the extreme to behold the monster ingesting and digesting and regurgitating the crew of the ill-fated Ultra Probe, at a tender age as young as eight or nine. Not knowing that it was going to happen and who was going to be eaten alive by a tentacled demon. I knew what was coming when I first saw "Dragon’s Domain" in November of 1977 with my friend Michael, who was also cognizant, made cognizant by me, of what was going to happen. Children who went into "Dragon’s Domain" in 1975 as "virgin viewers" were scarred for life, as is said in the discussion in the video.
The video.
https://www.facebook.com/watch/live/?ref=watch_permalink&v=740540671404055
The other video is a rumination on the downfall of Looney Tunes in the public consciousness in the twenty-first century, and most particularly their lack of mainstream appeal today in 2023. Many "well-taken" statements are made in the video about how the characters were used in the "Hare Jordan", SpaceJam, and Looney Tunes: Back in Action days. They were treated like the Muppets. An ensemble of many characters sharing the screen together, interacting rather like a family. There was even a Baby Looney Tunes television show. They were not put in the adversarial pairings in historio-literary and trans-global situations that defined much of the oeuvre that was the "Golden Age" of the cartoons, which the video producer does rightly specify as being post-World War II and into the 1960s. I must depart from him, however, in his lauding of the new Looney Tunes cartoons being concocted for HBO-Max. I am not a booster of those. They eschew the Chuck Jones, Friz Freleng, Robert McKimson designs and personas of the characters of post-1948 and choose to hearken back to the looks and behaviours of characters in Bob Clampett's cartoons of the early 1940s. Looks and behaviours that I intensely dislike. I judge them to be ugly and "off-putting", and bristle at seeing them being revived as the new default for the depictions of Bugs, et al.. I am also of the opinion that Mel Blanc cannot be replaced and that the efforts to replicate his sublime success in voicing of the characters, all fall flat with a thud.
And it did not endear me to them to see one of the new cartoons brand Yosemite Sam as a Republican. Yeeech! The vintage cartoons of Warner Brothers steered away from politically pigeon-holing the characters. And I appreciate that. Casting Yosemite Sam, a villain, in the Republican camp is a political statement about American conservatives being villainous that is, for me, at least, most unwelcome. The Bugs Bunny of yesteryear, if he were to be politically aligned at all, would not be in tandem with Democrats of today. Bugs of the twentieth century was freedom-loving, an individualist, a representation of the supremacy of individual effort and also of the desire of the individual to be left alone to go about his business. He upheld the sanctity of the American home, was unwilling to budge when the government told him to yield to incursions upon his private property by decisions and operatives of city hall. He was patriotic. He would not stand for the hectoring and bullying of "cancel culture". If Bugs of old were to be in politics now, he would be a Republican. And not a Republican-in-Name-Only (RINO). But I am glad that he was not branded with a partisan affiliation, in the cartoons of Bugs that should really only matter. The ones made in the twentieth century by Jones, Freleng, McKimson, and others.
If the Looney Tunes characters have fallen out of the mainstream these past twenty-some years, as the video laments, all that I say is, so be it. Relevance to the current culture, that of the 2020s, is, it seems to me, not something to which to aspire. I think the current culture to be repugnant. Awful. And I cannot say that I was ever a fan of the culture of the 2010s, the 2000s, and the 1990s either. The cartoons of Bugs Bunny and the other characters of Looney Tunes and Merrie Melodies, and the characters themselves, are creations of the twentieth century, and the twentieth century is where, or when, they belong. If this means that audiences of today, in being slavishly fixated on works of the present and only the present, cast them aside and leave them behind, then I nod my head and clap in agreement.
The video.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PVD-pndQftw
All for today.
Saturday, October 21, 2023.
The autumn weather this year is depressing. Only one sunny day this week. Grey skies. Intermittent rain. No cold temperatures yet. No frost. No snow. But snow and cold are expected by all of the weather forecasters to be coming sooner than normal this year. I expect before Remembrance Day.
I have been remembering the autumn of 1982 this year. That was a nice autumn. Many sunny days. Warm temperatures. I remember playing baseball and hide and seek through most of October. And many a day coming home on the bus from high school with the sun shining and an episode of Spiderman keenly expected at 4:30. I remember watching and videotape-recording Spiderman on many afternoons when it was sunny. I remember being outdoors on Saturday engaged in the playing of a baseball game with friends and associates who were being conversant with me over the videotape of Star Wars that I possessed from a September purchase, and coming home for a noontime lunch and a watching of The Amazing Spider-Man/The Incredible Hulk hour on NBC. I remember the week of October leading to Saturday, the 23 being one in which I videotape-recorded the Spiderman episodes, "Sky Harbor"/"The Big Brainwasher", "Down to Earth", and "Blotto", as I was busy penning a short story for English class. There was unseasonably warm weather one November weekend, causing signal picture interference on just about every cable television station on the Fredericton dial. Even CHSJ-TV. The Spiderman episode, "Where Crawls the Lizard"/"Electro the Human Lightning Bolt", airing on a Monday, was marred by distinct signal interference ripples in the picture, the day after I saw a Voyagers! episode, "The Day the Rebs Took Lincoln", on NBC with intense picture disruption. That November, I often walked in warm weather to the Brookside Mall and the Book Mart store there to look at video collectors' magazines, some of them from the U.K.. I also remember numerous Battlestar Galactica and Buck Rogers episodes being shown on Sundays from 8 A.M. to 10 A.M., and me videotape-recording them, often judging the signal interference to be unacceptable and discarding what I had captured on videocassette. I recall seeing The Martian Chronicles, Battle Beyond the Stars, and The Bugs Bunny/Road Runner Movie on television. And I remember always hoping to be with my new best friend, Joey. The snows came in early December. And then, the winter of 1982-3 was a mild one. I do not recall very many snowstorms that year. There was snow on the ground through the winter, but not much of it.
I have been having a look at the listings in La Presse for Plattsburgh, New York's WPTZ, Channel 5, which was an NBC-affiliated television station that aired Space: 1999 on Saturday evenings at 7 P.M. (Eastern Time) in 1975 and 1976. The first three episodes of Space: 1999 to be shown on WPTZ were "Breakaway", "End of Eternity", and "Voyager's Return". The three of them being telecast in September, 1975, by WPTZ. It is the first time that I have ever seen "End of Eternity" airing so early in a run of Season 1. "Death's Other Dominion", usually one of the first episodes of Season 1 to be offered, did not air on WPTZ until December. It was shown between "The Full Circle" and "Ring Around the Moon". The line-up of episodes for early 1976 was "Earthbound", "Another Time, Another Place", "The Infernal Machine", "Missing Link", "The Last Sunset", "Space Brain", and "The Troubled Spirit". Which tended to be the cluster of episodes that was the norm for mid-to-late in a run of Season 1 in most television markets. "End of Eternity" was repeated in March before a rerun of "Breakaway". After the March repeat of "Breakaway" were "Matter of Life and Death", "Collision Course", "Force of Life", "Alpha Child", "Mission of the Darians", "War Games", and "Voyager's Return". Sadly, there are long strings of Saturdays with no episode specified. So, I cannot provide a comprehensive broadcast history for Space: 1999 on WPTZ. But the first episodes aired are an unusual combination for a first month of Space: 1999 that might be of interest to this Weblog's small cohort of readers. What few of them come to my Website with Space: 1999 in mind.
My Website's traffic statistics continue to disappoint. There does not appear to be any end in sight to the drought. Before the slump, I was toying with the idea of actually making a new Web page or two. I was thinking of writing one on the Peanuts television specials. Those of the Vince Guaraldi era, at least. Before the television specials seemed to fall off of the rails. Not just with regard to music, but ideas, and standards and practices. Somehow, Charles Schulz and associates seemed to "lose the plot", as it were, sometime around 1977. Bizarre things were done. Showing the Little Red-Haired Girl's face. Lucy pulling the football away from Charlie Brown in an actual game in front of spectators who ought to have been able to see that it was her causing him to miss the kick. Charlie Brown being life of a party after a gulp of punch. Perennial loser at all sports Charlie Brown being chosen to be a Decathlon participant. Snoopy being allowed to drive motor vehicles. For real, i.e. real in the Peanuts universe, and not in a flight of fancy. Snoopy having magical powers. "Flashbeagle". Adult conversation actually being intelligible to the viewer. And so forth. Curiously, the Peanuts television specials lost their sheen around the same time that I moved from Douglastown to Fredericton. 1977 was a watershed year in so many ways. Anyway, I was toying with the idea. But the motivation to proceed eludes me. I just do not think that my Website has a bright future. What I am seeing now is representative of a much diminished interest in twentieth century entertainment, twentieth century life, among the populace. And I do not envisage any turnaround.
And Webcasts like the ones to which I Hyperlinked in last Weblog entry, are what is attracting the attention of the minority of people who are stalwartly interested in entertainment of yesteryear. A Website, and most especially one with my particular sensibilities and idiosyncracies, is just not going to "make the cut". It seems.
Tuesday, October 24, 2023.
Website updates first. Not much. I inserted an image of "Tugboat Granny" into a collage of images of Bugs Bunny/Road Runner Hour episode eighteen amidst my memories of January, 1974, that image being an improvement over what was present there previously. On McCorry's Memoirs Era 2. I am also doing some digital "cleaning" of the images of covers to Gold Key Comics' Looney Tunes on this Weblog.
Returning to my comments last Weblog entry, I ought to add that Snoopy did drive a motor vehicle in 1975's You're a Good Sport, Charlie Brown in the Vince Guaraldi era. So, his conducting of motor-powered means of transport did not originate post-1977. Granted. It was a first sign, I suppose, of a slipping of the conventions of Peanuts on television. But in its defence, I would venture to say that Snoopy drove a motorcycle in You're a Good Sport, Charlie Brown on dirt trails only. Not a car on a paved road. And he did it in his Masked Marvel persona, which might offer some leeway in portraying Snoopy as a capable operator of a motor-powered human conveyance. If he were to do it as Snoopy, the other characters might have reacted most disapprovingly. Maybe. Maybe not. But it does not seem as egregious a subversion of Peanuts convention as Snoopy driving a car in France, in full knowledge of the other Peanuts characters, them being passengers in the car, in What Have We Learned, Charie Brown? (1983).
News is sparse. Filming has begun on The Eagle Has Landed, with Mr. Morris interviewing a fan of Space: 1999 in Martinsville, Indiana. Discussion about LOONEY TUNES COLLECTOR'S CHOICE has stopped on Blu-Ray.com Forum. The release date for LOONEY TUNES COLLECTOR'S CHOICE VOLUME 2 has been delayed a couple of weeks. The fault in my Blu-Ray disc of "The Five Doctors" in DOCTOR WHO- THE COLLECTION- SEASON 20, exists also on a replacement Blu-Ray disc that I acquired- and on the Blu-Ray discs of other consumers of the product. It is an authoring glitch of some sort, or a run of defective Blu-Ray discs on the assembly line. And traffic statistics for my Website continue to be disappointing.
Thursday, October 26, 2023.
Website updates to report.
My friend, Michel, has supplied me with documentation sent to him in 1977, from Radio-Canada, delineating the intended broadcast sequence of Canada's French CBC television network, of episodes of Cosmos 1999, for both the 1975-6 run of Season 1 Cosmos 1999 and the 1976-7 airing of both Cosmos 1999 seasons. From this, I now have what I believe to be the true broadcast information for Cosmos 1999 on Radio-Canada in 1975-6. Where La Presse information conflicts with it, as is the case with telecasts in September, 1975, I opt to go with the Radio-Canada documentation. The second episode of Cosmos 1999 on Radio-Canada in 1975, was indeed "Un Autre Royaume de la Mort", not "Collision inevitable". And the third was "L'Enfant d'Alfa". "Collision inevitable" aired in November, the twelfth episode shown. I have updated the broadcast history section of The Space: 1999 Page accordingly. I expect that this shall be the final update of the broadcast histories where Cosmos 1999 is concerned, as I have a definitive source of information. And I doubt that I will ever have comprehensive information for the Rouyn-Noranda Radio-Canada affiliate, CKRN, assuming that it ever, at any time, did air Cosmos 1999.
My most heartfelt thanks to Michel. Here is copy of the documentation pertaining to 1975-6, for the readers of this Weblog to behold.
Other updates. My Era 3 memoirs now have a photograph of the Fredericton York Street train station in 1978, to accompany my memories of the journey by train to Toronto undertaken by my parents and I in February, 1978. And I have mated it with a 1970s photograph of a CN passenger train. And I moved the 1985 photograph of same train station that had been amidst my memories of the 1978 trek to Toronto, to Era 4, to go with my memories of the train rides to Toronto by my mother and I, in November, 1984, and also have added to same Era 4 memoirs, some new images representing my stay in a hotel in Mississauga and shopping excursions in central Toronto in November of 1984, in addition to some new text remembering experiences in the Greater Toronto Area in same month.
All for today.
Tuesday, October 31, 2023.
Snow. Snow. Snow. Snowing before Halloween. Of course it is. The Earth is becoming increasingly warmer, right?
And today, the snow that fell yesterday, mostly did not melt under the midday sun. And so, the children are trick-or-treating this evening amidst the whiteness of snow. "Are they singing 'Jungle Bells' while they collect Halloween candy?" I asked one of my neighbours. My neighbours laughed at my sardonic wit.
Over the past few days, I have been busy adding CBC broadcast history information to The Space: 1999 Page. There is now a section of CBC broadcast history for the Toronto region, including CBLT- Toronto, CBET- Windsor, CKVR- Barrie, CKNX- Wingham, CFPL- London, and CHEX- Peterborough. With some interesting preemptions. "Mission of the Darians" on February 4, 1978, was unseen in the Greater Toronto Area and most of Ontario outside of the Ottawa region, whereas everyone else in Canada had occasion to watch the Alphans aboard the S.S. Daria that day.
CBET decided in September of 1977, that it had shown Space: 1999 enough, having aired Season 1 in 1975-6 and having been part of the full-television-network run of Season 2 in 1976-7. CBET opted out of the CBC Television coast-to-coast dissemenation of Season 1 in 1977-8.
I managed to find some newspaper sources of television listings for southern Ontario, from which I procured the data. I also found North Bay Nugget, availing to me television listings for CBC-affiliated CFCL-TV- Timmins, Ontario, and its re-transmitters, CHNB- North Bay, Ontario and CKNC- Sudbury, Ontario. The CFCL information is now incorporated into my CBC Ottawa-Montreal-Quebec City Region Stations section, as channel 6a.
And with the help of my friend, Michel, I have information on CKRN- Rouyn-Noranda, Quebec, and Cosmos 1999. Michel informed me of having seen Cosmos 1999 on CKRN in 1976-7 on a Saturday evening while at his grandparents' place in Rouyn-Noranda. Also, my researches with North Bay Nugget and another newspaper, The Val d'Or Star, have shown that CKRN aired the Radio-Canada 5 P.M. weekday programming in 1973 and in early 1979. Television series such as Alerte dans l'espace, Daktari, and Daniel Boone, shown at 5 P.M. on CBFT in 1973, aired at same hour on CKRN. And L'Heure de pointe, Radio-Canada's weekdays at 5 P.M. offering in early 1979, was also on CKRN. Probability therefore is that CKRN aired Cosmos 1999 at 5 P.M. on Mondays in 1975-6. Unless information to the contrary comes my way, I will go with this for now.
My CBC broadcast histories for Space: 1999 are now nearing completion. And yet again, no record of any Saturday morning showings of Space: 1999- Season 2 in Canada. Thou loutish, falsehood-spewing Space: 1999 fans of the Season 2-hating variety, something more to stick into pipes for smoking.
Updates to The Bugs Bunny/Road Runner Hour Page include a reformatting of CBC broadcast history and some adjustments to the preamble of such broadcast history. Toronto region information is now included also for CBC broadcasts of The Bugs Bunny/Road Runner Hour. Interestingly, CBLT was Toronto's channel 6 before changing to channel 5 in 1972. I also added broadcast history for The Bugs Bunny/Road Runner Hour on CFCL to The Bugs Bunny/Road Runner Hour Page.
All for today. I have some news regarding The Day After Tomorrow- "Into Infinity" and a Blu-Ray release thereof, that I will share next Weblog entry.
Friday, November 3, 2023.
Numerous items to report and upon which to comment today. Onward I go. Indefatigable, even in the face of ever declining accesses of my Web pages by people as opposed to robots ("bots").
My Web pages for The Bugs Bunny Show, The Road Runner Show, The Bugs Bunny/Road Runner Hour, The Bugs Bunny and Tweety Show, and The Pink Panther Show have had their episode guide sections reformatted, to have all uses of the television series' title put in bold lettering.
More additions to my CBC broadcast histories for both Space: 1999 and The Bugs Bunny/Road Runner Hour. For both Web pages, there is now a section for CBC northern Ontario affiliates, them being CHNB- North Bay, CJIC- Sault Ste. Marie, and CKNC- Sudbury. And I moved CFCL- Timmins from the Ottawa-Montreal-Quebec City Region section over to the newly minted one, to sit alongside its fellow northern Ontario fidelity-to-CBC broadcasters. I also did a search for a Thunder Bay CBC Television station and found nothing. Thunder Bay was served, says Wikipedia, by a re-transmitter for CBLT- Toronto. And Kenora, the westernmost principality of Ontario, received its CBC Television programming by way of a re-transmitter for CBWT- Winnipeg. I believe that I have accounted for the distribution of the CBC Television signal betwixt 1969 and 1978 through the province of Ontario. Places not specified were served by re-broadcasters for one of the television stations mentioned in the broadcast histories.
I am also planning to visit the university library in Fredericton and its microfiche section, to see if there are newspapers available there for the Rouyn-Noranda area, so that I may have conclusive information as to how much that CKRN broadcast Cosmos 1999. It is possible. I did find newspapers for Charlottetown, Summerside, and Amherst there. Places of a comparable size, I would guess, to Rouyn-Noranda. But, of course, they are closer to Fredericton.
While I am there, I will try to find some Newfoundland newspapers too. I do wish to be thorough in my broadcast histories, lengthy though such parts of my Web pages already are. Newfoundland and Labrador are conspicuously missing from the broadcast histories for both Space: 1999 and The Bugs Bunny/Road Runner Hour. Maybe I can remediate that.
Knowing all that I now do, what would I say would be the worst place in Canada for a fan of Space: 1999? Is it still New Brunswick with the capricious CHSJ-TV? No. New Brunswickers were at least able to view every episode at least once. The same cannot be said for some locations in the western provinces that were denied occasion to see "The Testament of Arkadia", and also parts of northern Ontario, for which "Mission of the Darians" was not to be seen on either of the two days in which it was shown by CBC Television in 1978. CHSJ is not absolved from a position of dubious honour in service to the followers of Space: 1999. It did preempt the television show six times, no less, in 1976-8. It also videotape-delayed another broadcast (of "Dragon's Domain") to a time when not every enthusiast for Space: 1999 might be watching, for lack of awareness that the videotape-delayed episode showing, would be at a particular time in lieu of another television programme (Walt Disney). And it truncated numerous episodes with excess of inserted commercials into advertisement intervals.
What would be the best place in Canada for aficionados of Space: 1999? It could be Manitoba. Manitoba saw Season 1 in 1975-6. Manitoba saw every episode at least once in the CBC Television full-network engagement with Space: 1999 between 1976 and 1978. But I think it more likely to have been Nova Scotia and Prince Edward Island. All episodes were seen there at least once between 1976 and 1978. And usually, the broadcasts were scheduled before live sports broadcasts, meaning that there would be no joining already in progress, of any broadcast episode, due to an overlong sports event airing prior. The only exception to this was "Dragon's Domain" on 12 November, 1977. There may have been numerous other joinings-in-progress on CBC Television stations in places west of the eastern Maritimes. Baseball games preceded "The Exiles" and "Journey to Where" in Quebec and Ontario in autumn of 1976. And a college football game was shown before "Force of Life" in same provinces on 8 October, 1977. Also, CBHT, CBIT, CBCT, CBC Maritimes, aired first season Space: 1999 in 1975-6, though late at night, past the bedtimes of the youngsters. And reran both seasons on Sunday mornings between 1983 and 1985, doing so before the removal of episodes "Breakaway", "War Games", "Collision Course", "Black Sun", "The Metamorph", and "Space Warp" from the television series package (later regional repeats in other CBC Television markets were lacking those episodes). And a couple of times, with CHSJ videotape-delaying certain broadcasts, people in Nova Scotia and Prince Edward Island with access to CHSJ in addition to CBHT, CBIT, or CBCT, were able to twice partake in watching a particular CBC showing of Space: 1999. Yes. I would say that Nova Scotia and Prince Edward Island were the places to be, for anyone in Canada whose imagination was firmly gripped by the odyssey of Moonbase Alpha.
As to Cosmos 1999, I would say that the best place in Canada for seeing that, was somewhere in the Montreal-to-Sherbrooke corridor. Any place where one could see Cosmos 1999 on CBFT- Montreal and later see it videotape-delayed on CKSH- Sherbrooke or CKTM- Trois Rivieres.
I am also in the process of researching the broadcasting of Space: 1999 in Saskatchewan in 1975-6. My findings are that CKOS- Yorkton aired Space: 1999 in that television broadcasting year on Wednesday evenings at 7 P.M.. Presumably on videotape-delay from CBKT- Regina. What this means is that R.M. Kozan's Breakaway: 1977's Friday night at 10 P.M. airtime for Space: 1999 on CKOS in autumn of 1975, is fiction. And if it is fiction, is the order of episodes aired by CKOS in the book, fiction, also? Maybe. Maybe not. I lack data from newspapers on episodes shown on CKOS. All that I have are the airtimes. But my advice would be the administering of several dashes of salt with regard to airdates for certain episodes stated in the book. Mr. Kozan's entire work may be fictional. Except for the fact that CKOS did air Space: 1999 in 1975-6. That much is verifiable.
CBKT- Regina showed Space: 1999 in 1975-6 on Saturday afternoons at 3 o'clock. Sometimes following live sports broadcasts, which could have been problematic, where seeing an episode from its commencement was concerned. And it also aired Cosmos 1999 at 8 A.M. on Saturdays in 1975-6. Yes. CBKT aired some of the Radio-Canada roster of television programming, at times of its choosing, for francophones living in southern Saskatchewan. And Cosmos 1999 was among what Radio-Canada television programmes were being sourced by CBKT. Interesting. So, the little tykes in Regina in their pyjamas munching their Saturday A.M. Rice Krispies, Fruit Loops, or Apple Jacks, were watching first season episodes of Space: 1999 in French. Episodes such as "Death's Other Dominion", "Force of Life", "The Troubled Spirit", and "Dragon's Domain". My Regina contact many years ago said that he watched Space: 1999 on Saturday morning in the 1975-6 television broadcasting season. But he was in error as to what the language of the spectacular space opus it was that he was watching. He saw Cosmos 1999. Not, as he said, Space: 1999. That is not an error that I would have made, but, then, maybe my memory is atypical amongst the fans of Space: 1999. My tastes and sensibilities certainly are.
Cosmos 1999 aired in Regina in 1976-7, but on Saturday evening, as it did in Quebec and the eastern Maritimes. By then, Regina had a Radio-Canada television channel.
Fascinating "stuff". And I am not finished yet in my researches.
Anderson Entertainment has announced an upcoming Blu-Ray release for The Day After Tomorrow- "Into Infinity". I have in the past written of my high regard for that production for television by Gerry Anderson Productions. It is a runner-up to Space: 1999 in my estimation when it comes to the spirit of space exploration and discovery in the works of Gerry Anderson and his team. I fancy it much more than I do UFO. One glimpse of the Moon aside, it could easily fit within the Space: 1999 universe, happening some years after the events of the "Breakaway" episode of Space: 1999. The original film elements of The Day After Tomorrow- "Into Infinity" no longer exist, and Anderson Entertainment has commissioned the use of an Artificial Intelligence (AI) process that can boost the definition of an NTSC (or PAL) videotape to replicate, somewhat, the look of a film transferred to High Definition video. Any improvement over the DVD of The Day After Tomorrow- "Into Infinity" will be keenly appreciated by me. I certainly intend to purchase this Blu-Ray. It is a guaranteed sale to me with just the main content, but there is also the bonus of a "making-of" documentary (with interviews with the surviving acting cast members, Nick Tate, Brian Blessed, and Katherine Levy), and an audio commentary with Brian Blessed and Katherine Levy. And also an archive interview with Derek Wadsworth, who composed the music for both The Day After Tomorrow- "Into Infinity" and second season Space: 1999. I hope to have this Blu-Ray for Christmas, if its release is imminent over the next month and a half.
Sunday, November 5, 2023.
Yesterday morning, I went to the Harriet Irving Library on University of New Brunswick campus, in search of preservations on microfiche of newspapers of the Rouyn-Noranda region of Quebec and northeastern Ontario, and of the province of Newfoundland and Labrador. I "came up empty" in the first regard, and met success in the second. I found issues of The Evening Telegram of St. John's, Newfoundland for all weeks between September of 1976 and September of 1978, and with them have done a CBC broadcast history for Space: 1999 in Newfoundland and Labrador. It is now on The Space: 1999 Page. At a later date I will endeavour to do a CBC broadcast history for The Bugs Bunny/Road Runner Hour in Newfoundland and Labrador too.
I was unsuccessful at finding information on CKRN- Rouyn-Noranda, but my friend, Michel, has "come through" for me again. He has found television listings confirming that CKRN aired Cosmos 1999 Mondays at 5 P.M. in 1975-6.
With these new developments, the CBC broadcast history section of The Space: 1999 Page, is much closer to completion. Every one of the ten Canadian provinces is now represented. And almost all CBC Television stations are accounted-for.
I have continued researching the 1975-6 broadcast year for Space: 1999 in Canada, and have encountered some very interesting information, which I will share when next I do a Weblog entry.
Tuesday, November 7, 2023.
Work continues on CBC broadcast histories. Yesterday, I at last found newspaper television listings for the Terrace, British Columbia CBC affiliate, CFTK, for all years between 1969 and 1978. My Web pages for both The Bugs Bunny/Road Runner Hour and Space: 1999, are now updated with full CFTK CBC broadcast histories for the two television shows. And I also have found listings for the Pembroke, Ontario CBC affiliate, CHOV/CHRO, to add to both The Bugs Bunny/Road Runner Hour Page and The Space: 1999 Page. CHOV had a troubled history and had a change of owners and call letters in 1977 in the midst of the run of Space: 1999. Listings for it were erratic. I had to go with probability rather than certainty in some of the notations.
I have delved further into that, for me, phantom year of Space: 1999's availability on television in Canada, 1975-6. As is known to my Website's more dedicated readers, I was oblivious to the existence of Space: 1999 through most of the 1975-6 television broadcasting year. It did not air on CKCD, the CBC affiliate serving the place where I then lived, the Miramichi region of New Brunswick. I saw no promotion of it in autumn of 1975 on CBC Television as viewable on CKCD. Naturally not, as CBC Television was not in the habit of promoting non-full-network programming during full-network broadcasts (which was what CKCD tended only to show- and sometimes not even that). Although space had definitely caught my interest with a film that I had seen in school during Grade 3 (1974-5) and, of course, the off-the-Earth exploits of Rocket Robin Hood, Spidey, and Bugs Bunny, my eyes never locked onto a listing in newspaper television guides for Cosmos 1999 in 1975-6. Not that it would have mattered if they had, because in New Brunswick, on CBAFT, Cosmos 1999 in 1975-6 was shown on Tuesday afternoons when I was in school. TV Guide magazine, by the way, was not in my field of sight until summer of 1976, months after Radio-Canada had suspended Cosmos 1999 telecasts after having aired the entirety of Season 1. Although I was a collector of comic books in 1976, I never once saw any of Charlton Comics' Space: 1999 comic books on the shelves of Gallivan's Bookstore in Newcastle. Or anywhere else. I was utterly unaware of Space: 1999's existence. And when I did finally see some of it, in summer of 1976 with a distant television station's showing of "The Infernal Machine", I did not know what I was watching. I had come into it about half of the way through it. I saw a disembodied something or other shouting, holding three people captive, and "blowing things up". Most of the episode transpired on the Gwent spaceship; so, I saw almost nothing of Moonbase Alpha. It was difficult to tell where in the cosmos the events were happening. On the Moon or some other planet. And I guess that it was due to the poor picture reception that the Eagles and the face of Martin Landau did not imprint upon me at all. When I saw promotions on CBC in August of 1976 for Space: 1999 said to be premiering that autumn, I presumed Space: 1999 to be an entirely new television production. As I had known the television series of Planet of the Apes to have been two years previous. My friend, Evie, who, like me, had a television aerial tower, said that he had sometime before seen Space: 1999. I do not remember quite how I processed that. When I saw "Breakaway" on 11 September, 1976, I thought that I was watching something newly minted. I made no connection at all with my earlier sight of "The Infernal Machine". It was not until I discovered Cosmos 1999 on 16 October, 1976 and saw some of the first season episode, "Earthbound", that I was aware that there had been an earlier season.
The more that my researches reveal, the more evident that it is to me, that my experience with Space: 1999 was exceedingly uncommon for a Canadian. Northern New Brunswick was an anomoly. Just about everywhere else had a CBC Television station, owned and operated by the CBC or a privately owned affiliate, that showed Space: 1999 in 1975-6. Or, in Toronto's case, an independent television station airing the television series. Or had access, through cable television, to American broadcasters running the encounters of the Alpha Moonbase. And the francophone province of Quebec saw Cosmos 1999 on either Monday or Saturday late in the afternoon in 1975-6. In the Miramichi region, I had had none of that. Fate had isolated me from Space: 1999 through autumn of 1975, winter of 1975-6, and spring of 1976. And, "The Infernal Machine" aside, through most of the summer of 1976, until I had my earliest sights of CBC Television promotions for Space: 1999 for autumn of 1976.
Oddly, the Toronto CBC Television station, CBLT, did not show Space: 1999 in 1975-6, but an independent television channel in nearby Hamilton, one CHCH-TV, did. Broadcasting rights do tend to be exclusive to one particular network or channel covering a particular geographical area. CBC evidently had the rights. CHCH was not affiliated with the CBC in any way in 1975-6. So, how is it that it aired Space: 1999? The logical inference is that CHCH somehow had secured the rights to air Space: 1999 within its over-the-air signal range, in the Greater Toronto Area that included Hamilton, before the CBC had acquired the rights to broadcast of Space: 1999 in Canada. The CBC could air Space: 1999 but not in the Greater Toronto Area. CBLT had to defer to CHCH in the rights to air the television show but still could transmit it out to the CBC affiliates through the rest of Ontario, to air whenever they saw fit. And most of them did. CKVR- Barrie aired it on Saturday morning. Yes, Saturday morning. Season 1. Not Season 2. On Saturday morning. More for those Space: 1999 fans hostile to my perspective, to stuff into the pipe to smoke. Others aired it at 7 P.M. on a weekday evening. CHEX- Peterborough aired it on a weekday afternoon before the evening news. As is known on my Web page for Space: 1999, CBET- Windsor, aired Space: 1999 on Saturdays at 7 P.M.. Curiously, CBOT- Ottawa did not air Space: 1999 in 1975-6, to the best of my knowledge, but CHOV- Pembroke did, and it was receivable in Ottawa both over the air and on cable television. And Cosmos 1999 was viewable there. Quebeckers were not provided with Space: 1999 on Montreal's CBMT and Quebec City's CKMI in 1975-6, but they had Cosmos 1999 generously served to them on something of a silver platter.
Nova Scotians and Prince Edward Islanders saw Space: 1999 on Mondays late at night. And most of them had the option of watching it videotape-delayed on CHSJ on Fridays at 6:30 P.M.. Yes, CHSJ in Saint John in southern New Brunswick aired Season 1 Space: 1999 in 1975-6. Which, again, I was quite oblivious-to, not even noticing it in the television listings. And people of Nova Scotia, Prince Edward Island, and New Brunswick who were so fortunate as to have cable television could also see Space: 1999 in 1975-6 on television channels from Maine in the U.S.. This was how Frederictonians saw the television show in 1975-6, including my erstwhile friend, David B.. In 1975-6, CHSJ was on all television screens in Fredericton with crystal-clear reception, either over the air or on cable television. Whereas in the Miramichi, CHSJ then had no re-transmitter, and when the winds blew as they often did from the northwest, CHSJ's signal was quite weak in the Miramichi and places to its north. In 1975-6. CKCD was our provider then of CBC programming with pin-sharp picture quality. Until October of 1976 when CHSJ installed a re-transmitter in Newcastle, and CKCD turned fully ATV/CTV in affiliation. My attention to CHSJ in 1975-6 was almost non-existent. I cannot remember watching it at all in that television broadcasting year.
I do not know yet about Space: 1999 in 1975-6 in Newfoundland and Labrador.
Out west, Manitobans saw Space: 1999 in 1975-6 on CBWT- Winnipeg. People of Saskatchewan could see Space: 1999 on CBKT- Regina, CKOS- Yorkton, CKBI- Prince Albert, and CKSA- Lloydminster. Airtimes variable. And I know that CKTK- Terrace, in British Columbia, aired Space: 1999 in 1975-6 on Tuesday evening at 7 P.M. Probably on videotape-delay from CBUT- Vancouver. I do not know about Alberta yet.
It may have been because CHCH's broadcast rights expired and CBLT was at last able to show Space: 1999 in the Greater Toronto Area starting September, 1976, that Space: 1999 was then designated full-network, and "Breakaway" on 11 September, 1976, was said in TV Guide to be a "debut". Even though most of the country had already had ample occasion to see Space: 1999 though its more acclaimed season. The season that just about everyone prefers, often to the sheer exclusion of any favourable regard for the other. Any much as I hate to have to say it, my countrymen are in that same boat as the other detractors of Season 2 in the U.S., the U.K., France, et cetera. Only the freakish people of New Brunswick's north outside of the range of Quebec's telecasts of Cosmos 1999 at a not-during-school airtime, are the outliers. Except, maybe, for Newfoundland and some areas of Alberta. But my research is incomplete.
Rather depressing to see just how atypical that I am, even within the borders of my country, as a follower of Space: 1999. I guess that it is as ubiquitous in Canada as it is everywhere, the predisposition to antipathy toward second season. Right from the very start of "The Metamorph" that day in September of 1976. Why, why, why was I condemned to having my imprinting by Space: 1999 be done first mainly by the episodes of second season? It was before my Karma curse of 1977. So, why was I so unfortunate as to be left out of the bandwagon of the Season 1-seen-first multitudes? Why? Why? Why? And then mated with Season 2 in the socially best year of my life?
Things for me to ruminate about as another bleak November is upon me.
I have some episode information for CHCH- Hamilton. "Breakaway" aired first, of course. On Sunday, September 7, 1975 at 5:30 P.M.. And then, on subsequent Sundays, it was "War Games", "Death's Other Dominion", "Collision Course", "Force of Life", "Alpha Child", "Guardian of Piri", "Dragon's Domain", "Mission of the Darians", "Black Sun", "End of Eternity", "Voyager's Return", then two weeks of preemptions, then "Another Time, Another Place", "The Infernal Machine", "Ring Around the Moon", and "Missing Link". A familiar episode order, that.
Statistics of visits to my Website by actual people, not "bots", continue to disappoint. Evidently, my latest work on broadcast histories is not much of a "draw".
Updates of Website to report. I added a couple of clusters of images to The Space: 1999 Page and improved upon an image from the 1963 Littlest Hobo episode, "One, Last Rose", on The Littlest Hobo Page.
My researches of Space: 1999 broadcasts in Canada pre-September 11, 1976, have continued. I am in the process of assembling a list of CBC-owned-and-operated and CBC-affiliated television stations to have aired Space: 1999 in 1975-6. And included in the list will be the independent Canadian television stations that broadcast Space: 1999 in 1975-6.
For Space: 1999 in 1975-6, I still lack information for Newfoundland and Labrador. I need time to go to the Harriet Irving Library's microfiche section, for that. And a broadcast history for The Bugs Bunny/Road Runner Hour in Newfoundland and Labrador, is of higher priority for me now. Once I have that completed, if completion if it is possible (I cannot "take for granted" that it is), then I will train my eyes on St. John's newspaper The Evening Telegram for notation of 1975-6 broadcasting of Space: 1999.
Before I end my Weblog entry for today, I will share with this Weblog's readers more documentation, by Radio-Canada, of the CBC French television network intentions in the airing of Cosmos 1999. This time, for autumn of 1976 and winter of 1976-7. Without further adieu, here it is.
Again, my most heartfelt gratitude to Michel for providing these documents.
I have no further information on the coming Blu-Ray release of The Day After Tomorrow- "Into Infinity", but in anticipation of it I was anal-retentively rearranging the DVDs and Blu-Rays on my shelf in a bid to find a for-all-time-satisfying placement for The Day After Tomorrow- "Into Infinity", and Journey to the Far Side of the Sun, relative to Space: 1999. I choose to recant my earlier ruminations for inserting Journey to the Far Side of the Sun into the Space: 1999 universe. I opt not to regard it as happening in a post-"Breakaway" world. On further reflection, I realised that the lack of artificial gravity on the space probe in the movie, tends to render the space flight technicalities in the film incompatible with 1999 and post-1999 in Space: 1999. Unless one supposes that there was a moratorium on the use of artificial gravity for some reason. Here is what I now think. It might "blow the mind" of some people. Journey to the Far Side of the Sun is an inside-the-Space: 1999-universe movie for public consumption. Made at the Harlington-Straker film studios sometime in the late 1970s, in the bid to establish the film studio "cover" for S.H.A.D.O. operations. Col. Ed Straker, Col. Alec Freeman, Dr. Doug Jackson, Ford, and Miss Eland, all play supporting roles in the movie. The lead actors, Roy Thinnes, Ian Hendry, Patrick Wymark, and female actresses Lynn Loring and Loni Van Friedl, are professional thespians within the Space: 1999 universe. It works, does it not? It also explains the asesthetic of Journey to the Far Side of the Sun being so much like that of UFO.
The flight of the Altares in The Day After Tomorrow- "Into Infinity", on the other hand, is an actual space flight mission in The Space: 1999 universe. I choose to place it as I did about a year ago, sometime in the early twenty-first century. In an early twenty-first century a darned sight better than the one that exists in actuality.
All for today, Friday, November 10, 2023.
Monday, November 13, 2023.
Forty-six years ago this evening, I was being collected by my parents at the Fredericton S.M.T. bus depot after my ride on the bus from Newcastle to Fredericton after my Remembrance Day weekend's stay in Douglastown with my friend, Michael. It was a warmer day then than today. Warm enough to rain, the rain causing condensation on the bus windows. The man sitting beside me on the bus' back seat several times wiping the condensation from the window.
Oh, so long ago. So long ago. My parents very much alive and not very old. Me in my childhood years. My childhood friend, Michael, and I still very close friends, still best friends, nearly three months after the McCorry move from Douglastown to Fredericton. Space: 1999 still in its heyday, despite production of it having ceased. I expect that thousands, hundreds of thousands, maybe even a million, Canadian youngsters were talking about having seen that Saturday the episode with a one-eyed, people-eating, shrieking alien octopus in a spaceship graveyard.
That heyday is so very, very far in the past now. My Space: 1999 Web page receives but one visit on a given day, if that. My work of late on Space: 1999 CBC broadcast histories has yielded no recorded augmentation in Internet traffic for that Web page. There has been an uptick in visit to my Littlest Hobo Web page, and that is all. Did a certain episode of Corner Gas referencing The Littlest Hobo air again recently? Probably. Prompting some people who have no inkling of the age of the Hobo television series, or an awareness of the life expectancy of a German shepherd, to go searching the Internet with the question of, "Is the Littlest Hobo dog still alive?" And finding my Web page. As usual, nobody ventures further into my Website. Why should they? Nothing I write on my Web pages for specific television shows ever piques anyone's interest enough to delve deeper into what my Website offers.
Oh, I am always glum this time of year. I hate it. I hate the gloomy grey skies and raw air, the leafless trees, nobody being around on my street to talk with, and coming home from work in full nighttime darkness, walking in the evenings in the dark. Knowing that spring could not be farther away. My parents being dead, Christmas holds no meaning for me now as a phenomenon of present-day . Other than some time away from work, a turkey dinner, and finally a start to days gaining daylight.
I still have the past to look back to, to remember with heartwarming fondness. I pray that it will help me through this dark time as it has in the past.
I have no other news to report. The obnoxious fans of Space: 1999 continue to do what they do. I do not feel inclined today to respond to any of it. LOONEY TUNES COLLECTOR'S CHOICE VOLUME 2 is imminent. I still have not pre-ordered it, but I will. Why not? There are about a half dozen cartoons on it that are of interest to me.
Before I end today's Weblog entry, I will share another couple of pages of Radio-Canada documentation of Cosmos 1999 showings. This time, those relating to airings of the television show in spring of 1977. Here is the first of those pages.
It was typewritten on a blank piece of paper. The designated columns of other pages are absent. Maybe the cleric at Radio-Canada was typewriting on the back of one of the column-formatted pages.
Here is the second of the pages pertaining to Radio-Canada's provision of Cosmos 1999 in the spring months of 1977. This one was on a column-formatted page.
With thanks again to Michel for providing these pages to me. I have two others, concerning summer of 1977. I will put them on this Weblog on a later Weblog entry.
Friday, November 17, 2023.
I recently purchased, at a rather inflated price, a Buena Vista Spiderman 1967-70 DVD box set to serve as back-up to the one that I bought in 2004. Being as the box set went out of print within a couple of years of its release, the unit of it that I have recently purchased probably is of the same age as the one long in my holdings. Only unplayed. In mint condition coming out of the shrink wrap. I notice fading of the artwork on top of a couple of the DVDs in my newly acquired set. Other than that, the discs look pristine. I played the first of the six DVDs in the set last evening, from start to finish. No playback problems.
Here is something that may bring perplexed frowns to my readers. I gave a couple of my old Network Blu-Rays of Space: 1999 a viewing, after having watched only the Imprint Blu-Rays for the past two years. As I watched the episodes, "Death's Other Dominion" and "Guardian of Piri", on the Network Blu-Ray discs, I was struck at how vivid the episodes now were to my eyes. More so than they had been in my experience in the past couple of years. I then went to the Imprint Blu-Rays on which those episodes are encoded, and watched. To my eyes, the same episodes on the Imprint lacked the same vividness. I know. I know. Two years ago, I thought the Imprint to have "the edge" over the Network. But now, having been familiar with the Imprint for two years, my eyes seem to register a recognition of better image with the Network. It could be that my eyes were tricking me two years ago. Maybe I wanted so much for the Imprint set to truly be definitive that such biased my eyes in its favour, when really the Network was best all along, as regards quality of picture.
Network did, in my eyes, have the A & E and the Shout! Factory sets "beat" in the picture quality department. In the former case, it was subtly detectable, and in the latter, rather more conspicuous. I guess that it stands to reason that Network has the best picture quality because the film-to-video transfers of the episodes had been the most freshly minted prior to their stamping onto the glass master. They did not sit on a shelf for months or years on whatever medium was used to store them. And they were not re-encoded, or re-processed on an editing-tool Avid, for a new Blu-Ray disc content structure. Shout! did admit to tinkering with the Network transfers. The differences between the Imprint and the Network may simply be down to coding and video compression not being the same. I am certainly willing to go with that as an explanation.
But the fact that my eyes were indeed "fooled" two years ago as to which of the two, Imprint and Network, had the better picture, is testimonial that the differences are anything but stark. Slight. Much more slight than the variation between Network and Shout!. If a person is not as fussy, not as fastidious, as I in having the very best possible quality on the shelf, the Imprint is still a fine, fine set. Still, the bottom line is that I recant my proclamations two years ago about the Imprint set having better-looking episodes than does that of Network. I shall have to edit my Space: 1999 Web page accordingly. I have proceeded to watch other episodes of Space: 1999 on the Network Blu-Rays, and they, too, look more vivid than I have known them to look these past two years, on the Imprint.
It is good that I held onto my Network Blu-Rays. As I am going to favour those henceforth when I choose to watch Space: 1999. I am also going to try to buy some additional Network sets as back-up. I say, try, as now that Network is "kaput" and all of its titles are out-of-print, Network sets of Space: 1999 are becoming very scarce at Amazon Marketplace and eBay. Mint, sealed sets, at least.
The Imprint sets still have value for their bonus content, of course. I would say that the best configuration of Blu-Ray for a collection of Space: 1999 would be the Network complete television series set of ten Blu-Ray discs (of the episodes), Network's Super Space Theatre box set, the two Imprint bonus Blu-Ray discs, and the Shout! Blu-Ray disc of bonus material that includes the "These Episodes" documentary. And if one wishes to have the A & E audio commentaries and the Anthony Taylor commentaries, the Imprint Blu-Ray discs housing the relevant episodes. Season 1, Disc Three. Season 2, Disc Five. And Season 2, Disc One.
It is quite pleasing to be watching Space: 1999 on Blu-Ray again from the Network sets. Such brings me back to some years ago when my cat, Sammy, was with me. And the first season Blu-Rays, first being mastered in 2010, even predate my father's death. Yes, I am even nostalgic for my original Blu-Rays and DVDs of entertainments of my favour. Especially those that came into my possession when my father or both my father and my mother were living. Oh, how I miss those days!
I bring this Weblog entry to a close with the remaining documentation of Radio-Canada's 1976-7 showing of Cosmos 1999. For the summer of 1977. The date written on the documentation is May 1, 1977. Radio-Canada had its plans "laid down" for Cosmos 1999 summer of 1977 showings that far in advance.
Here is the documentation for summer of 1977 to August 13.
And the documentation for some of the last weeks of 1977's summer. There is nothing on paper, to the best of my knowledge, pertaining to the airing of "Le Domaine du Dragon" on 22 October and that of "Le Testament de l'Arcadie" on 31 October.
And this brings to an end the documentation on Radio-Canada's 1976-7 broadcasts of Cosmos 1999. Does documentation exist for Cosmos 1999 on Radio-Canada in 1979 and 1979-80? Probably. Very probably. Maybe someday I will have that too. Maybe even documentation for CBC English and Space: 1999. If it exists for Radio-Canada, then it likely, if not certainly, does for CBC Television.
But for now, this is all that I have. With thanks again to Michel and the kindly person at Radio-Canada who provided the documentation to him.
It snowed yesterday, and power kept flickering off briefly through the day. The snow was wet and heavy and was ploughed into boulder-sized chunks on the sides of roads. I expect that this snow will be on the ground until next April, covered over with more and more and more new snow before then.
Well, my recently purchased back-up set of the Buena Vista 2004 DVD set of Spiderman has a "rotter" within it. Disc 4, to be precise. It freezes and jumps at the start of "Pardo Presents", fifth episode of nine on the disc and probably where the layer change is. As the player tries to proceed into the main introduction of "Pardo Presents", the player freezes, ceases play for several seconds, then leaps ahead to the start of the episode's third act, with Spidey in the water reservoir. I have tried playing the DVD in two machines. Same thing. To my eyes, no evidence of delamination or darkening or "bronzing" of the disc at the outer rim. Though I do note a couple of scratches there, I have seen far worse scratches with zero effect on playability. I believe the problem to be the accursed "DVD rot". It is a nearly twenty-year-old DVD set, and I do not know where it was sent from, what conditions in which it was stored. It may have been in a high-humidity zone. Or maybe the "rot" was inherent, a result of a defective manufacturing process. Or maybe twenty years is the maximum life expectancy for a DVD. Any DVD.
I am so tired of DVD and its "rot" problem, which appears more and more to be ubiquitous. DVDs appear to "rot" just as freely and easily as laser videodiscs did. Most of my collection has been upgraded to Blu-Ray, and I am glad of that. But there are some things that never will be on Blu-Ray, and Spiderman, alas, is one of them. Rocket Robin Hood is another. And the Planet of the Apes television series. And The Tomorrow People. And Blake's 7. Maybe if the BBC has a mind to do it, there might be a chance for a Blake's' 7 Blu-Ray set, but Blake's 7 is not as popular as Doctor Who, and even Doctor Who now appears unlikely to have a fully comprehensive presence on Blu-Ray. And then there is Space Academy, Logan's Run, The New Avengers, and...
And Blu-Ray is not immune to "disc rot" either, as has been documented. I have yet to have a faulty Blu-Ray that is not defective from day one, straight out of a newly-opened package within weeks of release. But people report on Blu-Rays "rotting", and I believe them. A Cinram manufacturing plant is said to have produced a large number of blue-tinted coasters.
So, what am I going to do about Spiderman? Retain the fourth disc in my first purchased set, of course. It still plays without fault. For how much longer? I do not know. Apart from three summer months, I do not live in a humid area. And every DVD and Blu-Ray disc in my collection is in a best quality DVD case of sufficient thickness to prevent contact of disc plastic with case plastic. It is all that I can do. Now. I cannot at this time afford to buy another Spiderman DVD set at exorbitant price. And what happens if I encounter another defective fourth DVD? Another purchase?
It figures. It figures. The fourth of the DVDs in the set is my favourite, being as it contains "Blotto" and most of the other extravagantly imaginative second season episodes. My Karmic curse does seem determined to "press on".
I have expanded the CBC Broadcast History section of The Space: 1999 Page to now include Radio-Canada television stations in Ontario, specifically CBOFT- Ottawa, CBFST- Sudbury, CBLFT- Toronto, and CBEFT- Windsor, and their showings of Cosmos 1999. CBEFT did not exist until August of 1976. So, there was no Cosmos 1999 in Windsor in 1975-6. And CBOFT opted not to air Cosmos 1999 on its Monday evening showings in 1979. I cannot help but notice that there was a tendency on the part of outlets of CBC French to abandon Cosmos 1999 for large periods of time, or to target it for preemption if there was a locally produced item to run. It and only it. CBAFT did so a couple of times in winter of 1979, preempting "La planete Archanon" and "Le cerveau ordinateur" for La Cabane and D'Amour et d'eau fraiche. And later dropped Cosmos 1999 entirely with its move from Monday to Wednesday. It figures. It figures. The imaginative space opus receives the dubious honour as the most preemptable item on the week's roster. Who needs science fiction/fantasy, right?
Further. The expansion of The Space: 1999 Page's CBC Broadcast History section has incorporated also Radio-Canada broadcast histories for Cosmos 1999 in Canada's Prairie Provinces and British Columbia, effectively completing the history for Cosmos 1999 on Radio-Canada. My every heartfelt thanks to my friend Michel of the Jonquiere region of Quebec for all of his help and incentivising.
All for today, Thursday, November 23, 2023. It is Doctor Who's sixtieth birthday today. Happy birthday, Doctor.
Friday, December 1, 2023.
It is the start of a new month. The last month was quite dire. Apart from its usual depressive effect of shortening days, absence of foliage on the trees, and imminent start of winter, November had another morale-crushing thing in store for me this year. Death has visited me again. November is giving to March a "run for the money" when it comes to mortality for people in my life. It killed my father back in 2012. And this year it has claimed my old friend, Evie.
Readers of my autobiography will know who Evie is. Was. He was one of my friends in my life's second era, and one of the friends of that era with whom I sought reunion in Era 5. He was my Facebook friend since 2008. And as I reported earlier this year, he and I saw each other again in Douglastown, behind my old place, and talked for a good fifteen minutes, at least.
At the time and up until a couple of days before Evie's death, I thought our encounter earlier this year, on a Saturday in August, to have been an enormous helping of good luck. I thought it to be a result of chance. Now, I believe that God, knowing what was to happen, brought us together one, last time, to be buddies again as we had been way back when. And what better place for it than in close proximity to my old abode? We could not have been any closer to it without actually standing on the property. God wanted we two to put right everything between us. Whatever differences may have asserted themselves in our Facebook relationship, whatever unspoken hurt feelings there may have been over my having left Douglastown in 1977, or over our keeping in contact thereafter not maintained, and/or whatever else may have caused our friendship to have troughs punctuating peaks, were no longer weighing on us. It felt very much like we were together back in the old days before August of 1977. We were buddies again. And I believe that it was by design. Divine design. We were friends, across life eras, across decades, across the hundred or so miles between Miramichi City and Fredericton. And now, I am mourning the loss of a friend, and the skies could not be darker.
This is not the first loss of a childhood friend in my experience. I lost three others before this. But Ev, Ev as I have called him since the late 1980s, and I had an especially significant connection, him and I being friends at school and in and outside of our respective houses, both of them on Douglastown, New Brunswick's main road, the King George Highway. Ev's coming onto the scene at Douglastown Elementary School in December of 1973 very probably was the most important factor in me gaining confidence socially and finally "fitting in" at school. And from there, we were compatriots in appreciating certain television shows, though I acknowledged then and now that hockey was his first love. Hockey and other sports. Which I didn't follow as keenly as he.
I remember the day in December of 1973, very close to Christmas vacation, when my Grade 2 teacher, Mrs. Lyons, brought a new pupil into the classroom and sat him at my table. "This is Evie." I guess that me being the least socially attached then of everyone in our class, Mrs. Lyons thought that I would benefit most from the fellowship of our new classroom inhabitant. And she was. Ev and I became fast friends. We must have done. Not much more than two weeks later, Ev was at my birthday party, celebrating with my other friends, Michael among them, my eighth birthday. I still have my Polaroid photographs of the party, and will treasure them always. Ev quickly became my key link between my home life and my social existence at school. He knew me in both. And his presence in the latter I think did help me to find my place in the milieus of the elementary school of Douglastown. I became more comfortable interacting with other boys in the classroom, friendship did form for me and some of them.
On the 24th of February of 1974, a Sunday, as I was troubled by a Jekyll-and-Hyde Tweety-and-Sylvester cartoon on the previous day's Bugs Bunny/Road Runner Hour, Ev invited me to his place for an afternoon visit in his room. It was there that I beheld his love for the sport of hockey and his admiration of the Toronto Maple Leafs and its then star players. Ev showed to me all of his hockey sticker books and managed to pull me into buying some of them for my own collecting pleasure, even though the sport itself was still not my thing. Ev and I talked about the earlier day's Bugs Bunny/Road Runner Hour, which he had seen, too, and he was rather bemused at my unsettled state over the cartoon in which tiny Tweety was exposed to the awful concoction of Dr. Jekyll. But he was intrigued at my fascination with the cartoons and decided to visit me on the very next Saturday evening as I was watching and audiotape-recording another episode of The Bugs Bunny/Road Runner Hour.
As spring was blooming in our schoolyard, Ev, Kevin MacD., and I undertook to building forts around clusters of trees using rocks as our imagined walls. We had one or two squabbles in the process; threes tend to be awkward numbers. But we went through the tumult and reached the ending side of it, with me being buddies with both of them. On Ev's birthday in summer of 1974, we three were partying in Ev's backyard, devouring hot dogs and cake. And many a time that summer, I bicycled to Ev's place to join him for an afternoon chat whilst he played with hockey stick and hockey ball and blocks of wood demarcating nets as he pretended to be the play-by-play announcer for Hockey Night in Canada. I invited him and his sister, Paula, to dinner one evening, and I remember them eating applesauce in our kitchen. And I joined Cub Scouts to be with both Ev and Kevin MacD.. Gathering with them first at St. Samuel's Church hall and later at the Douglastown village hall, for the usual Monday evening Cubs meeting.
The autumn of 1974 brought into our lives some wonderful science fiction/fantasy opus name of Planet of the Apes. A television series airing Fridays at 7 P.M.. Ev was as keen for it as I. Possibly even more so. As he was audiotape-recording it before I started doing so. While together with Ev previously at his place, I had played Matchbox cars with him, but Planet of the Apes gave to us something rather more imaginative to indulge our yen for childhood pretend and play. We played Planet of the Apes often, both at Ev's place and at school, running about as the characters on the TV show did. Kevin MacD. joined us on more than one occasion, and I vividly remember pursuing them, me as Urko the gorilla, and them as the astronauts Virdon and Burke, between the two portables in the schoolyard, the ground beneath our feet being rather muddy. I also collected and played marbles with Ev and Kevin, raising their ire when I "welched" on a particular bet. One had to be exceedingly patient and forgiving to be friends with me then, and Ev had those qualities.
In March of 1975, Ev audiotape-recorded an episode of The Bugs Bunny/Road Runner Hour for me when I was away in Fredericton for Easter weekend, committing to an audiocassette such cartoons as "What's Up, Doc?", "Stop! Look! And Hasten!", and the Tweety-and-Sylvester San Franciscan hotel extravaganza, "Canary Row". He and Kevin both had a good laugh with me as I brought my stuffed Road Runner toy along to Kouchibouguac beach in June of 1975. Ev attended another of my birthday parties, the one in January of 1975, and I have a photograph of him and Michael standing with me at the dining room table.
Grade 4 (1975-6) was a less amenable experience for me where socializing was concerned. Our class was seated in rows of desks which did not enable much interaction. And the introduction that year of Physical Education to the curriculum, posed something of a difficulty for me, as I struggled to participate fully and successfully in athletic activities. Ev thrived at it, as did Kevin MacD. and most of the boys in our class. I fell behind, and I was rather inconsolable about that. I was not used to being anything other than tops in the class. Which I still was at a spelling bee that year. And I often won, for the boys, Mr. Wood's math game. That year, I was stricken with a particularly tenacious case of influenza and was out of school for at least a week. And Ev brought my school work home for me on a Friday around noon as I was watching an episode of Spiderman name of "Cloud City of Gold".
We had in common, Ev and I, television antenna towers connected to our homes, enabling the very best reception of New Brunswick television broadcasters and sometimes reception of more distant television stations. Ours were, I think, the only two houses in Douglastown to have such apparatuses. And the Groundhog Day Gale in 1976 inflicted no small amount of damage to both of our respective towers. But they were fully repaired for the coming to our television screens of something called Space: 1999 in the autumn of 1976. Space: 1999 was popular in Douglastown. More so than it seemed ever to be, anywhere else I would be. Ev watched a Space: 1999 episode, "The Rules of Luton", with me in my living room on April 23, 1977. An experience that I will always treasure.
Also a prized experience was Ev, Kevin MacD., and I being in a play in the school Christmas show in 1976. More of a skit than a play, but still a most significant thing for we three. Ev played Santa, and Kevin and I boys waiting Santa's arrival. It speaks volumes as to how much my confidence had grown by then. Diffident me of Grade 1 had been far too timid to even contemplate having a role in the Christmas show, other than standing in a choir and singing a carol, which I also did in 1976.
I continued to visit Ev, on Sunday afternoons, mostly, by 1977, as he practiced being a hockey announcer. By 1977, Ev had acquired a dog, and I was rather fearful of dogs and gave to his dog rather a wide berth as I stood chatting with Ev in his backyard. I was also fearful of water, but still participated in a water balloon joust with Ev and Peter, who was Ev's across-the-road neighbour. Ev, Peter, and I also played baseball base running "pickle", as I was starting to gain some modicum of proficiency in the playing of baseball.
And then it happened. The McCorrys left Douglastown and moved to Fredericton. In August of 1977. I could not be with Ev as he ventured forth into Croft Elementary School for Grade 6 and Harkins Junior High School. In May of 1979, I had convinced my parents to undertake a weekend's trek to the Miramichi and to Douglastown. And while we were there, I visited with Ev for an hour or so. We "caught up" on a couple of years of experiences. But I was rather reticent at describing how difficult it was for me socially in Fredericton, especially at school.
After that, my connection with Ev went into a long hiatus, bringing us all of the way through our high school years and beyond, before we met again in May of 1988. I still remember that sunny Friday as though it were yesterday. My nostalgia for Douglastown was surging at that point in time, and I was determined to reconnect with Ev, and Kevin MacD. too. My mother cautioned me about entertaining elaborate hopes. They might have left home. Or they might have grown so apart from me that they might not be receptive to me at all. But I could not be dissuaded. I was determined to see my old friends again and re-bond with them. And amazingly, everything happened like a charm. We stopped in our car along the road in front of Ev's place, spoke briefly to Ev's dad, before Ev pulled into the driveway in his truck. He knew it was me there when he saw our car. It was not the same car we had had in our Douglastown years, or even 1979. But somehow he knew. He was as warm and as welcoming as could be. I showed to him all the old photographs that I had brought, and the episode of Space: 1999 that we had watched together back in 1977. He was most gratified, moved, touched, by my remembering him and by the reconnection with so many memories of long ago. He brought me on a tour of Douglastown in his truck, pointing to me where numerous events had occurred during my long absence. He called me Kev, something I had not heard in a long time. And next day, the three of us, Ev, Kevin, and I gathered together for the afternoon, reminiscing and watching two episodes of Space: 1999 that I had brought with me. While we were standing in Kevin's driveway, Ev and Kevin both remarked at how much I was the same as the Kevin McCorry whom they used to know. I had changed very little. Indeed, Kevin knew me on sight even though he'd not seen me since 1977.
I continued to visit my two old friends. Kevin soon moved away, and Ev and I connected one-on-one many a time after that. Through the 1990s. Ev followed his dream of being an announcer and became a radio personality, being one of the announcers at CFAN Radio in Newcastle, on my first reunion with him in 1988. My parents and I listened to him on our car radio after my reunion with him, and I remember a definite jovial inflection in his radio voice at having been with an old friend again. Ev announced radio in Newcastle for many years, working the night shift when most of the "hip" youth were listening. He later changed careers and became a teacher, though occasionally doing disc-jockey work at parties, including the Douglastown Days reunions, two of which I attended in the 2010s. There were some further spans of years when our paths did not cross. There were times when I did not return much to Douglastown. But I always did eventually come back. Ev and I became Facebook friends in 2008 and kept in touch that way for many years. I did not see him for several years before I encountered him behind my old place in Douglastown last August. It was magical. We had not talked there since way back in the 1970s. We were almost instantly comfortable, and we talked for a good fifteen minutes, or more. We talked about things we had not talked about before, and we found some new connections to add to the old. I was feeling very good indeed at having seen Ev again. I had not been with an old friend in person for a long, long time, and was feeling very, very gratified. Of course, I did not know then that I would not see him again.
Ev was dealing with a significant health problem. He needed an organ transplant, and he was so happy to have found a donor. Alas, the surgery was not without complication. Although he seemed to be progressing very well post-surgery for a number of days, his condition changed for the worse. A brain bleed claimed his life this week. My old friend Ev who was with me in class, in his home and mine, during some of the best years of my life, in the formative years of my life, has passed away. Over the course of his life, he had met many, many people. He was a popular personality in the Miramichi. Both over the radio and in the classroom in which he taught. He will be missed by many. Many better people than I will have far, fear better eulogies than what I have written. But this is the story of Ev and Kev. Those two boys who met at the bulldozed-in-2017 school along the river Miramichi, on a cold, snowy December's day in 1973, and who became fast friends and sat around the McCorry birthday table on 5 January, 1974. We went back a long way, Ev and I, and as good as my memory is, his could at times be superior to mine. He remembered an incident or two that I had forgotten. Another thing that he did not forget was my love of the Warner Brothers cartoons, and of Tweety and Sylvester in particular. He mentioned that without any prompting from me. And up to our last time together, he never "gave up" on me as so many of my latter-day friends in Fredericton did. He steadfastly kept the memory of me, faulty though I certainly was, in my youth, within his fond heart. And he retained his rapport with me right to the last time we spoke on that Saturday four months ago.
This is all for my Weblog entry today. Rest in peace, Ev.
Friday, December 8, 2023.
I went to my friend Ev's funeral on Tuesday. My supervisor at work excused me from my duties for most of that day, so that I could go to Miramichi, attend the funeral service at St. Mary's Roman Catholic Church in Newcastle, and return to Fredericton, all over the course of about six hours. It was a lovely funeral service. Not the sort of funeral service to which I had been accustomed through prior experience with family funerals. No singing of hymns. No prolonged recitations of Biblical text. Bible passages were read, but briefly. Most of the oratory consisted of tributes to Ev by Ev's daughter and others, and an eulogy by Ev's colleague. Some popular songs were sung. There was prayer. Then, Ev's casket was being readied to be carried by the pallbearers out of the church. It was then that I left, as discreetly as I could, to embark on my return to Fredericton, so that I could be off of the highway and safe and sound in Fredericton before dark. I multiple times was sun-blinded on the road back to Fredericton, and the salt and the sand were flying nearly constantly onto my windshield. Early December will never be my favourite time of year for driving a car on the highway. But it was worth the difficulties, to be with my old friend as he was being laid to rest. While at the church, I saw my old Douglastown school classmate, Mark, for the first time in 46 years. I knew him instantly when he walked into the church foyer. His face had scarcely changed at all. We had an all too brief talk, and not one-on-one, alas. One of my other classmates of my Douglastown school years, Kevin L., was also there, I am told, but I did not see him.
During the funeral service, I closed my eyes a number of times and thought myself back to experiences, many experiences, with Ev in the long ago, when we two were youngsters. And the years when he and I were closest, most especially. The years of Grade 2 and Grade 3. Other experiences too, of course, in other, later years. Ev was among a small number of people to know me from my early elementary school years, and to accept me then, and now, for all of my faults. And the faults were numerous, quite numerous. Ev still had nostalgic affection for me as I was in my tenure as a Douglastownian and wished to maintain a connection with me in later life on the strength of the impression that I had made back in the day. Not everyone who was with me in Douglastown, has had such inclination. Unlike a majority of my Fredericton friends and associates, Ev was not condemning of me for all time for some failing in me that was manifest. Selfishness, ego-centricity, deficient empathy, wishy-washiness, leaving Douglastown for a number of wrong reasons, and so forth. Goodness knows, I was, and am, a flawed individual. But Ev was one of those rare people not to forsake me for life because I failed to meet a lofty standard. We had our differences, of course. And some times of estrangement. But he did not ever declare me unfit forever for friendship. Yes, others have. And that is "on them".
The loss of Ev and that of my friend, Sandy, nearly ten years ago, is enormous. There are now two people in the Miramichi no longer there, no longer anywhere in life, for me to align with, in my life's journey. A more and more solitary journey, the older that I become.
I have been watching episodes of Planet of the Apes in honour of Ev, that having been one of the television shows that we two fancied. Back in the day. Back in those years when we were closest. I must say that the DVDs of the Planet of the Apes television series look quite rough on my large, high-definition television screen. Compression artifacts are legion. And the episodes underwent little to no restoration when they were transferred to digital video. Unfortunately, under the present circumstances, Disney owning the home video rights to the Apes "franchise", and Disney being loathe to release vintage productions on physical media, it is highly unlikely that the Planet of the Apes television series will ever be on Blu-Ray. The world was lucky to have it on DVD. I suppose that we followers of Planet of the Apes (1974) have the Tim Burton 2001 Apes movie to thank for that. I gave a set of the Planet of the Apes television series DVDs to Ev back in 2008, by the way. At that time, he only had the Apes movies. I hope that it brought to him much enjoyment.
I have done some further Website updates. I added CBUFT to the television stations to air Cosmos 1999- "Le Testament de l'Arcadie" on 31 October, 1977. It probably did air it then, as did other Radio-Canada broadcasters on same day. "Le Domaine du Dragon" could have been shown next day, as numerous newspapers west of the Quebec-Ontario border did have a second Cosmos 1999 telecast listed for that week. But as it is known that "Le Domaine du Dragon" was listed in Quebec for October 22, and Cosmos 1999 was listed in eastern Maritimes TV Guide for that date, the probability is that "Le Domaine du Dragon" aired in the provinces west of Quebec also on 22 October. Or at least those that had "A Communiquer" or "TBA" for an hour time slot on 22 October. It is possible that Radio-Canada's initial plan was to show both "Le Domaine du Dragon" and "Le Testament de l'Arcadie" on the week of the 31, and that a sudden hour-long vacancy in the schedule for October 22 prompted Radio-Canada to move "Le Domaine du Dragon" ahead and to air it then. Newspaper television listings having two episodes of Cosmos 1999 for the week of the 31 may have been using outdated information. These are the probabilities that I now choose to "go with".
Added to my Era 2 memoirs are some additional images of the Planet of the Apes television series, several images of Happy Anniversary, Charlie Brown, and images of The Hudson Brothers Razzle-Dazzle Show, Tarzan, and a Gold Key Road Runner comic book of autumn of 1974. Some of the new images are to be found among my memories of the autumn months of 1974, in an expansion of an already existing collage of images including Douglastown Elementary School in the autumn and the With Skies and Wings reader textbook. The images of Happy Anniversary, Charlie Brown are in a new assemblage of images replacing an older one. I also corrected some text in my Era 3 memoirs.
Early reviews of LOONEY TUNES COLLECTOR'S CHOICE VOLUME 2 are indicating a lack of synchronisation of audio and video in the cartoon, "The Eager Beaver". Cartoon fans are grousing over that, on certain Internet discussion forums. I have not ordered LOONEY TUNES COLLECTOR'S CHOICE VOLUME 2 yet. And when I do make the purchase of such, I doubt that "The Eager Beaver" will see much play in my home theatre, being as it is pre-1948 with obscure characters. But the fault is still a most irksome discovery. I dislike the existence of any flaw in a Blu-Ray or DVD in my holdings, whether or not it is in something that I am not likely to watch very often. Where is the quality control?
No further news as yet on the Blu-Ray release of The Day After Tomorrow- "Into Infinity". At this juncture, it looks like the Blu-Ray of the between-Space: 1999-seasons Gerry Anderson Productions space exploration opus for young audiences, is not to be had in 2023. And as expected, no third DOCTOR WHO- THE COLLECTION set this year. New items for my Christmas this year are going to be sparse.
Saturday, December 9, 2023.
I have found television listings for CJFB- Swift Current, Saskatchewan, the final CBC affiliate requiring data for a broadcast history for both The Bugs Bunny/Road Runner Hour and Space: 1999 in their CBC runs. The CJFB Bugs Bunny/Road Runner Hour and Space: 1999 CBC broadcast histories can be found in the Saskatchewan sections for CBC broadcast history on The Bugs Bunny/Road Runner Hour Page and The Space: 1999 Page.
This brings to a close my researches on the history of CBC broadcast for The Bugs Bunny/Road Runner Hour from 1969 to 1975 and Space: 1999 from 1976 to 1978. I am never satisfied until I complete something, as I have in these cases. And at the risk of appearing to be smugly gloating, I am going to report on the completion of a mission. Nowhere have I found evidence of a single Saturday morning showing of Space: 1999- Season 2 in Canada on a CBC Television station during Space: 1999's heyday. Nor one of second season Cosmos 1999 on a Radio-Canada television channel. Period. People who have said otherwise, or who have declined to challenge or "call out" someone saying otherwise, are wrong. Wrong with potentially malignant motive in being so.
I have also found information on CJFB airing Space: 1999 in 1975-6. And with it, I believe that I now have a complete list of Canadian television stations showing Space: 1999 in its initial season on the airwaves of television in the world. By the way, I did a check on Newfoundland and Labrador and could not find Space: 1999 in the week's television listings in the 1975-6 television season. So, Newfoundland and Labrador was another of the places in Canada not to have access to Space: 1999 in 1975-6.
Here is the complete list of television stations in Canada airing Space: 1999 in the 1975-6 television broadcast year.
3- CBHT- Halifax, Nova Scotia, on Mondays at 11:30 P.M.
4- CHSJ- Saint John, New Brunswick, on Fridays at 6:30 P.M.
5- CBIT- Sydney, Nova Scotia, on Mondays at 11:30 P.M.
13- CBCT- Charlottetown, Prince Edward Island, on Mondays at 11:30 P.M.
5- CHOV- Pembroke, Ontario, on Thursdays at 6:30 P.M.
11- CKWS- Kingston, Ontario, on Fridays at 7 P.M.
3- CKVR- Barrie, Ontario, on Saturdays at 10:30 A.M. (autumn of 1975), and on Fridays at 6 P.M. (winter of 1976 onward)
8- CKNX- Wingham, Ontario, on Fridays at 7 P.M.
9- CBET- Windsor, Ontario, on Saturdays at 7 P.M.
11- CHCH (Independent)- Hamilton, Ontario, on Sundays at 5:30 P.M.
12- CHEX- Peterborough, Ontario, on Fridays at 6:30 P.M.
2- CJIC- Sault Ste. Marie, Ontario, on Fridays at 5 P.M.
4- CHNB- North Bay, Ontario, on Thursdays at 7 P.M.
6- CFCL- Timmins, Ontario, on Thursdays at 7 P.M.
9- CKNC- Sudbury, Ontario, on Thursdays at 7 P.M.
5- CKX- Brandon, Manitoba, on Saturdays at 1 P.M. and on Tuesdays at 6:30 P.M. (summer of 1976)
6- CBWT- Winnipeg, Manitoba on Saturdays at 1 P.M. and on Wednesdays at 9:30 P.M. (summer of 1976)
3- CKOS- Yorkton, Saskatchewan, on Wednesdays at 7 P.M.
5- CKBI- Prince Albert, Saskatchewan, on Fridays at 7 P.M.
5- CJFB- Swift Current, Saskatchewan, on Saturdays at 1 P.M., and on Thursdays at 6:30 P.M. (summer of 1976)
9- CBKT- Regina, Saskatchewan, on Saturdays at 1 P.M., and on Mondays at 7 P.M. (summer of 1976)
11- CBKST- Saskatoon, Saskatchewan, on Sundays at 11:20 P.M.
2- CFAC (Independent)- Calgary, Alberta, on Wednesdays at 8 P.M.
6- CKRD- Red Deer, Alberta, on Fridays at 6:30 P.M.
13- CITV (Independent)- Edmonton, Alberta, on Thursdays at 7 P.M.
2- CHBC- Kelowna, British Columbia, on Thursdays at 7 P.M.
2- CKPG- Prince George, British Columbia, on Saturdays at 10 P.M.
3- CKTK- Terrace, British Columbia, on Tuesdays at 7 P.M.
4- CFJC- Kamloops, British Columbia, on Wednesdays at 9 P.M.
5- CJDC- Dawson Creek, British Columbia, on Thursdays at 7 P.M.
Quite a smorgasbord, is it not? Consistency across the country just was not the forte of Space: 1999's first year on television in Canada. My theory about independent CHCH in Toronto may be applicable to Edmonton and Calgary, independent broadcasters there having grabbed the broadcast rights in their markets before the CBC acquired such rights for the country of Canada. I suspect the same may be true for Vancouver, though I have yet to find an independent television station there showing Space: 1999 in 1975-6. CBC affiliates in Alberta could air the television show, but not CBXT and CBRT in Edmonton and Calgary respectively. And if one was travelling from province to province, an intensive search of whole week's television listings, was needed if one was to find Space: 1999 on a nearby CBC or independent television station. Airtimes were that diverse.
I have no further information as to what episodes aired when. Newspaper television listings have been routinely unavailing when it comes to such information. Only the newspapers of Windsor and Detroit could be relied upon to supply enough episode information for me to compile a 1975-6 broadcast history for CBET. The CBET order of 1975-6 may have been common to a number of the CBC television stations, or maybe not. It was not identical to CHCH's. That much can be stated.
I will add that for CBWT, CKX, and CBKT, 1 P.M. on Saturdays seems to have been the regular airtime, but sports broadcasts could push it to later in the afternoon, like at 3 P.M.. And 6:30 P.M. on Fridays was CHEX's regular airtime for Space: 1999. An earlier noted showing of Space: 1999 at 5 P.M. may have been necessitated by some special broadcast of something or other. I cannot remember now, where I saw the 5 P.M. listing.
CKVR started airing Space: 1999 on Saturday morning and later switched it to Fridays at 6 P.M.. Reason unknown. Complaints, perhaps? Complaints from parents of traumatised children? Quite possibly the programme manager at CKVR made the mistaken assumption that Space: 1999 was like Star Trek. Acceptable for airing in the morning hours of Saturday, as Star Trek sometimes did. And he lived to regret not doing a comprehensive surveying of all episodes before deciding upon a Saturday A.M. airtime. Maybe he or she did not have the option of studying all twenty-four episodes, and simply showed without question the episodes that CBLT transmitted weekly to CKVR.
I now have six sets of the Network Space: 1999 complete television series Blu-Rays. And a seventh is en route to me. They are being mated with bonus Blu-Ray discs of the Imprint sets, and the Network Super Space Theatre Blu-Rays. Next on my purchasing agenda is another go at acquiring a back-up to the Buena Vista Spiderman DVDs, hopefully not to be plagued with another defective Disc 4.
Time to branch this Weblog into another incarnation. This one is reaching its limit of size.
Weblog entries post-December 9, 2023.
