the prisoner – books a, b, c and d

Dean Motter and Mark Askwith's comicbook sequel to the best-made TV series of all time has a high bar to reach for.

Right from the start I was pouring over every panel for subtext and hidden meanings, and his writing lives up to the expectation in spades.

Motter's artwork however appears casual and undetailed, and consequently doesn't really live-up to the scrutiny that such an over-analysed series brings with it. That said, his integration of photographic material from the show really shook and grabbed my attention, fitting properly into and enhancing the action, in much the same way that flashbacks did in the original.


Where he really excels though is with his dialogue. Number 6's layered implications, couched in natural conversation, shine through here as in the original, and it's easy to hear McGoohan's voice saying the words.

Ultimately the story all gets rather confused in the final book though. I still don't know what happened, or even what had happened before it all started.

And, from that perspective, it's exactly like the original.

THE ALCHEMISTS OF SOUND

Whenever I'm asked what sort of music I like, I'm never sure how to answer.

I suppose I infer that the question requires a neat box-like answer, like "jazz." After all, everyone knows what jazz is.

So I usually cite a few artists who I like – easily identifiable ones like Elvis and "Weird Al", but the truth is I know so little about music that I'm usually happy with anything.

But what do I really enjoy listening to?

Radiophonics.

When I was a teenager, I was in awe of The BBC Radiophonic Workshop. I'd buy compilations of BBC TV themes, cassettes of BBC incidental music, and LPs of BBC sound effects, and just listen to them, weekend after weekend. More than anything else, these unearthly, alien atmospheres would provide no end of inspiration for my own storywriting, and helped engender in me a belief that there was a great big universe out there, far bigger and more diverse than I now think the 'universe' can really contain.

You may have noticed the letters B, B and C cropping up a few times up there in the above paragraph. Well, that's because I found out today that, in musical terms, the word 'radiophonic' doesn't actually exist.

Roger Limb (radiophonic composer): "People often used to ask me that - What does radiophonic mean? – [and] I said It's a bit like Humpty Dumpty – it means anything I want it to mean at a particular time. I think it means sound or music that you don't hear normally."

A documentary programme about the BBC Radiophonic Workshop's unique audio creations is well overdue, or it was in 2003 when this was made anyway. And I can't emphasise enough how lovely it was to watch such an intelligently made programme, on a subject that I respect so much, and learn so much from it that I had never previously known.

Throughout the 1960s, this tiny BBC department worked tirelessly to produce sounds that, simply put, noone had ever heard before. They did this by a complex system of recording an actual noise, and then exhaustively calculating the different tape-speeds needed to speed it up, slow it down, play it backwards or whatever to produce a full complement of musical notes. These would then be copiously copied onto hundreds of tiny strips of ¼" magnetic tape and spliced together into a musical order to make a tune.

And that would only be one track.

In fact, according to this programme, there is a word for that – musique concrète.

And it wasn't just for science-fiction programmes – TV themes, Follows Shortly music and news bulletins all benefited from the workshop's tireless efforts. So prolific did these geniuses become, that one interviewee in this programme proudly boasted of how the whole of BBC Radio Sheffield's jingles were produced entirely by recording cutlery.

In the 1970s, proper electronic synthesisers came in, and with them heaps more opportunities to blow-away the listener to far-off enchanted worlds. The best incidental music I've ever heard, to any programme, ever, is easily Paddy Kingsland's work on the original BBC radio series of The Hitch-Hiker's Guide To The Galaxy.

Executive-Produced by Victor Lewis-Smith and Graham Pass, this tribute doco was extremely well made. It was accurate, it taught me, and it actually stuck to interviewing the people it was talking about. Not a sniggering comedian-of-the-hour knocking the whole thing anywhere. Even the narrator was 78-year-old Oliver Postgate, whose respectful voice lent the whole thing an air of authority, the sort of thing that today's usual 20-something presenters can't even hope to achieve. Well not for another 58 years anyway.

Kudos also, for having the confidence to show a completely blank screen for 25 seconds whilst playing a piece of music, and having that ghostly face in the background without ever explaining why. I still don't get it, but it was good to see some genuine creativity on show.

If I have any criticisms, it would be the programme's lack of direction in the first half, and over-pushing of the Doctor Who angle, but even here, it was justified with the relevant stats of just how much work for Who the department did. (400 archived tapes out of 3,500)

In conclusion, the thing that really came across about these artists was that they all appeared to have been doing exactly what they wanted to do in their life. To continually produce such marvels took dedication, conviction and passion, and their understanding of these qualities is evident from the tale of how, when the department was finally closed for those pesky budgeting reasons, Mark Ayres was asked to sort all the old tapes out, purely because he clearly had such a passion for it. Upon subsequently learning that most of these priceless tapes had been destroyed, he rolled up his sleeves and spent months determined to find them anyway, even though they didn't exist anymore. And, God bless him, find them he eventually did. Now that's the sort of inborn passion I'm pointing at.

I've never understood why 'radiophonic' music died out. Again and again, science-fiction movies, and even new Doctor Who shows, reject these unearthly sounds in favour of boring old samey orchestras, which really could be scoring any old genre of film. And, in fairness, they do make everywhere sound like Earth.

Final word then, has to go to David Cain, radiophonic composer from 1967-73, who in this show provided the following rather profound insight into perhaps why the department eventually went into decline...

"One thing about any definition of 'Golden Age', for me, comes also within music, comes within art, comes within literature. It is the point where the desires of the creator are greater than the technology which is available.

There comes a moment where the technology gets closer and closer to the sort of imagination creativity of the writer, and in the end, if you're not careful, it overtakes. And serendipity, which before was from your own sweat and blood, but you created something and thought "Goodness me, that's great," serendipity comes by saying "If I press one of these 397 buttons on this synthesiser, maybe I'll get something out of it."

Now at that moment, the machinery is driving the creativity, and the creativity is not driving the machinery, and maybe that's where the 'Golden Age' stops. Maybe."

Open Theism

About a year ago I found myself reading an account of open theism, which includes the controversial idea that, contrary to popular belief, God actually doesn't know what will happen in the future.

Nonsense of course. I found myself wondering just how much further some Christians can wind themselves up, over-studying the Bible and trying so hard to read in new meanings that just aren't there to be found.

I've long held that if God had wanted to say anything clearly in the Bible, then he would have been a poor communicator to have written it in a way that he knew hardly anyone was going to understand. There's a lot to be said for taking much of the Bible at simple face-value, and anyway, haven't these people read all the accounts in which God accurately predicted what later happened? Duh.

Isaiah 44:6-8 (NIV):

"This is what the LORD says—
Israel's King and Redeemer, the LORD Almighty:
I am the first and I am the last;
apart from me there is no God.
Who then is like me? Let him proclaim it.
Let him declare and lay out before me
what has happened since I established my ancient people,
and what is yet to come—
yes, let him foretell what will come.
Do not tremble, do not be afraid.
Did I not proclaim this and foretell it long ago?
You are my witnesses. Is there any God besides me?
No, there is no other Rock; I know not one."

Of course, I could just quote some stuff he said that later actually happened.

Luke 22:10-13 (NIV):

He replied, "As you enter the city, a man carrying a jar of water will meet you. Follow him to the house that he enters, and say to the owner of the house, 'The Teacher asks: Where is the guest room, where I may eat the Passover with my disciples?' He will show you a large upper room, all furnished. Make preparations there."

They left and found things just as Jesus had told them. So they prepared the Passover.

...and many more.

Deuteronomy 18:22 (NIV):

If what a prophet proclaims in the name of the LORD does not take place or come true, that is a message the LORD has not spoken. That prophet has spoken presumptuously. Do not be afraid of him.

But of course, you do have to balance that with...

Deuteronomy 13:1-3 (NIV):

If a prophet, or one who foretells by dreams, appears among you and announces to you a miraculous sign or wonder, and if the sign or wonder of which he has spoken takes place, and he says, "Let us follow other gods" (gods you have not known) "and let us worship them," you must not listen to the words of that prophet or dreamer. The LORD your God is testing you to find out whether you love him with all your heart and with all your soul.

...which pretty well means, if there were no God, I could now make any evidence of his non-existence fit into my Christian faith, by just calling it a ‘test’.

But back to my point – God knows the future, so when he says something will happen, it's unchangeable. It's as definite as that Twelve Monkeys movie.

Numbers 23:19 (NIV):
God is not a man, that he should lie,
nor a son of man, that he should change his mind.
Does he speak and then not act?
Does he promise and not fulfil?

That sounds fairly definite.

Exodus 32:14 (NIV):

Then the LORD relented and did not bring on his people the disaster he had threatened.

Oh. That doesn’t.

In fact, and I haven't counted here, but for every Biblical instance of God predicting the future, there seems to be another of him... err, well, getting it, err... wrong?

Jonah 3:10 (NIV):

When God saw what they did and how they turned from their evil ways, he had compassion and did not bring upon them the destruction he had threatened.

Oops.

1 Samuel 23:10-13 (NIV):

David said, "O LORD, God of Israel, your servant has heard definitely that Saul plans to come to Keilah and destroy the town on account of me. Will the citizens of Keilah surrender me to him? Will Saul come down, as your servant has heard? O LORD, God of Israel, tell your servant."

And the LORD said, "He will."

Again David asked, "Will the citizens of Keilah surrender me and my men to Saul?"

And the LORD said, "They will."

So David and his men, about six hundred in number, left Keilah and kept moving from place to place. When Saul was told that David had escaped from Keilah, he did not go there.

Ohhh, dear - big stuff-up by God there. He should be a weather forecaster – he might not change his mind, but we sure do.

Hmmm, that changing of our minds thing...

Proverbs 3:11-12 (NIV):

My son, do not despise the LORD's discipline
and do not resent his rebuke,
because the LORD disciplines those he loves,
as a father [Hebrew; Septuagint / and he punishes] the son he delights in.

Disciplines, rebukes, punishes, without wishing to change any of the Bible, I have to say I rather favour the word teaches.

Teaching is, after all, all about helping someone to change into a better person.

And, for me, the entire Christian faith all boils down to the conditions laid out in a long block of text in Ezekiel 33:12-16 (NIV)... (also quoted in my last post...)

"Therefore, son of man, say to your countrymen, 'The righteousness of the righteous man will not save him when he disobeys, and the wickedness of the wicked man will not cause him to fall when he turns from it. The righteous man, if he sins, will not be allowed to live because of his former righteousness.' If I tell the righteous man that he will surely live, but then he trusts in his righteousness and does evil, none of the righteous things he has done will be remembered; he will die for the evil he has done. And if I say to the wicked man, 'You will surely die,' but he then turns away from his sin and does what is just and right-if he gives back what he took in pledge for a loan, returns what he has stolen, follows the decrees that give life, and does no evil, he will surely live; he will not die. None of the sins he has committed will be remembered against him. He has done what is just and right; he will surely live.

Having just finished the rest of Ezekiel, at time of writing, I see things like this:

1. Despite many science-fiction films to the contrary, the future does not physically exist. God has not made it yet.

2. The future only exists potentially, in God's plans, and our plans.

3. Our plans are constantly changing, influenced by, among other things, God's choices, other people's choices, and our own choices.

4. Therefore, “God knows the future” = “God knows his plans, and ours.”

5. When we change our plans, God is sometimes gracious enough to change his, either to bless us, or to teach us, which is another form of blessing. I don’t know of any other reasons for this.

Reading Ezekiel out loud over the last 50-odd days, I found it far more interesting to give apparently "angry" God the soft voice of a very loving father, very seriously telling his child that he would be grounded unless he learnt why it was a mistake to stay out late.

That's a metaphor of course – the people who God was addressing in Ezekiel had done things a hundred-fold more serious, and the potential future God had waiting for them was a hundred-fold more serious too, to teach them the seriousness of what they had done / were doing. But I don't believe that their future suffering was any sort of a payment they had to make.

I believe it was an accurate reflection of the wrongs they'd done, and an opportunity for them to see such a wrong from another – clearer - perspective. Or at least a serious prompt to examine what parts of our lives need to be turned back to God. (something people are far more likely to do in bad times, than good)

In telling these people what he had waiting for them, God wasn't proving to them that he could see the future, but giving them a chance to change the way they think and act, and avoid any need for it.

The kid who has clearly just ‘got’ why he shouldn’t have stayed out late, doesn’t need to be grounded any more.

I think that God has decided some of the future. However I also think that he has, incredibly, left some holes for us to fill-in with our own dreams and plans.

But when the futures we plan will hurt ourselves or others, then listening to his plans, (as well as those of other people) are the only other alternatives we have.

The Book Of Ezekiel

For some reason, today's evangelists don't seem to preach out of Ezekiel very much.

Surprising, when you consider that Ezekiel was something of an evangelist too. It was his job to turn the Israelites (and anyone else who happened to be listening) back to God.

Yet paradoxically, in modern evangelism at least, Zeek doesn't seem to get the same press-coverage of, say, the more popular gospels, with their nice stories, of God being nice, and doing nice things. I think the reason why Ezekiel doesn't get quoted as often is because, frankly, the book's content can feel a little embarrassing. (that's a statement about my own feelings – not about the book itself)

There appear to me to be four aspects to Ezekiel's testimony that make it hard to quote inoffensively to non-Christians:

1. Ezekiel actually meets God several times, and describes these encounters with the exactness of someone who doesn't seem to want to forget anything. His descriptions of the four-headed winged creature (covered in eyes) that moves around on wheels and flies, is my first cause for awkwardness. If something like that happened to me, then, unlike Ezekiel, I think I would only feel able to open-up about that with someone who I was very close to, and felt safe with. Ezekiel, on the other hand, publishes it. I think I'll just gloss over that bit.

2. God tells Ezekiel to lie on his side for 9 months, eating only food cooked on human excrement, at the end of which he gets to... can you guess?... yes, ha ha, change sides.

Yeah, I, err, I think I'll just read on past that bit too.

3. Forget the crowd-pleasing prosperity-gospel, Ezekiel predicts... woe. Lots of woe. Woe, woe, woe. More woes than Fantasy Island by Tight Fit. Woe to everyone in fact – the Israelites, Tyre, the Egyptians, you name it, God is going to utterly punish everyone. Woe. He's even going to punish the people who he makes inflict the punishment, for doing it so well. Woe, dude.

At one point in chapter 9, we even get a flash-forward to God finally annihilating the entire Israelite people, in apparent contradiction to how he promised to look after them back in Exodus.

Erm... let's move onto number 4...

4. For the last nine chapters, God goes into meticulous detail about a new temple that he wants built for people to slaughter yet more animals in, as some uncomfortable form of worship to him.

Hrrrrrrm.

So, in summary, what was Ezekiel's message? Was he telling us that he saw a four-headed creature covered in eyes that had wheels and could fly, and that we're all going to eat food cooked on dung, until God kills us, unless we slaughter the animals first?

Hardly.

He said that God is awesome and good, while our sins are so bad that they're slowly killing us. And the only way to make ourselves good again is to aim for God's goodness. And the only way to put God first forever, is to give him whatever is currently first.

For my money, Ezekiel also has the clearest piece of evangelistic teaching in the whole Bible. It's in this blog's sidebar, I'm quoting it again in the next post, and here it is in this post too:

Ezekiel 33:12-16 (CEV):

Tell them that when good people start sinning, all the good they did in the past cannot save them from being punished. And remind them that when wicked people stop sinning, their past sins will be completely forgiven, and they won't be punished.

Suppose I promise good people that they will live, then later they start sinning and believe they will be saved by the good they did in the past. These people will certainly be put to death because of their sins. Their good deeds will be forgotten.

Suppose I warn wicked people that they will die because of their sins, and they stop sinning and start doing right. For example, they need to return anything they have taken as security for a loan and anything they have stolen. Then if they stop doing evil and start obeying my Law, they will live. Their past sins will be forgiven, and they will live because they have done right.

Doctor Who: The Mind Robber

As Doctor Who stories go, they don't come much weirder than The Mind Robber.

To escape from the lava flow that ended the last story, the Doctor takes the TARDIS out of time and space completely to a place he can only call "nowhere."


Here, anything that doesn't actually exist exists, so cue literary characters, a comicbook superhero and an evil genius who transforms Jamie and Zoe into fictional characters.


The Doctor too is at risk, as he can only escape this fate by failing to do whatever the master predicts in writing.

It's a visual tour-de-force – particularly in the last episode – as the Doctor and the master battle-it-out by verbally narrating a fight without contradicting what either of them has already said.

As with so many Doctor Whos, the final episode is also when it all falls apart. The earlier hook of being "nowhere" gets rather forgotten, and the master's plan to take over Earth could really have happened on any old planet. Worth mentioning too, is the final resolve – to overload the computer and make it blow up, thereby somehow returning everything to normal, which is what would have transpired anyway had the master won.

Fiction or not, there’s no way a computer so easily overloaded could have coped with the entire population of Earth.

Still, this is a wonderful, albeit slow, story, and in the face of such a terribly unworkable ending, I'm forced to ask myself why I enjoyed it so much, when I'd no way tolerate such a sloppy conclusion in the modern series. And I think a key reason would be this – we had four episodes that did hold together before it all fell apart in the last one.


Thanks again to www.shillpages.com for these screencaps.

Unforgettable – John Mann

I finally managed to complete clearing up my room today, helped out by John Mann on the Compton Cinema Organ.

It's the second time I've listened to this tape since being given it for Christmas by my mum a year ago, and on both occasions it's had the same effect on me – I don't so much listen to it as just let it's constant atmosphere wash over me.

I'm particularly intrigued by the way it's been recorded. This is not some perfectly crisp recording that makes you feel as though you're unrealistically inside the instrument. Instead we have the gorgeous echoey acoustics of the location, with the organ itself somewhere in the mid-distance, surely evoking a more realistic experience of hearing the performance live. In particular this had the effect of making my entire bedroom feel several degrees cooler – as though at an ice rink!

There was one track somewhere early on on side 2 that was particularly catchy, but surrounded by such a constant atmosphere I was really unaware of tracks beginning and finishing.

How commendable that someone has wisely seen fit to record this for others to benefit from, not just in other places, but at other times in the future too.

Gratuitously GROUCHO

It's a CD compilation of bits and pieces of Groucho's audio work through the years, with the accent on compilation. The sound quality is a bit hit and miss (some of which even I could have fixed), and it has to be said, the quality of the scripts went up and down for me too.

For example, track 4 Livingston Marx, African Explorer just didn't hold together for me, but then that's swiftly followed by Dr Hackenbush which pretty much defines the vaudeville sketch genre.

After all, no matter what the script, with that breakneck delivery, when you listen to Groucho meeting anyone it's hard to turn your brain off afterwards.

Doctor Who: The Dominators

The Dominators pretty much sums up the way it used to be for Doctor Who, and as such it's a sword that cuts both ways.

On the one hand it's set on an alien planet, features no humans aside from the regular cast, has room to develop the story and characters, and contains a philosophical undercurrent that doesn't preach a pat answer. It's also fun.

I also feel I have to point out that there's a complete lack of zombies in this, the Quarks being neither a race of brainwashed individuals, nor looking disturbingly humanoid.

However in the Quarks we also find that other side of the sword that I mentioned...


...they are, quite inarguably, the worst-looking aliens that Doctor Who has ever suffered a reputation for. The scene in which Jamie bravely creeps up behind one, ties a rope around its legs and trips it up leaves advocates of the original series like myself with no possible defence. The only way they could possibly be funnier would be by speeding up the film and dubbing over the theme from The Goodies.


The two Dominators themselves aren't particularly threatening either. They both look fierce and menacing, but one of them is a simple hothead and the other seems to be a pacifist anyway.

For all that though, the story has been worked-out, the jokes are good (particularly the blank looks that the Doctor gets when he explains the plan) and the programme’s trademark questioning of everything is an absolute breath of fresh air here from the recent revival's airheaded acceptance of present circumstances only.

Don't try posting a letter in one of these guys though.


Thanks to www.shillpages.com for these screencaps.

"Weird Al" Yankovic -LIVE!-

I wasn't sure what to expect of this. The English-speaking world's premier parodist crams so many jokes into his videos, that what could possibly be worth watching about his less-honed live performance?

Oh boy, was I wrong.

From the moment his parents introduce him at the start, this is adrenaline cranked-up and left on full.

Al wholeheartedly throws himself into each and every number, and I mean that literally, he really throws himself all around the stage for a whole hour. The video-clips that break-up his stage show while he's negotiating quick costume-changes have sadly all been cut from this release, but without them the whole thing just never slows down for a breather.

More than anything else, what comes across is his fitness. At one point he's pretending to be Madonna, dressed as a surgeon, on a double-bed, with one foot contorted behind his head, hopping, and still singing.


There's one thing I'd forgotten about Al's show when I saw him live in Auckland last year – the seriousness in his eyes. He never really looked like he was enjoying himself, and that's the same here, but in the final number on this DVD the mystery is solved. As he croons through the final reprise of Yoda, there is absolute joy on his face, and he's lovin' it. Of course he is – it's the final song, and he's been giving everything his full concentration all evening.

I know it’s a cliché, but if you really enjoy something, you work incredibly hard at it.

The Marx Brothers – A Documentary: Time Marx Is On

This documentary has the absolute bare minimum of an actual product.

What we have here are 50 minutes of clips that don't seem to even be in order, jumping around the brothers' lives regardless of what the sparce narration may have just mentioned. And some of them are just plain misleading – they were hardly the main characters in the cartoon that was referenced.


Such is the level of apathy in this release, that even the DVD's title page mis-spells its own name as "Time Marxes On."


What saves this production though is the sheer quality of these clips. Most of them are from TV appearances much later in the Marx Brothers' lives, and as such offer fascinating glimpses into the professional legacies they created for themselves. The sight of a post-retirement Groucho still singing and dancing despite some of the notes now being beyond him is the sort of joyous thing that TV producers usually stop us seeing. In this instance, Groucho's refusal to sit down and be old is just priceless.


However if it's the Marx Brothers' story you want, then my advice is to simply read the back – it's much more informative than the programme, and I'm not joking.

The Transformers: Man Of Iron (G1)

Script: Steve Parkhouse
Art: John Ridgway / Mike Collins

Inspired by writing my review of the recent movie, I decided to dig out this comicbook from my teenage years, and settle down to once again enjoy Steve Parkhouse's brief foray into the Hasbro universe.


My recollections were fairly spot-on. This British-set story did indeed still look a heck of a lot like Parkhouse's Doctor Who strips of the time – Stansham might just as well be Stockbridge – but I was unprepared for quite the extent to which the story was told from the humans' points-of-view. If anything, today I was rattled by why no-one in England had seen the giant transforming robots on the international news from the states. As a kid I'd just assumed that this was set in the same England where I lived. Today however I assumed this England was on the same Earth as all the other Transformers stories. It disappointed me that America and England had no idea what had been happening just across the pond. Even the final line gives the impression that in the years to come, none of the characters ever even heard of these robots again, despite all the subsequent stories back in America.

In a plot that foreshadowed the recent movie, the story concerns a kid called Sam getting caught-up in the war via a car, and getting taken to meet the others. At one point Jazz even stands outside his first-floor bedroom window one night.

The strip delivers what it promises – a simple charming tale of a little boy's adventure – and remembers to include a proper amount of actions/explosions too.

The end is an absolute cop-out though, but hey, this was written as what we now call a "missing adventure" – a tale designed to slot into some non-specific point in past continuity, without disturbing any subsequent events.

And to that end, it works just as well (as in not quite) if you instead imagine it set at some point during the recent movie.


The Transformers (G1, UK) #1-8: The Transformers / Power Play! / Prisoner Of War! / The Last Stand here.
The Transformers (G1, UK) #13-17: The Enemy Within here.
The Transformers (G1, UK) #18-21: Raiders Of The Last Ark here.