Tuesday, August 26, 2008

TODAY'S TWD: ELEMENTARY, MY DEAR WENDY WATSON

Person, place, or thing.

We're not getting all 'Electric Company' here about nouns. Just that those are the basic ways to link one TV show to another. People and places are the most common, but things can be links as well - Morley cigarettes, Oceanic Airlines, the New York Ledger..... right down to the atomic level.

And sometimes such an element can link the TV Universe to a particular corner of the Movie Universe!

In the "Obsolescent Cryogenic Meltdown" episode of 'The Middleman', a shipment of balthorium-g was in play during their adventure. Balthorium-g was the element used in the Russian doomsday device in "Dr. Strangelove Or How I Stopped Worrying And Learned To Love The Bomb". So even though the events of the movie can't ever come into play in Toobworld - not in Earth Prime-Time, at any rate! - we know there is some common ground at least.

However, there are those who think actor Peter Bull, as the Russian Ambassador in "Dr. Strangelove", mispronounced the line. It's suggested that he was saying "Cobalt-Thorium G". Both of those elements are real and can be used in atomic weapons to increase the amount of dangerous nuclear fallout.
Still, it's now been used as an in-joke reference on 'The Middleman' and even so, it becomes reality in the TV Universe. So, "balthorium-g" it remains!

BCnU!
Toby O'B

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