"DOCTOR WHO" ON JULY 4TH? PARRISH THE THOUGHT!

Happy Fourth of July! Happy Independence Day!

Or as they might say elsewhere in the world, Happy Monday!

As a Toobworld contribution to the Fourth of July theme, I'd like to offer this painting by my favorite artist, Maxfield Parrish:

"With Trumpet and Drum"

With big tin trumpet and

little red drum,

Marching like soldiers,

the children come!

The piece is entitled "With Trumpet And Drum" and it is dated from 1904. It was one of eight plates by Parrish to illustrate "Poems of Childhood" by the late Eugene Field. (He died nearly a decade earlier at the age of 45.)

As you can see in the picture, there was a clear influence for the main character in the painting:

The Gallifreyan Time Lord has met famous painters in the past, most notably Vincent Van Gogh and Leonardo da Vinci, but also Michaelangelo and Gainesborough. So why not Maxfield Parrish?

I'm not offering up any splainins as to the circumstance leading to the meeting between Parrish and the Doctor. There are not enough "facts" available to make concrete connections within the reality of Toobworld.

This is more along the lines of fanficcer territory. So as a fanfic enabler, I will make a few suggestions... if you feel inspired to write about this encounter between the Doctor and Maxfield Parrish.

1]  Their adventure should take place in 1903, giving Parrish enough time to use the Eleventh Incarnation of the Doctor as the inspiration for the little drummer boy. And it should be something that might have borne a resemblance to the finished painting - only with a little boy rather than the boyish "young" Doctor.

2]  Parrish lived in New Hampshire, so the action should take place there. As with a lot of the wild areas in New England, the mountainous terrain and back country forests of New Hampshire are home to many myths, legends, and tall tales. Large lumbering giants and small devilish imp-folk can be found in the stories there. With either group, it should be easy to come up with an alien origin for their kind.

3]  Look into the actual history for New Hampshire at the turn of the 20th Century. There might be something that happened that could be given a 'Doctor Who' twist, which has always been a staple of the show.

4]  Was the event something that only the children of the area could deal with, because the adults had all been entranced by the alien adversary?

5]  And whether you use Amy Pond as his Companion, or some other young loverly who tagged along during that hiatus for the Amy & the Doctor team between "The Big Bang" and "The Impossible Astronaut", at some point in the story she should emulate at least one of the poses in other famous paintings by Maxfield Parrish.

Me, I'm partial to "Ecstasy" myself, but "Reverie" and "Hope" might also fit the bill.

If you do end up writing some 'Doctor Who' fanfic to go with this patriotic painting, please send a copy along to me. I'd love to read it!

Again, Happy Fourth of July!

BCnU!

A ROYAL WEDDING SUPER SIX GUEST LIST

I just wanted to share this picture of the Royal Wedding that was provided by Bob of the Facebook group "The High Council of Time Lords"......

I would have expected to see the Third Incarnation of the Doctor make an appearance in the congregation - that is, once he had control over the TARDIS again. After all, he was always dressed for such an occasion!

The Royal Wedding may well be the best reality TV for the year, certainly the most uplifting. And as it was with Charles and Diana, the wedding between William and Kate could one day be dramatized for a TV movie. (Let's hope that it won't be for the same reasons, however.)

Even if it isn't, there may well be some TV characters in the near future who will claim to have attended the ceremony in Westminster Abbey, along with Elton John and Victoria Beckham.

That sort of thing happens all the time in Toobworld, but usually in connection to tragic events. Even with catalogued lists of victims from the sinking of the Titanic, collapse of the World Trade Center, and the Oklahoma City bombing, fictional characters have been added to the rolls in Toobworld.

At least this would be a joyous occasion......

Here is a "Super Six List" of some other TV characters whom I think may have been in attendance at the wedding of the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge......

1] King Victor of Svardia ('Mission: Impossible')

When seen on TV, he was a boy king; he'd be in his mid-fifties now.

2] King Charles of Caronia ('Get Smart')

If he's still alive, and if he hadn't abdicated in favor of his first-born.....

3] The King of Suaria ('Columbo')
More than likely, he's a king in exile - if he wasn't executed by rebel forces......

4] Bruce Wayne ('Batman')
His charity foundations may have worked with some of the late Princess Diana's pet projects.....

5] Chief Superintendent Inspector Dirk of Scotland Yard ('Columbo')
He wouldn't have been there as a guest, but rather he came out of retirement to act as an advisor on the security detail.

6] Mickey Stone & Albert Stroller ('Hustle')
But even with all of the heightened security, these two con men could have made it in - Mickey could pass himself off as an African dignitary, and Albert as an old family friend of the Middletons - just so long as he avoided them in the congregation.

BCnU!

CHARLIE'S BEAVER

I'm getting a lot of help in the last few days from members of Team Toobworld with suggestions for connections between various TV shows. Here's one from "Arclight":

I hope it's okay to respond to an old post like this but it reminded me of something very cool I caught on TV a long time ago. I was at my mom's and "Leave It To Beaver" was on. Specifically this episode:

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0630337/

Note the dream girl's name: Ginny Townsend. That's not why I'm writing. I'm writing because in the episode when June calls up information, she asks for the number of a Mrs. Charles Townsend.

(It's nice to see that serendipiteevee works for other people as well. Either that, or my own powers in that regard are far-reaching, making sure that others stumble upon these discoveries by "chance" to pass along to me.)

Arclight's message was in response to the blog post "A Townsend Family Reunion", specifically to this line, quoted from a 'Charlie's Angels' website:

"He was once married but confessed to not be the monogamous type, and it is never indicated whether or not he has any legitimate children."

So it could be that instead of making paternity guesses for any of those other TV characters I listed, we may actually narrow it down to being Ginny in Mayfield - with the added bonus of learning who his previous wife was.

This could be Charlie Townsend and his wife with their daughter Ginny... and a son as well!

Charlie lived in California, with his detective agency in the Los Angeles area. But the Cleavers and all the people they knew are located in the town of Mayfield. The location for Mayfield was never nailed down in the series, but a blog dedicated to 'Leave It To Beaver' made a convincing suggestion that it should be in Ohio:

I have often thought that Ohio makes the most sense for the location of Mayfield, although the show was not very consistent in giving hints as to where Mayfield is located. However, in "Beaver Makes a Loan" from Season 3, the drug store is hanging Kent State banners! That seems rather strange for a drug store not in Ohio!
I'm willing to accept Ohio as the location for Mayfield. (The picture above is from that episode, "Beaver Makes A Loan".....)

The distance between both states can be reconciled. Mrs. Townsend probably met Charlie while they were in college in California. But when the marriage went bust (as might be depicted below), she moved back home to her native Ohio, taking Ginny with her. Thank you, Arclight, for that theory of relateeveety discovery!

BCnU!

Toobworld note: The pictures of John Forsythe, allegedly as Charlie and his "family", come from the movie "The Glass Web". O'Bviously, they're looking at somebody else..... Here's who got cropped out:

MONA LIZABETH

Although sex reassignment surgeries were publicized world-wide in late 1952, men had been getting their genders changed years before Christine Jorgenson. And I don't see why that couldn't be the case as well in Toobworld. And if so, why couldn't some of the female TV characters we've seen over the years have that type of secret in their background? They may be played by actresses, but couldn't there be a few women who were once men?

I mean no disrespect to the actress who played her, and I had this idea before I learned of the slurs about her own personal life which she fought in the courts, but I'm thinking of at least one TV character who was presented as a woman, but who might have been a man before undergoing the surgeries - Mrs. Roberts, in an episode of 'Burke's Law'.

Aside from the strong definition to her features that gives her a hardened look, and that husky nature to her voice, nothing suggests that the woman could be a man. But once I got the idea in my head, it was hard not to see that the pozz'bility existed.

Captain Burke may have sensed her secret and wasn't open-minded about it. "You don't like me," Mrs. Roberts said to him. But then, she had been making a very blatant attempt to come on to him, and he may have been repulsed just by that alone.

It wasn't just Amos Burke who was put off by Mrs. Roberts......

Detective Tim Tilson:
"A woman like that makes me nervous."

Sgt. Les Hart:
"I've got news for you, son.
I've been around a lot longer,
And a woman like that makes me nervous too."

She and her husband had separate bedrooms and an arrangement in their marriage. She was more of a trophy for him and she had access to his wealth and fame. If she was a transgender, it could be that he probably didn't even know about it. Secrets go both ways - she didn't know her husband had a brother, for example.

Near the end, the conversation between Mrs. Roberts and Captain Burke took on a new dimension if we listen to it with that suggestion in mind....

Captain Burke:
"I've learned a great deal about you too."

Mrs. Roberts:
"Have you?"

Captain Burke:
"Oh, we all leave a trail behind.
All you really have to do is learn how to pick up the signs."

Mrs. Roberts:
"And what did you find?"

Captain Burke:
"You've been on a few safaris all by yourself."

Double entendre? It could be that Mrs. Roberts got the sex change in order to make it easier to chase after other men as a woman. And just because she caught herself a husband, that didn't mean the hunt was over. She said as much herself earlier in the episode......

Mrs. Roberts:
"We all hunt... in one way or another....."

It's definitely an idea that was not in the script, nor in the interpretation by the actress. But it's a theory that just might be pozz'ble, just pozz'ble......

Oh yeah?
Then where's her Adam's Apple?

BCnU!

WISH-CRAFT: NEVER ENOUGH EIGHT

There's a great reason why 'Doctor Who' should bring back Paul McGann as the eighth incarnation of the Doctor: they would never have to worry about any need for a timey-wimey splainin as to why he looked older than he did in the one TV appearance for McGann as the Doctor. We never got to see a regeneration scene bridging the eighth Doctor to the ninth. So who knows how old he had become by the time of the Time War?

I'd like to think that Grace Holloway stayed with the Doctor until her death. And maybe she was the mother of the offspring who would give birth to Susan, the Doctor's grand-daughter. Of course, this would mean that at some point Susan would have to be left in the care of the Doctor's first incarnation, in order to keep her safe from the apocalypse that was sure to come with the Time War.
This would mean that during the time she was with the Eighth Doctor, he would always know how the rest of Susan's life with his own original version would play out - in much the same way as Mrs. Hawking did with her son Daniel Faraday on 'Lost'. What do you think, fanficcers?

BCnU!

"MAUDIEPLICITY": SEND IN THE CLONES

Toobworld Central holds Dr. Miguelito Loveless to be one of the central characters of Earth Prime-Time. If he can't be found physically in a show, we could probably argue his connection behind the scenes.

So when the idea of Maudie Monday came to me over the weekend, I wondered if I could take on the challenge of creating a connection between this great character played by Michael Dunn and any one of the many roles assayed by Maudie Prickett.

As it turns out, I think I did a pretty good job at finding the missing link to most of her TV roles. at least those who were situated in California.....

Although 'The Wild, Wild West' reunion TV movie tried to convince us otherwise, the diminutive doctor lived well into the late 20th Century - if he's not still alive now in Toobworld. (He was last physically seen in 1973, thanks to an episode of 'Voyage To The Bottom Of The Sea' which was broadcast in the mid 1960's.)

So he could have been the mastermind behind a cloning experiment just before the outbreak of World War I. And among the test samples which successfully yielded a slew of clones to be raised throughout the state of California (Dr. Loveless' general base of operations, his ancestral "empire") would be all of the Maudie Prickett characters she played in the "contemporary" shows of the 1950's through the 1970's.

McMillan & Wife
– Buried Alive (1974) … Mrs. Chandler

Marcus Welby, M.D.
– The Faith of Childish Things (1974) … Miss James

Room 222
– Pi in the Sky (1973) … Miss Pliny

Call Her Mom
Mrs. Gibbons

What's a Nice Girl Like You...?
Elderly woman

Dragnet 1967
– Narco: Pill Maker (1970) … Mrs. Thelma Benstead
– Burglary Auto: Courtroom (1969) … Mrs. Gloria Chambers

The Mod Squad
– To Linc - With Love (1969) … Clerk

Gomer Pyle, U.S.M.C.
– The Short Voyage Home (1969) … Miss Paisley
– To Watch a Thief (1967) … Bank Teller
– Gomer and the Phone Company (1966) … Woman

Adam-12
– Log 112: You Blew It (1969) … Mrs. Wilson

The Tammy Grimes Show
– Officer's Mess (1966) … Mrs. Ratchett

My Three Sons
– The Glass Sneaker (1965) … Elsie Stepp
– A Holiday for Tramp (1962) … Brownie

The Jack Benny Program … Miss Gordon, Secretary
(Ten episodes)

Mister Ed
– Unemployment Show (1963) … Miss Pringle

Room for One More
– Out at Home (1962) … Miss Aiken

Ben Casey
– To the Pure (1961)

Checkmate
– The Thrill Seeker (1961)
– The Princess in the Tower (1960) … Mrs. Kaufman
[I've got the two boxed sets for this series, but they feature on the "best of" each season, and apparently neither of these two episodes qualified.]

Angel
– The Dentist (1961) … The dentist's secretary

Bachelor Father
– It Happens in November (1960) … Mrs. Crawford

Schlitz Playhouse
– Way of the West (1958) … Miss Piper
[This may have been a Western and so wouldn't qualify.]

Date with the Angels … Mrs. Cassie Murphy
(Six episodes)

G.E. True Theater
– With Malice Toward One (1957) … Mrs. Simms

The Bob Cummings Show
– Eleven Angry Women (1957)

It's a Great Life
– Denny Buys a Steer (1954) … Alice MacAvity
– The Surprise Party (1954) … Mrs. Grace Johnson Meet Corliss Archer
– The Male Ego (1954) … Mrs. Gale

[I could be wrong about some of these being set in California.....] I'm sure the temptation would be there to create an army of lovely young women, perhaps even cloned from his muse, Miss Antoinette. But the woman he chose to supply his test sample was of solid frontier stock, someone who would prove to be a hard worker. (The genetic source material for these Maudie Prickett clones would have been from one of her TV Western characters. Although the experiment probably took decades of research before implementation, I'd still go with one of her later Western roles, probably from her three different characters from 'Gunsmoke'. Dr. Loveless might have observed how strong her genetic stock was if there were three women in the Dodge City area who all looked alike.)

The U.S. government may have found out about the project and decided to intervene - probably not out of any desire to stop him, but to seize the experiment for themselves. With war on the horizon, seemingly inevitable that the United States would have to intervene, it could be that the shadow power behind the Presidency (maybe even under alien control - decades before the arrival of the Hive as seen in 'Dark Skies') decided that America could use a never-ending source of cannon fodder.

But circa 1914, there were at least two TV characters who would have the gumption and the smarts to put an end to such an experiment before Dr. Loveless could continue and before the government grabbed it for themselves - Quentin Everett Deverill, a scientific genius himself ('Q.E.D.'), and a young lad wise beyond his years who was known by the nickname of Indy ('The Young Indiana Jones Chronicles'). Maybe they teamed up to put an end to this California cloning case.

I'm not saying this is what actually happened. It's just a "pozz'bility", but one which I'm throwing out there for the fanficcers.

And it was all inspired by Maudie Prickett.

BCnU!

FANFICCER'S FRIEND: DOCTOR WHO AND THE ZOMBIE APOCALYPSE

'The Walking Dead' takes place in a TV dimension in which the world is decimated by zombies. And even though 'Dead Set' from Great Britain came first by two years, both shows are concurrent. (All of that was covered in the first post today for "Zombie Thursday".)

In fact, this deviation from Earth Prime-Time begins with these two shows. Up until the zombie apocalypse begins, this version of Toobworld was probably just like the main Toobworld - with Obama as President (that could change as 'The Walking Dead' continues), with small towns like Fernwood, Cicely, and Hooterville, and with a slightly deranged woman "vlogging" about Cinnamon Toast Crunch cereal. (Sorry, Thom!)

So why was there a zombie outbreak in Earth Prime-Time/undead and not in Earth Prime-Time? As we saw in the 'Community' episode "Epidemiology" (discussed earlier today as well), the pozz'bility was there for it to happen.

But as I pointed out, the quick fix to the zombie outbreak - by lowering the room temperature - wasn't enough. There had to be a more permanent solution found in the main Toobworld that wasn't available in the zombie Toobworld.

I think it could have been the Doctor.

It's likely that there were other outbreaks of the "zombie virus" in the area surrounding Greendale Community College in Colorado - that's why it took the military six hours to finally show up. And I think in that time, the Gallifreyan Time Lord of 'Doctor Who' was able to come up with a permanent solution to the problem.

So what was it? That's not for me to guess. I'm throwing it out there to the fanficcers; let them explore the pozz'bilities. And it's the type of situation in which you could summon any one of the eleven incarnations of the Doctor - maybe one or more working together! - as well as any characters from other TV shows - past, present or even future! -, to either help out, be a hindrance, or wind up as a victim. Mulder and Scully of 'The X-Files'? Dr. Walter Bishop of 'Fringe'? Maybe Dr. Loveless from 'The Wild, Wild West'? Or a few members of the Carrington family as seen in 'Dynasty' appearing as zombies?

And what happened to the Doctor over there in that dimension? Why didn't Earth Prime-Time/zombie have a doppelganger for the Time Lord?

Maybe over there he actually died instead of regenerating after his eighth incarnation.......

Anything is pozz'ble, just pozz'ble, in Toobworld!

If you enjoy writing that sort of thing, why not take a whack at it? Then give me the chance to read it....

BCnU!

FANFICCER'S FRIEND: OCTOBER 9, 1582

October 9, 1582 doesn't exist in the timelines of Italy, Spain, Portugal, and Poland, because the Gregorian calendar went into effect.

So what would have happened if the Gallifreyan Time Lord of 'Doctor Who' landed in one of those countries on that day that didn't exist? Would the Reapers be summoned? Would he have found himself in that Limbo-state seen in 'The Outer Limits' episode "The Premonition"? Maybe there would be some sort of connection to the manipulation of Time in 'Eerie, Indiana'......

And whatever the environs of an October 9th that doesn't exist, maybe it would be the perfect place for the Eleventh incarnation of the Doctor to meet some of his earlier incarnations - especially the 8th, played by Paul McGann.

Maybe there's a writer of fanfic out there who might want to explore the subject.....

BCnU!

THE FUGITIVE FROM U.N.C.L.E.

And now, speaking of both 'The Fugitive' and 'The Man From U.N.C.L.E.', here's my wish-craft picture for the never-to-be-seen crossover between both series:
It's actually from 'Centennial', and as such it doesn't actually qualify for the type of picture used in the "Fanficcer's Friend" feature of the blog. But I couldn't resist!

BCnU!

THE GENIE AND THE GENOA SALAMI SANDWICH

Toobworld is full of inanimate objects that talk. Some of them are due to reincarnation, like the car in 'My Mother The Car', Milton the Toaster in those Pop-Tarts blipverts, and the Geisler shopping cart in the commercial for Geisler Supermarkets.

But there could be other reasons for other talking objects, including this talking sandwich:



In the TV reunion movie "I Still Dream Of Jeannie", the genie's twin sister (known as Jeannie II because their mother was an "efficiency expert") played a dirty trick on Jeannie I. She reminded the head of the genies that a genie on Earth cannot go more than 3 months without an earthly master. And since Colonel Nelson was off on a top-secret space mission and technically no longer "earthly", Jeannie had to find a new master. What happened since then?

I think Jeannie II eventually found herself in the same straits as her sister and she was forced to get a new master. But that doesn't mean she had to be happy about it.

Here's a pozz'bility: the master chosen by Jeannie II was some schmuck who worked public relations for the orange juice industry's advisory board. Perhaps Jeannie didn't choose him at all; maybe he gained control of her genie bottle and forced her to do his bidding.

Of course, he may not have trusted her; he probably figured he should test her abilities to serve him first. He decided to start off simple with his wish-list.

And so he commanded her - and I'm sure you saw this coming a mile away - "Make me a sandwich."

And now that schmuck is stuck living with his brother's family* where at least he's relatively safe from being eaten....... So long as that growing teen doesn't need to keep stoking that bottomless pit

BCnU!

* At least it should be his brother's family since that's how such sitcoms work. Besides, you're less likely to get eaten by family....

KARLOFF & LEE: CLASSIC TOOBWORLD HORROR

It can't be used in any way but its original purpose within Toobworld "reality", but here's Boris Karloff as 'Colonel March Of Scotland Yard' with guest actor Christopher Lee as suspect Jean-Pierre in the episode "At Night All Cats Are Grey". (I love that title!) But if it had been a horror movie subset of the "Cineverse"? Spine-tingling!

(Sorry about the quality of the transfer.....)

BCnU!

"FLASH-FORWARD" & TOOBWORLD

I needed to clear out my DVR so that I would have room for everything that needs to be recorded over the next two weeks. (Expect the soup can on Sunday, but fear not, Team Toobworld! At least the "As Seen On TV" showcase will continue!)

So I finally buckled down to watch 'Flash-Forward', which had been stock-piled since its return from hiatus; I just watched the series conclusion last night. (I still have eight episodes of 'The Pacific' also, as well as the new version of "Riverworld", but there's no rush on those.) ABC, in its finite network wisdom, threw 'Flash-Forward' into a three-month hiatus from which it never recovered. I was watching the series every week since it premiered. despite its lack of appeal for me on a Toobworld basis. (Also, I would tell people that they only really needed to watch the first and last ten minutes of each episode, which didn't bode well.) As it went into the hiatus, however, that cliff-hanger was pretty gripping with Lloyd Simcoe was kidnapped. But when the show returned, that interest vested in the show was severed. I kept recording it because I still wanted to know how it all played out. I just didn't need to know right away.

Like I said, the show didn't have any bearing on Toobworld. Once it was reported that the Vice President died in a plane crash during the Great Blackout on October 6th, it was no longer set in the dimension of Earth Prime-Time. The main Toobworld reflects the world of Earth Prime (our world) when it comes to the major details - and that means Joe Biden is the Veep for both worlds and he's very much alive.

Add to that Peter Coyote as President David Segovia and a woman named Clemente who would become the new Vice President, and the "Flash-Forward" blackout could never be part of the main Toobworld. It's probably just as well. The expanse of world-wide destruction caused by the blackout would have dwarfed other major calamities and events that plagued Toobworld in the past. These would include the "V" invasion (from the original production, not the remake from this year), or the Eugenics War from 'Star Trek'. Even the arrival of the Tenctonese as seen in 'Alien Nation' can be absorbed into the main Toobworld and still be a part of "life" there even now. (An easy splainin of prejudice against the "slags" makes for an easy splainin as to why we don't see the Tenctonese in Los Angeles-based TV series today; they're kept segregated.) So we don't need to see TV characters in other shows talk about those events in every episode.

During the height of the Viet Nam War, how many TV shows acknowledged that it was happening, let alone deal with it as a topic? 'The Mod Squad', 'Then Came Bronson', an episode of 'The Twilight Zone'..... 'All In The Family' and 'Maude' may have been the only sitcoms to address the war; I can't see it playing any part in an episode of 'That Girl' or 'My Mother The Car'. There were a few TV shows, even sitcoms like 'Becker', which at least made a reference to the collapse of the Twin Towers on 9/11. But a fledgling drama at the time, '100 Centre Street' refused to mention the terror track in their scripts, despite it having happened less than a mile away.

As global as those events might have been, they didn't have a direct impact on everyone. But the 'Flash-Forward' experience did. If it happened in the main Toobworld, it's hard to believe strangers wouldn't be adding "What did you see?" to their introductions to each other. I'm not sure I'm sorry to see it go. It was a fascinating premise, although reduced to a pedestrian level with so many storylines to juggle. But it did have interesting characters some of whom I'd like to have seen again. And I am curious about that cliff-hanger at the end - was that Charlie Benford seen in somebody's flashback? It could be the daughter of Mark and Olivia because the flash-forward was apparently taking place on New Year's Eve, 2015. (Those producers were pretty optimistic!) And I want to know how - if - Mark survived the explosion of the FBI building.

(I'm guessing he fell forward as he blacked out and down into that pool outside the building, even though it wasn't very deep. Not that it was a guarantee he'd be back anyway. There were several characters who could be considered superfluous to the storyline once their flash-forwards came about - Nicole Kirby for one. It's a moot point now, anyway - Joseph Fiennes, who played Mark Benford, will now be playing Merlin in a new TV series for Starz.)

I'm fairly certain on one aspect - there will be lots of fanfic out there with their own endings for the series now that it's cancelled......
One last thought about the show's finale - I liked how FBI Agent Demitri Noh was teamed up with Dr. Simon Campos at the lab, trying to stop the next flash-forward from happening. Both of them were the only two regular characters in the series who didn't have a flash-forward on October 6th. I thought John Cho and Dominic Monaghan worked well together in those scenes and I think they'd mesh together well in some other action series as partners, perhaps a futuristic series. Maybe even a sitcom - they've got the chops for it.)

So in the end, an experiment to create a new water-cooler show to carry on from 'Lost', with a great premise that didn't always follow through, and which doesn't affect Toobworld at all*. I can't say it won't be missed, but I wasn't sorry to know that cliff-hanger would never be resolved either.

Oh - there is one thing.... What was up with the reappearance of that damned kangaroo? BCnU!

*It could be argued that with the timeline reboot from 'Primeval', we could consider 'Flash-Forward' part of Toobworld once it was realigned to have Obama as President and Joe Biden still alive after the Great Blackout. But there would still be the massive amount of other casualties that should have been addressed in other TV shows. Best to just leave it as it is: part of some alternate TV dimension......

FANFICCER'S FRIEND: "DRAGNET"

I used to run a monthly feature called "Fanficcer's Friend" in which I'd supply a picture usually from a movie and suggest that TV fanficcers use it to help expand Toobworld with new adventures.

I'm going to tweak that a bit right now and use pictures from 'Dragnet' that are already frozen in time as far as Toobworld is concerned in honor of our two inductees into the TV Crossover Hall of Fame.

First up: Here's the premise - Friday and Gannon are looking for a rogue Nazi who's hunting the recently thawed out Colonel Wilhelm Klink. Klink had been the guinea pig in the Nazi experiments to cryogenically freeze a man for decades. The process was developed to use on Hitler (see 'The Man From U.N.C.LE.') using technology developed by the Edwardian archvillain the Face ('Adam Adamant Lives!'), but they didn't want to risk the Fuehrer on the first try.

We know Klink survived into the 1960's without any significant aging.....



So how else to splain it without cryogenics?

Also, Friday and Gannon can't be after Klink himself - if Batman and Robin let him go, he must not be a wanted man by the 1960's.....

In the next picture, Friday and Gannon are in the Movie Universe (where both of them have credentials - Friday in 1954 and Gannon in 1987). The body in question? How about Smiler Grogan of "It's A Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World"?

Hey, I just supply the pictures and suggestions. You do the rest....

BCnU!

OF GODS AND GALLIFREY

The Doctor:

"Old High Gallifreyan! The lost language of the Time Lords.

There were days—there were many days—these words could burn stars,

and raise up empires, and topple gods."

Amy:

"What does this say?"

The Doctor:

"…'Hello, Sweetie.'"

'DOCTOR WHO' - "TIME OF THE ANGELS"

From this exchange, might we consider the pozz'bility that the Doctor might have used his people's language to bring about an end to the reign that the demi-gods held over the humans of Earth? If so, we can make the case for theoretical connections to 'Hercules: The Legendary Journeys', 'Cupid', 'Venus, Inc.', and 'The Aphrodite Inheritance'. It could tie into any show that featured the mythologies of the Greeks, the Norse, the Egyptians, the Sumerians, and the Amerind peoples. (I'm thinking of 'Star Trek' with its appearance by Apollo.) Even the musical "Olympus 7-000" with Donald O'Connor as Hermes would come into play!

If some fanficcer wants to run with that, be my guest......

BCnU!

EMMA/KELLY: I SPY THE AVENGERS

In 1970, 'ITV Saturday Night Theatre' presented a play written by John Mortimer (the creator of 'Rumpole') entitled "Married Alive". Diana Rigg played a woman whose life is disrupted by the arrival of a man known only as "The Colonel". The Colonel inserts himself into her life claiming that he's her long-lost husband.

"Married Alive" was later shown on NBC. I'm hoping that a copy of the tele-play is available for viewing at the Paley Center for Media. If so, I'm going down this week to watch it. (Have to go anyway to renew my membership.)

I didn't bother looking for actual screen grabs from the production of "Married Alive", because that wouldn't have triggered my Tooby sense. On the other hand, this publicity photo did the trick: A picture from the actual production couldn't be used to inspire Toobworld fanfic, as it was already set in stone in the TV Universe as being of Liz Jardine and the Colonel. But a publicity picture is outside the realm of Earth Prime-Time, so it could be used to showcase two other characters played by Dame Diana Rigg and the late Robert Culp.

I think everybody knows where I'm going with this. I'm throwing this out there to anybody who writes 'I Spy' or 'The Avengers' fan fiction as being a picture of Mrs. Emma Peel and Kelly Robinson on some spy operation which we never saw depicted on our TV screens.

Hopefully, I haven't stoked the flames for slash-fic writers. An adventure involving the talented amateur and the intrepid tennis ace should be a classy one, very proper, but especially light-hearted. There should be nothing unseemly or squalid about the story - especially since Mrs. Peel knew in her heart that her husband Peter would one day return. (And eventually he did - after being lost in the Amazon jungle, Peter Peel was rescued and returned to England. He and Emma were reunited and she left the service of British intelligence.)

Had it been Tara King with Kelly Robinson, then all bets are off.

So have it, fanficcers! If you do write up a story teaming Emma Peel with Kelly Robinson, feel free to steal the picture. I did.

And make sure you let me know your work is out there so I can take a gander at it.... BCnU!