Tuesday, November 28, 2023
The Power of 3 podcast #172
Monday, November 27, 2023
The Sky at Night: The Art of Stargazing by Dr Maggie Aderin-Pocock
Blurb as follows:
"What is the story behind the stars? Many of us gaze up into space and marvel at the Milky Way, but do you know what you're really looking at?
The Art of Stargazing is the ultimate insider's guide to the night sky in which award-winning space scientist and The Sky at Night presenter Dr Maggie Aderin-Pocock shares her expertise and unique insights into the marvellous world of stars. Take a tour of the 88 constellations and explore the science, history, culture and romanticism behind these celestial bodies.
In this must-have handbook for budding stargazers - and anyone looking for a little more wonder in their lives - Maggie will help you to identify stars and teach you the basics of naked-eye observation, offering fascinating facts plus advice on kit, 'dark sky' locations and much more. Also included are beautiful illustrations to accompany each constellation and an easy-to-read sky map. With Maggie by your side, the night sky will truly come alive."
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| My credit in the indicia |
It's the fifth book published in the past few months that I've written or worked on - the last year or so has been extremely busy, jumping from project to project. Bit knackered now.
Friday, November 24, 2023
The Daleks in Colour and Kennedy's "Survivors"
This week, a post by Letters of Note started off a chain of thoughts. Following Kennedy's death, his widow Jacqueline wrote to Nikita Khrushchev, Premier of the Soviet Union:
“I know how much my husband cared about peace, and how the relation between you and him was central to this care in his mind. He used to quote your words in some of his speeches - 'In the next war the survivors will envy the dead.'”
Khrushchev seems to have been credited for this evocative phrase in the 20 July 1963 issue of Pravda (I've not been able to check this but it says so here). Whatever the case, President Kennedy quickly picked up on the phrase, quoting it on 26 July in his radio and television address to the US people on the nuclear test ban treaty - a transcript and recording can be found on the website of the John F Kennedy Presidential Library and Museum.
“A war today or tomorrow, if it led to nuclear war, would not be like any war in history. A full-scale nuclear exchange, lasting less than 60 minutes, with the weapons now in existence, could wipe out more than 300 million Americans, Europeans and Russians, as well as untold numbers elsewhere. And the survivors, as Chairman Khrushchev warned the Communist Chinese, 'the survivors would envy the dead.' For they would inherit a world so devastated by explosions and poison and fire that today we cannot even conceive of its horrors.”
These words were very widely reported, such as in the Daily Telegraph the following day (it's a front-page story, but the line about survivors is on p. 16 where the news story continues). That was on Saturday, 27 July 1963 and, despite what Kennedy said, I think people could very well imagine the horrors. Surely it can't be a coincidence that this was probably also the weekend over which Terry Nation wrote his 26-page storyline for a Doctor Who serial at that point entitled "The Survivors".
One more thing, which I mentioned yesterday in my interview with BBC News (and tweeted back in July). Nation’s thrilling, 26-page storyline, on the basis on which scripts were commissioned, used the words “execution”, “elimination” and “extinction”. Whitaker summarised the plot in one paragraph for his colleagues, and used a word Nation had not: “exterminated”.
Source: Asa Briggs, Competition, p. 418. My book David Whitaker in an Exciting Adventure with Television is out now.
Thursday, November 23, 2023
Three Counties Radio and Doctor Who @60
This morning, I joined Andy Collins on BBC Three Counties radio to talk about David Whitaker, first story editor of Doctor Who, and how his childhood in places such as Knebworth, Cheshunt and Nasty (as well as living in London) fed into those early adventures - and explains why the Daleks invaded Bedford of all places. You can listen here:
- Andy Collins: Doctor Who is 60! (my bit starts at 1.54.00)
ETA: Danny Fullbrook also interviewed me for the BBC News website about David Whitaker's connection to the area - see Doctor Who: Bedford writer's childhood influenced the Daleks.
The second part of my contribution to the Something Who podcast is also now live. Having tackled 1965 story The Rescue (written by David Whitaker) in part one, me, Richard, Giles and Paul get to grips with 2010's The Eleventh Hour.
More of me rabbiting on about Doctor Who here:
Wednesday, November 22, 2023
Zero Room Audio - recording of David Whitaker book launch
Excitingly, this recording marks the return of 1980s audio fanzine Zero Room.
Monday, November 20, 2023
Something Who #83: Dido Know, Don't Dido?
It's really interesting to compare what seem to be such disparate, unrelated stories and see the different production teams grappling with what's basically the same problem: how to restart Doctor Who with new regular characters and a tone of engaging, fun adventure.
It was also fun to apply the stuff I've learned researching my newly published biography of David Whitaker, almost like an end-of-term test.
Oh, there is a bit where I had to attempt some acting, a good leap out of my comfort zone.
Friday, November 17, 2023
The Philip Hinchcliffe Years - The DNA of Doctor Who
From Morbius to Krynoids, Eldrad to Wirrn, ROUNDEL PUBLISHING takes an in-depth look with unrivalled access to the architect of some of the most revered years of Doctor Who's history!
Available in softback, hardback or deluxe hardback options including the option to receive signed copies, exclusive art prints and even the chance to get a personal message from Philip himself!
The book is edited by Gary Russell and designed by Will Brooks, with essays on each one of the Doctor Who stories from the period and insights from Hinchcliffe.
I've written the essay on Planet of Evil (1975) and the way this adventure and the production team at the time more generally borrowed from classics of sci-fi. Other contributors include Louise Jameson, Graeme Burk, Hannah Cooper, Matt Dale, Hayden Gribble, Toby Hadoke, David J Howe, Robin Ince, Alex Kingdom, Emma Ko, Trey Korte, Aaron Lowe, Sophia Morphew, Kim Pfeifer-Adams, Mick Schubert, Kenny Smith, Matthew Sweet, Matthew Toffolo and Ian Winterton.
The Kickstarter runs until 30 November. See the site for loads more details - and to bung us some cash.
Sunday, November 12, 2023
The Naked Sun, by Isaac Asimov
It's been fascinating to reread this classic sci-fi murder mystery first published in 1958, which I originally read in my teens. I don't think then that I knew of its obvious influence on the 1977 Doctor Who story The Robots of Death. And I hadn't made the connection before to Baley's frequent exclamation "Jehosophat" and the 1983 Doctor Who story The Five Doctors. When, in that, the Third Doctor exclaims "Jehosophat", I'd thought it showed his intimate knowledge of the past - a reference to the fourth king of Judah in the Old Testament. But used in the same manner that Baley says it, it's a word from the future.
More extraordinary is how modern some of this novel seems. There's a lot on the psychological impact of not meeting in person but communicating remotely, with which we've all got first-hand experience thanks to lockdown. Asimov's view is that the technology enables a phenomenon that becomes self-enforcing: the less people interact in person, the more horrified they are by the prospect of doing so, leading to a whole culture of isolation. Baley, as visitor, becomes attuned to their horror at the very notion of physical contact. Just the suggestion of proximity, the thought of touch and breath and smell from other bodies, can lead to extreme reactions - in line with some recent conversations I've had with friends about how slow we've been to resocialise.
Extending from this horror of contact, the Solarians struggle to say the word "children" because of what their existence implies; without quite spelling it out, there's an implicit aversion to sex. A key distinction is made on Solaria between "viewing" (remotely) and "seeing" (in person). On page 51, murder suspect Gladia Delmarre steps out of the shower in front of a shocked Baley and thinks nothing of it herself because he's not physically present. On page 118, Baley is quick to stop another woman, Klorissa Cantoro, from undressing in front of him. This stuff, I think, is titillation for the adolescent, male and straight audience assumed to be reading, but any reading is overshadowed by the author's own dealings with women.
"Asimov, who described himself as a feminist, casually groped female fans for years." Astounding, by Alec Nevala-Lee, p. 12.
The women here are certainly objectified. At no point is Baley at risk of seeing male Solarians naked as it would not have the same effect. Also, Solarians recoil at the duty to marry and have children, but there's no suggestion that some of them might do so because they are anything other than heteronormative and sexual. For all the outlandish rules of this society on another world, it takes for granted various social norms that seem rather parochial now.
I'm also stuck by what feels incongruous for a futuristic story: Baley smokes a pipe. Perhaps that's in line with something he says on page 183: "having eliminated the impossible, what remains, however improbable, is the truth." But for all he might be moulded in the form of 19th century detective Sherlock Holmes, only transposed to the future, The Naked Sun is bound up in anxieties of its time.
We're told, for example, that the imposition of marriage and procreation keeps the population stable, and that the murdered man is a fetologist, working to screen and improve the genetic stock on explicitly eugenicist lines.
"And no one would believe me capable of so seriously psychotic an act as murder. Not with my gene make-up. So don't waste accusations on me." (pp. 126-7)
That idea of purity among the minority elite on Solaria plays against the slave-class majority: we're told (for example, on p. 191) that robots outnumber humans 10,000 to one. The analogy in the book is to the helots, the Ancient Greek people subjugated by the Spartans. But there's surely a more contemporary resonance in what's being described here, to civil rights in the US and anticolonialism abroad. More than proximity, there's a greater terror to this elite - that this majority might become conscious of this gross imbalance of power.
"But what if some human threatened to teach the robots how to harm humans; to make them, in other words, capable of revolting?" (pp. 190-1)
An age ago, when I did my master's degree in science-fiction at the University of Reading, one tutor suggested a good way to grasp the workings of any given utopia: look at how children are raised in it. One thing that's striking now is that Baley (and perhaps Asimov, too) takes for granted the old saying, "spare the rod, spoil the child": it's seen as fundamentally problematic that robots, programmed to never harm humans, won't inflict "discipline" on the children in their care. The implication is that such discipline is physical, i.e. beating the child.
Just as troubling, we see that children on Solaria instinctively play together in person and need touch and affection (the latter supplied by robots), but are gradually taught to isolate themselves from one another. They are taught to recoil from one another - and to depersonalise others. On page 134, we learn one small boy views Baley as an inferior kind of human because he is from Earth, and therefore someone who, like robots, can be the target of arrows.
This idea of how people can come to be seen is central to a book about exposure under the titular naked sun. Given the careful distinction between "viewing" and "seeing", it's notable that Baley's partner R. Daneel Olivaw is not recognised for what he really is. The Solarians assume (and at one point someone's life depends on thinking) that he is human, when he is a robot. The Solarian robots do not have names and each has a specific function. Yet for all they are treated like appliances, they have feelings - upset if a human does their jobs, or if a human is hurt. Olivaw is a more complicated case: the Solarians unwittingly treat him as a person - but so does Baley, for all he knows the truth. He might be a bit dismissive of and irritated by this robot, but no more so than he is with other humans. Olivaw has some agency but The Robots of Death takes the logical step not taken here: that robots are an oppressed people deserving liberation.
(One day, I'll return to what was meant to be a lockdown project of watching particular episodes of Star Trek: The Next Generation. I have things to say about Data's evident personhood and the repeated efforts by his own employers to deny it.)
Other things are striking about The Naked Sun. The women characters are rather two-dimensional (for all we view them in 3D), Baley is often cross and difficult for no particular reason, and there's no great concern at the end that his actions lead to someone's death. For all it's a murder mystery in the classic style, with various different suspects all (viewed) together at the end as the detective puts his case, I didn't feel we were encouraged to play along in making sense of the evidence and guessing whodunnit.
Yet most striking is Baley's conclusion. He's a maverick loner on an alien world where he doesn't fit in. When he returns to Earth at the end, the suggestion is that his experience means he no longer fits in at home. A lot of classic science-fiction I've read is about maverick individuals, their will pitted against the wider, impersonal system. There's something of that here: in a final twist, Baley makes a decision not to punish one guilty party and to have framed someone connected to but not actually guilty of the murder.
But that's not what Baley concludes here. He tells his superiors that the people of Solaria have given up,
"something worth more than atomic power, cities, agriculture, tools, fire, everything. [They've given up] The tribe, sir. Cooperation between individuals." (p. 195)
The analogy is to the scientific community, where peer review can point out faults and lead to better progress being made. But I'm struck by this rejection of the individual in favour of the collective. It's surely a rejection of elites living in seclusion and luxury in favour of something more equitable - even socialist.
Saturday, November 11, 2023
Doctor Who Magazine #597
I've got one thing in this issue: the latest Sufficient Data infographic takes us right back to the beginning of Doctor Who, with everything we know takes place in the Doctor's life before the first TV episode.
But there's also handsome adverts for my two new books, David Whitaker in an Exciting Adventure with Television and Whotopia - The Ultimate Guide to the Whoniverse. In fact, I only realise now, with everything put out on iPlayer, that our new book is the perfect guide to all these episodes, providing loads of ways into it. How clever, and they didn't tell us!
The Doctor Who Magazine website also has a competition to win a copy of Whotopia, open until 8 December. Good luck!
Thursday, November 09, 2023
David Whitaker seen on television
In August 1964, Doctor Who's first story editor, David Whitaker, wrote up a CV for his new agent, Beryl Vertue, ahead of leaving his staff job at the BBC to go freelance. That CV is a key source in piecing together David's wide-ranging career. Before becoming a writer, David had been a professional actor and his CV refers to acting work in both radio and TV - but without saying what this involved.
We know David worked for BBC Radio in Belfast while working on stage at the New Theatre at Bangor, 1954-55, but not the productions or roles. In October 1955, he was one of four unnamed sailors in The Voyage of Magellan produced by Rayner Heppenstall.
As per the Radio Times listing, this play was repeated. That may explain why a recording of it survives - made for this repeat and retained in case of further broadcast. As a result, this is one of two known records of David's voice, and although he's part of the ensemble rather than playing a named character, we can identify him in the crowd thanks to the other recording we have of him. I'll come to that in a moment.
Sadly, the BBC's Written Archives Centre (WAC) in Caversham does not hold paperwork relating to The Voyage of Magellan to give us more information, such as whether it was first broadcast live or recorded in advance. Details of this and any other roles David might have had on radio are not included in the "radio contributions" files for David held by WAC, which instead cover writing work he did for television outside his staff job.
As for the TV acting work he did before 1964, no details are known to survive - though I take an educated guess in my biography, David Whitaker in an Exciting Adventure in Television. But once he'd left his staff job at the BBC, David made a number of other appearances on TV...
Alys and Alan Hayes alerted me to the fact that, on 30 June 1967, David and his wife June Barry were among the celebrities gathered for the 1,000th episode of BBC Two's arts discussion programme Late Night Line-Up. For this, guests from previous episodes (including David Attenborough, Jonathan Miller, Robert Morley, Nyrie Dawn Porter and Ned Sherin) were entertained by comedians Peter Cook and Dudley Moore, assisted by a pre-Monty Python Terry Jones. This programme survives in the BBC archive. Here are two screenshots:
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| Terry Jones (standing) serves Peter Cook and (his back to us) Dudley Moore, while John Hopkins (with beard) looks on, David Whitaker and June Barry beside him. |
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| Peter Cook standing over Dudley Moore, while John Hopkins, David Whitaker and June Barry watch. |
The bearded man sat next to David is the playwright John Hopkins, with whom David worked and corresponded in the BBC script department while they were both on staff there. Hopkins wrote the screenplay for the James Bond film Thunderball (1965), which originally included a reference to Daleks:
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| BOND (grunts) The Daleks have taken over! |
Here's Hopkins again later the same year that he sat next to David, having just won an award for his script for Talking to a Stranger (available on YouTube), starring Judi Dench - seen second from the left:
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| TV Awards, 17 November 1967 Eric Portman, Judi Dench, Sydney Newman, Donald Wilson, Basil Coleman, John Hopkins |
In the middle of the picture are (in glasses) Sydney Newman, leaving his job as BBC Head of Drama after five years, and beside him tall Donald Wilson, Newman's former head of serials. These two men created Doctor Who and I'm not aware of any other photograph of them together.
Back to David. On 5 March 1969, he was one of the hosts of the Writers' Guild awards held at the Dorchester Hotel in London. The moment that he announced the plaque for 'Best British Light Entertainment Script' awarded to the writing team behind Marty [Feldman] was captured on film and opens the surviving documentary One Pair Of Eyes: No, But Seriously, first broadcast on 7 June. It's the second surviving example of David's voice and you can currently view this on YouTube, but also here is a screenshot:
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| David Whitaker and Marius Goring Writers' Guild Awards, 5 March 1969 |
Beside David is Marius Goring, the actor who'd played a villain in David's TV serial The Evil of the Daleks (1967) and his film Subterfuge (1968, but not released until 1971).
In 1972, David had a cameo role in The Far Country, his own adaptation of the Nevil Shute novel, produced by Eric Tayler for ABC in Australia and first broadcast on 9 February that year. Sadly, David's appearance is not included in the surviving footage from the serial.
Two years later, David wrote another role for himself in the STW-9 series he originated, The Drifter. Again, sadly, this doesn't survive but David's role was covered in the local listings magazine:
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| 'Photo News' from (Australian) TV Week, 4 May 1974 |
David kept this page from the listings magazine and was also sent the original photograph, plus another one showing him being made-up for this role.
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| Laurence Hodge, Norman MacLeod and David Whitaker in The Drifter (1974) |
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| David Whitaker made-up for The Drifter (1974) |
Although he lived for another six years, these are the latest dated photographs of David Whitaker.
Wednesday, November 08, 2023
Who's Views interview about David Whitaker
I've also done a long text interview with Will at the Consulting Detective site. And you can buy my book, David Whitaker in an Exciting Adventure with Television.
Tuesday, November 07, 2023
James Beck (Walker in Dad's Army) and David Whitaker
Here are two stills from the earliest known TV appearance by actor James Beck, later famous as spiv 'Joe Walker' in Dad's Army.
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| Ivor Salter, Ronnie Corbett and James Beck in Crackerjack, BBC TV, 19 March 1958 |
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| Michael Darbyshire and James Beck in Crackerjack, BBC TV, 19 March 1958 |
This role in Crackerjack is from three years before what's usually cited as Beck's first TV role - as 'Roach' in The Fifth Form at St Dominic's (1961). (Dave Homewood's exhaustive list of Beck's TV credits says Beck might also have been in episodes of I Made News and Fabian of the Yard in the 1950s.)
The Crackerjack sketch, 'Cops and Robbers', was written by its regular comic guest stars Ronnie Corbett and Michael Darbyshire. Darbyshire receives a visit from Beck's 'Police Inspector Bright', who warns him to be on the look out for a dangerous criminal called 'Kelly' (Ivor Salter). Corbett and Darbyshire are excited by the chance to play Sherlock Holmes and catch the crook. Mayhem ensues...
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| Radio Times listing for 19 March 1958 with credit for 'David Whittaker' (sic) |
Beck and Whitaker met as actors in repertory theatre in Paignton in the summer of 1955. Two years later, still in Paignton, Beck had a role as 'Arthur Leicester' in A Hand in Marriage, a play David wrote and co-directed. Immediately after this production, David began a full-time job in the Script Unit at the BBC, and quickly worked on a wide variety of shows, Crackerjack among them.
A little after this TV appearance, in October 1958, Beck began a long stint at the York Theatre Royal, where he made life-long friends with a number of other cast members, including Jean Alexander (later 'Hilda Ogden' in Coronation Street), Trevor Bannister (later 'Mr Lucas' in Are You Being Served?), June Barry (later 'Joanie Walker', daughter of Annie, in Coronation Street and also 'June Forsyte' in The Forsyte Saga) and Alethea Charlton (an amazing character actress who later played the cavewoman 'Hur' in the first Doctor Who serial).
That last piece of casting may again have come about through David Whitaker, who was story editor on the first year of Doctor Who. Alethea was also bridesmaid when June Barry married David in the summer of 1963, and James Beck gave away the bride. The gang of friends are all visible in the surviving film from the day, some of which is including in our documentary Looking for David included on the Doctor Who - The Collection: Season 2 box-set.
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| St Mary Abbots Church, Kensington, 8 June 1963 Groom David Whitaker, bride June Barry, bridesmaid Alethea Charlton, ushers Trevor Bannister and James Beck |
According to June Barry, David was also at Beck's home on 31 July 1968 to watch the first episode of Dad's Army go out. More on all this in my book, David Whitaker in an Exciting Adventure with Television, which is published this week.
Monday, November 06, 2023
David Whitaker in Sheffield, 1954
One key source was actor Alan Curtis (1930-2021), who was interviewed on 9 April 2014 by my friend Toby Hadoke. This was largely about Alan's role in 1966 Doctor Who story The War Machines, but he also mentioned being friends with David and gave some insights into his character. You can hear that interview in full here:
Prompted by Toby, I visited Alan on 16 August 2016. As well as sharing his memories - which I detail in the book - Alan kindly allowed me to nose through his scrapbooks from 1954, when he and David worked together between March and September as part of the Harry Hanson Court Players repertory company, performing a new play every week at the Lyceum Theatre.
There wasn't a great deal of time and I didn't have the facilities to scan pages from the scrapbook, but I grabbed some snaps thinking I could come back another time - which sadly never happened.
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| Sheffield Court Plays - 1954: Douglas Neill (producer); Rex Holdsworth; Anne Sherwin; Iris Gilbert; Carol Howard; Alan Curtis; Lizbeth Cassay; Derek Clark; David Whitaker; Hugh Anthony; Gerard Hely; Mary Clarke; Edouin et Rachelle (in their own arrangements at Two Pianos); settings designed by Robert Pitt; constructed by Joseph Keeley |
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| David Whitaker, a photograph I suspect taken before late 1953 when he underwent plastic surgery on his nose. |
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| "Here Gerard Hely is measured by Iris Gilbert for his costume while David Whitaker, Derek Clark and Louise Jervis break from the Victoria Hall rehearsal to watch." |
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| Cast list for Reefer Girl, a true story by Lorraine Tier, with David Whitaker in the role of 'John Parsons'. It was performed twice-nightly from Monday, 5 April 1954. |
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| Cast list for A Streetcar Named Desire by Tennessee Williams, with David Whitaker in the role of 'Howard Mitchell'. It was performed twice-nightly from Monday, 28 June 1954. |
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| 'Five Hours' Emotion Nightly' - review of A Streetcar Named Desire from unknown newspaper, with David Whitaker bringing 'naive simplicity' to his role. |
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| Bookmark flyer for the Harry Hanson Court Players, with David Whitaker credited above the title for It's A Boy by Austin Melford, beginning week of 2 August 1954. |
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| Cast list for Dracula by Bram Stoker, with David in the role of 'Doctor Seward'. It was performed twice-nightly from Monday, 26 July 1954. |
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| Cast list for Arsenic and Old Lace by Joseph Kesselring, with David in the role of 'Officer O'Hara'. It was performed twice-nightly from Monday, 9 August 1954. |
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| David Whitaker, standing second from left, in cricket whites and hat as part of the Sheffield Court Players team, which played on Sundays (their day off from the theatre) |
Tuesday, October 24, 2023
The Victorian Chaise-Longue, by Marghanita Laski
“I’ve no idea now why I suggested her," Hussein said earlier this year. Laski was best known at the time as a critic and panelist on TV shows such as What's My Line? But she was also a novelist and of her various novels my bet is that, 60 years ago, Hussein had in mind her odd, 100-page The Victorian Chaise-Longue (1953). He might even have had in mind the TV version: adapted and directed by James MacTaggart, it was screened on BBC Television on 19 March 1962.
The story is told from the perspective of Melanie or Melly Langdon (who has the same initials as Laski), a young woman who has recently given birth to a healthy son but is herself ill with TB. In an attempt to aid her recovery by exposing her to more sunlight, she's allowed out of the confinement of one room in her Islington home and can spend afternoons in the drawing room. There, she lies propped up on an old chaise-longue.
We cut back to her visit to an antique shop (also called a junk shop), seeking a cradle for the then forthcoming baby. There's some fun stuff as she projects an air of idle fancy rather than of being after something specific, to prevent the staff trying to foist something on her for an unreasonable price. This done, she then forms a bond with the young man serving her and they locate the shop's sole cradle - a "hopelessly unfashionable" Jacobean model in dark-carved oak.
“‘I can't say I fancy it myself,’ admitted the young man. ‘It will probably go to America. There's quite a demand for them there, for keeping logs in, you know.’
‘My cradle will have a baby in it,’ said Melanie proudly, and they enjoyed a moment of sympathetic superiority, the poor yet well-adjusted English who hadn't lost sight of true purposes.” (p. 18)
In short, she's a demonstrably intelligent, driven young woman with agency and attitude. When she then spots an old chaise-longue that takes her fancy, she buys it on the spot.
We return to the present - but briefly because soon after the recuperating Melanie/Melly is seated in this antique piece of furniture, she finds herself somewhere else amid people other than her husband. To begin with, Melanie thinks she's been kidnapped but we come to realise that she's been transported back in time 90 years to 22 April 1864 (p. 37), and into the body of another young woman, Milly, who is trapped on the same chaise-tongue while also suffering from TB. At times, Melanie can access Milly's thoughts and memories, and is even swamped by them. She struggles to make her predicament understood and to find a means of escape. As she fails to escape or get through to those around her, she uncovers Milly's awful story.
One issue is that Melanie's knowledge of the 1860s is imperfect and she can't think what to say to convince anyone. Then, when she settles on an idea, there is a further obstacle:
“If I speak of Cardinal Newman and he's happened already, it proves nothing at all. If I could say that the Government will fall and the Prince Consort will die, there's no proof it's going to happen. Discoveries and inventions, she thought then, that's what I'll talk about, that must prove it to him. We have aeroplanes, she said tentatively in her mind, and then she tried to repeat the phrase soundlessly with her mouth, but the exact words would not come. What did I say, she asked herself when the effort had been made, something about machines that fly or was it aeronautic machines? Wireless, she screamed in her mind, television, penicillin, gramophone-records and vacuum-cleaners, but none of these words could be framed by her lips.” (p. 58)
In short, some powerful force prevents her from saying anything aloud that Milly would not understand, which effectively prevents her from altering future history. This is similar to the strictures in the early background notes on Doctor Who revised in July 1963 - soon after Waris Hussein recommended this book - about not being able to change or affect established events.
However, I think I've identified another source for the conception of the mechanics of time travel seen in early Doctor Who, which I get into in my imminent book, David Whitaker in an Exciting Adventure with Television (plus details of when Whitaker worked on something with Laski). Instead, I think Hussein was probably thinking of the tone and feel of this short story. The website of Persephone Books, which published the edition of Laski's novel I read, comes with an endorsement by novelist Penelope Lively:
“Disturbing and compulsive ... This is time travel fiction, but with a difference… instead of making it into a form of adventure, what Marghanita Laski has done is to propose that such an experience would be the ultimate terror…”
The first broadcast episodes of Doctor Who are scary, the events an ordeal for the crew. So I wonder if that's what Hussein brought to the series, via Laski...
Oh, and one last excellent fact about Laski, from the introduction by PD James to my edition of the novel:
“In one of her obituaries, Laurence Marks described how she gave evidence in the 1960s for the defence in the prosecution of the publisher of John Cleland's bawdy comic novel, Fanny Hill. Miss Laski told the court that this book was important because it illustrated the first use in English Literature of certain unusual words. The judge asked for an example, to which Miss Laski replied 'chaise-longue'.” (pp. viii-ix)
See also: me on The Inheritors by William Golding (1955) and its influence on the first Doctor Who story
Friday, October 20, 2023
Carrying the Fire, by Michael Collins
A BRILLIANT BOOK
- THE BEST BOOK
WRITTEN BY AN ASTRONAUT
BY SEVERAL MILLION MILES!£2
For another, I've long admired Mike Collins's insightful, wry and funny perspective on that extraordinary mission, having first seen him interviewed in the great Shadow of the Moon, about which I blogged at the time.
Carrying the Fire really is an extraordinary book, written by a then 43 year-old Collins just four years after the Apollo 11 landing took place. He covers flight school, life as a test pilot, then work as an astronaut leading up to Gemini 10 and Apollo 11, and details those flights in depth. We finish with a chapter ruminating on what it all means and, given the extraordinary achievement that nothing can hope to eclipse, what he might now do with his life.
The book is packed with compelling bits of information, such as the first alcoholic drink the Apollo 11 crew had on returning to Earth. There's even a recipe for the martini in question:
"A short glass of ice, a guzzle-guzzle of gin, a splash of vermouth. God, it's nice to be back!" (p. 445)
For me, the first big surprise was a personal one. My late grandfather (d. 2007) was born William and known to his mother and siblings as Bill but to everyone else as "Roscoe", a monicker that has been passed on as a middle name to various of his descendants. According to legend, Grandpa got this nickname on the day he arrived as a gunner in India in the mid-1930s, on the same day that headlines in the local paper declared that, "Roscoe Turner flies in!"
My family had always assumed that this Roscoe Turner was some military bigwig of the time. It was a delight to learn the truth from an astronaut, when Collins explains why he doesn't like to give public speeches.
"In truth, the only graduation speaker to make any lasting impression on me was Roscoe Turner, who in 1953 had come to the graduation of our primary pilot school class at Columbus, Mississippi. The most colourful racing pilot from the Golden Age of Aviation between the world wars, Roscoe had had us sitting goggle-eyed as he matter-of-factly described that wild world of aviation which we all knew was gone forever. ... Roscoe had flown with a waxed mustache and a pet lion named Gilmore, we flew with a rule book, a slide rule, and a computer." (p. 16)
The next surprise related to my research into the life of David Whitaker, whose final Doctor Who story The Ambassadors of Death (1970) involves the missing crew of Mars Probe 7. We're told in the story that this is just the latest in a series of missions to Mars - General Carrington, we're told, flew on Mars Probe 6. - just as the Apollo flights were numbered sequentially. But I think the particular digit was chosen by David Whitaker because of an earlier space programme, as described by Collins.
"The Mercury spacecraft had all been given names, followed by the number 7 to indicate they belonged to the Original Seven [astronauts taken on by NASA]: Freedom (Shepard), Liberty Bell (Grissom), Friendship (Glenn), Aurora (Carpenter), Sigma (Schirra), and Faith (Cooper)." (p. 138n)
(The seventh of the Seven, Deke Slayton, was grounded because of having an erratic heart rhythm.)
That idea of The Ambassadors of Death mashing up elements of Mercury and Apollo has led me to think of some other ways the story mixes up different elements of real spaceflight... which I'll return to somewhere else. On another occasion, Collins uses a phrase that makes me wonder if David Whitaker also drew on technical, NASA-related sources in naming a particular switch in his 1964 story The Edge of Destruction:
"Other situations could develop [in going to the moon] where one had a choice of a fast return at great fuel cost or a slow economical trip home depending on whether one was running short of life-support systems or of propellants." (p. 303 - but my italics)
Collins certainly has a characteristic turn of phrase, such as when he tells us that, "we are busier than two one-legged men in a kicking contest" (p. 219). This makes for engaging, fun commentary yet - ever the test pilot - he's matter of fact about the practicalities of getting bodies to the Moon and back. For example, there's this, at the end of a lengthy description of the interior of the command module Columbia that he took to the moon:
"The right-hand side of the lower equipment bay is where we urinate (we defecate wherever we and our little plastic bags end up), and the left-hand side is where we store our food and prepare it, with either hot or cold water from a little spout." (p. 362)
This kind of stuff is revealing but I knew a lot of it already from my other reading and watching documentaries. What's more of a surprise, coming at this backwards having read later accounts, is the terminology Collins uses. Flights to the moon are "manned" rather than "crewed", and are undertaken with the noblest of intentions for the benefit of all "mankind" - notable now because the language of space travel tends to be much more inclusive. Then there's how he describes one effect of weightlessness:
"I finally realise why Neil and Buzz have been looking strange to me. It's their eyes! With no gravity pulling down on the loose fatty tissue beneath their eye, they look squinty and decidedly Oriental. It makes Buzz look like a swollen-eyed allergic Oriental, and Neil like a very wily, sly one." (p. 387)
It's a shock to read this - and see it reproduced without comment in this 2009 reprint - not least because Collins is acutely aware of the issue of the Apollo astronauts solely comprising middle-aged white men. Elsewhere, he remarks on his own and the programme's unwitting prejudice in the recruitment of further astronauts. In detailing the rigorous selection criteria, he adds:
"I harked back to my own traumatic days as an applicant, or supplicant, and vowed to do as conscientious a job as possible to screen these men, to cull any phonies, to pick the very best. There were no blacks* and no women in the group." (p. 178)
The asterisk leads to a footnote with something I didn't know:
"The closest this country has come to having a black astronaut was the selection of Major Robert H Lawrence, Jr., on June 30, 1967, as a member of the Air Force Manned Orbiting Laboratory astronaut group. A PhD chemist in addition to being a qualified test pilot, Lawrence was killed on December 8, 1967, in the crash of an F.104 at Edwards AFB. In mid-1969, the Manned Orbiting Laboratory program was cancelled." (p. 178n)
But Collins goes on, in the main text, that the lack of women on the programme was a relief.
"I think our selection board breathed a sigh of relief that there were no women, because women made problems, no doubt about it. It was bad enough to have to unzip your pressure suit, stick a plastic bag on your bottom, and defecate - with ugly old John Young sitting six inches away. How about it was a woman? Besides, penisless, she couldn't even use a CUVMS [chemical urine volume measuring system condom receiver], so that system would have to be completely redesigned. No, it was better to stick to men. The absence of blacks was a different matter. NASA should have had them, our group would have welcomed them, and I don't know why none showed up." (p. 178)
Collins is not alone in this view of women in space: as I wrote in my review, Moondust by Andrew Smith goes into much more detail about the problems of plumbing in weightless environments, and the author concludes:
“Even I find it hard to imagine men and women of his generation sharing these experiences.” (Moondust, p. 247)
But that acknowledges the cultural context of these particular men. The lack of women in the space programme is more than an unfortunate technical necessity; it's part of a broader attitude. Collins enthuses about pin-up pictures of young women in his digs during training and on the Gemini capsule, and tells us bemusedly about a hastily curtailed effort to have the young women in question come in for a photo op. It's all a bit puerile, even naive, of this husband and father.
On another occasion, a double entendre shared with Buzz Aldrin leads to a flight of fancy:
"Still... the possibilities of weightlessness are there for the ingenious to exploit. No need to carry bras into space, that's for sure. Imagine a spacecraft of the future, with a crew of a thousand ladies, off for Alpha Centauri, with two thousand breasts bobbing beautifully and quivering delightfully in response to their every weightless movement..." (Collins, pp. 392-3)
I've seen some of this sort of thing in science-fiction of the period. It's all a bit sniggering schoolboy, and lacks the kind of practical approach to problem-solving that makes up most of the rest of the book. How different the space programme might have been if these dorky men had been told about sports bras.
Later, back on earth, Collins shares his misgivings about taking a job as Assistant Secretary for Public Affairs where he was tasked with increasing youth involvement in foreign affairs. He glosses over the conflict here, of talking to "hairies" - as he calls them - on university campuses in the midst of the conflict in Vietnam. One gets the sense that this was a more technically complicated endeavour than his flight to the moon, and less of a success. It's extraordinary to think of this man so linked to such an advanced, technological project and representative of the future put so quickly in a situation where he seems so out of step with the times.
Collins is more insightful as observer of his colleagues' difficulties in returning to earth: Neil Armstrong rather hiding away in a university job, Buzz Aldrin battling demons in LA. In fact, I found this final chapter in many ways the most interesting part of the book, Collins full of disquiet about what the extraordinary venture to the moon might mean, and uncertain of his own future. He died in 2021 aged 90, so lived more than half his life after going to the moon and after writing this book. By the time he wrote it, the Apollo programme had already been cancelled and space travel was being restricted to the relatively parochial orbit of earth.
"As the argument ebbs and flows, I think a couple of points are worth making. First, Apollo 11 was perceived by most Americans as being an end, rather than a beginning, and I think that is a dreadful mistake. Frequently, NASA's PR department is blamed for this, but I don't think NASA could have prevented it." (p. 464)
Collins thinks the American people viewed landing on the moon like any other TV spectacular, akin to the Super Bowl, and so they couldn't then understand the need to repeat it. I'm not sure that's the best analogy given that the Super Bowl is an annual event, but it's intriguing to think of the moon landing as circus. Then again, does that explain the similar loss of interest in the space programme from those outside the US?
I'm more and more interested in the way Apollo was explained and framed for the public at the time...
 |
| TV Times listings magazine 19-25 July 1969 "Man on the Moon - ITN takes you all the way" |
- Me on Apollo by Fitch, Baker and Collins
- Me on Ad Astra, An Illustrated Guide to Leaving the Planet by Dallas Campbell
- Me on Moonglow by Michael Chabon
- Me on #Cosmonauts and #OtherWorlds
- "So What If It's All Green Cheese? The Moon on Screen", my essay in the exhibition catalogue accompanying "The Moon" at Royal Museums Greenwich
- "Man on the Moon", my essay on the psychology involved, in medical journal Lancet Psychiatry
Thursday, October 12, 2023
Venomous Lumpsucker, by Ned Beauman
"Every year, a certain number of extinction credits were allocated at no charge by the WCSE [World Commission on Species Extinction], while others were auctioned off, and afterwards they could be bought and sold on the open market. The idea was that the supply of credits would be gradually ratcheted down, so the price would creep up until they were pretty much unaffordable, and people would simply have to use their ingenuity to avoid driving species to extinction.
"Unfortunately for the endangered species of the world, on the night of the Mosvatia Bioinformatics dinner the price of an extinction credit stood at just €38,432." - p. 22.
When someone sabotages the system, these two unlikely characters end up on a quest to find the last surviving examples of Resaint's unusual fish...
Smart, funny and brutal as hell, this brilliant book is packed with big ideas. A lot of them follow from the basic wheeze of extinction credits - with attempts to exploit or cheat the system or, for example, the impact of extinctions in making food taste blander. But there are also other big ideas thrown into the mix, such as the fungal infection that changes people's appearance so much that computer systems don't recognise them as human. Again, we see multiple impacts of this and explore ways it can be exploited. Every few pages there's some new, smart idea. It's a rollicking, intelligent read.
I can easily see why this won this year's Clarke Award (for the best science-fiction novel) and is a Sunday Times Book of the Year. Top marks also to John Hastings, reading the audiobook version and making the different characters distinct. I've just bought a copy of the paperback to give as a gift.
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