Goodbye Manolito

 I just heard that Henry Darrow has died, aged 87 - and it's only now, looking at his Wikipedia entry, that I discovered that his ancestry was Puerto Rican.

He was a familiar face on TV when I was younger, often playing Latino or Native American characters - there was a TV movie called Brock's Last Case where Richard Widmark retired from being a police detective and started running an orange grove in California, for instance, assisted by Henry Darrow's character (who I think was accused of murder, bringing Richard Widmark out of retirement to clear his name).   He also appeared briefly in The Invisible Man (starring David McCallum), and a host of other popular series of the 1970s.

He appeared in Star Trek TNG as a Starfleet Admiral whose body had been taken over by maggot eating aliens, and also as Chakotay's dad in Voyager.

But I liked him best as Manolito Montoya in the High Chapparal.  I always did like the roguish bad boys with a heart of gold.

The Feathered Serpent, Series 2

I had no memory of a second series of The Feathered Serpent even existing, despite loving the first season - I think I was probably in the middle of exams when it was on TV in 1978.  When I sent off for the DVD, though, both seasons were included and I finally got to see the end of the story.

At the end of the first season, the baddies are killed and the Princess seems to be about to marry the Toltec Prince Heumac, but it turns out that they have further problems to solve before they can get to the happy ending....

Nasca the Evil High Priest was far too good a character to kill off (played by Patrick Troughton with great relish), so he immediately gets resurrected, with the help of new baddy Xipec, Governor of the Gold Province.  He was far more fun than Nasca's accomplice in the first season (the rather boring Jaguar General) - silver-tongued, elegant, tall, with long black hair and lots of gold eye paint, and dressed in dark green and gold, a bit like a 1970s version of Loki.  He's also quite happy to torture young Tozo, Prince Heumac's servant, who does a very good job of showing how much he's suffering when he's tied up on the terrace baking in the hot sun.

Here he is with the mad witch Keelag who brings Nasca back to life - a good meaty female role, but not one that passes the Beschdel Test - she and Empress Chimalma never meet, and the only other female "speaking part" is a city woman who has been driven mad by poisoned water, who only screams.

Xipec was played by Granville Saxton, who has appeared more recently as a Death Eater in Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, and one of the Patricians in The Eagle (the film version of Rosemary Sutcliff's book Eagle of the Ninth).

I don't think I learned much about Aztec/Toltec civilisation from the series, but it was great fun to watch, and I don't think there's ever been anything else quite like it on British children's TV.

The Feathered Serpent

 I have quite clear memories of watching The Feathered Serpent when it was first on TV in 1976.  Diane Keene, who played the Princess Chimalma, also starred in The Cuckoo Waltz, a sit com in which Bodie from the Professionals was the lodger with a young couple, and the mother-in-law (I think it was the mother-in-law) "knew how many blue beans made five".

What I hadn't realised when I first watched the series was that the evil priest was played by Patrick Troughton, so I thought it would be interesting to re-visit it with this knowledge in mind.

I had imagined, when I first saw the series, that I was learning something about the Aztecs and Toltecs, but it quickly became apparent that this was not the case.  All the Aztec and Toltec stuff was really window-dressing for a very basic plot where the good king wants to marry his daughter to the Prince of the neighbouring kingdom to bring peace and the evil priest wants to thwart this and increase his own power.  There's also a lot of sneaking around in secret passages.  I also remembered the Princess being paralysed by poison and having to lie still without blinking for long periods.

Patrick Troughton is wonderful, of course, in a dark, glittery robe and occasionally a head-dress with a black skull.  He also seems to be the only member of the cast who wears anything on his feet - everyone else is barefoot, even the Emperor.  He does a wonderful job of manipulating the other characters, quickly changing his story when it seems they don't want to go in the direction he's leading them. 

"You know the Toltecs are famous for sorcery, don't you?  That's what must have happened, or why could the Prince defeat you so easily?" he murmurs in the ear of the the General who is the rival for the hand of the Princess, when his honour will not allow him to launch a surprise attack on the Toltec camp - for which they clearly had no budget whatsoever, so it all had to be done by suggestion and off screen.

There's also an incredibly convenient eclipse of the sun at the climax of the story.

Poor Princess Chimalma is the only woman in the cast with a speaking part - a serving girl is glimpsed in two scenes, and that's about it.

Still, it's all great fun, and the plucky boy hero, Tozo, is very good - it's the sort of part that could have been annoying, but he was very convincing, despite having to wear a pale blue mini skirt and bikini top.

Thinking of costumes, the big gold head dresses do have a certain Time Lordly look to them.  And, my goodness, the eye makeup!

I was also surprised to recognise the name of the composer of the music for the series, David Fanshawe.  He's most famous for his album African Sanctus, which he did a couple of years before The Feathered Serpent - and when I looked him up, I saw that he had also composed the music for Flambards, with it's distinctive whistling theme.