Goodbye, Peter Firmin

This is far more upsetting than Harlan Ellison's death - Peter Firmin (and his collaborator Oliver Postgate) made children's TV that was a huge part of my childhood.

The Clangers (sad whistling, and glooping from the Soup Dragon)
Pogles Wood (it took me years to work out that Tog was supposed to be a squirrel!)
Ivor the Engine (a sad song from the Grumbly and District Choral Society, with solo from Ivor)
Noggin the Nog (the Men of the Northlands sit by their log fire, and they tell a tale....)
Bagpuss (when Bagpuss goes to sleep, all his friends go to sleep too)

He also created, with Ivor Owen, Basil Brush.

Eagle of the Ninth

As a child, I adored the work of Rosemary Sutcliff, and one of my favourites was the Eagle of the Ninth, telling the story of the Ninth Hispana Legion as it marched north into the mists of Caledonia and into legend.
At the time, the early 1950s, Rosemary Sutcliff was working from current archaeological research, by which the Ninth really had marched north and disappeared. Since then, traces of the Legion have been found at a later date, elsewhere in the Roman Empire, but when she was writing it really did seem that they had vanished into the mists.
And the other inspiration for her story was archaeological work at Silchester, where a Roman eagle statue had been found hidden in the hypocaust of a villa there. You can still see the Silchester eagle, at the Museum of Reading, though now it seems that it may have been part of a statue in the town, and not a legionary eagle after all.

In 2011 a film was made of the book, starring Channing Tatum and Jamie Bell, and though Donald Sutherland was perfect as Uncle Aquila, the plot of the film left out about half the book, jettisoning Cottia (the girl next door), Cub (the wolf cub), and Marcus's disguise as the oculist Demetrius of Alexandria completely. And they changed the ending.

In 1977, though, BBC Scotland made the story into a series. I loved the series when it was first shown, starring Anthony Higgins as Marcus and Christian Rodska as Esca, so I was delighted when I learned that it was now available on DVD, from Simply Media - and a little apprehensive. Would it be as good as I remembered?
They obviously had a tiny budget, but they did have the advantage of the rolling Scottish hills to film in, which gave it that epic scope. The director also managed to film battle sequences quite cleverly using overlaying images and only about a dozen extras.
It's a difficult book to make a story of, with a lot of the action in flashback as the story of what happened to the Ninth is told by a Roman and a Caledonian tribesman, and towards the beginning of the book, Marcus spends months recuperating from his wound at his uncle's house with not a lot happening. They manage to fit the story into six episodes quite satisfactorily, though.
I was very happy. They got it right.

Goodbye, Mr Rodney

Very sad to hear that Rodney Bewes has just died. He was 79.
Most people seem to be remembering him for The Likely Lads, but I first knew him as Mr Rodney, human sidekick to Basil Brush, trying to be sensible, and reading Basil de Farmer, the Man in Shining Armour in instalments at the end of each show.

In more recent years, he toured a one man show about Three Men in a Boat, which came to local Theatr Brycheiniog.

And Now it's Brian Cant....

He was a reassuring, friendly voice for small children for over twenty years as the presenter of Playschool, and then there was Playaway, and the wonderful Camberwick Green, Trumpton and Chigley. He also had a long theatre career, and even appeared in some early Doctor Who episodes.
So here are Pugh, Pugh, Barney McGrew, Cuthbert, Dibble and Grubb, at Trumpton Fire Station, on parade.

Goodbye, John Noakes

Another part of my childhood gone. John Noakes was 83 - here he is with Shep in the Blue Peter studio.
I watched Blue Peter twice a week for years - for most of that time the presenters were John Noakes, Peter Purves and Valerie Singleton - and the dogs Petra and Patch. I remember him climbing Nelson's Column, and going on a flying trapeze, and (less dangerously) attempting traditional Northumbrian wrestling. Of course, I remember the incident with the baby elephant. Blue Peter was a comforting presence - we got the annuals at Christmas as well.
After that, I watched Go With Noakes, which he did with the help (or hindrance) of Shep.
He was a great children's TV presenter.

Gordon Murray Dies

Just when I was thinking things couldn't possibly get any worse in the world, I discovered that Gordon Murray, the creator of Camberwick Green, Trumpton and Chigley, has died. He was 95.

There's another part of my childhood gone forever.

Gordon Murray also operated Spotty Dog in the Woodentops. I loved Spotty Dog when I was three.

And here's Windy Miller, from Camberwick Green, waving goodbye. (My sister used to do a spot on impression of the sound his windmill made as the sails went round!)

The Buccaneers

Here's Robert Shaw, about to give the order to fire cannons in the opening sequence of The Buccaneers.
The series was made by the same studio that made Robin Hood with Richard Greene, and at about the same time. It's maybe not quite as good as Robin Hood, but it's still enormous fun, and it's sad that it wasn't repeated very often. It's terribly dated now, of course, and was made very much with children in mind (the sort of child I was, who also loved Errol Flynn movies, though I suspect the makers were only thinking of boys).
Captain Dan Tempest was a reformed (sort of) pirate, working with Lt. Beamish of New Providence and getting involved with the Spanish, other pirates, searches for treasure, damsels in distress (or damsels perfectly able to hold their own, in the case of guest Joan Sims and her companions). Quite often, the villains of the week were corrupt British officials, so Dan and his crew were fighting redcoats.
There was some attempt to tie the events into real history, so the governor of the island (never seen after the first couple of episodes) was Woodes Rogers, who really was the governor of New Providence.
Dan was assisted by a multi-national crew - Armando the Spaniard (and where the script called for it, half-Indian), Taffy the Welshman and Gaff the Londoner, with Dickon as ship's boy in some episodes (introduced in the episode The Wasp, where he was working for Blackbeard).
There are some interesting guest stars, some of whom worked on Robin Hood as well - Sid James before the Carry On films, for instance (he was also a moneyer - maker of silver coins - in Robin Hood), Roger Delgado as a Spanish captain (who wonderfully at one point has the line "I am the master now" as he takes over the governor's mansion on New Providence briefly).
There are 39 episodes in all, some better than others of course, but the best are well plotted, and full of humour - and there's always a sword fight (and Dan always wins!).
I've just finished the box set, and I recommend it to anyone who likes old pirate films.

Thunderbirds Are Go!

The first, double length, episode of Thunderbirds was shown over the Easter weekend, and I'm sure we weren't the only Convention goers who retired to their hotel room at 5pm to watch. With our hearts in our mouths - had they got it right?
We'd seen the documentary a couple of days before, and it looked as if the show might be in safe hands, with the chap from Weta obviously a big fan of the original series, and taking great pains with the Thunderbirds ships.
And there was a huge sigh of relief as we realised that they had been faithful to the original while updating it with a light touch. They even have the palm trees bending back for the launch of Thunderbird 2.
No sign of the Thunderbirds hats - or even Parker's chauffeur's hat -but that's fair enough. Who wears a hat while piloting an aircraft anyway? And Lady Penelope has lost her cigarette holder and gained a pug dog. There's also a new female member of the team, who gets a cool new ship (and has a guilty secret....).
The only thing that isn't quite right, and it's a pity to say this because the voice actor was so clearly enthusiastic in the documentary, is Brains. He just sounds weird.
I suppose that doesn't matter so much to the actual target audience, which is not a fifty-something person who remembers it when it first came out, but today's young TV watching generation.
I really hope the series succeeds, because it's good to have a family of characters whose main aim in life is to rescue people, rather than blowing stuff up and shooting people.

Luther Arkwright and the Knights of God

When I first picked up Grandville, and got enthused about the adventures of a badger Inspector at Scotland Yard, I had no idea how influential Bryan Talbot was as a comic artist.
I'm starting to get an inkling now.

Bryan Talbot's ground-breaking work, back in the 1970s and 80s, was The Adventures of Luther Arkwright. I was vaguely aware of it, but the price of copies secondhand made me think twice about looking any closer, while at the same time showing how desirable they were.
This year, The Adventures of Luther Arkwright were re-published in a huge volume along with the sequel Heart of Empire. It seemed like a good chance to see what all the fuss was about.
At the same time, I noticed that Big Finish had produced an audio version of Luther Arkwright, with David Tennant as Luther and Paul Darrow as Cromwell (and what a voice that man has for a good villain!). I sent off for that, too. I thought that if I listened to the story first, I might have a better idea of what was happening, as the hero jumped between parallel worlds, and if I had a grasp of the story, I could take more notice of what was happening in the background of the comic panels.
And what a treat it is! I can highly recommend the 3CD set.
I'm now about halfway through the graphic novel, savouring it slowly.

I've also been reading the interviews in the new volume, and getting a feel for just how influential the story, and the way the story is told, was when it first came out. People like Alan Moore and Michael Moorcock talk about the influence it had on their work.
I've just recently been revisiting that obscure children's series from the 1980s, Knights of God, so it struck me very strongly that Luther Arkwright influenced this series, too. Both have a religious military order, with an autocratic leader - you could swap Cromwell for the Father Abbot of the Knights of God and never notice the difference, including the descent of both of them into madness (though without the sexual perversions of Nathaniel Cromwell - it was a children's TV series, after all). In each case, a big military rally is planned (though the one in Knights of God never takes place) and both organisations are big on black uniforms and motorcycles. There's even talk of an uprising in Wales in Luther Arkwright, which is an important part of Knights of God, and in both the rebels are trying to put the original Royal family back on the throne.
There's a plot against both Cromwell and the Abbot by high ranking members of their organisations, though in Cromwell's case it's more like the failed coup against Hitler in the latter days of the Second World War. In Knights of God, it's all about Brother Hugo's personal ambition. Knights of God swaps the dimension-jumping between parallel worlds for Arthurian myth, but otherwise I think there are very close similarities indeed.

Knights of God and The Crystal Cave

One of the panels we went to at WorldCon - in fact, the very first one we went to - was about children's TV. They talked about lots of programmes that we both remembered with fondness - and then someone mentioned the Knights of God.
"Huh?" said the Young Man.
"Oh, you'd love Knights of God!" I said.

It was only broadcast once, in 1987, and it's never been put out on video or DVD, though there is a paperback. I had quite a job to track down a copy, which I eventually got from vintagetelevision.co.uk
To be honest, all I really remembered was John Woodvine, as Prior Mordrin, the leader of the fascistic Knights of God, being evil - and the fact that they blew up a helicopter in the final episode! I'd never seen all the episodes, and I'd completely forgotten that Patrick Troughton was in it, as Arthur, leader of the resistance movement. In fact, his character behaved more like Merlin than King Arthur, but the whole thing had a vaguely Arthurian feel to it.
The series was set slightly in the future - 2020 - when a devastating civil war had been won by the Knights of God, who were ruling from Winchester, London having been mostly destroyed. However, there was still resistance in Wales, led by Gareth Thomas - who had experience of this sort of thing, having recently been Blake of Blake's Seven, and in the Wastelands, which was basically Yorkshire, led by Don Henderson, who spent a lot of time wandering round the moors with a machine gun.
As it was a children's series, though, the main hero was Gervase Edwards, son of Gareth Thomas's character, and his girlfriend Julia, who were imprisoned in a "training camp", pursued across the moors, shot at, and generally had a pretty rough time of it over the thirteen episodes. Co-incidentally, Julia was the daughter of the Brigadier of the Guards Regiment which came over to the side of the resistance near the end. They were played by George Winter and Clare Parker.
It was soon clear, as I watched, that the most interesting thing about the story was not the youngsters trying to survive and find out what Gervase's destiny was (it would have been a lot shorter story if Arthur had just told him, and by the time he discovered it, the only person to be surprised was him!) but the power struggle between Prior Mordrin and his deputy Brother Hugo, played with oily malevolence by Julian Fellowes (more recently seen in Downton Abbey).
I could see why it was never repeated - I spent some time when I'd finished watching it trying to make the plot work better in my head, but it was quite fun, and interesting to see how TVS had made the most of their limited budget - they made the most of the helicopters, but also kept making the point within the story that everyone had very limited resources, which was why they were using horses and carts, and sailing boats, and - once - a steam train as well as the military trucks and armoured cars.
There weren't that many female characters, either - a Yorkshire woman who helped Julia (so at least those episodes passed the Beschdel test!), Gervase's mam, and a nurse at Knights of God HQ were just about it. Also, everybody was white - one would hope, if it was being made now, that at least a couple of the Yorkshire resistance movement might be Asians from Bradford or something.

George Winter later turned up in another Arthurian series, The Crystal Cave, as young Merlin, but doesn't seem to have done much acting since then.
I was horribly disappointed by the Crystal Cave. I love the book, by Mary Stewart, that the series was based on, and Robert Powell played Ambrosius, which he did very well - but the script.... Some scenes were almost word for word from the book, which was great, but others - just weren't.
I remember looking forward with some excitement to the scene where Merlin solves the mystery of why the tower keeps falling down by leading everyone to a Roman lead mine which is causing subsidence - where he has a vision of two dragons fighting, one red and one white, just as in the traditional legend. In the books, Merlin has no control over his visions, and they affect him like having a fit. In the series, he makes the prophesy about the dragons, but by means of a trick, so he comes over as a con artist rather than the genuine prophet that he was in the book.

Patrick Troughton

When I realised how little I knew of Roddy McDowall's career, outside Planet of the Apes and Fright Night, it occurred to me that I didn't know a lot about Patrick Troughton's career, either.

Patrick Troughton became the Doctor in 1966. I was five years old, and I loved William Hartnell. I understood that Patrick Troughton was the same man, but I hated his silly hat and the way he played the recorder. What finally stopped me watching was an episode where what seemed like armies of Daleks were exploding on screen, revealing the Kaleds writhing horribly inside. My gran had to keep turning to ITV, and then flicking back again to see if it was all over - and after that we didn't watch it at all for a long while. When Patrick Troughton changed into Jon Pertwee, I suddenly took an interest again, but it took me a very long time to realise that Patrick Troughton had actually been rather good as the Doctor, and that some of those old episodes were worth watching.

Apart from the Doctor, I was aware that he had been the very first TV Robin Hood, though the episodes were filmed live, and I was too young to have seen any of them. I did enjoy seeing him in The Box of Delights - it was a book I loved as a child ("The wolves are running!" sends a chill down my spine even now). He was the magical Punch and Judy man who gave the Box to Kay Harker.

I'm a life-long Robin Hood fan, and I grew up on re-runs of Richard Greene's series - and there was Patrick Troughton again, playing various villains and good guys. In those days you only got to see the episode once - no videos or DVDs - so it was possible to have the same actor appearing as different characters all over the place. Paul Eddington, later famous in The Good Life, started off as Second Peasant and ended up as Count de whatever in a later episode!

He was also in films - playing the blind man harried by harpies in Jason and the Argonauts, that classic Ray Harryhausen film.

In the mid-Seventies, there was a children's serial called The Feathered Serpent, set in Aztec times. What I mostly remember is the young men in the production tying their hair back with the thick wool we used to call Dougals, which were fashionable briefly at about the same time as those clacker balls that got bashed together in a rather dangerous fashion. I also remember the heroine being poisoned by the evil chief priest (Patrick Troughton being really quite scary) and being totally paralysed, unable even to blink.

And just recently, I was hunting down some pictures online and came across a blog dedicated to Swallows and Amazons - especially the filming of the stories in the 1970s. The blog is called Sophie Neville, and it is quite fascinating. There was Patrick Troughton again, playing the eel man in The Big Six!

Apart from all this, he was another actor who always seemed to be working - he was in masses of TV series, did quite a lot of theatre work, and a few more films, and he appeared at Doctor Who Conventions as well.
And now I'm starting to collect the DVDs of his time in Doctor Who, with a new appreciation of his time in the role.