Trigger-Happy Cops in Prodigal Son

 I've just started watching Prodigal Son, mostly because Michael Sheen is in it as the serial killer dad, but I'm quickly warming to the other members of the cast as well.

There's one thing that really jumped out at me in the first few episodes, though, and it's how the members of the NYPD portrayed here are so quick to pull out their guns.

Now, this is a series that is approving of cops - they are solving some grisly murders, after all, so they're obviously the good guys.  But in so many situations their first response is to point a gun at someone, while someone else yells "NO!  Don't shoot!"  For instance, Malcolm Bright falls asleep in an office in the precinct, has a nightmare and starts running.  Despite the fact that he's in an area of the precinct that he's obviously authorised to be in, and that he's also obviously unarmed, half a dozen officers immediately point guns at him, and it's left to the woman on the team to wake him up, bring him back to reality, and save him from the very real risk of being killed.

In another episode, the murderer has been dosing victims with LSD before killing them - the officers know this, but still their first response, not the last response, is to point a gun at the victim who is obviously tripping.

I'm sure that this portrayal of the police is reasonably recent - I'd have to go back to watch a few episodes of Kojak or something similar to be sure, but I'm pretty sure Kojak was more often seen with a lollipop than a gun in his hand, even though there was a lot of violence in the show.

I've also been thinking about the recent protests in the US with the slogan Abolish the Police.  If Prodigal Son is a favourable depiction of police officers in action, and they are shown to be so trigger-happy, I can't say I'm surprised that there is a protest movement against that style of policing.

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.

Happy St Patrick's Day

 

Here's a picture of the River Liffey in Dublin, which I took while I was at Dublin WorldCon in 2019.

Sharon Penman has Died

 Another sad loss - Sharon Penman had been ill for some time, but her death was still an unpleasant surprise.  She had recently been diagnosed with a rare cancer.  She was 75.

She was one of my favourite historical novelists, and one of the few who wrote about Welsh medieval history.  Both Sharon Penman and Edith Pargeter wrote about Prince Llewelyn, the last independent Prince of Wales.  Edith Pargeter wrote four books under the umbrella title Brothers of Gwynedd, and Sharon Penman wrote the magnificent trilogy which begins with the life of Llewelyn the Great, the Last Llewelyn's grandfather: Here Be Dragons, Falls the Shadow and The Reckoning.  Falls the Shadow brings in Simon de Montfort as the main character, as his daughter Ellen eventually married Llewelyn (no thanks to Edward I, who I despise with a deep and abiding passion!). 

 I wept non-stop through the last 200 pages of The Reckoning, partly because I was so involved with the characters, and partly because I already knew the history, so I knew what was going to happen to them.  When I was an archaeologist, I did the site tours of Caergwrle Castle in North Wales, which is where Dafydd, Llewelyn's younger brother, launched his attack on nearby Hawardan Castle (which was held by the English), thus starting a war with England which Edward I very decisively finished.

Sharon didn't only write about Welsh history, though.  Her first book was The Sunne in Splendour, about Richard III, and it is magnificent.  It was also completely re-written after the original manuscript was stolen, while she was still working as a tax lawyer.

She's also written about Henry II and Eleanor of Aquitaine, the Anarchy under King Stephen, and Richard I.  Her most recent book was The Land Beyond the Sea, about King Baldwin IV of Jerusalem and the war against Saladin - the same period that was covered in the film Kingdom of Heaven, but with a more historically accurate Balian d'Ibelin.

For lighter medieval fare, there are the lovely Queen's Man books, shorter medieval mysteries about a young man who works for Queen Eleanor.  I'm very fond of Justin de Quincy (and his dog Shadow).

"We are all Star Stuff" Delenn Goes Home

 

Mira Furlan, who played  Minbari Ambassador Delenn in Babylon 5, has just died at the age of 65.

She had only been in the US for two years when she got the part of Delenn, having emigrated from the former Yugoslavia with her husband.  She was born in Croatia, and her husband Goran, who survives her, was Serbian.  They have a son called Marko.  

War had broken out in Yugoslavia when they left.  Mira had been part of a travelling theatre company which crossed borders to perform despite receiving death threats from both sides of the civil war.  When asked about it she said: "What's the worst that could have happened?  Yes, they could have killed me.  So what?  Art should have no borders."

Her official Twitter account announced the news of her death with a quotation from Mira:

"I look at the stars.  It's a clear night and the Milky Way seems so near.  That's where I'll be going soon.  "We're all star stuff",  I suddenly remember Delenn's line from Joe's script.  

Not a bad prospect.  I am not afraid.

In the meantime, let me close my eyes and sense the beauty around me.  And take that breath under the dark sky full of stars.

Breathe in.  Breathe out.

That's all."

How I Got Started in Fan Fiction

There's an argument on Twitter at the moment which started when someone (I'm not linking to it) said rude things about fan fiction writers.

I'm proud to be a fan fiction writer - and I'm incredibly grateful for all the fan fiction writers on AO3.  Reading their stories helped keep me sane through 2020 (yes, even the ones which didn't meet professional standards - they were written with love, and the writers were doing their best).

So, I started writing fan fiction when I was 12.

I shared a bedroom with my sister, and I used to tell her bedtime stories until she fell asleep, which I made up myself.  Then I started writing the stories down.  I was reading my way through the Swallows and Amazons series by Arthur Ransome at the time, so my stories were heavily based on them.  I was also a great fan of old pirate movies that were shown in the afternoons on weekend TV, and some of my plots were based on them.  In the process, I turned Nancy and Peggy Blackett into 18th century pirates and based them in Cornwall, with a ship called the Sea Witch.  I was also reading my dad's collection of Richard Bolitho novels, which gave me all the knowledge of sails and rigging I needed.  I can still tell the difference between a sloop, a barquentine and a ship of the line.

I didn't know it at the time, but what I was doing was writing Swallows and Amazons AU crossover fan fic, and I was having enormous fun.

None of these stories ever went further than a folder in my bedroom, where they were written out in felt tip pen.

I doubt if there are many Starship Excalibur zines still around from the early 1980s, but when I joined Star Trek fandom in my late teens, I wrote for them.  Looking back now, some of those stories were quite embarrassing - more enthusiasm than skill - but I got enough encouragement to keep doing it, and I kept improving.  My proudest moment was to write a Deep Space Nine story without ever having seen an episode of Deep Space Nine!  The new series had just started, and I knew some of the details, but I didn't have a TV at the time.  I wrote a story about Keiko O'Brien setting up her school and dealing with a problem Andorian pupil, and I seemed to get it right.

I spent many years not writing at all, for various reasons, but eventually I decided to make my best attempt at becoming a published writer, and started writing original fiction.  I got as far as getting a personalised rejection letter from an agent.  So I knew my writing was almost professional standard, but I also knew I wasn't going to get any better than I already was.  

I self-published the stories on Smashwords (see the side bar).

Then I went to Dublin WorldCon, where the AO3 website won a Hugo.  I'd heard of AO3 before that, but it seemed so huge that I kind of bounced off it.  This gave me the impetus to try again.

Last year, I wrote nearly 60,000 words of fan fiction.  Some of it was incredibly niche - I think I'm the only person to ever have written a fan fic for The Flashing Blade, which all of 6 people have read!  I've also written Lord Peter Wimsey fan fiction, in which Lord Peter became Lady Petra - working out how the plots would have changed if Lord Peter was a woman was fun.  (Bunter became Myrtle Bunter, too).  The first story I tried was about The Saint, since I was re-watching the old Roger Moore series and trying to make sense of his confusing and possibly contradictory back-story.

And I've written a lot of Good Omens fan fic, too.

So there we are - I'm proud of being a fan fic writer, and reader.  If it's comfort reading, well, I'm not the only person who needed comfort reading last year, and the process of creation has been very satisfying (I love doing research!).

I'm also very grateful that sites like AO3 exist, because I can remember the days when fan fiction writers could be sued - in fact, Anne McCaffrey once threatened to sue me, so that Star Trek/Pern crossover never saw the light of day!

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.