So, dearest bloggerisationism fiends, From The North favourite Doctor Who is extremely back on your actual telly-boxes wheresoever in the world you currently are (even The Federated States of Micronesia. Probably). You may have noticed this. As mentioned - at some great length - in the previous From The North bloggerisationism update at various times (but, actually, exactly the same time) on Friday 10 May and Saturday 11 May 2024, the first two episodes of Ncuti Gatwa, Millie Gibson and Big Mister Rusty's first series arrived on different viewing platforms around the globe. This blogger still refuses to use the preferred industry term 'dropped' on the grounds of taste and decency and images of diarrhoea infecting his brain. Thence, lo, there was - soon afterwards - much rejoicing amongst the multitude. And also, because there's a 'y' in the day, a great wailing and gnashing of teeth from deep within The Bottomless Pit that is 'where The Special People hang out.' No change there, then.
There was, of course, no way on God's good Earth that yer actual Keith Telly Topping was intending to stay up till gone Midnight, UK time. This blogger is an old man, dearest bloggerisationism fiends, he needs his bed too much. But, seemingly unlike some oafish members of fandom, this blogger was aware that the first two episodes would not, magically, disappear from BBC iPlayer after they were first uploaded and could, therefore, be accessed and watched at a somewhat more sensible time. If 6am on the following morning can reasonably be described as 'sensible'. To be fair, it's not that much earlier than this blogger is to be observed out of his pit on a normal - none-Doctor Who - Saturday.
'How do you keep going?' 'For days like this!' Space Babies. This blogger loved it, dearest bloggerisationism fiends. This blogger thought it was great. Almost - but, not quite - all of it. The TARDIS scene; the butterfly scene and 'The Butterfly Compensation Switch'!; the design; the Star Trek reference; the snot monster; the gorgeous The End Of The World riffs and the Image Of The Fendahl allusions; 'Sometimes a world is sterile. Or, goes mad and ... bans kissing!'; The Doctor's three-line summation of his chosen lifestyle; the explanation of why The Doctor was frightened of The Bogeyman; the snow on the space station and the sinister little call-backs to The Church On Ruby Road; 'So, the planet down below wouldn't stop the babies being born but then refused to look after them?' 'It's a very strange planet.' 'Not that strange'; 'Don't you touch them, you illegitimate person!'; 'It's snot!'; the Alien airlock sequence homage; 'tell your mum not to slap me!' et cetera. Loved. It.
Then, there was The Devil's Chord. 'First you have a note ...' So, anyone else reckon Please Please Me would've been massively enhanced if The Be-Atles (a popular beat combo of the 1960s, you might've heard of them) had been brave and included 'My Dog Fred' instead of, say, 'Boys' on side one? Just this blogger then?
All of the episode's 'historical inaccuracies' which this blogger imagines someone with access to the Interweb near you is currently whinging about, loudly, to anyone that will listen (and, indeed, anyone that won't) - George Harrison playing 'the wrong Gretsch', John Lennon wearing 'the wrong spectacles', Cilla Black being an EMI artiste nine months before she actually signed for the label, the fact that there's no snow on the ground in the middle of the longest cold-snap Britain had suffered in three centuries - are all, of course, easily explainable by the whole 'Maestro changed history in 1925' malarkey. The fact that there wasn't a 'Finland Missile Crisis' in February 1963 being another plank in that particular construction - cos, you know, we'd've probably all noticed if there had been one. Mavity/schmavity, dear bloggerisationism fiends.
The Pyramids Of Mars and An Unearthly Child references in The Devil's Chord were, of course, brilliant for those long-term Doctor Who fans without a massive bug their collective arsehole about, you know, stuff. And the fact that the episode's music-off denouement was drawn directly from Robert Johnson's 'Cross Roads Blues' (or, if you prefer, The Charlie Daniels Band's 'The Devil Went Down To Georgia') was an added bonus. The dialogue sang. 'People always say The Titanic. Or Mars. Or Bethlehem. But, The Beatles ... why have I never done that before?' and 'You take John Lennon, I'll take Paul McCartney, find out what happened and when it happened.' Then, dear bloggerisationism fiends, ultimately Lennon and McCartney saved the world. A lot. Well, of course they did. Some of us have been claiming that for decades and no one listened to us. The Lost Chord, for those taking notes was, seemingly, a variant on E-major. And, they had lots of fun finding it. Well, it was either going to be that or G7sus4 (or whatever 'A Hard Day's Night's opening chord actually is, because there's quite a bit of debate on the subject).
It was also really sweet to see the legendary June Hudson appearing in The Devil's Chord as the little old lady playing 'Clair De Lune' before being, somewhat messily, killed by Maestro. June was, as long-term fans will know, the much-acclaimed costume designer on Doctor Who during the late 1970s.
In short, dearest bloggerisationism fiends, Keith Telly Topping loved both episodes the mostest baby (the second one possibly slightly more than the first. But only slightly). Alternative points of view are, of course, utterly unworthy and should be kept as far away as possible from Keith Telly Topping's sight. Thanks in advance for your kind cooperation in this regard. According to some of this blogger's fiends, the two episodes have, predictably, gone down remarkably badly - as in 'like a sack of shite' - with certain Usual Suspect-type sour-faced malcontents with shite-from-brains and shite-for-opinions. So, that's good - that's Big Rusty doing exactly the job that he was brought back to do - annoying exactly the sort of whinging feks you want to be annoyed on a regular basis and on general principle. It is, it should be noted, one of the oldest clichés with regard to Doctor Who that perhaps the main reason for its longevity and popularity with several different generations of viewers is that it's never the same two weeks running, let alone two eras running - it regularly reinvents itself, constantly changing, constantly moving, seldom - if ever - standing still. And yet, there seem to be a portion of extremely loud-mouthed, ill-mannered and self-entitled smears on the underpants of humanity for whom any and all change (in life, generally, but in Doctor Who in particular) is vastly unwelcome. They're quite a sight. For what it's worth (and this blogger reckons it's worth ... something at the very least) Keith Telly Topping's favourite bits of both episodes were the scenes of Nucti Gatwa and Millie Gibson together, just the two of them; the lyrical opening five minutes TARDIS scenes in Space Babies and the touching and continuity-heavy reminiscences on the Abbey Road roof in The Devil's Chord. Magical.
'Dad, d'you know the piano's on my foot?' 'You hum it, son, I'll play it!'
Also, let's face it dearest bloggerisationism fiends, who doesn't love a twist at the end?
When asked his own, personal, opinion on the two episodes, this blogger thought it wise to take some sage advice which he was once given - by Aaron Neville - and told it like it was, baby.
As is usual whenever a radio audience is gathered together and there is Doctor Who to be discussed, BBC Newcastle inevitably ring up their very own, tame Doctor Who 'blogger, fan and ahem, "expert"', yer actual Keith Telly Topping, for a swift down-the-liner. With the very lovely Emma Millen (who, seemingly, had only just got back from holiday a couple of hours previously and hadn't even been home to unpack yet) and the legend that is Nick Roberts. We did about fifteen minutes in total (in two chunks) on topics as diverse as Space Babies, The Devil's Chord, whom in the name of all that is Holy stays up until Midnight to watch something on iPlayer when they could be safely a-bed at the time?, the Disney+ effect, Ncuti and Mille as a - rather spectacular - duo, what the reviews have made of it all, is Keith Telly Topping naught but a crass Big Rusty sycophant and Boom and the return of The Moff. For those who wish to have a listen to this blogger's inane wittering, it is available here from 2hr 17mins in, carrying on for about the next five minutes then, following a couple of bangin' tunes, concluding around the 2hrs 35 mark. It will be available for, approximately, the twenty eight days from 13 May.
So, in short, this blogger had a great time watching both episodes - twice - on Saturday and then managed to get through the weekend, just about, without having all of those positive emotions sucked out of him by The Sour-Faced Naysayers. Of whom, there are more than a few. It was tricky going for a while, mind you, but he survived. Of course, he does have his tongue rammed so far up Big Rusty's arse there is no room for anyone else to get in there according to those who claim to know about these things. But, he 'means well.' Apparently.
Plus, next Saturday (or, Friday, depending on where exactly you are in the world at the appointed time) we have the return of The Moffinator his very self to look forward to. Which will - this blogger both trusts and, indeed, expects - be great. Next ...
Space Babies and The Devil's Chord were, either separately or collectively, the subject of a wide range of - broadly, though not exclusively, positive - reviews from such media outlets as diverse as the Gruniad Morning Star, the Independent, Vulture, Engadget (no, me neither), Den Of Geek, Super Hero Hype, The Hollywood Reporter, the Evening Standard, SciFi Pulse, Empire, Men's Journal, Film Stories, the Radio Times, Comic Book Resources, Telly Visions, Collider, Bleeding Cool News, the Daily Torygraph, The Times, Games Radar, ComicBookMovie.com, TV Line, Laughing Place, TV Fanatic, the New York Times, Nerdist, Variety, Los Angeles Times, the Daily Scum Mail, Gizmodo, the Metro and IMDB, IGN. And, probably lots of other newspapers, periodicals, magazines, websites and so on. But, the above were the links that this blogger had to hand at the time of writing. 'Even the haters will find it impossible to resist Ncuti Gatwa,' claimed someone at the Gruniad, with little supporting evidence of that being the case. Indeed, that sounds very much like a challenge, mate and this blogger is pretty certain that it won't take very long for someone who is interested in finding an example of the haters doing exactly that to find one. Once again, there must be a 'y' in the day.
In the lengthy and extensive round of publicity pre-the series kicking, interviews with Big Mister Rusty appeared in IGN, The Times, Deadline, Gizmodo, The Daily Beast, the Evening Standard, Salon, Comic Book Resources, Retro Pop, Huff Post, The Hollywood Reporter, KCWR and numerous other organs of the media. Including the Radio Times (which used to be run by adults).
Regarding Ncuti's little cameo on Match Of The Day the Saturday previously - part of the BBC's extensive pre-publicity for the series - anyone else reckon that he talked more sense in ten seconds of punditry than Ian Wright has managed in two decades?
This blogger still thinks, even a decade and a bit after the fact, that one of the greatest reviews he ever saw for any book was the opening paragraph to David Hepworth's Word review of Mark Lewisohn's All Those Years, Part One: Tune-In. In which Hepworth stated something to the effect of 'I might not be considered an expert, per se, but I reckon I know a fair bit about The Be-Atles (a popular beat combo of the 1960s, you might've heard of them). Mark Lewisohn's biography is seventeen hundred pages long (and still only goes up to 1962) and barely a page of it went by where I didn't think, at least once, "I never knew that!"' This blogger is currently about one hundred pages into David Brunt's extraordinary The Doctor Who Production Diary from those delightful fiends of this blogger at Telos Publishing and, he is currently matching Mister Hepworth in the 'I never knew that' stakes page-for-page. If anybody wants Keith Telly Topping for the next week or two, he'll probably be in here, somewhere. Either that or, you know, watching Doctor Who. Obviously.
Which bring us nicely to a final selection of the semi-regular From The North feature When Doctors Meets It Is A Humbling Experience: Number One Hundred. 'I say, I say. I was walking down the street this morning when I saw a man selling a brand new, eighty-inch, 4K television. I asked him how much he was charging and he said "just one pound, sir." "Why is it so cheap," I asked? "Well, the volume is stuck on maximum," he replied. "So, that's why it's only a quid," I asked? "Yes," he noted. "You can't turn that down."'
When Doctors Meets It Is A Humbling Experience: Number One Hundred One. 'I say, I say, I was having a lovely walk through Central London when I reached Trafalgar Square and looked at Nelson's Column. Did you know, Nelson's Column is one hundred and sixty nine feet three inches or fifty one point five nine metres high? However, Lord Nelson his very self was just five feet four inches or one point six three metres tall. That's Horatio of thirty point five three-to-one.'
When Doctors Meets It Is A Humbling Experience: Number One Hundred Two. 'I'm really worried about the Russian invasion of Ukraine.' 'What, you mean the increased threat of nuclear conflict?' 'Yes. But, more that it might gives the Scots ideas.'
When Doctors Meets It Is A Humbling Experience: Number One Hundred Three. 'I went to see an old friend this week. He's got a new house. "Make yourself at home," he said. So I did. I threw him out. I can't bear visitors.'
When Doctors Meets It Is A Humbling Experience: Number One Hundred Four. 'I say, I say. Do you know how you get down from an elephant?' 'No.' 'You don't, you get down from a goose.'
When Doctors Meets It Is A Humbling Experience: Number One Hundred Five. 'A friend of mine was always getting drunk after work and, finally, his wife'd had enough of such nonsense and told him, in no uncertain terms, that the next time this happened, she would leave him. Nevertheless, some of his colleagues still managed to persuade him to go out for a drink after work one evening. Of course, the inevitable happened, he had a skin-full and ended up being ill down the front of his suit. He miserably told his colleagues that they'd just, effectively, cost him his marriage. One of the colleagues said "don't worry, have you got a twenty pound note? Just stick that in your top pocket and when you get home, tell you wife that, as you were coming home, some drunk person was sick on you in the street. They were ever so apologetic, however and gave you twenty pounds to get your suit dry-cleaned by way of compensation." "Do you think that will work?" my friend asked. "Of course it will," they replied. So, my friend went home. His wife was apoplectic when she saw the state he was in with vomit down his jacket but, he quickly explained what he'd been advised to say and produced the money from his pocket as proof that this had occurred. "But, there's forty pounds here" his wife said. "Yes," he replied. "The other twenty was from the bloke who shat in my pants."'
When Doctors Meets It Is A Humbling Experience: Number One Hundred Six. And, so we end this semi-regular From The North feature back where we began. 'It's smaller on the outside.' It's been emotional.
Roger Corman, 'The King Of The Bs' who made such low-budget classics as Little Shop Of Horrors (1960) and Attack Of The Crab Monsters (1957) and gave many of Hollywood's most famous actors and directors early breaks, has died at the age of ninety eight. Corman died Thursday at his home in Santa Monica according to a statement released Saturday by his wife and daughters. 'He was generous, open-hearted and kind to all those who knew him,' the statement added. 'When asked how he would like to be remembered, he said, with typical modesty, "I was a filmmaker, just that."' Roger William Corman was born in Detroit and raised in Beverly Hills, but 'not in the affluent section,' he was always keen to note. He attended Stanford University, earning a degree in engineering and arrived in Hollywood after three years in the Navy. After quitting the business briefly to study English literature for a term at Oxford University, he returned to Hollywood. He worked as a television stagehand and literary agent before finding his life's work in film. In 1954 he collaborated with James Nicholson and Samuel Arkoff to produce The Monster From the Ocean Floor for a budget of ten thousand dollars. From those humble beginnings, American-International Pictures never looked back. Over the next seventeen years, Corman directed dozens of movies, often as many as six or seven each year, usually shot extremely quickly on leftover sets from other productions. His, probably unbeatable, record for a professional feature was two days-and-a-night, to shoot Little Shop Of Horrors. Using a repertory corps of actors, who often doubled as the production crew, Corman injected his rock and/or roll melodramas, hard-boiled crime thrillers, horror movies and science-fiction romps with healthy doses of humour and often more than a hint of sly and barbed social comment (most notably in 1962's The Intruder, which examined racism in America's Deep South and starred a young William Shatner). Corman helped create hundreds of B-movies as both a producer and director, among them The Saga Of The Viking Women & Their Voyage To The Waters Of The Great Sea Serpent (1958), Bucket Of Blood (1959), The Haunted Palace (1963) and Bloody Mama (1970). A remarkable judge of talent, he hired such aspiring filmmakers as Francis Ford Coppola, Ron Howard, James Cameron and Martin Scorsese.
'There are many constraints connected with working on a low budget, but at the same time there are certain opportunities,' Corman said in a 2007 documentary about one of his heroes, Val Lewton, the 1940s director of Cat People. 'You can gamble a little bit more. You can experiment. You have to find a more creative way to solve a problem or to present a concept,' he said. The roots of Hollywood's golden age in the 1970s can be found in Corman's films. Jack Nicholson made his film debut as the title character in a 1958 Corman movie, The Cry Baby Killer and stayed with the company for numerous biker, horror and action films, writing and producing some of them. Other actors whose careers began in Corman movies included Robert De Niro, Bruce Dern and Ellen Burstyn. Peter Fonda' appearance in The Wild Angels (1966) was a precursor to his own landmark road movie, Easy Rider (1969), co-starring Nicholson and fellow Corman alumnus Dennis Hopper. Boxcar Bertha (1971), starring Barbara Hershey and David Carradine, was an early film by Scorsese. Corman's B-movie directors were given minuscule budgets and often told to finish their films in as little as five days. Coppola reportedly didn't even get that much when he was given the change to direct his debut, Dementia 13, having previously seen hired as the sound man on Corman's The Young Racers (1963). With about twenty thousand dollars of the budget remaining, he instructed Coppola to write a script overnight. When Ron Howard, who would go on to win a best director Oscar for A Beautiful Mind, pleaded for an extra half-day to reshoot a scene in Grand Theft Auto (1977), Corman told him, 'Ron, you can come back if you want, but nobody else will be there!' 'Roger Corman was my very first boss, my lifetime mentor and my hero,' Howard has said. 'Roger was one of the greatest visionaries in the history of cinema,' Gale Ann Hurd, whose producing credits include The Terminator franchise, wrote on X. Initially only drive-ins and specialty cinemas would book Corman's movies, but as teenagers began to be attracted to their mixture of attractive exploitation themes, national chains eventually gave in. Corman's pictures were open for their time about sex and drugs, such as 1967's The Trip, an explicit story about LSD usage, written by Nicholson and starring Fonda and Hopper. Meanwhile, Corman discovered a lucrative side-line releasing prestige foreign films in the United States, among them Ingmar Bergman's Cries & Whispers, Federico Fellini's Amarcord and Volker Schlondorff's The Tin Drum. Corman got his start in the industry as a messenger boy for Twentieth Century-Fox, eventually graduating to story analyst. Despite his penny-pinching ways, Corman retained good relations with his directors, boasting that he never fired anyone because 'I wouldn't want to inflict that humiliation.' Several of his former underlings repaid his kindness in later years. Coppola cast him in a great role in The Godfather, Part II, Jonathan Demme included him in both The Silence Of The Lambs and Philadelphia and Howard gave him a part in Apollo 13.
Many of Corman's own movies - particularly the earlier ones - were quickly forgotten by all but die-hard fans. An exception was Little Shop Of Horrors, which starred a bloodthirsty plant that feasted on humans and featured Nicholson in a small, but memorable, role as a pain-loving dental patient. It inspired a long-lasting stage musical and a 1986 big-screen musical adaptation starring Steve Martin and Bill Murray. His CV also included Not Of This Earth (1957), Machine-Gun Kelly (1958), The Last Woman On Earth (1960), Gas-s-s-s (1970), X: The Man With The X-Ray Eyes (1963, a particular favourite of this blogger), Sorority Girl (1957), Swamp Women (1957), The Pit & The Pendulum (1961), The Premature Burial (1962), I, Mobster (1959) and many, many others. In 1961, Corman initiated a series of films based on the works of Edgar Allan Poe, most of them in collaboration with Vincent Price (a close friend who shared Corman's liberal political views). One of the most notable was The Raven (1963), which teamed Nicholson with veteran horror stars Boris Karloff, Peter Lorre and Basil Rathbone. Directed by Corman on a rare three-week schedule, the movie won good reviews from the mainstream media, a rarity for his films. The first of his Poe adaptations, House Of Usher (1960), was deemed worthy of preservation by the Library of Congress. The Masque Of The Red Death, made in England in late 1963 and with a higher-than-usual budget and impressive sets borrowed from the recently-made epic Becket, included luscious colour cinematography from a young Nicholas Roeg. It had many champions as the finest film Corman ever made (it's certainly this blogger's own favourite; once describing it in A Vault Of Horror as 'the least boring film ever made!')
After the Poe-cycle, Corman tapped into the burgeoning counterculture market with the hugely successful The Wild Angels and The Trip. 'It was my privilege to know him. He was a great friend. He shaped my childhood with science-fiction movies and Edgar Allen Poe epics,' John Carpenter, director of Halloween and The Thing wrote on Twixter. Near the end of his life, Boris Karloff starred in another Corman-produced classic, the 1968 thriller Targets, which marked Peter Bogdanovich's directorial debut. Corman's success prompted offers from major studios and he directed The St Valentine's Day Massacre (1967) and Von Richthofen & Brown (1971) on comparatively 'normal' budgets. Both were disappointments, however (commercially and artistically) and Roger blamed their failure on front-office interference. Apart from Frankenstein Unbound in 1990, Corman retired from directing in 1971 to concentrate on his production company New World, making low-budget exploitation films and using the profits made to distribute European art movies in the US. Besides producing dozens of entertaining films Corman's place in cinema history is assured through his unrivalled eye for talent. In 2009, Corman received an honorary Academy Award for his services to the movie industry. His autobiography, How I Made A Hundred Movies In Hollywood & Never Lost A Dime, was published in 1990 and included the memorable observation: 'In science-fiction films, the monster should always be bigger than the leading lady!' In 1964 he married Julie Halloran, a UCLA graduate who also became a producer. He is survived by his wife and their children Catherine, Roger, Brian and Mary.
Next, we have the nominations for the From The North Headline Of The Week award. Starting with Wales Online's 'Real Life Basil Fawlty' Ran Guest House With 'Gruesome Bedding' & Was Rude To Guests. And to cameramen, seemingly.
The Blackpool Gazette's cautionary tale of strip-clubs and identification, Blackpool Businessman Given The Stamp Of Disapproval in second on the list.
The York Press's concerned piece York Man 'Trapped In His Own Living Room' After Door Jams would seem to raise as many questions as it, actually, answers.
The Gruniad Morning Star's Port Talbot Couple Admit 'Dine & Dash' Offences With One Thousand Pounds In Unpaid Bills is, apparently, a sorry tale of a succulent Chinese meal interrupted by the forces of law and order. Although the photo of the couple charged in this particular case does, rather, raise one important question; the reason that this blogger (in the days when he, regularly, dined out) never tried the old 'dine and dash' malarkey (apart from the fact that it's, you know, wrong) was that he doubted he'd be able to make it twenty strides away from any given restaurant without getting chased down Stowell Street by an angry chef wielding a large meat cleaver. These two are, therefore, clearly fitter than they look. So, well done them.
For sheer thigh-slapping hilarity, it's hard to top the BBC News website's Man Told To Stop Cleaning Filthy Signs By Council. The reasons for which are, if you will, as clear as mud. A'hey-tang-you.
The Stray Ferret (no, me neither), meanwhile has a story which looks really important, Pierce Brosnan 'Borrows Screwdriver' From Knaresborough Optician. I mean, surely in the Aston Martin, he's got an ejector seat that turns into a screwdriver at the touch of a button on the gear knob? Q Branch think of everything, you know.
One can always, of course, rely on the good old Daily Mirra - which used to public reasonably accurate stories ... until they stopped hacking people's phones - to come up with a steaming pile of horseshit. Or, in the case of British 'Big Cat' Photographed Close To Pub As Locals Fear They Are 'Going Mad', catshit.
Then there's the Bristol Post's The Bristol Road So Bad People Get Injured Just Walking On It. Particularly if they get hit by a car.
And, finally, the hands-down winner, the Bangkok Post's Niece Charged In Huge Sausage Embezzlement Case. It's the 'huge' that makes it art.
