![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
Day fourteen, your favourite male character. Oh meme, you really ought to know better than that by now. Like I'm going to be able to decide anywhere near definitively. If absolutely pressed - like at gunpoint, or by threat of being forced to watch Eurovision - it's probably Joe Cartwright or Manolito Montoya, but I refuse to choose between the two of them. That would be like having to choose between my children (if I had any). So I'm going to have to fudge it again, aren't I.
He's not my favourite character (except when he is), but I do rate Harrison Blackwood very highly, for quite a few reasons. Back when War Of The Worlds first aired in the UK, we still had proper regional ITV, so when you saw it would have depended on where you were living at the time. I saw it first in the early nineties. By then Doctor Who had been gone for a little while, and didn't appear to be returning (oh those pre-internet days, when we had no real way of finding out!) and I was feeling somewhat bereft. And then, there in the early hours of Wednesday mornings (about half past one), was Harrison Blackwood. A nutjob, pacifist vegan with an odd tuning fork obsession. He wore a hat, he thought sleep was almost entirely unnecessary, he absolutely refused ever to use a gun (and yet would cheerfully build a flame thrower from scratch, and annihilate his enemies with that, when required), and had a thing for hypnotising guards when inconveniently arrested. He was the Doctor, basically. He didn't have a spaceship, but he did live somewhere that was bigger inside than out - a huge underground house, hidden beneath a little cottage by the sea. And he fought aliens, weekly. Sometimes his adventures were rubbish, sometimes they were brilliant, and frequently they required him to wrestle with rather obviously rubber props. He was usually accompanied by a very stiff and proper army officer, and a pretty, blonde scientist, suggesting a fondness amongst the writers for the early Pertwee era; and he had an evil nemesis who treated him oddly fondly, though didn't have a pointed beard. He did have a tendency to giggle, though.
So yeah. Harrison Blackwood was quite the tonic for the insomniac Doctor Who fan in the early nineties. He was fun to hang out with in the small hours, when sleep was a very long way away. I remain very fond of him. Later he was revamped, given a beard and a gun, and turned into a different person entirely, but for me that version isn't canon. The true Harrison is the nutjob with a floppy hat, striding into battle against vast alien hordes, armed with his trusty tuning fork. Hanging out with him is a surefire way to get your insides scooped out by an alien with wobbly rubber arms, but on the plus side, he does have a nice smile.
Sorry, that's not much of a plus side, is it. I really have got to work on my priorities.
He's not my favourite character (except when he is), but I do rate Harrison Blackwood very highly, for quite a few reasons. Back when War Of The Worlds first aired in the UK, we still had proper regional ITV, so when you saw it would have depended on where you were living at the time. I saw it first in the early nineties. By then Doctor Who had been gone for a little while, and didn't appear to be returning (oh those pre-internet days, when we had no real way of finding out!) and I was feeling somewhat bereft. And then, there in the early hours of Wednesday mornings (about half past one), was Harrison Blackwood. A nutjob, pacifist vegan with an odd tuning fork obsession. He wore a hat, he thought sleep was almost entirely unnecessary, he absolutely refused ever to use a gun (and yet would cheerfully build a flame thrower from scratch, and annihilate his enemies with that, when required), and had a thing for hypnotising guards when inconveniently arrested. He was the Doctor, basically. He didn't have a spaceship, but he did live somewhere that was bigger inside than out - a huge underground house, hidden beneath a little cottage by the sea. And he fought aliens, weekly. Sometimes his adventures were rubbish, sometimes they were brilliant, and frequently they required him to wrestle with rather obviously rubber props. He was usually accompanied by a very stiff and proper army officer, and a pretty, blonde scientist, suggesting a fondness amongst the writers for the early Pertwee era; and he had an evil nemesis who treated him oddly fondly, though didn't have a pointed beard. He did have a tendency to giggle, though.
So yeah. Harrison Blackwood was quite the tonic for the insomniac Doctor Who fan in the early nineties. He was fun to hang out with in the small hours, when sleep was a very long way away. I remain very fond of him. Later he was revamped, given a beard and a gun, and turned into a different person entirely, but for me that version isn't canon. The true Harrison is the nutjob with a floppy hat, striding into battle against vast alien hordes, armed with his trusty tuning fork. Hanging out with him is a surefire way to get your insides scooped out by an alien with wobbly rubber arms, but on the plus side, he does have a nice smile.
Sorry, that's not much of a plus side, is it. I really have got to work on my priorities.
Tags: