Xenon's Seventh Circle

What a rubbish day! The great Christopher Lee, and dear old Ron Moody, in one fell swoop. Neither was a young man, but it's a shame nonetheless. Christopher Lee especially had a remarkable career, and seems to have known and worked with everybody. You can spot him, in his earlier years, as a deck officer aboard one of the Naval ships set against Burt Lancaster and Nick Cravat in The Crimon Pirate (1952). One of my favourite films, and I very much recommend it. He also cropped up in the Beeb's brave attempt to adapt Mervyn Peake's epic fantasy Gormenghast a few years back, playing the creaking librarian Flay. I recommend that too, although you'd do better really to read the book. The adaptation was gorgeous, but suffered from too much material in too little screentime. Worth searching out though, if you're in need of something else once Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell is done.

In a more cheerful frame of mind (actually, I don't know that it is more cheerful), I have been doing further Remington Steele-ing. And dear gods, the 1980s. As I've mentioned before, it's a show that steers away from anything too eighties, in an attempt to be as timeless as possible. If anything it favours the vintage styles of the thirties and forties, and at times even earlier than that. But every so often, there's no hiding from the fact that it was made in the eighties. The worst of the decade hides in dark corners, and pops up every so often to shout boo.

( Still, on the plus side, at least it's not the seventies. )

So, American television was kind enough to make a pirate series. I wanted to wait until I'd got my pretend pirate show all figured out and posted before I watched it, so I finally got around to seeing the first two episodes last night. Obviously, because it's mine, I think my show is better! But, quite honestly... boy is my show better. If only by virtue of not really existing, but still.

( Ouch. )

I am the worst possible DreamWidther. I go weeks and weeks without saying a thing, and then when I do finally say something it's of no interest to anybody. I'd leave, but then who would I irritate with inane ramblings about television, and random videos of Bruce Springsteen & The E Street Band? Anyway, some weeks back, before I got distracted by real world stuff again, I signed my brain away to isurrendered. What this means is that you get given a prompt, and have to design your own television series around it. With a cast list, and plot information, and all sorts of stuff like that. It's horribly, horribly absorbing, and once you've agreed to do it, your life is massively overrun with plans for a TV show that nobody but your imagination is ever going to see. Anyhow, thisbluespirit was kind enough to give me the nicely flexible prompt of "Pirates". Anybody who has read even one of my posts will know that I immediately set about constructing a TV series that's really just a flimsy excuse for lots of sword fights, big ships with billowy sails looking pretty on the ocean, and as many cannon as it's possible to fire in the space of one mini-series. Subtlety. I doesn't has it.

Pirates, however, I now have in abundance. Your fun fact about pirates for the day is that they were a far more diverse bunch than Hollywood would have you believe. A pirate crew (and, for that matter, quite a lot of other branches of the seafaring life) were more interested in how well you could fight, and how dependable you were, than in where you happened to come from, and a lot of former slaves, both freed and escaped, wound up at sea. Female pirates were also more common than you might think. History tells us that the infamous Jack Rackham sailed with two, and it wasn't until the Victorians got hold of the story that it was turned into anything particularly notorious. There weren't many of them, certainly, but a sword-swinging lady pirate is far from unlikely. So, in other words, a pirate series is tailor-made for a modern audience. And also has swords, which is better still. Hurrah.

With that in mind, have a basic premise and a cast list. At some point over the weekend, I should be posting the episode guide. Hopefully. I've got to stop worrying over it at some point, so if I say that I'm going to post it, I shall have to.

*clears throat*

Thrown overboard by a duplicitous crew, fortune-hunter Alexander Gray thinks he's in trouble when he's rescued by pirates. But when he discovers that the Governor of Jamaica is corrupt, and is behind his recent woes, he realises that the pirates might just be the only people he can trust. Declared outlaw by the Governor, and forced into a rocky alliance with a band of thieves and cutthroats, he has a long fight ahead of him if he's to see his world set to rights.



A ten-part mini series from BBC Drama, new for Autumn 2014.

( ... )

http://dw-50ficathon.livejournal.com/

Title: Under A Black Flag
Rating: U (Gen)
Word count: c. 2800
Warnings: None (that I can think of)
Summary: Pirates (and Eight and Grace)

( ... )

I have been busy, and have been neglecting the meme. Sorry, meme. It's nothing personal. I have been busy digging, which is much more entertaining than it sounds, especially since I keep finding fossils. Everywhere there are fossils. The garden was apparently the scene of some ghastly mollusc massacre some time during the Jurassic. But anyway.

Day twenty-one, your favourite ship. A close run thing, this one. Obviously there's the TARDIS, and also my beloved White Star (the original and best) from Babylon 5. I never did quite forgive Sheridan for crashing her into a planet, even if it was in the act of probably saving the universe. But in the event, neither of them wins. Instead I'm going with the Charming Molly, the eighteenth century sailing ship from Jack Holborn. A 1982 adaptation of the book by Leon Garfield, Jack Holborn tells the story of a small orphan boy caught up in the affairs of the dread pirate Captain Sharingham, and his danger magnet brother, Sir John. The Charming Molly is Sharingham's ship, a rather characterful and exuberant three-master with a talent for atmospheric lurking. She doesn't last long, sadly, as she gets pounded to driftwood in a storm halfway through the series, but she lives on in young Jack's dreams, haunting him with memories that he can't quite reach. I love Jack Holborn. It's a terrific family adventure serial about pirates and stolen jewels and adventuring and things like that; and the Molly, and especially her red-haired figurehead, is key to a big chunk of the story. So she wins, for adventuring and excitement, and assorted escapades, and for haunting Jack's dreams all his life. And also for the opening credits, with perfect adventuring music, and her being a shameless camera whore. Why don't we have sailing ships these days? Everybody should have one. They're so much more fun than cars.

Not being the biggest fan of TV nowadays, I haven't been paying a lot of attention to what's on over the holidays (aside from Doctor Who, obviously). Instead I spent the weekend with pirates. As it turns out, they proved to be ideal company.

( Who wouldn't want to spend Christmas with pirates? )

In episodes twenty-two and twenty-three, The Time Tunnel suddenly turns into a show tailor-made for me, and comes up with just about everything that I could want. That anybody could want, really. If there's anybody alive who doesn't think that pirates and cowboys are just about the most excitingest things ever, then they're probably somebody confused and disillusioned, and soon to see the error of their ways. Oh yes.

( ... )

Though not necessarily in the same place. More from the late eighties in a moment, but for now it's still the late seventies, and the penultimate episode of Man From Atlantis. Yes, there is light at the end of the tunnel. Or there will be, once the warbling mergirl is out of the way.

Episode 16: The Siren

( ... )

I am in sci-fi swashbuckly heaven. :) I don't think I've had more fun all year than I'm having now with Voyagers!. The combination of out-and-out fun and historical settings is a good starting point, but the characters are really making this show. As a lead man, Phineas seriously rocks. He's falling around through time, without a clue where he's going, or what he's going to do when he gets there; and then when he crash lands in some fairly random century, he almost invariably has a whale of a time there. Especially if there are swords, staves and bows and arrows. Jon-Erik Hexum was born to swashbuckle. He should have been around in the fifties - although of course then he couldn't have done Voyagers!, which would be sad. Think of the movies he could have done in the fifties, though! He could have been swinging from ropes and hacking about him with swords to his heart's content. Also, perhaps the fact that he's not around anymore would that way seem less tragic.

I do have one complaint, though. How come, episode after episode, we get lovely, detailed views of American history; but when we wind up in Britain we get, firstly, a bizarre Dickensian fictional London... and then secondly, Robin Hood. Complete with Errol Flynn Hollywood costumes, and Maid Marion. Yes, it is possible that there was an historical figure who was the basis for the legends. Marion, however, was added to the tale centuries later by a Frenchman. You only need do a tiny piece of research to get that one. British history is just as important as American history, Universal. And if you employed a few more British actors, rather than Americans with lousy fake accents, then you might just be able to ask them a few questions about it. :p

It's all too much fun to gripe, though. Way, way too much fun. 'Cause of the swashbuckling, and the time travel, and the swords, and the swashbuckling, and the playfulness, and the merriment, and the swashbuckling. And Jon-Erik Hexum. Always, always, Jon-Erik Hexum. Hard to believe that this year sees the twenty-fifth anniversary of his death.

( Yes, there are stupid amounts of screencaps underneath. How'd you guess?! )