Messages

deleting a sentence about hating to see Edgar GO,

Oops, I got that wrong, didn't I?

 

Never mind, we're not 100% on Mark anyway. The beast has 4 previous Mark Howards all from Southport which ties in with this guy's 'West Lancashire' address. What makes it interesting (!) is that they date back to 1993 and contain two drawings - Prog 857's 'The Adventure Ends Abruptly' and Prog 875's  'Dredd Goes to Hollywood - RoboCop'. It would be nice to have some verification from Mark as this could trump Proudfoot's long time claim to fame. Leaving that to the backburner let's have a look at the letter.

The 'Unripened One' comment is disrespectful but did raise a small smile. He then goes down the classic route of knocking down and building back up - never saw that coming! To be fair it's a decent attempt at something vaguely resembling a proper letter and, God forbid, it looks like some planning may have gone into the structure. For that alone he gets the official LETTERSENTERTAINYOU 'Best of the bunch award'.

Yes, those letters and pictures you mention are all mine (the pics in Progs 857 and and 875, letters in 1052 and 1597 (notice again a curious number of 5s here) and also one in the Megazine, although I can't remember the issue number this letter was a whiney wannabe missive suggesting original readers' stories instead of reprints). Do I now have a claim to fame and, if so, what is it?

Confession time. The letter in 1597 was actually an attempt to squeeze in some toilet references. Whilst Tharg scuppered two of them, substituting "...poUR IN A Logical..." for "...send in a logical..." and deleting a sentence about hating to see Edgar GO, but he missed "...something BIG. JOBS come..." and my own particular favourite "...darK HAZIness..." So, what do I win? I got a nicely crushed Judge Mortis figure from Tharg, so I guess that's enough. (Tip for the Justice Dept; should Judge Death and his pals return to pester the Big Meg, simply lure them into a large envelope and then entrust it to the tender mercies of the Royal Mail. The Dark Judges would not survive this.)

Thanks for the "Best of the Bunch Award," it really cheered me up.

Yours sincerely,

Mark (Please Don't Take my J Away) Howard.

Jones.

I really enjoy Farscape, being the proud owner of the full set of DVD's, and watch it right through every couple of years or so. What I like about it most is the fact that all the characters are more than willing to screw each other over, to greater or lesser degrees, and are by no means perfect. The first series especially is full of this kind of thing; when something threatens the ship they can never fully agree what to do and often prevail more by luck than good judgment. This is really highlighted in one first season episode when all the crew of Moya do actually work together to solve something and end up having a happy meal time together. Great stuff. If Star Trek had enjoyed similar characterisations it would have been, I feel, a far better show.

Best of all sci-fi shows, in my humble, is Babylon 5. Period. I will hear no arguments on the subject. Anyone who doesn't get goosebumps listening to G'Kar's impassioned yet controlled speeches just isn't human. I once saw Andreus Katsulus (sp?) walking down the promenade at Blackpool and he looked disturbingly similar to G'Kar even without his makeup and with a huge, pit-prop of a cigar sticking out of his face. I was genuinely saddened to hear of his death.

BSG, for me, teeters on the brink of boredom far too often even though sometimes it can be quite brilliant. Weird show, that. Cylons looking for God? Interesting. Still, at least there are no fluffy, orange robotic dogs waddling about the place in a haze of cute.

ST:TOS is no longer a television show but a religion and must be respected if only for its impact, but still contains some brilliant episodes (Balance of Terror is probably my favourite). ST:TNG was largely spheroids with a few outstanding episodes and needed deeper characters, IMHO. ST:VOY was a show I really wanted to enjoy, but it was a wasted opportunity. If ever a ST series needed to be Babylon 5'd, needed to be told as a continuous storyline rather than a bunch of episodes strung together, it was this one. A great opportunity squandered. ST:DS9 was, I thought, utterly cack when I first watched it, but a friend of mine recently lent me the whole lot and, after putting it off and putting it off, I eventually watched it right through and, do you know, it wasn't half bad. Especially the later series dealing with the war against the Dominion. It wasn't perfect (and the less said about the ending the better), but certainly had some good storylines and interesting, flawed characters. ST:ENT was another disappointment, but nowhere near as disappointing as it could have been. It must get extra points for arming Nazi Messerschmidts with energy weapons if nothing else.

Dr Who, as has already been said, is in a class of its own and capable of some truly outstanding episodes like Blink and Midnight.

Torchwood. Pap. Pure, unadulterated pap. When I watch it, I can't help but wonder how just a handful of people can possibly keep all that going. Who services the Range Rover? Who does all the paperwork and deals with the stationary requisitions? Who looks after that bloody weevil they've had locked up since day one? An organisation like Torchwood would need an army of ancillary staff. They wouldn't have to be shown, just hinted at, but omissions like this really make my blood boil. To me, Torchwood is like the Double Deckers with fewer members, a smaller bus, less laughs, rampant homosexuality and the odd slimy thing thrown in for good measure. Pap, pap, pap, pap, pap.

I could go on, but I probably shouldn't.

She knoooowwws! She knooooooooooowwwws!!! Aieeee!

...er...

This looked way better in my head.



Still, wet nuns in tight habits... what's not to love?

It does wash out you know !

Maybe it does for ordinary mortals...

"Connecting to server...failed. Server may be down."  

Someone's needs to invent a means of motherless reproduction, so we could ejaculate onto these boxers and grow our own Dredd's from them!

Doesn't work. You have no idea how many pairs I've ruined on a very similar experiment.

I'll try to be there.

Unfortunately, sport is like Kryptonite to me. I get winded just watching it.

Great.

A vehement celibate on my underpants. That's just what I need.  Grud knows, my skiddies see little enough action as it is without plastering the poster child for puritanical abstinence all over them.  

Still...

In my early twenties, I was awoken in the middle of the night by a most extraordinary apparition. Now, I've never been really certain as to whether I was still dreaming or whether I actually woke up to witness it, but, as I lay in my bed, I saw a serene face staring at me from the darkness. There was no body, just a large, transparent face about the size of a dustbin lid that was all shiny and blue (similar to the "angels" that are released at the end of Raiders of the Lost Ark) and had long, wispy tendrils coming off it, waving about gently like seaweed in a soft current.

I had no sense of fear and the face looked at me with the same kind of curiosity you see on the faces of dogs sometimes. Almost as soon as I saw the face, it disappeared completely, leaving me alone in the dark. I looked at the clock, 02:31, and then fell back to sleep.

I was awakened five hours later by a telephone call from my mother. [spoiler]"Bad news, your uncle died at half past two this morning."[/spoiler] (Spoiler used for dramatic effect...)

Only then did teh fear set in.

That, my friend, is how to write comedy.

It is, indeed. I wonder what happened to the British sitcom sometimes ... was it something about the 70s that gave us Porridge and Rising Damp in addition to Dad's Army? Dare I mention Fawlty Towers? Although I was never a fan, maybe you could add Only Fools & Horses as a sitcom from the 80s, especially since it fulfils the No 1 rule of (UK) situation comedy: Imprisoned With A Monster.

Dad's Army, interestingly, doesn't seem to follow that rule. Mainwaring is something of a monster, but not in the teeth-grindingly awful sense of a Basil Fawlty, or a Mr MacKay (although there is an interesting argument that Fletcher is the monster in Porridge, or that both he and MacKay are and that the sitcom is a battle for Godber's soul), or Rigsby.

Or, now that I think about, Arnold Rimmer. It's no coincidence that Red Dwarf got progressively less funny the more they expanded the locations and the cast ...

Cheers

Jim

The Office, too? The Brentmeister must rank as a fully fledged monster. Every era has its classics, I think we sometimes forget that in our nostalgic reveries. For every fondly remembered Fawlty Towers there were probably a dozen instantly forgettable Robin's Nests. Blackadder, too, is likely a classic of its age. I still can't watch that very last scene without a tear in my eye. Father Ted springs also to mind and things like Peep Show and Hyperdrive (well, maybe not Hyperdrive...). Watch the first episode of every new sit-com, because you never know where the next Basil Fawlty or Reginald Perrin are going to come from.

Oh, and as I heard Barry Cryer say once, "analysing comedy is like dissecting a frog. Nobody laughs and the frog dies."

That'll be Journey's End.

M@

Good Lord, that's it! Thank you!