SCHRIESHEIM@DEC-MARLBORO@sri-unix (12/13/82)
Sorry for the delays. I've been having network problems.
Also I see that the ARPA net is testing TCP, so this will be delayed yet another day.
Dave.
This is an SF-Lovers bulk submission from the DEC Enet. Please remove
the headers due to the sending of this message and this "wrapping" and
handle the enclosed messages as seperate submissions. Thank you.
If you have any problems, please contact me via <DEC-SFL at DEC-Marlboro>
Dave Mitton, DEC SFL Redistribution
------------------------------
From: "DJLONG AT MERLIN c/o" <DEC-SFL at DEC-Marlboro>
Posted-date: 23-Nov-1982
Subject: Space Rock
I know this subject might be getting a little tired but:
There was mention of a Rick Wakeman album that was dedicated to fantasy. That
could have been one of two. He put one out early called "Myths and Legends
of King Arthur and the Knights of the Round Table". A more recent (1976)
album entitled "No Earthly Connection" has more of a SF AND Fantasy
overtone. It includes the song "Spaceman" (Part 3 of 5 of a LONG song)
along with "The Prisoner" which deals with what happens to a murderer AFTER
he gets the business end of a hangman's noose.
There was an all-too-brief mention of Rush. This included their songs
"Cygnus X-1" and "2112". "2112" is a full-side, multi-song piece of art
that was supposedly based on a female SF author's book and there are rumors
of making into a movie. [Maybe someone could supply the name of the book.
Plot is Anti-Utopian society of massive cities that control EVERYthing,
kind of like THX-1138 wherein eventually the 'elder race of man' comes back
to reclaim earth and, in the end, announces it triumphantly to the Solar
Federation]
Mention was also made of "Starship Trooper" from Yes's "The Yes Album".
No, it doesn't have much to do with SF except for an occasional reference
to the Starship Trooper. Yes's only real, bona-fided SF song was "Arriving
UFO" which, if you have heard the lyrics can be amusing [I could not take
it oh-so-seriously, really, when you called and said you'd seen a UFO].
That also makes use of technologic effects for some of the weird sounds.
On Yes's last original album they had a song called "Machine Messiah"
dealing with our dependence on machines for our work.
The most recent case is on Rush's latest album "Signals". It is a song
called "Countdown" that describes the maiden voyage of the Space Shuttle
Columbia. It goes so far as to have some of the actual audio tapes of the
launch sequence in the background.
Cheers -
David J. P. Long (MERLIN::DJLONG, DJLONG @ MERLIN)
------------------------------
From: "JOHN FRANCIS AT EIFFEL c/o" <DEC-SFL at DEC-Marlboro>
Posted-date: 06-Dec-1982
Subject: SFL Submission (Twilight Zone)
Good news for TZ fans in the NY area (or who can get WOR, NY channel 9,
on local cable television services).
I caught the last ten minutes of a TWZ episode over the weekend, and saw
from the credits that this was again two shows back-to-back. As this is
the usual way they show TZ episodes in this area I was not particularly
astonished, although I did wonder what TZ was doing on in the afternoon
slot normally reserved for movies. Reading the TZ episode guide today I
find that what I saw was the end of "On Thursday We Leave For Home", one
of the 1-hour episodes! I can only assume they ran two one-hour episodes
in the two-hour movie slot, and may well be doing this again some future
weekend. Needless to say, I shall be watching.......
John.
P.S. Thanks, Lauren, for the episode guide. If it wasn't for that, I'd
never have known.
------------------------------
From: "TSC::COORS::VICKREY c/o" <DEC-SFL at DEC-Marlboro>
Date: 7-DEC-1982 20:28
Subj: The Doctor's regenerations
THE MANY FACES OF DR. WHO
In response to the not-100%-accurate stuff going around about Dr. Who:
I discovered the good doctor in early 1981 and latched on to the series with
the same fervent joy expressed when I discovered Star Trek in 1967. So, the
following is gathered from books, magazines, conventions, and miscellaneous and
I stand by its accuracy.
Dr. Who premiered November 23, 1963 on the BBC. The Doctor was played by
William Hartnell, a highly respected veteran actor. He had a granddaughter,
Susan, and kidnapped (yes, kidnapped!) two of her teachers (Ian and Barbara)
when they stumbled into the TARDIS. It was at this time that the chameleon
circuit broke, leaving the TARDIS stuck in the shape of a blue police box.
(TARDIS stands for Time And Relative Dimensions In Space; police box is a
contraption that served as a sort of telephone booth for British police -
when the light at the top blinked, the nearest bobby was supposed to call in.
These devices are now obsolete.) The first Doctor was played as an anti-hero
and was a very grouchy old man.
Hartnell left the series in the middle of the fourth season due to ill health.
The BBC, which had already handled the problem of companions wanting to leave
the show by writing them out and writing new ones in, then came up with the
novel idea of the Doctor having to regenerate due to his bad health as the
"reason" for his change in appearance and personality. According to the
official canons (as I remember hearing it), this was the Doctor's first
regeneration.
The Second Doctor was Patrick Troughton, a veteran character actor who shows up
all over the British tube (spotted him in All Creatures Great and Small, with
Peter Davison, the Fifth Doctor). His Doctor was a clown/hobo, who disarmed
people by being very silly, played the recorder, and was given to offering
people jellybabies, gobstoffers, and the like. The Doctor's second life came
to an end at the end of the sixth season when he ran into a situation too much
for him to handle and he was forced to call upon his fellow Time Lords for
help. Help him they did, and they thanked him for the information that made
them aware of that terrible mess - then they tried him for the crime of
perenniel interference and sentenced him to involuntary regeneration and exile
to Earth. (Two behind-the-scenes reasons for this: Troughton wanted to move
on, and the BBC budget shrank, so they needed cheaper sets. The next three
seasons are almost entirely on Earth - and on locations within 25 miles of
London.)
The Third Doctor was Jon Pertwee, a comedian and caberet performer. His Doctor
was very much the dandy and very into gadgets - he produced the sonic
screwdriver, the whomobile, a who hovercraft, a who helicoptor, and a whoed-up
Edwardian roadster named Bessie. It was Pertwee's Doctor who worked for UNIT
(although it was Troughton's Doctor who first met the Brigadier) and Pertwee's
Doctor who came across the Master for the first time. The Third Doctor spent a
lot of time protecting Earth from invading aliens and found himself on occasion
trying to protect the invading aliens from Earth. He also found himself at the
beck and call of Gallifrey, being sent on missions to provide his special brand
of interference.
As a tenth anniversary special, the Three Doctors were reunited to combat a
menace to their/his home world of Gallifrey, much to the chagrin of the
Brigadier, who had finally got used to the idea that his friend the Third
Doctor was also his friend the Second Doctor and now found himself confronted
with both at once and a third that he had never met! At the end of this story,
the Doctor's exile was lifted.
At the end of the eleventh season, Pertwee was ready to go. The story here was
that the Doctor had picked up something on his travels that he had to return,
and in doing so suffered radiation damage to the point of death. Another Time
Lord intervened, and started up a greatly accelerated regeneration. Hence the
Doctor's "erratic" behavior in Robot.
Tom Baker played the Fourth Doctor. Those who have seen his predecessors say
that he combines characteristics of all three of them. Features of the Baker
era are the scarf(s), pockets, jellybabies, K-9, the return of the Master, and
two trips to Gallifrey. Baker played the Doctor for seven years, making him
the current record-holder. These shows are all available in the U.S., from two
different distributors and trimmed down (**expletives deleted by automatic net
censoring program**) to fit half-hour viewing slots .
In the eighteenth season Baker began to feel that it was time to move on, so
his Doctor fell to his regeneration at the end of Logopolis (which is full of
truly marvelous backpointers to events and details all the way back to the very
first Doctor Who).
The Fifth (and present) Doctor is played by Peter Davison. He wears a sort of
cricketeer's uniform (which looks very preppy to me), the shirt with question
mark lapels that Baker wore in his last year, and a stalk of celery in his
coat lapel (because "it's civilised"). He is into cricket. His Doctor is less
reliant on gadgetry (hence the departure of K-9 with Romana, and the loss of
the sonic screwdriver in a Davison story called The Visitation). The Master is
still around. And, alas, no scarf. The Doctor unravels it to find his way
around the TARDIS during his latest regeneration, a fate he saved it from in
the labryinth on Minos (or was it Crete?). I've seen three Davison stories,
and he is good. (It seems to be an established fact that your favorite Doctor
is the first Doctor you see, no matter how much you like the others.) Some of
the events are given away in the Dr Who guide available to this list, but all I
will say is that one companion leaves the show, another seems to leave but will
be back, and a certain category of villains will return. The twentieth season
will have a former companion in every story - the Brigadier is confirmed. The
Black Guardian, whom the Doctor foils at the end of the Key to Time series, is
also back. And the Doctor will return to Gallifrey.
The nineteenth season, which is the first year of Davison's Doctor, will be
available in the U.S. starting January 1; the twentieth season will become
available in March, and the twenty-first season in March 1984. There is a
two-hour twentieth birthday special being planned - I'm not sure what the
distribution for that is. And a series called the Five Faces of Doctor Who,
featuring the very first Doctor Who story, a Troughton story, the Three
Doctors, a Pertwee story, and Logopolis, is supposed to be distributed as a
package. (Harass your local stations!)
------------------------------
From: "Dave Mitton at Smaug c/o" <DEC-SFL at DEC-Marlboro>
Posted-date: 8-Dec-1982
Subject: Star Wars and the Death Star trivia
The person that mentioned that the Death Star is not called that in SW is
wrong. Upon a recent review of it, I paid attention to that detail and
noticed that no one calls it the "Death Star" until the final scenes at
the rebel base. Then the mission control "voice" starts announcing the
time until the "Death Star" will be in range. Previous to that all of
the Empire personnel call it a "battle station" or simply "this station".
A good example is the meeting in Gov. Tarkin's conference room.
Another interesting thing I noticed is that Lucas carefully avoided any
obvious text in our "Roman" alphabet. You will see lots of Arabic numberals,
and some funny symbols here and there, but there is only one place that
you see readable English text. That is on the Tractor beam control
that Obi-Wan turns off. I guess this was really necessary, since you
had to know what he was doing, and he wasn't about to explain it aloud
under the conditions. I think it is this attention to detail that
makes the world of Star Wars such an "believable" setting.
Dave Mitton.
------------------------------
From: "TSC::COORS::VICKREY c/o" <DEC-SFL at DEC-Marlboro>
Date: 9-DEC-1982 00:13
Subj: Yoda == Emperor?
THAT'S IT!!!!!!!!!! Yoda is REALLY the Emperor IN DISGUISE. There is no
other. The Rebellion is doomed!
And Merry Xmas to you,
susan
------------------------------
From: "RUNE::B_TODD c/o" <DEC-SFL at DEC-Marlboro>
Date: 12-DEC-1982 22:42
Subj: ROTJ, Wolfe, Clarke
All right, already! My vote for the 'other hope' has always been Vader
(what else would show the ultimately benevolent direction of the Force
than a conversion?), but I can't really get involved in the endless
(and fairly groundless) speculative process.
Discovering SHADOW OF THE TORTURER (Wolfe) was a rare treat: it has
been a very long time since I read ANYTHING that actually used the
English language rather than whatever subset the author felt appropriate
for the illiterate (or maybe the authors themselves have become so).
In closing, let me cast a vote for reviews (book or movie) in preference
to speculation (that's just an opinion, not a call for censorship).
Alternatively, partitioning SFL so that one can safely skip the frothier
sections would be useful.
- Bill
------------------------------
--------