Jo Grant in Space

Twitter has earned itself a bad reputation as the home of cancel culture and Donald Trump. But it's also the place where Katy Manning endearingly expresses her enduring affection for Jon Pertwee. I have no grounds to suspect anything was going on between the two behind the scenes on Doctor Who but wouldn't it be lovely? Especially since this is her Twitter profile to-day:

To-day she's also tweeting about losing her purse so if you happen to see it, please return it to her.

Manning was in hospital recently and I was happy to see when she finally returned to Twitter after surgery on her eyes. It put me in the mood to watch one of her episodes so I watched Colony in Space, a 1971 story by Malcolm Hulke. In this serial, to bypass an invisible security beam set by the Master (Roger Delgado), the Doctor (Jon Pertwee) encourages Jo (Katy Manning) to lie flat on her back and "wiggle away!"

The effort draws some involuntary gasps and cries from Jo but they both make it safely inside the Master's TARDIS, thank heavens. Once inside, they begin poring over the Master's files.

They find a document the Master had stolen from the Time Lords about an indigenous race that produced a superweapon before devolving to "primitives". So that explains one document in these cabinets, what are all the others? I amused myself thinking about Missy spending long evenings scrupulously attending to piles of paperwork.

This is another instance where Steven Moffat retroactively improved Doctor Who with Missy. I used to think it silly that the Master doesn't kill the Doctor in Colony in Space and it seemed really strange when the Master offered to share control of the universe with the Doctor. After Missy, the inconsistent nature of the Master's fixation on the Doctor actually makes sense.

MASTER: "Look at all those planetary systems, Doctor! We could rule them all!"

DOCTOR: "What for? What is the point?"

MASTER: "The point is one must rule or serve, that's a basic law of life."

Of course the Master would see life as only being about power.

The serial's mainly about a conflict between a colony and a mining company and I like how many shades of grey there are in the conflict. The mining company is obviously the villain but they do have a point when they argue the need for the planet's mineral resources on Earth may be more important than the colonist's obstinate struggle to make plants grow on an apparently barren rock. Why the planet can't be colonised and mined isn't clear--Earth has both colonies and mines, after all. Hulke was apparently inspired by the history of the American colonies which makes it surprising it didn't occur to him that settlements and mining operations often had symbiotic relationships. Why don't the colonists open some saloons? Maybe a casino?

The mostly male cast is a bit strange, with the couple female characters both in caretaker roles among the colonists. The demarcation of gender roles is surprising after the feminism of Pertwee's first season. It turns out this was apparently due to the BBC's Head of Drama Serials, Ronnie Marsh, who objected when actress Susan Jameson was cast as one of the miners on vague grounds that it wouldn't be suitable for a family audience. So she was replaced by an actor named Tony Caunter. I wonder how many decisions like that happen to-day?

But the serial does have a good guest cast. I really like Morris Perry as the cruel and callous head of the miners, Dent, even if his hair looks like he was filming Richard III between takes.

This was also the last appearance of one of my favourite Doctor Who guest stars, Bernard Kay, who gets a complex role here as the seditious miner who helps the Doctor and the colonists.

It's not that he's not interested in the profits and he says he doesn't mind lying to the government. He just doesn't want to murder anyone. He has a lot of nice juicy scenes where he has to sort out his feelings and make up his mind.

The alien "primitives" have a cool design. I like how there are three different kinds, my favourite being the supremely wise elderly baby.

This is a six part serial but, like a lot of Pertwee's early serials, very easy to watch in one sitting.

Twitter Sonnet #1382

The quarry kicks a coin against the salt.
The kind of starch we need is under cloth.
The golden air Capone consigned to vault.
We asked a sullen, drinking, mobster moth.
A picture nears with smiling jacks awake.
Assembled pegs complete computer storms.
The salty snow prepares the ground to bake.
The hedges rise to craft a dream of forms.
Confusing plans began with rocks and food.
The big iguana's really just a dream.
Our metal arms would wreck the nature mood.
The other crew were stacked within the beam.
The power came from paper brains and pens.
The lumps of grain and stone we'd count as wins.

Life is Sweet, Until There's Murder

What can a young man do when faced with the inconvenience of an unexpectedly pregnant girlfriend? Robert Wagner opts for murder in 1956's A Kiss Before Dying, a cheesy but entertaining effort from first time director Gerd Oswald. The best part of the film is the gorgeous cinematography by Lucien Ballard.

How clean everything looked in the '50s. There's a great quantity of location shots in this movie. I really like how it doesn't seem like everything's been pissed on. The general absence of graffiti reminds me a lot of Japan. David Lynch has talked about how much he hates graffiti. I've never much thought about it but I'm starting to agree. You can say maybe it's self-expression, etc etc, except 90% it's indecipherable and even the stuff you can read tends to blur together into one uniform pattern, not doing much to make itself distinctive, doing more to make the architecture it mars indistinct.

I was also reminded of Japan because of all the check. People love to wear check in Japan. Also in this movie.

The blouse worn by Ellen (Virginia Leith) stands out from the couch by being pink check instead of beige check. Later she swaps the pink for powder blue check for a desert outing with Bud (Robert Wagner).

Ellen is the sister of Dorothy (Joanne Woodward), the girl Bud impregnates and murders. The fact that he kills her without even broaching the topic of abortion says something about '50s American taboo. That may have been part of the point, though. There's an anti-establishment subtext to the film, like many '50s youth dramas. Ellen and Dorothy's last name is "Kingship" and their wealthy father, whose disapproval for Dorothy's pregnancy Bud fears will lead to the loss of her inheritance, is played by George Macready, an actor known for playing villains.

The film loses much chance at subtlety, though, with Bud's ridiculously obvious machinations to murder Dorothy and her almost complete failure to get the hint. After he asks her to return a photo of him, after he repeatedly tells her not to tell anyone of their relationship, after he asks her to translate from Spanish, in her own handwriting, something the looks a lot like a suicide note . . .

The second half of the film features Ellen trying to discover the identity of Dorothy's killer with a little help from Jeffrey Hunter. The same year he played the kid in The Searchers he's shown here a learned upperclassman. He's always, always, holding a pipe.

Ellen proves a little smarter than her sister, thankfully, and I quite liked Leith's performance. It doesn't hurt that she's a knockout. Wagner is nice and sinister as the killer pretending to be a good boyfriend (whether his character in real life happened to inform such a performance I won't speculate). Mary Astor is interesting in a small role as Bud's mother.

A Kiss Before Dying Is available on Amazon Prime.

A Mystery on a Time Table

One thing 1953's A Blueprint for a Murder definitely has is a good blueprint. The plot about a woman who may or may not have murdered her stepdaughter finds ample opportunities for great, provocative suspense. The cast is terrific, too, featuring Joseph Cotten, Jean Peters, Gary Merrill, and Catherine McLeod. It doesn't quite connect, though. There's a peculiar disconnect from the events portrayed that I would blame on director Andrew L. Stone's bad instincts and possibly on studio interference. Certainly the ending of the film, which strikes several wrong notes, feels like it was a hasty studio mandate.

Cam (Cotten) has a job that requires him to do a lot of world travel so he hasn't actually gotten to know his sister-in-law, Lynne (Peters), very well. Her husband, his brother, is now deceased and she's taking care of his two children from a previous marriage. Cam comes home when one of the kids is dying in the hospital from a mysterious ailment.

I was happy to watch Joseph Cotten and Jean Peters play off each other in good cinematography--the two also star together in Niagara, a great colour noir--but the film makes its first misstep when the little girl dies. No-one ever seems quite as devastated by it as they ought to be though Peters does a good job of never seeming too guilty or too innocent. When a kid dies, at least one person really ought to be shown crying or despondent. Something to suggest trauma.

Stone also wrote the screenplay which really is a good blueprint. He's good at arranging all the legal facts and plot points as Cotten pursues his own investigation, instigating an autopsy and questioning the nursing staff. All the actors do fine but one senses a clear lack of direction in every scene. Everyone seems to be in default line reading mode, some actors being better at it than others. Cotten is always good, I consider Peters one of the 1950s' underrated treasures, and Merrill is fine as the family lawyer helping Cotten figure things out. Catherine McLeod plays Merrill's wife and she's the first person to suspect Peters might be a killer. When Cotten mentions how the little girl complained repeatedly, "Don't touch my feet!" McCleod is reminded of a case of strychnine poisoning she investigated. The actress makes an interesting gesture with her hand on her face while she thinks.

Together with the weirdness of the line, "Don't touch my feet," the scene is memorable.

The end of the film finally reveals whether or not Lynne is indeed the killer. Set on a cruise ship, Cam has to pretend he's falling in love with Lynne so he can keep an eye on her and possibly get close enough to kill her before she kills the other child. But is he falling for her? Is she falling for him? That seems to be the implication. Because of this, the movie really needed to do some followup after the final revelation but it doesn't. It's as though Stone's interest in the film's plot wasn't matched by an interest in its heart. Maybe he should've built model trains instead. On the other hand, if another director used his screenplay, I could see this being a really good movie. Otto Preminger or John Huston maybe.

A Brilliant Cocktail of Ice Skates, Tugboats, Apples, and a Cowgirl

Disney must have learned from their mistakes in the previous two anthology films because 1948's Melody Time is a masterpiece. A series of flawless shorts present impeccable style, seemingly effortless comedy, and some powerful drama. It's a breathtaking feat in short form storytelling; a breakthrough in Disney's late 1940s, simpler visual style; and an astonishing example of keen storytelling instincts.

TRIGGER WARNING: This post contains Trigger, the Smartest Horse in the Movies.

Roy Rogers with his horse, Trigger, appears in live action to narrate the final tale to Bobby Driscoll and Luana Patten. With a singing group called the Sons of the Pioneers, Rogers proves a perfect fit for the story of Pecos Bill, the "fakelore" figure created by writer Edward S. O'Reilly. With the genius for comedic timing of Disney's animators, Bill's improbable youth and tale tale feats are presented with appropriate rapidity and exaggeration, from his creation of the Rio Grande to the trademark Lone Star of Texas itself.

And I really need to commend Disney+ here. According to Wikipedia, "For the first time in 80 years, the uncut version with Pecos Bill's cigarette can now be seen on Disney+." Although it was available elsewhere in the world, for years the only available version of this short featured Bill's cigarette edited out of every shot, resulting in strange hand gestures and a drastically shortened runtime. But now it's all back, even Bill rolling a cigarette with his tongue and lighting it with a lightning bolt.

In addition to the pleasure of having these bits back in themselves, they also complete the patchwork of editing and animation, allowing the story to flow in its natural form. Bill, with his carefree embrace of solitude, danger, and unshakeable good nature, is a delightful, celebratory caricature of distinctively western American culture. The short also features one of the sexiest women of the Disney animated canon, as big in her way as all the natural phenomena Bill encountered before.

"When down the stream comes Slue Foot Sue, with all her charms revealed to view." Meaning her anachronistic panties, I suppose. Her fate is sadly determined by the bustle she decides to wear when attempting to tame Bill's horse, the second time Melody Time mines comedy gold from women's undergarments.

The first short, Once Upon a Wintertime, is a gentle romantic story with a song performed by Frances Langford.

A boy and girl ice skating are mirrored by a pair of rabbits in the same relationship. The unambiguous correlation drawn between human relationships and the natural order is very cute. The poor young woman keeps tipping over, though, due to an overabundance of petticoats, leading to a petty argument and the lass storming off unwisely to thin ice.

I love how all the backgrounds change to dark and twisted trees as she and the female rabbit find themselves in peril. Once again, the whole natural world harmonises with the drama between the boy and girl.

Two pure style animated music videos are included in the film, Bumble Boogie and Trees. Bumble Boogie, with Freddy Martin providing a jazz interpretation of Flight of the Bumblebees, is by far the stronger as we watch a poor panicked bee tumble his way through a nightmare of erratic shapes and instruments.

Trees is gorgeous but, being based on the not terribly brilliant poem "Trees" by Joyce Kilmer, here set to music, it doesn't quite hold up.

Little Toot, the story of an anthropomorphised tugboat, would be captivating just for the bizarre mingling of human traits with tugboats. But it's also a story with real tension and drama as the young tugboat causes a real, impressive disaster at the beginning, putting a lot of dramatic weight on his adventure to redeem himself. The Andrews Sisters provide perfect musical accompaniment.

The biggest surprise of the film may be the very simple Legend of Johnny Appleseed. Dennis Day provides narration and voices for an animated interpretation of the legend around John Chapman, the American pioneer. It's hard to explain why this short is so touching but there's something really charming about how unswerving Johnny is in his gentle affection for life and his weird enthusiasm for planting apple trees. He has the pathos of a beloved windup toy and its genuinely a bit heartbreaking when he resists death entirely so he can keep on planting trees.

There's all this and there's a callback short to Donald Duck's South American films. Blame It on the Samba finds Donald reunited with Jose Carioca and the Aracuan Bird as they dance to the music of, and vie for the affections of, organist Ethel Smith.

Any one of these shorts is a treasure. As a whole, Melody Time is a delightful way to spend an evening.

Melody Time is available on Disney+.

Twitter Sonnet 1381

The welcome spiders ran and slept at home.
Remembered hats were placed on drying skulls.
A careful felt was sculpted like the dome.
The dress's cloud was painted 'cross the bowls.
The spinning wheel would sample diff'rent mud.
The sloping hill would puzzle walking up.
The watching spirit swam through burning blood.
The tap supplied a waiting wooden cup.
Upholstered chairs convened to judge a couch.
When time decides the cake was cut in fives.
The mountains cop a big collective slouch.
With soda hands we touched across the hives.
The handle broke and rainy clouds descend.
The books of air with gusted leaves append.

Standing In for the Irreplaceable

You can't buy friends and family, really, but maybe it is useful to pay people to occupy those empty spaces. In fact, it's a lucrative business in Japan and it's the subject of Werner Herzog's 2019 film Family Romance, LLC. Not a documentary, the film consists of scenarios devised by Herzog but stars non-professional actors improvising their dialogue. The film's protagonist is the real life founder of Family Romance, LLC, Yuichi Ishii, playing himself. This experiment in filmmaking is peculiarly suited to the subject, being about an industry where people are paid essentially to improvise roles. This fascinating film examines the performative aspects of Japanese culture and human nature in general.

In Japan, there's a very conscious separation between the "private" and the "public" face--called honne and tatemae. You can see this phenomenon at work in many Japanese films like in the bar hostesses of When a Woman Ascends the Stairs or in the bureaucrats in Ikiru. But living and working in Japan has given me a better perspective on just how prevalent it is. It helps people recognise their roles and the parameters of their responsibilities in all kinds of workplaces. It's a concept that's been criticised and scrutinised--there's even a disturbing smile mask syndrome where the imposition of a forced smile on an employee's face leads to depression from sustained psychological discord. I've seen that frozen smile, too, in movies and in person. But, to be devil's advocate for a moment, I would say there's a counter-intuitive freedom in system where everyone is aware of this performative aspect of the culture. There's a difference between people being fake to seem real and people being fake because everyone is expected to be fake at work. It's a tacit acknowledgement by everyone involved that the woman serving you coffee wouldn't be doing this if it wasn't her job. Since the work persona is so clearly dileanated, it makes it perfectly natural when people let loose in a drunken night of karaoke.

The typical scenarios shown in Herzog's film range from a train conductor for whom Yuichi accepts intense verbal beration from his boss for allowing a train to leave station 20 seconds early to a woman who wants to recreate the feeling of winning a lottery.

These are people who are aware of the artificial experience they're engaging in but the main plot of the film involves Yuichi posing as the father of a 12 year old girl, Mahiro (Mahiro Tanimoto), who's led to believe he truly is her father.

Employed by the girl's mother, he spends time with Mahiro on outings in the park or at restaurants, pretending to be the father who divorced and left her mother when she was a small child. Gradually, Yuichi becomes concerned about signs of real affection from the girl and her mother.

Herzog serves as his own cinematographer in the film and says in an interview included with the film that he tried very hard to be "invisible". It generally seems that in most scenes the film crew consisted of just Herzog himself with a camera, being as close and as unobtrusive as possible to catch moments when he deemed real emotions suddenly manifested. Even in scenes where the client is aware of the business nature of the relationship, the act of performing the role seems to actually create something of genuine feelings of the relationships among the participants.

There is a moment where Yuichi and Mahiro are doing something, both focused on something off screen, and she turns and looks at him without him seeing. There's this look in her eyes of genuine desire or need for something from him and Herzog immediately focuses on her expression. It really does seem real but, after all, Mahiro is an actress performing for us.

The score by Ernst Reijseger is ambient and filled with the kind of static, vibrant, non-committal energy present in another of Herzog's favourite musical selections, the Vorspiel from Das Rheingold (not used in this film). Herzog doesn't pass judgement but there is a definite sadness evoked from a disconnect in the proceedings. Is it because the rented family and friends are the wrong way to address emotional void or because they don't go far enough? The film refrains from presuming this kind of judgement.

Family Romance, LLC is available on Mubi. I got the free trial just to watch this movie, I'm not sure if I'll keep the service. Mubi seems to have a good selection of indie and art films, old and new, and I was able to subscribe to it through Amazon Prime, allowing me to use Amazon's very stable streaming service instead of something like the frustratingly unreliable Criterion Channel servers. But I'm not sure I want yet another subscription service right now.

The Tide Continues

After reading The Ebb-Tide I looked to see if it had any film adaptations. Turns out there were four--I watched the 1937 version because it looked like it had the best cast. Ray Milland plays Herrick and Barry Fitzgerald plays Huish, which I thought was perfect, even if I doubted Fitzgerald could pull off a Cockney accent. But while Milland as he was in The Lost Weekend might have been perfect, in the 1930s his gig was playing straight forward, romantic leads and that's what Herrick is transformed into here. The attempt in doing so is to give him centre stage but paradoxically it makes him a far less substantial character. Who is Herrick if he isn't wrestling with his pride and conscience? Well, he's the wouldbe lover of Francis Farmer who plays a beautiful stowaway named Faith Wishart. There isn't much for her to do, either, but look beautiful which, to be fair, she accomplishes admirably. Also on the plus side, Barry Fitzgerald is every bit as great, and unable to hide his Irish accent, as I expected. Would you believe he plays a fantastic drunkard?

The only American in the book is Captain Davis who's replaced by Captain Thorbecke in this film, an identical character except he's European and played by Austrian actor Oscar Homolka with a thick accent. Milland was Welsh but, as usual at the time, even when playing British characters (like here), he has an American accent. I guess the studios generally didn't like to make Americans look weaker than Europeans and there were still concerns about audiences being unable to understand foreign accents. So they were usually relegated to character actors like Fitzgerald or Eric Blore, save for exceptions like Charles Boyer or Cary Grant, or carryover stars from the silent era big enough to have whatever accent wanted, like Greta Garbo.

Ray Milland as he was in Dial M for Murder would've been perfect as Attwater, who's played by American actor Lloyd Nolan, another British character with an unexplained American accent. In addition to the wrong accent, Nolan completely fails to give Attwater any of his fascinating complexity--his charming manner coupled with paradoxical piety and sadism. I can easily imagine this scene being played between Dial M for Murder Ray Milland and Lost Weekend Ray Milland:

'And what brings you here, Mr Herrick-Hay, or Mr Hay-Herrick?' asked the voice of Attwater. 'Your back view from my present position is remarkably fine, and I would continue to present it. We can get on very nicely as we are, and if you were to turn round, do you know? I think it would be awkward.'

Herrick slowly rose to his feet; his heart throbbed hard, a hideous excitement shook him, but he was master of himself. Slowly he turned, and faced Attwater and the muzzle of a pointed rifle. 'Why could I not do that last night?' he thought.

'Well, why don't you fire?' he said aloud, with a voice that trembled.

Attwater slowly put his gun under his arm, then his hands in his pockets.

'What brings you here?' he repeated.

'I don't know,' said Herrick; and then, with a cry: 'Can you do anything with me?'

'Are you armed?' said Attwater. 'I ask for the form's sake.'

'Armed? No!' said Herrick. 'O yes, I am, too!' And he flung upon the beach a dripping pistol.

'You are wet,' said Attwater.

'Yes, I am wet,' said Herrick. 'Can you do anything with me?'

Attwater read his face attentively.

'It would depend a good deal upon what you are,' said he.

'What I am? A coward!' said Herrick.

'There is very little to be done with that,' said Attwater. 'And yet the description hardly strikes one as exhaustive.'

'Oh, what does it matter?' cried Herrick. 'Here I am. I am broken crockery; I am a burst drum; the whole of my life is gone to water; I have nothing left that I believe in, except my living horror of myself. Why do I come to you? I don't know; you are cold, cruel, hateful; and I hate you, or I think I hate you. But you are an honest man, an honest gentleman. I put myself, helpless, in your hands. What must I do? If I can't do anything, be merciful and put a bullet through me; it's only a puppy with a broken leg!'

'If I were you, I would pick up that pistol, come up to the house, and put on some dry clothes,' said Attwater.

'If you really mean it?' said Herrick. 'You know they—we—they. .. But you know all.'

'I know quite enough,' said Attwater. 'Come up to the house.'

There is a definite attraction between the two men in the book that's not present in the film. I don't generally like to hold up all such things as "code for gay" though I wouldn't be surprised if homophobia were the culprit in the attempt to reroute this chemistry--unsuccessfully--to Francis Farmer's character.

The book has no female characters unless you count one of Attwater's native servants--a beautiful woman mentioned very briefly in the book. Every film adaptation shoehorns a female character in--the first adaptation, from 1922, introduces a daughter for Attwater while a French version from the 60s introduces yet another character. The 1947 version is basically a remake of 1937's, with Rhonda Fleming in the same role as Faith Wishhart.

Faith is the daughter of the captain Herrick, Huish, and Thorbecke steal the ship from. She attracts both Herrick and Attwater but the film doesn't actually make much hay from the love triangle it sets up. The last act is so muddled it presents a lot of plot points while forgetting that it deleted a lot of setup. It's not even clear why Herrick is horrified by Attwater who's condescending attitude about the power of life and death he holds over the natives isn't nearly as pronounced in the movie as it is n the book.

The movie doesn't seem to be streaming in HD anywhere. I watched a lousy VHS rip on YouTube, which is too bad, because I suspect Farmer emerging from the sea in one scene in a totally unexplained evening gown/sarong is really beautiful. But Barry Fitzgerald is a delight in any resolution.

The Current Carrying Men to Infamy

On a hot beach, far from home, a destitute Englishman comforts himself with a tattered collection of Virgil. What path in life led him from university to poverty? The same that leads him further down the spiral in The Ebb-Tide, an 1894 novel by Robert Louis Stevenson and Lloyd Osbourne. A tale of unscrupulous men on a desperate sea adventure, it reads a bit like a darker, more mature version of Louis Stevenson's Treasure Island. There's treasure and stolen cargo, there's a mysterious and grim atmosphere in the beautiful language, much like Treasure Island, but there are also ruminations on human worth and the meaning of moral value ascribed to actions. It's a fascinating and disturbing work, particularly for being the last completed novel Louis Stevenson worked on.

Herrick, the Englishman, befriends two other desperate men--an American sea captain named Davis and a cockney reprobate called Huish. Although circumstances have driven Herrick to compromise his self image as a gentleman, Davis nonetheless trusts him enough to make him first mate when a seagoing opportunity arises. Despite Davis himself having no good reputation for having lost another ship under suspicious circumstances, he's given command of a ship bearing a cargo of champagne when no-one else is willing to take her. The ship, the Farallone, had fallen prey to smallpox, which had killed the previous crew. Only the very dregs of the unemployed beachcombers could be coerced into crewing her now.

But like the scoundrels they are, Davis and Huish soon plan something more ambitious while behaving with less discipline, deciding to commandeer the ship and cargo for themselves to fetch a higher price, but also, compulsively, drinking quantities of that same precious cargo.

In the cabin at one corner of the table, immediately below the lamp, and on the lee side of a bottle of champagne, sat Huish. 'What's this? Where did that come from?' asked the captain.

'It's fizz, and it came from the after-'old, if you want to know,' said Huish, and drained his mug.

'This'll never do,' exclaimed Davis, the merchant seaman's horror of breaking into cargo showing incongruously forth on board that stolen ship. 'There was never any good came of games like that.'

'You byby!' said Huish. 'A fellow would think (to 'ear him) we were on the square! And look 'ere, you've put this job up 'ansomely for me, 'aven't you? I'm to go on deck and steer while you two sit and guzzle, and I'm to go by nickname, and got to call you “sir” and “mister.” Well, you look here, my bloke: I'll have fizz ad lib., or it won't wash. I tell you that. And you know mighty well, you ain't got any man-of-war to signal now.'

Davis was staggered. 'I'd give fifty dollars this had never happened,' he said weakly.

'Well, it 'as 'appened, you see,' returned Huish. 'Try some; it's devilish good.'

The Rubicon was crossed without another struggle. The captain filled a mug and drank.

Herrick finds himself cast further and further from his bright past now that his lot is cast with this murky and deplorable future. What else could he have done but join this voyage?

'That's the dreadful part of it!' cried Herrick. 'Another week and I'd have murdered someone for a dollar! God! and I know that? And I'm still living? It's some beastly dream.'

'Quietly, quietly! Quietly does it, my son. Take your pea soup. Food, that's what you want,' said Davis.

The soup strengthened and quieted Herrick's nerves; another glass of wine, and a piece of pickled pork and fried banana completed what the soup began; and he was able once more to look the captain in the face.

'I didn't know I was so much run down,' he said.

'Well,' said Davis, 'you were as steady as a rock all day: now you've had a little lunch, you'll be as steady as a rock again.'

'Yes,'was the reply, 'I'm steady enough now, but I'm a queer kind of a first officer.'

'Shucks!' cried the captain. 'You've only got to mind the ship's course, and keep your slate to half a point. A babby could do that, let alone a college graduate like you. There ain't nothing TO sailoring, when you come to look it in the face. And now we'll go and put her about. Bring the slate; we'll have to start our dead reckoning right away.'

Dead reckoning is easy enough to explain in words or on paper but Herrick soon finds practical experience is required to do it properly. This is one of the ways the book discusses class and resentment periodically manifests between Huish and Herrick alternately with wary respect. The concept of a poor man gorging himself on champagne is a potent enough symbol of class transgression, mirroring Herrick's own circumstance. In the second half of the novel, the Farallone encounters an island where an English gentleman called Attwater is hoarding a bounty of pearls. Herrick's internal conflict becomes quite external as he's forced to choose between the Attwater and the drunken pirates. But instead of choosing between good and evil he finds the choice is between two kinds of brutality. He realises his life has finally brought him to a point where he no longer feels he is free to choose between killing and not killing but only between which men to murder.

He considered the men. Attwater intrigued, puzzled, dazzled, enchanted and revolted him; alive, he seemed but a doubtful good; and the thought of him lying dead was so unwelcome that it pursued him, like a vision, with every circumstance of colour and sound. Incessantly, he had before him the image of that great mass of man stricken down in varying attitudes and with varying wounds; fallen prone, fallen supine, fallen on his side; or clinging to a doorpost with the changing face and the relaxing fingers of the death-agony. He heard the click of the trigger, the thud of the ball, the cry of the victim; he saw the blood flow. And this building up of circumstance was like a consecration of the man, till he seemed to walk in sacrificial fillets.

The progression of the story is remarkably like a noir at times. It's an engrossing, unsettling, and conflicted book filled with complex, colourfully rendered characters. And like a noir its central drama turns on just how much control a man really has of his life and his actions.

Twitter Sonnet #1380

A button veils a lever plugged to life.
Between the chairs a table sets the tone.
Collapsing plates reveal the dinner strife.
But growing legs decide they're almost grown.
The idle tracks were tapping rock and sod.
Another train was passing webs and wings.
The summer poison simmers 'round the pod.
The exo-chorus chatters loud and sings.
The action sequence built a sparking bridge.
For safer passage walk the dripping coals.
Observers score the move from 'long the ridge.
The smartest feet were strapped to wooden poles.
The frozen dreams could melt and slowly run.
With icy sweets the hours munch the sun.

News from the Brains

I think it's fair nowadays to get the impression news media are controlled by a ravenous meat blob fixed to a ceiling. But only in the 2005 Doctor Who episode, "The Long Game", was this literally the case. Presumably.

The Ninth Doctor (Christopher Eccleston), Rose (Billie Piper), and Adam (Bruno Langley) wind up on a space station in the distant future where the food is lousy and the aliens are scarce--which is odd, as Adam points out, earning praise from the Doctor for the insightful comment. Sadly, Adam is about to betray the Doctor in his very first adventure as a companion.

Introduced in the previous episode, "Dalek", Adam is an intriguing "failed" companion, one who turns out not to have the ethical fortitude to be trusted with time travel. Which I'm surprised doesn't happen more often--or maybe it does, I'm sure Big Finish could fill in some gaps with companions who don't pass muster after only one or two trips in the TARDIS.

It's a little odd the Doctor isn't upset with Rose for giving the TARDIS key and her rigged cell phone to Adam. But I guess that's love for you.

The station turns out to be the headquarters of the Earth news organisation. I like the Sci Fi metaphor writer Russell T. Davies came up with for how the operation works. First, you've got a half dozen or so people pumping information through their brains to a single person who then passes it from their brain into the system which feeds it back to everyone. The Doctor comments that no-one's brain is big enough to actually hold all that information so it's all gone moments after it's passed through.

Then, the "lucky" few who get promoted are sent up to the 500th floor where, unbeknownst to the majority of employees, they're killed so their corpses can be put to work, overseen by none other than Simon Pegg.

Look at his round, full cheeks! He's quite good in the episode being cocky and sadistic.

Despite being journalists of a kind, the Doctor derides them for failing to question any of the odd things happening around them, like the fact that no-one ever visits other floors and that it's getting increasingly warm. Of course people who have been trained not to think critically would be complacent with the information fed through their brains. I like the idea that it passes through multiple brains, though, because it suggests the information is filtered by perspective, however passive. And, of course, the higher up the ladder they get, the closer they get to a single, communal perspective, in other words, death.