Welcome, all, to post 666 on the blog.
Whether this is necessarily somewhere where you can get your kicks, as the picture suggests, or if that a person who has understanding will count the number of the blog to be 666, I don’t know.
Either way, I hope you don’t find the blog to be evil in any way, and that if you can’t get your kicks here, that you may at least find something of interest.
Something I’ve discovered – which I didn’t know last Remembrance Day – is that my great-grandfather fought in World War I.
I’m still researching it further, but from what I’ve gleaned so far, he joined up in 1914 as one of the ‘Pals Battallions’ which were formed in Liverpool. As I understand it, these were formed because Lord Kitchener believed that the key to winning the war was sheer force of numbers, and so it was made possible for people to sign up with their friends and work colleagues, and serve alongside them. This was a very successful idea, as within several months over 3000 people signed up, and it appears that my great-grandfather was among them.
It’s obviously rather lame – though probably predictable – that knowing one of my ancestors served in WWI has made it feel slightly closer to home, but I think that’s probably for two reasons, really; firstly, reading about him and trying to track down further details of my great-grandfather has meant I’ve learned new things about events of his life (and indeed lifetime), which has made me more aware of them, and brought them to life for me.
Secondly, and less personally, I think it’s often the case that we learn more or feel more about major events by looking at it on a personal or human level; for me, one of the reasons why Anne Frank’s Diary Of A Young Girl is so powerful a document is because it speaks so clearly of emotions and feelings which we can all understand and relate to – fear and loneliness to name but two – and then, when you consider that her experience, and worse, was one which was shared by millions of people, it’s like a punch to the gut.
So, in the past few months, I’ve perhaps felt a greater empathy for those people who are brave enough to fight for their country, and a greater realisation of how we owe them a debt we can never truly repay. In tandem with this, unfortunately, I feel a growing sense of anger that all too many politicians seem to see war as little more than a way to gain approval points or political prestige – many of the improvements in the country set up after WWII (such as the NHS and education) are constantly being whittled away, and it seems all too clear that all of the ‘WMD’ nonsense before the invasion of Iraq was simply that – nonsense – to justify going to war. I find myself wishing that the bravery of those who are willing to fight in wars was in even partly matched by honesty on the part of the political masters who put them in harm’s way.
I respect anyone who’s willing to fight for their country, as it’s something I’m not so certain I could do. In remembrance of those who have fallen, and as a parting shot at those who seem all too willing to incite conflict, I’d like to leave you with a quote from Rudyard Kipling, specifically his Epitaphs Of The War:
‘If any question why we died,
Tell them, because our fathers lied.’
If you, or those you care about, have served in the forces, or are currently serving, I’d like to express my admiration and thanks – the comfort and safety of my daily life, I am all too aware, was bought at a high cost.
To my mind, one of the few disappointments in all of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s original Sherlock Holmes tales is the introduction of his nemesis Professor Moriarty.
Professor James Moriarty first appears in The Adventure Of The Final Problem, in which Holmes is revealed to have been thwarting the plots of ‘the Napoleon of Crime’ for some time. Holmes and Watson flee England to escape retribution from Moriarty and his men. The two of them travel to Switzerland, and whilst walking near the Reichenbach Falls, Watson is called back to their hotel to assist someone who’s been taken ill. This is a ruse, and when Watson realises and returns to the mountain path, he finds a note from Holmes saying as much, and that he expects both he and Moriarty will fight to the death. Watson sees signs of a struggle on the path, and concludes that Holmes and Moriarty, whilst fighting, have fallen to their deaths.
I’m summarising it there (and inevitably losing a lot of the original tale’s skill and charm; if you haven’t read it, I urge you to do so), but that’s the general gist. It’s not a bad story in and of itself, and it’s pretty well-known that Doyle was trying to kill off Holmes in an impressive way so he could write other things, Holmes having become a millstone, albeit one which was a nice earner. The main problem – as opposed to the Final Problem – I have with it is that the introduction of Moriarty as Holmes’s polar opposite, and his demise at Reichenbach, all occur within the one story. Whilst Holmes is portrayed as having been aware of Moriarty’s nefarious ways for some time, the reader hasn’t really had much chance to sense that an arch-foe is on the move, and though later stories build the mythology of Moriarty’s wicked ways, we can only take Holmes’s word for it. Well, Holmes’s comments as reported via Watson through Doyle, but you know what I mean.
Anyway, I’ve been thinking about this recently because the novel I’m currently working on (more in my head than on the page at the moment, granted) The Body Orchard, features a return match between a deeply villainous chap and the detective who caught him last time. Part of the problem I’ve been mentally wrestling with has been that of establishing the stakes involved, and the backstory. I’m taking my cue somewhat from Thomas Harris’s Red Dragon, wherein the reader hears much about Hannibal Lecter from his opposite number, Will Graham; Graham’s portrayed as an intelligent if troubled man, whose references to Lecter make it very clear that he’s a man who should never be underestimated or trusted, even for a moment. In much the same way as Holmes tells us that Moriarty’s a baddie of the highest order, we learn about the villain from a character who we’ve already started to root for or empathise with. Granted, Holmes is less human than Graham, but I think that the comparison’s a reasonable one. And there are other examples of characters, or events, being made portentous by more virtuous characters – Yoda’s line “You will be” in The Empire Strikes Back, and the Doctor’s look of panic at the end of the Doctor Who episode Turn Left, spring to mind, and I’m sure you can think of others.
So anyway, this is something that I’ve been mulling over recently – the challenge of making it clear that a villain is someone to be reckoned with, without having to show them running over blind orphans with a combine harvester. I’m feeling fairly comfortable with the solutions I’ve come up with, but now I have another question: since my villain is supposed to be so very clever indeed, how do I demonstrate that in a fashion that doesn’t look token or unconvincing? Holmes and Moriarty were only ever as smart as Doyle, and Will Graham and Lecter as intelligent as Thomas Harris (and in the book Hannibal, Lecter appears to have lost a lot of his intelligence, but I was ferociously disappointed with that book, and I won’t get into that now).
In exactly the same way, my characters always have the disadvantage of only ever being as clever as me, which – as is abundantly clear to anyone who reads this blog on a regular basis – means that if I portray them as, say, walking upright or using tools, they’re already pushing at the boundaries of my knowledge.
*With apologies to Bill Shaky (Macbeth Act 1, Scene 2)
Neil Patrick Harris as Dr Horrible, and Jack Knight as DC Comics’ Starman.
One baddie. One goodie.
And, it seems, one goggle supplier in common.
That’s right, even the lampposts are made by Chanel.
I, for one, certainly see no reason why Gunpowder Treason should ever be forgot.
(Pictures taken from our wedding firework display)
…This is one such thing.
In an interview for the Writer’s Guild Magazine, writer James Moran aims a well-deserved kick at the groin of one of the most irritating and pervasive cliches about Doctor Who:
Question: Was it the old cliché of hiding behind the sofa as a kid?
Moran: […] while I did get scared a lot, I never hid behind the sofa (it was impossible, because our sofa was against the wall.) I don’t know how all these people claim to have hidden behind their sofas as kids, unless they all lived in massive, Friends-style apartments with the sofa in the middle of the room. I suspect many of them didn’t actually watch the show and are retconning their own childhood to jump on the bandwagon.
Mr Moran, I salute you.
What with this, and the fact that it’s now known by an audience of millions that Daleks can go upstairs, it must be a hell of a challenge for a lot of journalists to write about Who nowadays, eh?
…This is one such thing.
In an interview for the Writer’s Guild Magazine, writer James Moran aims a well-deserved kick at the groin of one of the most irritating and pervasive cliches about Doctor Who:
Question: Was it the old cliché of hiding behind the sofa as a kid?
Moran: […] while I did get scared a lot, I never hid behind the sofa (it was impossible, because our sofa was against the wall.) I don’t know how all these people claim to have hidden behind their sofas as kids, unless they all lived in massive, Friends-style apartments with the sofa in the middle of the room. I suspect many of them didn’t actually watch the show and are retconning their own childhood to jump on the bandwagon.
Mr Moran, I salute you.
What with this, and the fact that it’s now known by an audience of millions that Daleks can go upstairs, it must be a hell of a challenge for a lot of journalists to write about Who nowadays, eh?
You know it makes sense.
As m’chum Steve has already recounted, on Friday night he and I went to see a filming of the Channel 4 comedy The IT Crowd. His post says a lot about the shows, so this is my more self-absorbed version of events (ahem).
It was a lot of fun, and the first time I’d seen a studio sitcom recorded in… hmm, come to think about it maybe it’s the first time ever, so it was fascinating to see how it was all done. It was filmed at Pinewood Studios, and it was startling – in the best way – to see how the offices and other rooms in the show look in reality and on screen.
Steve and I were the guests of my friend Sean, who’s IT Consultant for the show, so after Sean and the other cast and crew members had done the hard work, Steve and I stepped onto the set to help Sean with de-rigging, as it was the last show of the series. This felt kind of odd in itself – I’ve followed the show since it began, and so to be crawling round on the floor behind Roy and Moss’s desks and helping pull cables through the wall made me feel like I wasn’t quite in the real world any more (I felt like Eddie Valiant in Who Framed Roger Rabbit when he goes into Toontown).
Anyway, after we’d helped Sean do what was necessary, we were taken into the green room, where various members of the cast and crew were having a well-earned drink. Just inside the door, and looking surprisingly relaxed, was the writer-director Graham Linehan, who Sean kindly introduced me to, and explained to Graham that I’d contributed to one of the show’s websites.
Graham – and I’m going to call him by his first name because he’s a friendly chap and I don’t think he’d take offence – asked us if we’d had a good night, and specifically what we’d thought of a particular scene in the last episode, and it was very interesting to see that he’d thought of an angle on it which I hadn’t; very much a case of the creator being so in control of the material that he’s able to see things which someone who’s less steeped in it (me on this occasion) would miss. But he was friendly about it, and it was a genuine shame that I had to leg it early to get the last train home, as it would have been good to chat more.
I’ve barely touched on how funny the shows were – mainly because Steve’s covered them in more detail, and also for spoiler-related reasons – but they were very strong episodes, and all in all it made for a cracking night out, and I’m mega-grateful to Sean for getting us on the guest list.
If nothing else, looking at the size of the sets, all the lighting overhead, the cameras and mics pointing at the cast, and the number of people who were hard at work, it made me even more keen to continue with writing, given that everything in that studio was there because once, Graham Linehan sat down and typed ‘INT. OFFICE – DAY’…
Powered by WordPress & Theme by Anders Norén
