TV

[September 10, 1964] Bewitched, Bothered and Bewildered (September 1964 Television Debuts)

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[We have exciting news!  Journey Press, the publishing company founded by the team behind Galactic Journey, has just launched its first book.  We know you will enjoy Rediscovery: Science Fiction by Women (1958-1963), a curated set of fourteen excellent stories introduced by the rising stars of 2019. 

If you enjoy Galactic Journey, you'll want to purchase a copy today — available physically and virtually!]


by Rosemary Benton

Roll 'em!

Television this year has been a dry well in terms of new programming. With the exception of Jeopardy on NBC and the extremely fun variety show Hollywood Palace there haven't been any new programs to really dig into. Granted, most networks don't add new material until September and October roll around, but ever since the finale of The Twilight Zone and with the impending finale of Outer Limits next year, September could not get here fast enough. Given the wealth of new science fiction and horror programs scheduled to debut this month one can only hope that one of these new series will fill the void of these two departing titans of science-fiction/horror TV.

Since the beginning of the year when TV Guide's first January 1964 issue came out there has been significant buzz circulating about this year's September lineup. In particular five shows premiering this month promise to be a real thrill: the action-adventure cartoon Jonny Quest, undersea science fiction adventure series Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea, the charming and fantastical Bewitched, and the kooky horror-themed family sitcoms The Addams Family and The Munsters.

Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea, premiering Monday 9/14

This might not be the best example of quality science fiction television coming out this Fall, given its direct connection to the poorly written 1961 nautical science-fiction movie of the same name. But Irwin Allen (writer, director and producer of the 1961 film) is convinced that this is a worthwhile premise for an ongoing adventure series on ABC, and since most of the sets from the movie were apparently still in storage I'm sure that saved the production companies (Cambridge Productions, Inc. and 20th Century Fox Television) a ton of money. The fact that the show will be in black and white certainly can't hurt the budget either.

As Irwin is a director infamous for his liberal use of stock footage, and given that the movie sets are going to be reused for the TV show, I am hesitant to put much faith in the further low-budget adventures of the S.S.R.N. Seaview and her crew. I wouldn't say that Irwin Allen is a stellar talent as a writer, either, the abysmal plot and bizarre science of the 1961 movie being the most concerning threats to the success of this show. But I can at least rest easy knowing that Voyage is just one of this Fall's science fiction, fantasy and horror show lineup.

Bewitched, premiering Thursday 9/17

Bewitched is a lighthearted sitcom centered around the misadventures of newly married witch Samantha (played by Elizabeth Montgomery) to well meaning but insecure Darrin Stephens (played by Dick York). Situational comedy will abound as Samantha tries to adapt to living in the mortal world, and we will surely get a good laugh out of Darrin's attempt to reconcile with a wife who is not only more powerful than him, but whose mother is determined to make his life miserable. 

As if the versatile, powerful acting of Agnes Moorehead as the nosy and witchy mother of Montomery's character wasn't reason enough to tune into this show on the 17th, Bewitched's executive producer is the highly successful network executive and program developer Harry Ackerman. His time as the executive producer on the wildly popular family shows Dennis the Menace and Leave it to Beaver has surely given him invaluable experience managing sitcoms. And with his legion of connections within the entertainment industry I would be shocked if the best and brightest talents weren't brought on board for Bewitched. This show, although advertised as rather fluffy, will undoubtedly become a family favorite.

Jonny Quest, premiering Friday 9/18

Jonny Quest is the next science-fiction themed show of note set to premier this month. Upon its 9/18 release on ABC at 7:30 PM EST Jonny Quest will be the 11th animated television series (closely preceded by their 10th series debut The Peter Potamus Show on September 16th) from the powerhouse duo William Hanna and Joseph Barbera of Hanna-Barbera Productions, Inc. From the look of the artwork provided to advertise for the show, this is going to be a very different series in tone and direction compared to earlier Hanna-Barbera creations.

It isn't unfair to characterize the vast majority of Hanna-Barbera shows as goofy looking and brimming with slap-stick humor. Their characters are usually bulbous and colorful with expressive, over the top movements clearly designed to be amusing to young children. Jonny Quest, on the other hand, looks like a comic book come to life!

If one is familiar with science fiction-fantasy anthologies like Alarming Tales from Harvey Comics and DC Comics' Tales of the Unexpected, or any number of western titles from Atlas Comics, then you might recognize the tell tale heavy shadowing and strong jawlines signature to veteran comic book artist and writer Douglas Wildey. To develop the cast and tone for the series Hanna-Barbera brought in this perfectly suited talent to work some artistic magic. It is my sincere hope that this series, with its crisp art and larger budget, will be to Hanna-Barbera what Superman was to Fleischer Studios.

Since writers in comic books are unfortunately not often credited, it's not really feasible to point to a significant number of Wildey's writing assignments in order to predict what type of voice he will bring to the scripts for the show. However, given William Hanna and Joseph Barbera's comments on the upcoming series in their TV Guide interview with Dwight Whitney, I imagine it's safe to say that the signature wacky antics of Hanna-Barbera Productions' earlier works will be tamped down in favor of more gripping story telling. Barbera did say, “If a kid leaves his seat, I'll eat the chair”, after all.

The Addams Family, premiering Friday 9/18

The 18th is going to be a red letter day. Not only do we get Jonny Quest at 7:30 EST on ABC, but at 8:30 EST we get the show I am personally the most excited for – The Addams Family! At long last Charles Addams' New Yorker cartoon about an eccentric and socially clueless gothic family is going to make the jump to film!

Charles Addams did not flesh out his individual characters too much following their initial appearance in 1938. The single panel comics instead focused on the odd juxtaposition of the grandiose macabre behavior of the Addams clan and the astonishment expressed by their wholly average neighbors. Despite the chaos or discomfort that follows in their wake, the Addams' always proceed with unconcerned or oblivious confidence. If the writers can maintain this aloof quality to the central cast of the Addams household then they will have done their job well.

In terms of casting I couldn't think of anyone more fitting to play Morticia Addams than the slim, angularly beautiful Carolyn Jones. John Astin, with his similarly angular face, large eyes and overly enthusiastic smile, is the perfect choice for Gomez Addams. Visually the black and white filming of the show will be right at home with both the macabre fashion sense of the titular family, but it will allow for possible satire of the horror genre as it is now – with Victorian motifs coming off as cliché, and a nostalgic pining for the Universal Studios monsters of the early-mid 20th century.

The Munsters, premiering Thursday 9/24

“Science-Fiction Times” issue 418 sneeringly describes the simultaneous September release of The Addams Family and The Munsters as proof of “just how derivative things can get on TV”. Undeniably, The Munsters is CBS' rival programming to The Addams Family. The main characters in The Munsters are also an extended family of morbid weirdoes living in a crumbling towering manor that is out of place in the nice suburban neighborhood surrounding it. And true, there is a witchy mother figure, along with an eccentric uncle and a Frankenstein's monster-type character.

What immediately stands out between the two shows is one glaringly different character. While the Addams family is unanimous in their attire and foreboding nature, the Munsters' household includes a young conventionally attractive woman. Marilyn Munster (played by Beverly Owen) is a white sheep among dark horses. In sitcoms such a character serves the role of showing contrast and causing plot conflicts. I predict that the main way that this show will stand on its own against The Addams Family by readily acknowledging what the Addams do not – that they are different and that not all of society can coexist harmoniously with theirs.

In some ways this could be viewed as a more mature route to take a sitcom, but I don't think TV audiences need to be worried about The Munsters getting too heavy. After all, the makeup on Herman Munster (played by Fred Gwynne) more closely resembles layered blocks of acrylic paint than makeup designed to look gaunt and sickly. Gwynne's constant dopey grin and hooded eyes also lend a comedic air to his character. Al Lewis' grandfather character is likewise hilariously designed to look like an elderly Dracula ala Bela Lugosi who has really let himself go in the last hundred or so years. Yes, it is superficially similar to The Addams Family, but unless the evidence proves otherwise I think we can safely assume that the two shows will be distinct enough to warrant recognition for their own individual strengths.

Final Thoughts

It seems that for now science-fiction and horror on television will be predominantly paired with a heavy helping of comedy. The use of these genres to critique social concepts will continue unhindered in Bewitched, The Addams Family, and The Munsters, but if the most “serious” science-fiction we can expect this fall is coming from Irwin Allen then it seems like we will need to wait a little longer for the spiritual successor to Twilight Zone and Outer Limits. In the meantime young viewers can enjoy the adventures of the Quest family, and the whole family can tune in to the antics of three new paranormal families trying to make their way in American suburbia. It may be a campy, kooky, and spooky year of TV, but at least it will be fun.

[Come join us at Portal 55, Galactic Journey's real-time lounge! Talk about your favorite SFF, chat with the Traveler and co., relax, sit a spell…]




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Magazine, Science Fiction/Fantasy

[September 8, 1964] It's War! (The October 1964 Galaxy and the 1964 Hugos)

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[We have exciting news!  Journey Press, the publishing company founded by the team behind Galactic Journey, has just launched its first book.  We know you will enjoy Rediscovery: Science Fiction by Women (1958-1963), a curated set of fourteen excellent stories introduced by the rising stars of 2019. 

If you enjoy Galactic Journey, you'll want to purchase a copy today — available physically and virtually!]


by Gideon Marcus

It's a War, Man

No matter which way you look these days, fighting has broken out somewhere.  Vietnam?  War.  The Congo?  War.  Yemen?  War.

Worldcon?  You'd better believe it's war.

Back in May, the committee putting on this year's event (in Oakland, called Pacificon II) decided that Walter Breen would not be allowed to attend.  For those of you living in a steel-plated bubble, Breen is a big-name fan in the SF and coin-collecting circles with a gift for inciting dislike in direct proportion to one's proximity.

Oh, and he's also a child molester.

Now there has been much gnashing of teeth and rending of garments over the draconian action taken by the Pacificon committee, likening the arbitrary action to McCarthy's witch trials of the last decade.  As a result, fandom has largely resolved itself into two camps, one defending the attempt to evict Breen from organized fandom, the other vilifying it.

I know we're a kooky bunch of misfits and our tent should be pretty inclusive, but ya gotta draw the line somewhere, don't you?  And what may have been fine for Alexander doesn't hold in the 20th Century.  I guess it's clear which side I fall on.

Well, despite the protests and the boycotts that tainted the Worldcon (which were part of what deterred me from attending this year), they still managed to honor what the fans felt was the best science fiction and fantasy of 1963.  Without further ado, here's how the Hugos went:

Best Novel

Here Gather the Stars, by Clifford Simak (63 votes)

Nominees

For the first time, the Journey had reviewed all of the choices for Best Novel before the nominating ballots had even been counted.  While we didn't pick the Simak for a Galactic Star last year, it's not a bad book, certainly better than the Heinlein and the Herbert, probably better than the Norton.  I suspect the reason the Vonnegut finished so low is that, as a mainstream book, fewer had read it.  Or perhaps just because it was so weird.

Short Fiction

The No Truce with Kings by Poul Anderson (93 votes)

Nominees

We got all of these this year, too.  The Anderson was our clear favorite, being the only one on the list to rate a Galactic Star.  The rest are in the order we had rated them.  Sadly, because this category encompasses so many stories, a great number got cheated out of recognition.  Perhaps they will divide the categories by length in the future.

Best Dramatic Presentation

None this year — insufficient votes cast for any one title to create a proper ballot.

I bet this will change next year what with so many SF shows coming out this Fall season (Rose Benton has got an article coming out in two days on this very subject!)

Best Professional Magazine

Analog ed. by John W. Campbell, Jr. (90 votes)

Nominees

It looks like people voted for the magazines in rough proportion to subscription rates, though F&SF did disproportionately well.  I am happy to say that this is the year we start covering Science-Fantasy…in its new incarnation under the editorship of Kyril Bonfiglioli.

Best Professional Artist

Ed Emshwiller (77 votes)

Nominees

Book covers are showing their influence on the voting — Krenkel and Frazetta don't do the SF mags. 

Best Fanzine

AMRA (72 votes)

Nominees

  • Yandro (51 votes)
  • Starspinkle (48 votes)
  • ERB-dom (45 votes)
  • No Vote (52 votes)
  • No Award (6 votes)

(isn't it interesting how close the ERB fanzine's tally is to Savage Pellucidar's…)

I was glad to see that Warhoon, which is full-throatedly in favor of Walter Breen, was not in the running.  Starspinkle, which makes no secret of its disdain for Breen, is the only one of these I read regularly.

Also, while Galactic Journey was not on the ballot again (for some reason), we did get a whopping 88 write-in votes.  So, unofficially, we are the best fanzine for 1964.  Go us!

Best Publisher

Ace Books (89 votes)

Nominees

  • Pyramid (79 votes)
  • Ballantine (45 votes)
  • Doubleday (35 votes)
  • No Vote (25 votes)
  • No Award (11 votes)

I should keep track of who is publishing what for next year.  The problem is, I usually read novels in serial format.

And that's it for my Hugos report.  It'll be interesting to see if fandom's scars heal at all by next year.

Veterans of Foreign Wars

Given the turmoil in the papers and in fandom, it's not surprising that war is a common theme in science fiction, too.  In fact, the October 1964 issue of Galaxy is bookended by novellas on the subject; together they take up more than half the book.  They also are the best parts.


by George Schelling

Soldier, Ask Not, by Gordon R. Dickson

Centuries from now, after humanity has scattered amongst a dozen or more stars, the species has splintered to specialize in particular traits.  The eggheads of Newton focus on scientific advance while the Cassidans make the building of starships their trade.  The mystical Exotics have devoted their lives to nonviolent pursuit of philosophy.  The Dorsai, of course, are renowned galaxy-wide for their military prowess.  And the hyper-religious "Friendlies" are committed to faith.

Our story's setting is the wartorn Exotic world of St. Marie, where Dorsai mercenaries have been employed to topple the Friendly mercenaries who had conquered the world years prior.  Newsman Tam Olyn has learned that the Friendlies' mission is a forlorn one, and he hopes to leverage that information to force the Christian zealots to do something desperate, illegal, to win the fight.  For Olyn has a grudge to settle with the Friendlies, having watched them slaughter without mercy an entire company of surrendered soldiers several years back.


by Gray Morrow

Set in the same universe as Dickson's prior Dorsai stories, Soldier is a more mature piece, asking a lot of hard questions.  Is Olyn's zeal any less than that of the Friendlies, any more laudable?  If Olyn's actions cause the destruction of an entire sub-branch of humanity, can the species' collective psyche withstand the loss of one of its vital components? 

Of course, the situation turns out to be far more complex than Olyn thought, with the Friendly commandant and the Dorsai commander proving to be independent variables beyond his control.  In the end, nothing goes as planned.

Soldier is not perfect.  It's overwritten in places, although since the tale is a first-person account written by a war correspondent, I wonder if this was intentional.  The omniscience of the Exotic, Padma, who has an understanding of events and factors that would make even Hari Seldon jealous, is a bit convenient as a storytelling device.  The idea that humanity has evolved in a few centuries, not just societally but mentally, such that vital components of our minds have been bred out of existence, is difficult to swallow.

But Dickson is a good writer, and I found myself turning the pages with avid interest. 

Four stars.

Martian Play Song, by John Burress

A variation of patty-cake that will make you chortle.  Three stars.

Be of Good Cheer, by Fritz Leiber

The first of two robot stories, this is a letter from Josh B. Smiley, Director-in-Chief of Level 77's Bureau of Public Morale to one Hermione Fennerghast of Santa Barbara.  It seems she just can't be happy living in a mechanically run world, where robots ignore the people, where people seem to be increasingly scarce, and where both the indoors and outdoors are being reduced to dull grayness.  Smiley does his best to reassure her that all is for the best, but the Director's verbal smile increasingly comes off as forced.

It's cute while it lasts, forgettable when it's over.  Three stars.

The Area of "Accessible Space">, by Willy Ley

Mr. Ley offers us a list of near-Earth celestial targets that could be reached in the near future by rockets and probes.  The author is quite optimistic about our prospect, in fact: "There can hardly be any doubt that a mission to a comet (unmanned) will be flown before a man lands on the moon."

Anyone want to lay odds?

Three stars.

How the Old World Died, by Harry Harrison

Robot story #2: computerized automata are programmed with one overriding desire — to reproduce.  Soon, they take over the entire world, having deconstructed our buildings and machines to make more of them.

The twist ending to the story is not only ridiculous, but it also is in direct contradiction to events described earlier.  Sure, perhaps the narrator (a crotchety grandpa who remembers the good old days) is not reliable.  But if that be true, then 90% of the story is invalid, and what was the point of reading it?

Two stars.

The 1980 President, by Miriam Allen deFord


by Hector Castellon

Have you noticed that every President of the United States elected in a year ending in zero ultimately dies in office?  Perhaps that's why, in 1980, the two big parties have nominated candidates they wouldn't mind losing (though they'd never admit it publicly).

A cute idea for a gag story, I guess.  Except, in this case, the parties have been maneuvered into their actions by alien agent, The Brown Man, and his goal is racial harmony and equality.

Yeah, I found the whole thing a bit too heavy-handed for my tastes, too.  I've liked deFord a lot, but her work lately has seemed kind of primitive, more at home in a less refined era of science fiction.

Three stars, barely.

The Tactful Saboteur, by Frank Herbert


by Jack Gaughan

From bad to worse.  This unreadable piece involves a government with a built in Department of Sabotage to ensure things don't run too smoothly.  I guess.  Maybe you'll get more out of it than I did.

One star.

What's the Name of That Town?, by R. A. Lafferty

A supercomputer is tasked with discovering an event not from the evidence for its existence, but from the conspicuous lack of evidence.  Lafferty's piece is an inverse of deFord's — a great idea rather wasted on a feeble laugh. 

Another barely three-star story.

Maxwell's Monkey, by Edgar Pangborn

What if the monkey on your back was a real monkey?  This monkey is a clunker.

Two stars.

Precious Artifact, by Philip K. Dick

Humanity emerges victorious from a war with the "proxmen", and Milt Biskle, a terraformer on Mars, is granted the right to return to Earth.  He does so only reluctantly, subconsciously dreading a trip to his overcrowded homeworld.

Once there, he is wracked with fears that the teeming masses of people, the burgeoning skylines are all imaginary.  Underneath, he is certain, lies nothing but ruins, smashed by the proxmen — who were actually triumphant and project this illusion to keep the few remaining humans sane.

But there is a level of truth even deeper…

A minor effort from a major author, Dick's latest warrants three stars.

The Children of Night, by Frederik Pohl


by Virgil Finlay

Lastly, Galaxy's editor picks up the pen to deliver a tale of marketing in the early 21st Century.  It's a topic near and dear to Pohl's heart, he having started out as a pretty successful copywriter, and it's no surprise that he often returns to this subject in his stories.

In this particular case, Pohl's protagonist is "Gunner", a fixer for the world's most reputable (and infamous) publicity firm.  They're the kind who'd even try to reform Hitler's image if the were enough Deutschmarks in the deal.  And in 2022, Moultrie & Bigelow's client is no less than the Arcturan insectoids who tried to wipe out humanity in a decade-long interstellar war.  I mean, how do you sell the public on a bunch of stinky bugs who killed indiscriminately and conducted experiments on children that would make Mengele blanch? (Who am I kidding — the bastard would take notes.)

Unlike many of the author's other marketing stories, this one is played straight; and while I don't know that I buy the ending, no one would argue that Fred Pohl can't write.

Four stars.

Picking up the Pieces

At times, the latest issue of Galaxy feels like a battlefield, with definite winners and losers.  In the end, though, this kind of war is a lot more palatable than the other ones going on in the world. 

At four bits, that's affordable and welcome R&R.

[Come join us at Portal 55, Galactic Journey's real-time lounge! Talk about your favorite SFF, chat with the Traveler and co., relax, sit a spell…]




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Science / Space Race

[September 6, 1964] New Stars in the Sky (Explorer 20, Nimbus, and OGO-1)

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[We have exciting news!  Journey Press, the publishing company founded by the team behind Galactic Journey, has just launched its first book.  We know you will enjoy Rediscovery: Science Fiction by Women (1958-1963), a curated set of fourteen excellent stories introduced by the rising stars of 2019. 

If you enjoy Galactic Journey, you'll want to purchase a copy today — available physically and virtually!]


by Kaye Dee

I love watching satellites — and it seems like every week now there are new stars in the sky as more satellites are launched to help us learn more about outer space and the Earth itself. Just in the past two weeks, we’ve seen three new satellites dedicated to discovering more about the Earth’s atmosphere and the way it works.

Explorer-XX: Topside Down

The first of the recent launches was Explorer-XX, finally orbited on 25 August from Vandenberg Air Force Base in California after problems with its Scout X-4 booster that took many months to resolve. Explorer-XX has a string of aliases: it’s also known as Ionosphere Explorer IE-A, Ionosphere 2, Science S-48, Topside-sounder, TOPSI and Beacon Explorer BE-A! Underneath all those monikers, it’s the latest in the series of scientific research satellites that began with America’s first satellite, Explorer-I, back in 1958.


Explorer-XX under construction

Explorer-XX’s main purpose is to act as a topside sounder, which means that it takes measurements of the ion concentration within the ionosphere from orbit above it. This data can then be compared with measurements taken from the ground. Since the ionosphere is what makes global radio communications possible, understanding its composition and characteristics is important to scientific and defence research, as well as international radio telecommunications operators.

Unlike some satellites, Explorer-XX doesn’t have an onboard tape recorder, so it can only transmit data when it’s in range of a ground station. One of those ground stations happens to be just outside the Woomera Rocket Range, at NASA’s Deep Space Instrumentation Facility at Island Lagoon. Island Lagoon is actually a dry salt-lake (and not a bad picnic spot for a nice Sunday outing from Woomera Village), and its shores proved to be an ideal location for NASA’s first deep space tracking station outside America. Last year, the Minitrack radio-interferometry tracking system that was originally installed on Woomera’s Range G to support satellite tracking during the International Geophysical Year, was moved to the Island Lagoon site. Minitrack is part of NASA’s Satellite Tracking and Data Acquisition Network and it can receive the Explorer-XX data. Some of the sounding rocket work out at Woomera also involves taking ionospheric soundings for defence and civilian scientific research, so I’m sure my colleagues at WRE will soon be incorporating the data from Explorer-XX into their research as well.


NASA's Minitrack station at Island Lagoon, near Woomera – one of the data receiving stations for Explorer-XX

Following in Canada's Footsteps

Explorer-XX is only the second topside sounder ever launched. The first was Alouette-1, Canada’s first satellite, which went into orbit almost exactly two years ago and is still in operation. Alouette-1, by the way, was part of a program in which the United States generously offered to launch satellites for other countries. Great Britain and Canada have already had their first satellites launched this way, and Italy will soon have a satellite launched by NASA as well. Australia had an invitation to take part in this project, too, but while I was working for the WRE, I heard that our government had rejected the offer on the basis that the country couldn’t afford it — which is pretty short-sighted thinking, if you ask me!

Canadian scientists celebrating the launch of their first satellite-Alouette-1. Wish there was a picture of Australian scientists doing the same.

Nimbus-1: Second-Generation Weather Satellite

Even if the Australian Government lacked the vision to take up America’s offer of a satellite launch, it is interested in taking advantage of the practical ways in which satellite can benefit the country. Last month, I mentioned Australia’s intention to be part of the INTELSAT communications satellite consortium, and our Bureau of Meteorology is fast becoming a major user of weather satellites. Its ground station was one of 47 outside the United States to receive live weather images broadcast directly from space from the TIROS-8 weather satellite launched last December. Some test transmissions were received from TIROS-8 on Christmas Day, just a few days after its launch, and images have been regularly received since January 7 this year.

Now, the first of a new weather type of weather satellite is in orbit, from which Australia is also receiving data. Nimbus-1 (aka Nimbus-A) was launched from Vandenberg just a few days after Explorer-XX, on August 28. It’s now in polar orbit, more eccentric than desired because of a short second-stage burn, but all its instruments are functioning and ground stations are receiving regular data.


Some people think Nimbus-1 looks like a butterfly, though it reminds me of an ocean buoy with solar panels attached either side!

Like TIROS-8, Nimbus-1 can transmit live cloud images from orbit using the Automatic Picture Transmission instrument. This television system is designed to photograph an area of 800 miles square, which is the largest field of view to date. The pictures are transmitted using a slow-scan system of four lines per second, similar to the way radio photographs are sent. Each ground station is designed to receive three pictures per orbit. Nimbus can also store data on board and retransmit it later if it is not in range of a ground station. But what makes Nimbus-1 different from TIROS-8 is that its High-Resolution Infra-red Radiometer enables it to take images at night and measure the night-time radiative temperature of cloud tops and the Earth’s surface, so that data is being acquired all day, every day.


Here's a diagram of Nimbus-1 showing its main components and instruments.

On its first day in orbit, Nimbus took a picture of Hurricane Cleo as it travelled north along the US east coast after devastating parts of the Caribbean and Florida. This really demonstrates that with the data and images from the TIROS and Nimbus satellites, the Bureau of Meteorology will now be able to reliably track the development of conditions over the Pacific, Southern and Indian Oceans that determine the weather across different parts of Australia. The poet Dorothea Mackellar didn’t call Australia the “land of droughts and flooding rains” for nothing, but weather satellites will undoubtedly improve the forecasters’ abilities to see when these weather conditions are coming!


Hurricane Cleo imaged by Nimbus-1. Its strike on Florida delayed the launch of the Gemini-2 unmanned test flight.

Orbiting Geophysical Observatory-1: A New Design Paradigm

Just two days ago, 5 September (Australia time), NASA’s third recent satellite was launched. This time it was the Orbiting Geophysical Observatory, or OGO-1, the first of a series of satellites that is intended to study the atmosphere, magnetosphere and the space environment between the Earth and the Moon, making sure that it will be safe for the Apollo astronauts to traverse this region of space.


This philatelic cover marking the launch of OGO-1 highlights its role in manned spaceflight safety.

OGO-1 is the largest and most complex scientific satellite that NASA has launched to date. With the OGO series, NASA is taking a new approach to satellite design. Until now, each satellite has been designed to accommodate the instruments and experiments that it would carry. However, with OGO, the satellite design is fixed and the experiments are tailored to fit the satellite. Each satellite will carry about 20 experiments.


Diagram of the universal OGO bus that will be used for all the satellites in the series.

OGO-1 has been placed into a highly elliptical orbit with an apogee of almost 93,000 miles, and the plan is for future OGO missions to alternate between this type of orbit and low polar obits. At 31° inclination (its angle with respect to the equator), the OGO series needs additional tracking stations to supplement NASA’s STADAN network. One of these support stations will be established next year in Darwin, in the Northern Territory, as an outstation of the STADAN station at Carnarvon. This facility is part of the NASA Carnarvon tracking station that I mentioned in my last article, which is a prime tracking station for the upcoming Gemini missions.

Unfortunately, one of OGO-1's long booms and one of its short booms did not properly deploy. As a result the satellite used up most of its stablisation-thruster fuel attempting to lock the satellite into its Earth-stabilised orbit. For the moment, scientists have decided not to turn on any of OGO-1's instruments while they work out ways to operate it as a spin-stablised satellite. Let's hope they succeed as this satellite and its successors promise a wealth of new data on the near-space environment.


OGO-1's deployment from its folded launch configuration to its operational configuration is rather complex. I guess it's not surprising that this new satellite has had some problems in properly unfolding!

It’s exciting to see so many new space missions occurring and knowing that, through the tracking stations around the country (managed by the WRE on NASA’s behalf and operated by local engineers and technicians) Australia is playing its part in the exploration and peaceful use of outer space. I can scarcely wait to see what goes up next month!




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Science Fiction/Fantasy

[September 4, 1964] (The Soviet novella, From Beyond)

4 Comments


by Margarita Mospanova

Imagine a picture, dear readers. It’s a rainy day, the light coming in from the windows dark and heavy. You have a day off work and there’s nothing requiring your immediate attention. You make yourself a cup of tea or a mug of coffee and drag your favorite chair to the nearest window. Turn to the bookshelf to grab that novel that you’ve been dying to read but couldn’t find the time to and… several minutes later realize that you’ve been stuck on the first page for a while. You sigh, take a sip of something tasty, and force yourself to muddle through. And yet, the magic of the day is gone, the perfect atmosphere is gone, the enthusiasm for a new book is gone. The novel lies half open on your knees, its pages crinkling softly in protest, and, unreasonably irritated by the whisper of the rain outside, you resign yourself to another wasted day.

Well. That got pretty dark pretty fast. But because that’s happened to me more than once in the past, I now keep a stack of perfect remedies right by the chair. Novels are too long, short stories are, as you might guess, too short, but novellas and novelettes are ideal for when you want to relax for an hour or two but have no desire to commit yourself to something really time-consuming.

And the latest novella I had the pleasure of reading came from the authors easily recognized by our most attentive readers. From Beyond by Arkady and Boris Strugatsky (From the Outside, Strangers, or whatever title the eventual translated edition will bear) started as a small short story and was later reworked into the novella first published in 1960.

Composed of three parts, the story follows professor Lozovsky, an archeologist leading an excavation site in Tajikistan. But each part has its own narrator: a military officer on a camping trip, a scientist from the excavation site, and finally the professor himself.

The structure of the novella deserves a separate mention because not only it is divided by characters and places, but it is also not set chronologically. Which, to my experience, does not happen as often as I would like, being a fan of experimental fiction myself. The first story actually deals with the very end of the professor’s journey and reads a bit like horror to boot!

And for each character the Strugatskys create a completely unique voice which adds a different mood for each chapter. The somewhat direct and down-to-earth officer leads us from a simple hiking trip on a sleeping volcano to a mysterious night encounter with a mad man. The scientist recounts the events in a dry and somewhat formal manner, sticking to facts and nothing but facts. And the professor is a bit naive and as enthusiastic as a child in a candy-shop, which makes his dedication and commitment to science all the more apparent.

All three parts of the novella deal with a first-contact scenario. Or rather a version of it, where humans are not supposed to be a part of the action, so to speak. The novella is fairly short and I do not see a reason to divulge all the details and completely spoil the plot for you, dear readers, but some things are just too good to ignore. As such I will allow myself to gush over one small, but still very much story-relevant part of the novella:

It has a space zoo in it! These two simple words are usually a surefire way for me to completely fall in love with whatever they appear inside. And this novella did not let me down. The zoo was probably my favorite part of it, if I have to choose. Yes, some of the details are a bit hard to believe. Yes, there are plenty of things to nitpick from the science side of things. But let’s be honest here. It’s a space zoo. Very little matters compared to that.

I have to admit that out of all the Soviet science fiction writers the Strugatsky brothers are fast becoming my favorites. So far, most of what I’ve read from them are short stories and I’ve been ready to move onto something bigger for a while now. As such, I am very glad I managed to get my hands on this novella.

No matter the subject, Strugatskys’ characters turn out alive and exceptionally well fleshed out. With just a few word strokes, they paint a picture so vivid, it is better than many a movie I had to suffer through in the past.

And so, it is my great pleasure to award From Beyond by Arkady and Boris Strugatsky five flying tigers out of five.

(Space zoo in zero gravity, dear readers. The tigers aren’t the only ones flying in this one.)

[We have exciting news!  Journey Press, the publishing company founded by the team behind Galactic Journey, has just launched its first book.  We know you will enjoy Rediscovery: Science Fiction by Women (1958-1963), a curated set of fourteen excellent stories introduced by the rising stars of 2019. 

If you enjoy Galactic Journey, you'll want to purchase a copy today — available physically and virtually!]




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Book, Magazine

[September 2, 1964] Taking on The Man (September 1964 Analog)

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by Gideon Marcus

Tarnished Gold

I am an avid fan of science fiction magazines.  It would not be going too far to say that Galactic Journey's original purpose was to document these delightful digests as they came out (since then, our scope has crept quite a bit, even as far as the opening of a publishing company!)

If you've been following my column, you know that I view some magazine editors more favorably than others.  For instance, I have a great deal of respect for Fred Pohl, who helms Galaxy, IF AND Worlds of Tomorrow, all of them quite good reads.  Then there's Cele Goldsmith (now Lalli) who took on both Amazing and Fantastic, and while neither are unalloyed excellence, they are improved over where they were before she came on, and there's usually something excellent in at least one of the mags every month. 

My relationship with Fantasy and Science Fiction's Avram Davidson is more complicated; I understand he's moved to Berkeley and is retiring from the editorship of that magazine to devote himself to writing.  I think that's probably better for everyone involved.  Still, there have been some good issues under Davidson, and I can't let curses go without some grudging admiration.

And then there's John W. Campbell.

Look.  I recognize that his Astounding kicked off the Golden Age of Science Fiction, and that, for a while, his magazine (and its sister, Unknown) were the best games in town, by far.  But Campbell went off the deep end long, long ago, with his pseudo-science, his reactionary politics, his heavy-handed editorial policy that ensures that White Male Terrans are usually the stars (and writers) of his stories, and his inflammatory editorials that I gave up reading a while ago.

Asimov's long-since turned his back on him.  Even I've rattled sabers with him.  But the most poignant declaration against Campbell is a recent one, given by prominent writer Jeannette Ng at a local conference.  She minced no words, denouncing his male-chauvinism, his racism, his authoritarianism, and urged that the genre be freed from the overlong shadow he casts. 


Jeannette Ng, iconoclast

While Campbell's influence in SF is somewhat on the wane, Analog still has double the circulation of the next biggest competitor, four times that of F&SF, where the majority of the women SF writers publish.  It's people like Ms. Ng, pointing at the naked Emperor and noting the ugliness, who will advance the New Wave, the post-Campbellian era.

All I have to say is "bravo". 

The Issue at Hand

The ironic thing is that the current issue of Analog is actually pretty good (full disclosure: I didn't read the editorial, which is probably awful).  Just the cover, illustrating the latest Lord D'Arcy story is worth the price of admission.


by John Schoenherr

Opening up the pages, things are pretty good inside, too.  At least until the end. 

the risk takers, by Carolyn Meyer

This article on the use of mannequins in aeronautical and medical science is lively, much more Asimovian than most of the non-fiction Campbell has subjected us to recently.  And, it's the first time a woman author has graced the science column of Analog.  While the piece is comparatively brief and perhaps aimed at a more general (dare I say "younger") audience than the average Analog reader, I enjoyed it.

Four stars.

A Case of Identity, Randall Garrett

Randall Garrett is possibly the author I've savaged the most during my tenure running the Journey, but even I have to admit that the fellow's latest series is a winner.  Lord D'Arcy is a magical detective hailing from an alternate 1964.  In this installment, the Marquis of Cherbourg is missing, and coincidentally, an exact double has just been found dead and naked near the docks.  There's witchcraft afoot, and the good Lord, along with his sorcerer assistant, Master Sean O Lochlainn, are on the case.


by John Schoenherr

This story doesn't flow quite as smoothly as the first one, spending many inches on the historical background of this brand-new world.  It's still a superlative tale, however.

Four strong stars.

The Machmen, James H. Schmitz


by John Schoenherr

An interstellar survey group is overpowered by a group of ambitious cyborgs.  The goal of these so-called "Machmen" (presumably pronounced "Mash-men"?) is to forcibly convert the captured team of eggheads into brainwashed cybernetic comrades and start a colony.  But one the scientists has gotten loose, and he has a risky plan to thwart the nefarious scheme that just…might…work.

It's not a bad piece.  In fact it moves quite nicely, far more readily than the author's latest (and disappointing) Telzey Amberdon story.  But on the other hand, it reads like it might have come out in the 1930s.  I wonder if it's been hiding in a desk from the early days of Schmitz' career.

Three stars.

Sheol, Piers Anthony and H. James Hotaling


by John Schoenherr

This is an odd piece about the Government postman who delivers parcels to the oddballs who live in the suburbs.  It's quite deftly written, but there's weird social commentary that, while not offensive, feels Campbellian.  Tailor made for John, or doctored after the fact?  There's no way to tell.

Three stars.

Sleeping Planet (Part 3 of 3), William R. Burkett, Jr.


by Kelly Freas

Last up, we have the conclusion to Sleeping Planet.  What started out as a promising novel about the sudden subjugation of the Earth has ended up exactly as predicted.  The few unsleeping humans, along with their robotic allies (abruptly introduced near the end of the last installment), put on a movie show that convinces the invaders that the dead spirits of Earth are taking out their revenge.  This confusion facilitates the final gambit of the Terrans: to infiltrate and revive one of the planetary defense stations in El Paso.  After that, it's all over but the shouting.

There are several problems with this last part.  First off, it's essentially unnecessary.  There are no surprises, the human plan pretty much going as discussed in the last part.  That's the big picture.  Smaller picture issues include:

  • Why were Earth's defense centers even vulnerable to the sleeping dust in the first place?  Wouldn't it make sense for them to have their own air supplies against chemical/biological attack?
  • The amazingly human-like aliens (another Campbellian feature) are always played for suckers.  I was almost rooting for them to win at the end, so arrogant and annoying were the humans.
  • At the end, Earth's leaders make light of the attack, calling it a brief nap (but a warning as to what might happen NEXT TIME).  I understand this is largely to quell panic and outrage.  At the same time, though, it is mentioned numerous times that hundreds, maybe thousands of women were revived and rendered stupefied so that the might "service" the alien troops.  That this mass rape goes unaddressed and essentially laughed off really bothered me.  Honestly, even including this element was disgusting and unnecessary, especially in a story that mostly kept a light tone.

Two stars for this segment, two-and-a-half for the book as a whole.  We'll see if it gets picked up for separate print.

Summing Up

Thus ends another edition of the magazine that Campbell built, representative of the best and worst of the man.  This time, the positive aspects have won out, resulting in a 3.2 star issue.  This is surpassed this month only by Fantasy and Science Fiction (3.4).  There was no IF this month due to a problem at the printers, the result of shifting from bimonthly to monthly.  That leaves the new New Worlds (3.1), Amazing (2.7), and Fantastic (2.6) scoring below Analog and F&SF.  An unusual month, indeed.

Women wrote 6 of 38 pieces (1 of 4 science articles, 5 of 34 fiction pieces), a fairly average month.  Despite the paucity of magazines, there was enough high quality material to make a decently sized issue.  Now that I'm in the anthology business, perhaps I'll do just that…

SPEAKING OF WHICH:

We have exciting news!  Journey Press, the publishing company founded by the team behind Galactic Journey, has just launched its first book.  We know you will enjoy Rediscovery: Science Fiction by Women (1958-1963), a curated set of fourteen excellent stories introduced by the rising stars of 2019. 

If you enjoy Galactic Journey, you'll want to purchase a copy today — available physically and virtually!  Not only will you find it excellent reading, but it will support our efforts and allow us to make more of the material you enjoy!  Thank you for your support!




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Book

[August 31, 1964] Grow old along with me (Brian Aldiss' Greybeard)

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by Gideon Marcus

A slow burn

The British love writing about the end of the world.

Whether it's J.G. Ballard depicting a drowning world, Nevil Shute showing us clouds of atomic radiation slowly enveloping the globe, the cinema showing the day the Earth caught fire, or John Wyndham terrorizing a blind world with man-eating plants, the UK has been fertile ground for a particular kind of disaster story.  While presenting global catastrophes is not unique to Britain, U.K. authors are more apt to focus on the social ramifications, and also the aftermath, rather than the more flashy destruction scenes.  Moreover, British SF tends to take its time with disasters, letting you stop for a contemplative tea rather than maintaining a continuous mad dash.  Of course, Americans write contemplative post-disaster too (viz. Pat Frank's Alas, Babylon, but it's rarer.

Brian Aldiss, the vanguard of the British "New Wave" of science fiction, had already made his mark in this genre with Hothouse, a portrayal of Earth's far-future where humans have reverted to knee-high savages and plants have displaced virtually all of the animal kingdom.  A popular series and then a fix-up book, Hothouse was a hit, winning a Hugo a couple of years back. 

Now, the prolific Oxonion (by residence, not degree) has produced the latest in inexorable aftermath fiction: Greybeard.

Winding down

The basic premise of Greybeard is like a cross between On the Beach and John Christopher's The Death of Grass (No Blade of Grass in the United States).  In 1981, orbital atomic tests cause the Earth's protective Van Allen Belts to waver, and the Earth is scoured with extraterrestrial radiations.  Most large mammals are adversely affected; they sicken and die, they cease to breed true.  Humans are hit worst of all: half the world's children succumb to the ensuing illness, and virtually all humanity is rendered sterile.

Aldiss begins his story in 2029, after society has largely collapsed.  The viewpoint character is Algernon Timberlane, generally known as "Greybeard" for his signature adornment.  Of course, some fifty years after "the Accident", everyone is grey, but Algy stands out for being among the youngest of humanity's remnants, a spry 54-year-old in a world of old coots.  An intellectual and possessed of vigor, and also married to one of the youngest and loveliest women yet living (Martha Broughton), Greybeard stands out, and he has many years left for adventure.

Adventure he does, in a sort of quiet, understated fashion.  From the first chapter, the book wends in two chronological directions.  Going forward, Algy and Martha leave their authoritarian community of Sparcot after it is overrun with feral stoats, their goal to reach the coast and see what's left of the world before it decays completely to a natural state.  Going backward, we journey stepwise to the immediate aftermath of the Accident, first to the warlord era of 2018, then to the world wars of 2001 as nations struggled to secure the last viable children, and finally to Algy's youth, before humanity is certain of its doomed status.

A British manner of storytelling

Greybeard does an excellent job of exploring humanity with a hollowed out spot where its legacy should be.  It's a fascinating study, a story of old people (men and women equally represented) in a field normally dominated by the young.  At first, our species tries to carry on, business as usual.  We then fall by stages into strife and then a senescent blurriness.  In other words, as a race, we age and begin to die. 

Aldiss is never in a hurry to tell his story, letting the reader soak in the sights and smells of the slowly decaying civilization.  At the same time, neither does the pace lag, with Algy moving around quite a bit and meeting an interesting ragtag of other survivors.  The book is in many ways a travelogue of southeast England, with Aldiss' home of Oxford featuring prominently.  This intimate familiarity with the region adds verisimilitude to a very immediate-feeling tale.

The author also cuts the subtle horror of the situation with an arch sense of humor; for instance, the journalistic organization Algy joins after the wars, in order to document the last days of humanity, is called Documentation of Universal Contemporary History, for which Timberline is assigned to the English branch.  Yes — DOUCH(E).  The advancing senility of the people Greybeard meets is at once deeply chilling and comically ridiculous.  In other words, the situation is hopeless but not serious.

Hope or despair at the bottom of the box?

Of course, the overriding question on everyone's mind (particularly the reader's) is whether or not there are any viable children left on the planet.  There are hints given throughout; however, certain verification yea or nay is reserved for the very end.  Either answer would work, but would result in wildly different tales and messages.  I liked the path Aldiss chose.

In any event, Greybeard is definitely one of the stronger books of the year, and another excellent outing by Mr. Aldiss.  Four stars.


photo by John Bulmer

[We have exciting news!  Journey Press, the publishing company founded by the team behind Galactic Journey, has just launched its first book.  We know you will enjoy Rediscovery: Science Fiction by Women (1958-1963), a curated set of fourteen excellent stories introduced by the rising stars of 2019. 

If you enjoy Galactic Journey, you'll want to purchase a copy today — available physically and virtually!]




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Science / Space Race

[August 29,1964] Coming to You Live via Satellite

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by Kaye Dee

Back in early January 1955, I was incredibly lucky to hear space promoter and science fiction writer Mr. Arthur C Clarke give a talk in Sydney about the future prospects of space activities. One of the things he discussed was the way in which satellites in Earth orbit could revolutionise communications around the world, allowing us to make phone calls or transmit television and radio virtually instantaneously from country to country. He first wrote about his ideas for global satellite communications back in 1945, especially in an article in the British radio enthusiasts’ magazine “Wireless World”. Mr. Clarke explained that three satellites, placed equidistantly around a very particular orbit, would be able to provide radio and television coverage across the world by relaying signals sent from ground stations in each country.

The first two pages of Mr. Clarke's seminal article on communications satellites. As a science fiction author, I guess he couldn't resist the title.

The special orbit that Mr. Clarke discussed is now called “geostationary orbit”: it’s 24,000 miles above the equator. Satellites in this orbit are travelling at the same speed as which the Earth rotates, and this means that they appear to be stationary above one spot on the Earth’s surface, so that they can act as a stable relay platform for radio and television signals.

From Imagination to Reality

Well now Mr. Clarke’s idea is in the process of becoming reality! Since 1962, Telstar, Relay and the Syncom 1 and 2 satellites have all transmitted telephone and television between the United States and Europe. But none of these satellites was in geostationary orbit and none of them was in a suitable position to transmit to the Southern Hemisphere. On August 19, Syncom 3, the latest in the series, was launched —and it is going to become the world’s first geostationary communications satellite! Right now, it’s manoeuvring from its initial elliptical orbit up into its final geostationary orbit, which it is due to reach by late September — just in time to broadcast the Tokyo Olympic Games to you in the Northern Hemisphere. Unfortunately, we here Down Under will miss out again this time, but hopefully not for too much longer….


The Syncom 3 geostationary satellite. Soon it will be bringing you the Tokyo Olympics live – if you live in the Northern Hemisphere

Introducing INTELSAT

Just a few days ago, on August 24, Australia formally became a founding member of the International Telecommunications Satellite Organization, which is going to be known as INTELSAT for short. INTELSAT is a revolutionary idea: an intergovernmental consortium that will develop, own and manage a global geostationary satellite communications network to provide international broadcast services. Member nations will contribute to the cost of establishing, operating and maintaining the satellite system, but they’ll get a return for that investment through the revenue generated from satellite usage fees. The really great aspect of INTELSAT is that its services will be open to any nation to use and everyone will pay the same rates. This is an important policy because it means that Third World countries will be able to afford to have access to satellite communications and be connected to the world.

In my May item on rocket mail, I mentioned how important satellite communications could be to Australia. The big difference is that it will really reduce our isolation from the rest of the world. Right now, if something major happens overseas, it’s going to be two or three days at least before we can see any film footage about it on television or in the newsreels. With satellites, we could see things the same day they happen! Satellites will also make it easier for us to communicate within Australia — we’ve got a very big country with a very small population, and there are a lot of parts of the Australia where it’s difficult or just too expensive to provide telephone connections and television service.

A Presidential Proposal

The late President Kennedy first proposed the idea that has become INTELSAT in a speech to the United Nations in 1961.


When President Kennedy addressed the United Nations in September 1961, he proposed a global satellite communications system – and international research into weather control.

He even signed the Communications Satellite Act in 1962 to help bring it into being. That Act created the Communications Satellite Corporation, which calls itself COMSAT, as a private corporation to represent the United States in the international governance for INTELSAT, where most other countries are represented by their national telecommunications carriers: Australia, for example, will be represented by the Overseas Telecommunications Commission (OTC), which has been our telecommunications agency since 1946. In addition to Australia, seven other countries have joined together to establish INTELSAT, and several more nations will become members soon, once their governments have enacted the necessary legislation.

Mrs O’Donahue Saves the Day!

INTELSAT plans to launch its first its first satellite in the first half of next year. Interestingly, I have heard that NASA is thinking of using INTELSAT satellites to provide communications links with its tracking stations around the world for the Apollo Moon programme. Actually, a recent incident at the NASA Carnarvon Tracking Station in Western Australia may have helped to give them the idea. Back in April, the Manned Space Flight Network station in Carnarvon suffered a major loss of communications just minutes before it was due to support the uncrewed Gemini 1 mission.


Gemini 1 launched successfully, but one of NASA's main tracking stations for the mission almost wasn't operational!

A lightning strike destroyed the telephone lines between Carnarvon and the town of Mullewa, which was the tracking station’s only connection to Perth and the overseas cables that carried data to and from America.

Luckily, an alternative route along an obsolete section of an old pole-top phone line was improvised. Information from NASA, relayed via Perth, was sent to along this line to the tiny settlement of Hamelin Pool. Mrs. O’Donahue, the postmistress there, then read the data figures down the temporary line to the Carnarvon telephone exchange for more than two hours! After this near-catastrophe, it’s no wonder NASA is looking for a more reliable means of communication with Carnarvon!


Here's a woman who never thought she'd be saving NASA's bacon: Mrs. O'Donahue, the postmistress at Hamlin Pool

If NASA goes ahead with its plan to use communications satellites for its Apollo communications network, I guess OTC will be establishing Australia’s first satellite ground station in Carnarvon, to keep the NASA station in contact with the United States. I can’t wait to see the first live satellite broadcasts to and from Australia.

And if I can call my Scottish cousins directly via satellite, that’s going to be a slice of science fiction become reality!

[Come join us at Portal 55, Galactic Journey's real-time lounge! Talk about your favorite SFF, chat with the Traveler and co., relax, sit a spell…]




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Book, Magazine, Science Fiction/Fantasy

[August 27, 1964] Change..? ( New Worlds, September-October 1964)

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by Mark Yon

Scenes from England

Hello again!

It seems that the winds of change may be beginning to blow here again in the British Isles. Since we last spoke, we’ve had ex-Prime Minister Winston Churchill retire from Parliament, which may be a sign that the old guard is changing. There are also rumours of a General Election being announced later in the year.

Whilst we are in Parliamentary recess, the signs are that things will get rather intense after the Summer. Should be interesting: Labour have a vibrant new man at their helm, named Harold Wilson, who makes the Conservatives seem staid by comparison.

He’s even met The Beatles, making him the envy of 99% of Britain’s youngsters.

Harold meeting the Fab Four in March 1964

I am tempted to suggest that perhaps the Beatles should be elected – surely with their current global reputation they would stand a good chance. I have enjoyed reading about the US reaction to the A Hard Day’s Night movie, which seems almost as frenzied as the reaction here when I saw it back in July. I decided to wait for the fuss to die down before seeing it myself, but I did enjoy it a lot. If ticket sales are any sign of success, it’s still being shown in cinemas here, with some fans seeing it on a weekly basis.

In terms of music, the seemingly unstoppable Beatles have, after three weeks, had the single A Hard Day’s Night replaced by a slightly more unusual Number One: that by the mighty Manfred Mann (it’s a group and a person!) and their catchy number Doo Wah Diddy Diddy.  My current favourite however is the rather loud and brash You Really Got Me by The Kinks.

If we’re not queuing up to see A Hard Day’s Night again, then the cinema pickings are a little slim. I did enjoy seeing Carry On Spying recently, a comedic spoof of the James Bond genre in that slap-around British manner that is not to be taken at all seriously. The plot is that a top secret chemical formula has been stolen by STENCH (the Society for the Total Extinction of Non-Conforming Humans), and so a bumbling set of trainee spies led by Agent Simpkins (Kenneth Williams) are on the trail, chasing villains such as The Fat Man, Dr Milchman and Dr Crow (really!) around the world.

Movie poster with the inimitable Kenneth Williams (centre)

Ok – it’s not subtle. But it made me laugh, and almost made up for the fact that Ian Fleming is no longer with us – I wonder what he would have made of it.

And whilst I mention Bond, I’m also waiting impatiently for the next Bond movie, Goldfinger, due here next month. Can’t wait.

The signs of change are also here in the newest New Worlds magazine as well. Three issues in of this new version and I think that we’re beginning to see the new format settling down into some kind of order. The good news is that the last couple of issues have been a marked improvement overall for me, although there have been some spectacular mistakes as well – Michael Moorcock’s ‘story’ Goodbye, Miranda in the last issue was just awful.

The Issue At Hand

The cover is another eye-catching one, by ‘Jakubowicz’, in the style of those previously done by Jim Cawthorn. I do like these new covers, they do grab your attention. Can you tell that this is a science fiction magazine? You certainly couldn’t with the last of the John Carnell issues. And we’re also (at last!) seeing some interior illustration as well – it was much missed.

The issue starts with a call-to-arms. We begin with a spirited Editorial from Mike Moorcock attempting to allay concerns that the new artistic approach in the magazine will be at a cost to the entertainment provided by reading old-style science fiction. It’s a convincing argument, although I’m not sure that it will change the views of some of the old-time readers.

The hints are that readership numbers are up on the new magazine – possibly double the print run of the old Nova format. If this is new readers, or lapsed readers, then surely the opinion of ‘the oldsters’ will be less important?

To the stories themselves.

The Shores of Death (Part 1 of 2), by Michael Moorcock

So we begin with the first part of a two-part serial written by the editor of the magazine. And at first glance, the title is straight out of the Pulp-SF era, a tad over-melodramatic.

Look: more artwork! (by James Cawthorn)

Nevertheless, the story is promising, although typically dour. The future for Humanity seems bleak as our galaxy colliding with another means the end of all we know soon.  In addition to this, travel to other places seems to be difficult, if not near impossible – most of those who try to travel long distances away from Earth either die or are driven mad. Our hero of the story, Clovis Marca, is searching for something – an answer, a solution, a source of inner peace before the end, perhaps. He is pursued by people – one is Fastina Cahmin, a young woman, the other the enigmatic Take, who may have an answer for Clovis, though he’s not saying (yet) what it is.

So again, this is an old-style pulp story given new sensibility. There’s sex and lots of inner angst, as Clovis is driven to search for answers. It has that tone of what I’m now noticing as a British theme that the future will be bad and will get worse, and all ends abruptly to be continued next month, but it feels like a lot of fuss about nothing special, which is never good for a story, I find. It’s another so-so effort from the editor, though not as bad as Goodbye Miranda. 3 out of 5.

Private Shape, by Sydney J. Bounds

Another of the old guard making a return to the new magazine. This is an odd one – a Marlow-esque attempt to tell a detective-noir story from the viewpoint of a shape-changing private detective. Didn’t really work for me. 3 out of 5.

Integrity, by P. F. Woods

Another friend of the editor, this is Barrington J. Bailey under his nom de plume, who appeared most recently in the May-June 1964 issue. Integrity is described in the heading as “a story of a Goldwater paradise” about a future ‘Free America’ where shooting everything and everybody for social placement seems common. I get the impression that it’s meant to shock, or at least warn, but it just seems like reality magnified to an unrealistic degree, and therefore loses credibility to me.  3 out of 5.

I Remember, Anita, by Langdon Jones

By contrast I liked this one more. The second story in successive issues by relative newcomer Langdon Jones. I must admit that the title gave me concern as its title reminded me of the Moorcock story last issue, but I’m glad to say that this one was better. It is a love story which initially reads as if it could be published in a mainstream magazine but has a science-fictional twist in the tale at the end. Surprisingly sexy and shocking. This is better than his last story and shows surprising potential. 4 out of 5.

Andromeda, by Clifford C. Reed

Last seen in March 1964, Cliff Reed gives us another dystopian tale. Andromeda is a protest story in a time of strict control, and the consequences to a young woman who dares to speak up in a totalitarian society on “Free Speech Sunday”. It’s another nicely told story, showing how a figure of protest can become a focus point when she chooses to die rather than remain in captivity. A talky tale. 3 out of 5.

New Experience, by E. C. Tubb

I could make a cliched comment about this being a "New Experience", having traditional sf writer Tubb in this new issue of New Worlds, but modesty forbids…

Nevertheless, the return of Tubb is an interesting one. I liked his last serial, Window on the Moon in New Worlds (April – June 1963) at the beginning, although it was a bit of a mess at the end. I was hoping that this story was better.

The story itself is little more than what I can only imagine is a bad drug trip wrapped up in a basic science-fictional idea that scientists are searching for a drug that will remove painful memories. Like a lot of inner-space stories it involves ideas of god-like deities.

It’s certainly different to Window on the Moon, and although it covers similar ideas to stories from the end of the Carnell era – I suspect that it might be one left over in the pile, so to speak – it is better than most of those other drug-addled stories. I can see why Moorcock would like it, as it clearly plays to his William S. Burroughs-ian interests. But for someone like me whose drug-taking extends to the odd cup of tea it leaves me unmoved. Self-obsessed and yet surprisingly dull. 3 out of 5.

The point that the long-established writer’s name has not been used on the front cover of the magazine to sell it, whilst relative new writer Michael Moorcock’s has, is rather telling of the new approach to the magazine. Will Moorcock’s name grab the attention more than Tubb’s?

The return of the book review column shows Burroughs mentioned by Moorcock again as he extols the virtues of J G Ballard and his new book The Terminal Beach.

James Colvin (don’t forget, a pseudonym of Moorcock and Barrington Bayley, which must make editorial meetings interesting!) similarly praises John Carnell’s latest publications – a ‘best-of’ New Worlds from 1961-63, published in America, and his first publication here since stepping away from New Worlds called New Writings in SF.

Honesty time – I tried reading it myself last month and really disliked it, as it seemed to be a issue of old-style New Worlds published in paperback form. It was tired, overwrought and had what I saw as all of the weaknesses of the old magazine but in a book form. I couldn’t finish it.

The review here disagrees with my view, considerably, being “a good start to the series which promises to be one of the most popular and influential ever to be published in this country.”  Hmm.

Of the short book reviews there’s a mixture of fairly un-original fiction, often not the best of the writers involved, and some excellent non-fiction. I was amused by the summary of Robert A Heinlein’s  Revolt in 2100 as “really scraping the bottom of the barrel here. 3 stories on overworked themes by SF’s shadow-Hemingway.” I quite liked them.

In terms of the Letters, there’s more debate on the issue raised in the Editorial, of the point of difficult books over simpler fare, (summarised as “Ulysses is a classic and Finnegan’s Wake a dud”) and a plea to recognise the range in current sf – there is room for everything from Clarke to Burroughs. A sort of “Don’t throw the baby out with the bath water!” kind of thing.

As ever, the reader’s ratings of recent issues make interesting reading, to see if the critical mass feel the same as I did. No surprises to see Ballard doing well, but Goodbye Miranda came fourth – did they read the same story as me?

Summing up

I’m now starting to get an idea of what Moorcock is trying to achieve here. In this new incarnation of New Worlds he clearly wishes to move the genre forward but is also conscious of maintaining links to the past. There is not a complete break with the traditions of the past but there is a clear determination to move towards softer science and more literary material. It hasn’t always worked for me this issue, but I can now see where I think things are going. It should make things interesting. More change…. Exciting times.

On this new schedule the next issue will be out at the end of October. However, I am hoping that I’ve finally been able to get hold of a regular supply of Science Fantasy magazine, which should be out next month. Until next time…

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Magazine, Science Fiction/Fantasy

[August 25, 1964] Combat Zones (September 1964 Fantastic)

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by Victoria Silverwolf

Wars Near and Far

The involvement of the United States in the conflict in Vietnam reached a turning point this month, with the signing of a joint resolution of Congress by President Lyndon Baines Johnson on August 10.


Doesn't look like much, for a piece of paper sending the nation into an undeclared war.

In response to the Gulf of Tonkin incident of August 2, when three North Vietnamese torpedo boats attacked the United States destroyer Maddox, the resolution grants broad powers to the President to use military force in the region. All members of Congress except Senator Wayne Morse of Oregon, Senator Ernest Gruening of Alaska, and Representative Adam Clayton Powell, Jr., of New York voted for the resolution. (Morse and Gruening voted against it, while Powell only voted present during roll call. Perhaps that was a wise move on his part.)

The name of the Navy vessel involved in the battle reminds me of the tragic domestic conflict in the USA over racial segregation. That's because restaurant owner and unsuccessful political candidate Lester Maddox shut down his Pickrick diner rather than obey a judicial order to integrate it. Let's hope this is the last we ever hear from this fellow.


This is a recently released recording of a news conference he gave in July defending his refusal to serve black customers. Please don't buy it.

The Battle of the Bands

With all that going on, it's a relief to turn to less violent forms of combat. After withdrawing from the top of the American popular music charts for a couple of months, the Beatles launched an all-out assault with the release of their first feature film, an amusing romp called A Hard Day's Night.


Wilfrid Brambell is very funny in the role of Paul's grandfather.

Of course, the title song shot up to Number One.


I should have known better than to think we'd seen the last of these guys.

Not to be outdone, crooner Dean Martin, no fan of rock 'n' roll, drove back the British invaders with a new version of the 1947 ballad Everybody Loves Somebody, proving that teenagers aren't the only ones buying records these days by replacing the Fab Four at the top.


The Hit Version; as opposed to the forgotten version he sang on the radio in 1948.

His victory was short-lived, however, as a three-woman army entered the fray. Just a few days ago, The Supremes replaced him with their Motown hit Where Did Our Love Go?


I assume he does not refer to Dean Martin.

Order of Battle

The stories in the latest issue of Fantastic feature all kinds of warfare, both literal and metaphoric.


Cover art by Robert Adragna

Planet of Change, by J. T. McIntosh


Interior illustrations also by Adragna

We begin our military theme with a courtroom drama, in the tradition of The Caine Mutiny. This time, of course, the court-martial involves the star-faring members of an all-male Space Navy rather than sailors.

Before the story begins, the crew of a starship refused to land on a particular planet, despite the direct orders of the captain. This seems reasonable, as previous expeditions to the mysterious world disappeared. The mutineers obeyed their commander in all other ways.

During the trial of the second-in-command, who subtly persuaded the others to rebel, the prosecuting attorney investigates the defendant's background. It turns out that records about his past life and service record were conveniently destroyed. Under questioning, the strange truth about the planet comes out.

At this point, I thought the officer was going to be exposed as a shape-shifting alien in human form. I have to give McIntosh credit for coming up with something more original. The secret of the planet is a very strange one. Without giving too much away, let's just say that previous voyages to the place didn't really vanish.

Because the story takes place almost entirely at the trial, much of it is taken up by a long flashback narrated by the defendant. This has a distancing effect, which makes the imaginative plot a little less effective. The motive of the second-in-command, and others like him, may seem peculiar, even distasteful. As if the author knew this, he has the prosecutor react in the same way. Overall, it's worth reading once, but I doubt it will ever be regarded as a classic.

Three stars.

Beyond the Line, by William F. Temple


Illustrated by Virgil Finlay

A war can take place inside one's self also. The main character in this sentimental tale is a woman who is well aware that her asymmetrical face and body are unattractive. After a childhood spent escaping into fairy tales, and later writing her own, she decides to face the harsh truth of reality. Just as she does so, however, a rose appears out of nowhere in her lonely bedroom. It is asymmetrical also, and fades more quickly than a normal flower.

So far this reads like a romantic fantasy, but the explanation for the rose involves concepts from science fiction. Some readers may find it too much of a tearjerker, but I enjoyed it. It reminded me, in some ways, of Robert F. Young and his reworking of old stories, mixed with his emotional love stories. It's very well written, and is likely to pull a few heartstrings.

Four stars.

Fire Sale, by Laurence M. Janifer

Back to the world of armies and soldiers in this variation on one of the oldest themes in fantasy literature. The Devil appears to an important American officer. His Soviet counterpart is willing to sacrifice a large number of his own people to Satan, in exchange for killing the American. The Devil asks the officer if he can come up with a better offer. The solution to the dilemma is a grim one, which could only happen in this modern age.

This mordant little fable gets right to the point, without excess verbiage. You may be a little tired of this kind of story, but it accomplishes what it sets out to do.

Three stars.

When the Idols Walked (Part 2 of 2), by John Jakes


Illustrated by Emsh

It would be tedious to repeat the previous adventures of the mighty barbarian Brak, as related in last issue. The magazine has to take up four pages in its synopsis of Part One. Suffice to say that he faces the wrath of an evil sorceress and the invading army following her. The story eventually builds up to a full scale war between the Bad Guys and the Good Guys, but first our hero has to survive other deadly challenges.

In our last episode, as the narrator of an old-time serial might say, Brak wound up in an underground crematorium, from which nobody has ever returned. In a manner that involves a great deal of good luck, he finds a way out, leading to a rushing river. Next comes an encounter that could be edited out without changing the plot. Brak fights a three-headed avian monster, whose heads grow back as soon as they are chopped off. As you can see, this is stolen directly from Greek myth, and the author even calls the creature a bird-hydra.

Once he escapes from the beast, he finds the city of the Good Guys under attack from without, by the war machines of the Bad Guys, as well as from within, by the giant walking statue controlled by the sorceress. A heck of a lot of fighting and bloodshed follow, until Brak gets to the mechanical controls operating another giant statue, as foreshadowed in Part One.

Jake can certainly write vividly, and the action never stops for a second. The story is really just one damned thing after another, and certain things that showed up in the first part never come back. What happened to the strangling ghost? Whatever became of the magician who fought the sorceress? This short novel is never boring, but derivative and loosely plotted.

Two stars.

A Vision of the King, by David R. Bunch

Like many stories from a unique writer, this grim tale is difficult to describe. In brief, the narrator watches a figure approach with three dark boats. They talk, and the narrator refuses to go with him. As far as I can tell, it's about death, one of the author's favorite themes. It's not a pleasant thing to read, but I can't deny that the style has a certain power.

Two stars.

Hear and Obey, by Jack Sharkey


Illustrated by George Schelling

War can be waged with words instead of weapons, of course. In this version of the familiar tale of a genie granting wishes, a man purchases Aladdin's lamp from one of those weird little shops that show up in fantasy fiction so often. The genie takes everything the fellow says literally. (It reminds me of the old Lenny Bruce joke about the guy who says to the genie "Make me a malted.")

After a lot of frustrated conversation, the man finally gets a million dollars in cash. Since we have to have a twist ending, the fellow says something that the genie takes literally, with bad results. The tone of the story changes suddenly from light comedy to gruesome horror, which is disconcerting.

Two stars.

2064, or Thereabouts, by Darryl R. Groupe

Let me put on my deerstalker hat and do a little detective work here. Take a look at the author's name. Remind you of anything? Well, there's a first name starting with D, the middle initial R, and a last name that is almost like group, which means a collection of objects, just like the word bunch.

Even before reading the story, we can guess that this is David R. Bunch again, under a different name to weakly disguise his second appearance. Once we get started on it, the style and theme are unmistakable.

The setting is a dystopian future full of people whose bodies have been almost entirely replaced by machines. An artist visits, eager to do a portrait of the most extreme example of the new form of humanity, with only the absolute minimum of flesh left. Their encounter leads to a grim ending.

The plot is less coherent than I've made it sound. Like the other story by Bunch in this issue, it holds a certain eerie fascination for the reader, even as it confuses and disturbs.

Two stars.

Mopping Up the Battlefield

With the exception of a single good story, this was yet another issue full of mediocrity and disappointment. Maybe I'm just in a bad mood because of the looming threat of global warfare abroad, and a new civil war at home. I should probably relax and watch a little television to get my mind off it, even if I have to put up with those lousy commercials.

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Science Fiction/Fantasy, TV

[August 23rd, 1964] The Reign Of Boredom (Doctor Who: The Reign Of Terror [Part 1])

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By Jessica Holmes

Ready for another historical episode? This serial of Doctor Who comes from the mind of Dennis Spooner, who I don’t think we’ve had a story from before. Interestingly, this is the first Doctor Who serial to be partially shot on location, instead of the airing cupboard at the BBC they usually use.

I want to start with a couple of things. One: I am not, by any stretch of the imagination, an expert on the French Revolution. And two: my opinion on this episode is objective fact and I shall not be tolerating any dissenters.

Let’s get on with it, shall we?

A LAND OF FEAR

The TARDIS lands in a nice spot of countryside, and in keeping with his promise at the end of the previous serial, the Doctor curtly informs Ian and Barbara they can go now, and not to let the door bang their backsides on the way out. However, considering this is the Doctor we’re talking about, Ian and Barbara aren’t about to just waltz off when they’re not even sure they’re on the right planet, so Ian manages to coax the Doctor out for a drink while they scope out the area.

Hearing some loud bangs as they leave the TARDIS, Ian rummages around in the bushes and drags out a small boy, who kindly informs them that they’re in France. To be fair, it’s not far off from Old Blighty. Get a ferry from Dover and you can make a day trip of it.

The boy runs off, and the others track him to a deserted house.

Ian and Barbara admit to themselves that they wouldn’t really be disappointed if they weren’t in England in 1964. Or should they come back to 1963? I’m not sure if it’s been as long for them as it’s been for us.

Finding the house empty, the companions promptly start plundering the owners’ belongings. Aside from some fancy frocks and dusty candlesticks, they find documents signed by Robespierre…and realise where and when they are.

And just to round things off, while exploring alone (always a bad idea) the Doctor gets a nice whack over the back of the head.

Meanwhile, the rest of the companions are helping themselves to some contemporary clothes. The garments look quite accurate to the location and time period, though I couldn’t say if the lack of corsets is excellent historical attention to detail (the corset having fallen out of fashion during the revolution in favour of simpler garments), or simply a lack of budget or modern clothing standards getting in the way of accurate period costuming.

That might all be a bit nit-picky, but I think the Doctor would appreciate my twaddle on whether or not everyone should be wearing a corset. This is, after all, his favourite historical period. I don’t know what that says about him but I think we should probably keep him away from any members of the aristocracy, just in case.

Oh. Too bad, because a couple just showed up. This farmhouse, it turns out, is their hideout. I’m not going to tell you their names because for one, I didn’t catch them, and for two, they’ll be dead in a couple of minutes so there’s no point.

They prepare to make a brave stand as a gang of soldiers come to capture them, only for one of them to chicken out and run outside, necessitating the other to come out and rescue him. He’s doing well at persuading the soldiers not to shoot them, right up to the point that he tells them that even if they have uniforms, they’re still peasants underneath.

To literally nobody’s surprise, that’s not a very clever thing to say to a bunch of gun-toting peasants.

R.I.P, French blokes whose names I don’t know.

Meanwhile, Ian’s trying to find where they stashed the Doctor, who is still out cold, but the soldiers barge in before he can, and drag everyone (except the Doctor, who is still having a nice nap) out into the courtyard.

The Doctor finally wakes up just as the soldiers are about to execute his mates. However, their leader persuades the men that they should take the companions to Paris, where they’ll be rewarded for delivering them to ‘Madame Guillotine’. How nice.

Before leaving, they decide to burn the house down, just to be thorough. Things sure don’t look good for the Doctor. Pity I literally don’t care. Of course I always know the Doctor or whoever is imperiled in the cliffhanger-of-the-week is going to be fine, but I am usually enjoying the episode enough that I can suspend my disbelief.

I didn’t know 24 minutes of television with multiple shootings and a house burning down could actually be this boring. Yes; this is the end of the episode! Is it just me, or would all these events normally take place within the first fifteen minutes?

2 out of 5.

GUESTS OF MADAME GUILLOTINE

I think I like the title more than I like the episode.

With the Doctor being slow-roasted French-style, the companions arrive in the city of lights, and Paris gives them a lovely warm welcome, by which I mean they’re immediately sentenced to death for being in the company of traitors of the revolution.

There we go. Show’s over, everyone’s dead.

…Sadly I don’t think I’ll get out of doing this write-up that easily.

Unfortunately there’s a backlog of necks that want chopping, so Ian, Barbara and Susan are going to have to wait a bit, in the company of a delightfully charming jailor who makes creepy implications about what Barbara could do for him to secure her release. Barbara gives him a slap instead. That’s my girl. Susan, on the other hand, wallows in misery, convinced everyone’s going to die. Tsk.

Oh, and the Doctor’s alive too. The little boy from last episode went into the house and dragged him out, which is nice of him. Don’t expect him to stick around, though, nice as it might have been for the Doctor to have a plucky young sidekick. The Doctor’s off to Paris!

On a real, actual road! With real sky! And a fake Bill Hartnell! Two out of three isn't bad. See, they didn't actually have the budget to transport any of the cast out to the filming location, so they had to make do with a double shot from a distance. That's pretty neat!

Ian, meanwhile, is sitting in a cell with a chap who is not feeling his best. He’s got a nasty gunshot wound, and it’s clear he’s not long for this world. The wounded man tells Ian to find an Englishman in Paris, who is in the city to gather information. There’s a war coming between England and France, because the day ends in a Y. I can’t even remember which historical war they’re gearing up for. There’s too many, and a ridiculous number of them are simply called the ‘Anglo-French War’. We’ve been at war, or preparing for it, pretty much ever since that William bloke paddled across the Channel.

I digress. The man imparts his wish, and dies, and I swear this should be more interesting to me than it is. It’s just not doing anything for me.

Out in the sunshine, the Doctor is having a nice walk in the countryside, and comes upon some ‘tax-dodgers’ being forced to work on the road. He tells their foreman that they might work faster if he actually picked up a pick. Astute observation, Doctor, and a great way to illustrate the difference between intelligence and wisdom, as this makes the foreman take offence, and investigate the Doctor's lack of travel papers. No papers, eh? Probably up to no good. And what do we do with people who are up to no good? We put them to work!

In Paris, Barbara and Susan are making progress on digging their way out of their cell. It looks like the ladies might be coming to the rescue.

Meanwhile, the man who was commanding the soldiers who captured the companions (I’m sorry, I didn’t hear his name) has come to investigate the death of the man in Ian’s cell, and asks if he and Ian spoke before he died. Ian lies to him, and says that they didn’t, but the jailor tells the commander otherwise, though he didn’t hear what was said.

Back in the ladies’ cell, Susan and Barbara find some rats in the hole they’ve made, and go into hysterics, because we womenfolk literally melt if we see a rodent, don’t you know? I don’t know. You cross the universe fighting priests who cut people’s hearts out and bug-eyed monsters and pepper-pots with death rays, and you go to pieces over a few rats?

Look. I’m scared of spiders. But if I’m going to be decapitated in the morning, and the only way out of it is to crawl through a tunnel filled with tarantulas, I’d absolutely, positively, definitely…get my last rites in order and sort out a will.

Perhaps I can’t really talk.

Meanwhile in the countryside….

Sometimes I do wish the characters would stay together for longer than five minutes so I don’t have to come up with a new way to re-introduce them every other paragraph to prevent things getting repetitive.

But meanwhile à la campagne, the Doctor gets in a boring and stupid and unnecessary scene that, unless there is some deep meaning in it that I’m too thick to get, is there just to pad out the episode. This whole thing with the roadworks is so pointless.

The Doctor distracts the foreman by making him stare at the sun, then steals his money, throws it on the ground, and while the foreman is digging through the soil, whacks him over the back of the head. Our hero, everyone!

Okay, so he was actually using the foreman’s greed against him by making him think he’d found a treasure trove, but he still knocked a man out cold while he wasn’t even looking.

To be fair, I was already thinking ‘why not just hit him with your pick’, and then he did, but that doesn’t reflect well on either of us.

Back in Paris (see? This is what I mean), the guards come for Susan and Barbara, and they’re taken with a bunch of other prisoners to the guillotine.

And all Ian can do is watch helplessly from his cell.

And how have I managed to write so much about an episode of little substance?

2 out of 5.

A CHANGE OF IDENTITY

Let’s introduce this one with a little scrap from my notes:

My chippy tea is going cold and I’m having to watch this.

Jessica from the past, you put it into words.

At least we’re finally getting to the bit where people’s heads start getting chopped off. Please?

The Doctor makes it to Paris, just as the women are on their way to have a little off the top, though of course he doesn’t know that.

In an alleyway, two men, noblemen by the looks of it, are lying in wait for the prisoners and soldiers heading their way.

And back in prison. Oh, back in prison. I can barely bring myself to go on. The jailor leaves the key to Ian’s cell…in the lock. Of Ian’s cell. And then rushes off because the commander chap is calling him. Leaving Ian free to grab the key-ring, nick his key, and put it back how he found it before the jailor remembers what he did with the keys.

I don’t even have the will to make a joke or be annoyed about it. It’s just not worth it.

Out on the streets of Paris, the horse towing Barbara and Susan on their way to certain doom throws a shoe, and Barbara plans to make a run for it when the guards unhitch the horse. Susan, however, has suddenly developed a very inconvenient illness and so can’t be running off anywhere, and Barbara, bless, won’t leave her.

Luckily the two men are nearby to save them because goodness knows they couldn’t possibly have rescued themselves in the face of this sudden narrative contrivance.

The Doctor, meanwhile, is shopping for new clothes. This is Paris, after all. Being in possession of no actual money, he trades in his old clothes and also a rather ugly ring, in return for…well. Wait and see.

Barbara and Susan make it to a safehouse. The blokes who saved them are called Jules and Jean, and they are posh, upper-class, and might as well have a dotted line around their necks labelled ‘chop here’.

Ian, meanwhile, is escaping, but not without notice.

I’ll just say, it’s not a very thrilling escape when the jailor is passed out on the floor and the only conscious witness is presumably hoping Ian will just lead him to the English spy, and so doesn’t lift a finger.

Susan and Barbara tell Jules and Jean about the farmhouse and the men they met there. They realise that their escape route has been compromised. A messenger arrives for them, a man called Leon.

Back in the dungeon….

Forget everything mean I’ve said about this episode. It’s just redeemed itself.

Behold the Doctor’s new outfit:

Besides being a genuinely funny reveal, the Doctor’s new outfit serves another purpose. It enables him to walk right into the prison in the guise of a regional officer, and interrogate the jailor as to the whereabouts of Ian, Barbara and Susan!

He learns of their escape, but before he can go off to be their knight in fabulous plumage, along comes the commander, who asks to see the Doctor’s papers. Of course, the Doctor remembered to forge some this time (perhaps the only worthwhile thing to come out of his little interlude in the countryside), so he’s not rumbled…yet.

However, the commander is on his way to have a chat with Robespierre himself about the execution lists, and extends an invitation to the Doctor, who can’t very well say no.

At least that might be interesting next time.

In what the French call le safehouse, Leon and Barbara make small-talk. Barbara tells him that she’s English, which he takes as an encouraging sign that she doesn’t really have a side in the whole revolution thing.

Look, she’s a history teacher. I can bet you she has opinions.

So that’s nice. And dull.

However, back at the prison, qu’est-ce que c’est? Or, as the English prefer to say, what is this that this is?

It’s the man from the clothing shop. He informs the commander that he has evidence of a traitor, and then (all together now), dun dun DUUUUUUUN…!

He produces the Doctor’s ring.

See, this is why I don’t wear jewellery. You never know when a duplicitous merchant of clothes might buy it off me and use it as evidence of me betraying the ideals of the revolution.

Okay, that’s it. I’m free. For now. I really hope things start picking up next time.

2 out of 5.

Final Thoughts

Well, having spent quite a lot of this review just making my own stupid jokes, how engaging do we think I found this serial so far?

Not very.

I can’t quite put my finger on it, but if I was going to hazard a guess, I would say that it’s the pacing. There is not enough plot here to stretch over a six-part serial, and so in dragging out individual plot points that might actually have been interesting in a more densely-plotted story, all the flavour is drained out of them. Think of it like jam scraped over too much bread.

Now, that’s not to say that a story must have a dense plot to be good. Not by any means. However, what a good story may lack in plot it absolutely must make up in terms of interesting character insight and development, and apart from the core cast, I don’t even know the names of any other characters here! The jailor’s a drunken lecherous lout, an embodiment of contemporary Royalist stereotypes about the Revolutionaries, right down to the tatty uniform. The commander? Well, I’d give you my judgement only I don’t have one. I don’t recall one thing about him! As for the young aristocratic men, they seem nice enough but about as interesting as white bread. At least the men in the first episode had the distinguishing characteristics of being a snob and a coward. Not the best characteristics, but I remembered them, didn’t I?

We’ll have to see how the rest of the serial pans out for me to lay down any greater judgement one way or another, but between you and me? I wouldn’t hold my breath.

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55 years ago: Science Fact and Fiction