Missing Doctor Who episodes found

Great news.

Nine missing episodes of 1960s Doctor Who have been found at a TV station in Nigeria, including most of the classic story The Web of Fear.

The black and white story sees Patrick Troughton's second Doctor battle robot yeti in the London Underground.

Also recovered is a complete version of Troughton's six-part story The Enemy of the World.

It is thought to be the largest haul of missing episodes recovered in the last three decades.

Solo William Boyd

I think the Ian Fleming copyright holders should get William Boyd to pen another James Bond novel since Solo is a far more satisfactory Bond novel than both Devil May Care and Carte Blanche. I think what William Boyd's done here is to completely engross himself in the larger than life world Ian Fleming created in a way that the writers of the previous two Bond novels didn't. He doesn't go for realism, understanding that Bond can never be realistic and instead treats Bond as a superhero in a tux.

Boyd's Bond is very much Fleming's Bond - a carnal, chain smoking, action man. This is a Bond who can't talk to a woman without his eyes falling to the small nippled breasts or the bra-busting bouncers. In an early segment of the book Bond breaks into a woman's house and watches her undress. It's all good unclean fun and by the time the story starts proper I was completely sucked into the world of Bond in a way I have not been for a great many Bond novels. It helps, of course, that Boyd sets his novel in 1969 when Bond is 45 and ageing quite disgracefully. We don't need Bond updated for our overly sensitive times, nor do we want him to treat women as equals. The man Fleming created was a chauvinistic bastard and so too is the Bond that Boyd successfully recreates.

Bond admired the small-nippled breasts of the girl on the next table, clearly visible through the transparent gauze of her blouse. There was something to be said for modern fashions after all.

The plot concerns the fictional African country of Zanzarim which is in the midst of a terrible civil war and Bond is sent over with the task of bringing the war to an end. It is here that the book does tend to get a bit bogged down as Bond posing as a journalist, but after a terrific jungle scene things start to pick up again and there is a massive shock around the mid-way point. The latter section of the novel is set in America where Bond goes rogue, or solo as the book would have it, in order to exact vengeance for his near death at the hands of a double crossing bitch. There are more twists to come and Felix Leiter pops up towards the end of the book and helps Bond put everything in order.

There were several nice touches in the book - Bond bumping into an old school friend  and then naming many of his classmates for one and also the recipe for James Bond's salad dressing is painfully detailed. These may seem like minor points but they do add colour to the book, and make Bond seem real in a way that he hasn't for a great many years.

Overall then Solo is a success and the Bond here owes much more to the literary character than the cinematic one. This guy is nasty and even makes Daniel Craig looks like a pussy, and thankfully he does it all with so much style.

Writing Class Hero

It is an odd truism but a truism nonetheless that the best art is often hidden away, known only by an enlightened few - such is the case with Radio 4's Ed Reardon's Week.

 The painfully honest sitcom is presented in a semi documentary style and concentrates on 50 something struggling author Ed Reardon - described in the press material as   "author, pipesmoker, consummate fare-dodger and master of the abusive email".  Much is often made of the fact that Reardon once sold a script to the BBC for Tenko which provides him with his only guaranteed income and that's only about £17 per annum. Our hero often adds to his income by getting paid £10 for making up the numbers in police identity parades.

The writers are Chris Douglas and Andrew Nickolds and the show is currently up to eight seasons with no sign of running out of steam. Indeed as the time's gone on the listener gets to know Ed better and finds real affection for the character as well as the cat, Elgar who is his only constant companion. The humour is mostly subtle but can often be laugh out loud funny - that's LOL for the Internet generation.

I's a big fan of radio, especially Radio Four and it's digital sister, Radio Four Extra and listen to a lot of drama, comedy and factual programs. And in my opinion, for what it's worth, is that Ed Reardon's Week is the best use of the radio medium for comedy since the original Alan Partridge show, Knowing Me, Knowing You. And whilst Partridge made a successful transition to TV Ed Reardon remains hidden away on the radio and perhaps this is where he truly belongs. The visuals are better that way.

If you like well written, well acted, superbly observational comedy than you really need to check out Ed Readon's Week.

Holmes in their DNA

Arthur Conan Doyle laid down a challenge to all writers when he created Sherlock Holmes - either homage or avoidance. This is likely the reason that Agatha Christie, an Englishwoman, made her detective Poirot a Belgian. He could not have been English because he would have seemed too close to Holmes.

'It would be interesting to place Poirot and Holmes in the same room and see who is the smartest.' Crime writer, Val McDermid.

Another detective who can be seen as an early son of Holes was Jules Maigret created by George Simenon who featured in some seventy five novels between 1931 and 1972. Sexton Blake was another who actually appeared in a staggering  4000 stories by more than 200 different writers, and even lived in an house on Baker Street.

The list of Holmes-alikes goes on an on and it can be argued that any fictional detective created since Holmes first walked the mean streets of Baker Street owes much to the pipe smoking, drug addicted intellectual sleuth with the hawk like nose and piercing eyes.

Sexton Blake

And whilst the modern crop of superstar fictional sleuths, charters like Ian Rankin's Rebus or Mark Billingham's Tom Thorne may on the surface seem far removed from Sherlock Holmes, it is doubtful that they would have existed in the first place were it not for Holmes. And both Ian Rankin and Mark Billingham have expressed a great admiration for Conan Doyle's remarkable creation. Indeed even authors who have never read Doyle but are influenced by other crime writers are by default taking from Doyle and Holmes since so much of him runs through the entire DNA of crime fiction.

Holmes may have not been the first fictional detective but he was and remains the most influential.

TAINTED STATS

Weekly Stats Report: 30 Sep - 6 Oct 2013 
Project: THE TAINTED ARCHIVE
URL: http://tainted-archive.blogspot.com/

Summary

	Mon	Tues	Wed	Thur	Fri	Sat	Sun	Total	Avg
Pageloads	169	200	151	118	117	129	152	1,036	148
Unique Visits	116	138	117	101	107	109	122	810	116
First Time Visits	109	127	111	96	100	101	119	763	109
Returning Visits	7	11	6	5	7	8	3	47	7

RIP director William A. Graham

Director William A. Graham who directed the pilot episodes of both Police Story and The Big Valley as well as the Elvis Presley movie, Change of Habit passed away earlier last month at the age of 87. He also helmed episodes of Batman, The Fugitive, Ironside and The X Files.

FROM THE HOLLYWOOD REPORTER: 

A native of New York who served in the Navy and attended Yale, Graham in the mid-1950s began directing segments of TV anthology programs like Kraft Theatre and Omnibus. In the '60s, he hemmed multiple installments of the series Naked City,Breaking Point, 12 O'Clock High, The F.B.I. and The Fugitiveand did the two action-packed False Face episodes on Batman.

His telefilm credits also include Get Christie Love! (1974), starring Teresa Graves; The Man Who Captured Eichmann (1996), with Robert Duvall as Nazi war criminal Adolf Eichmann; and Elvis and the Colonel: The Untold Story (1993), with Rob Youngblood as Elvis Presley and Beau Bridges as Col. Tom Parker.

Doctor Who: The Monster Collection

One of the problems with the BBC's Doctor Who DVD releases is that although they are high quality editions, with a positive wealth of extra features they often prove too expensive for the casual fan. The BBC have addressed this just in time for Halloween with a superbly priced collection of six DVDs that go under the collective banner of The Monster Collection.

The sets are Cybermen, Sontarans, Silurans, The Master, Davros and of course Daleks.

These discs are great value (£7 each) and each one contains a complete story from two different doctors - The Silurans for instance contains the Jon Pertwee 1970 seven parter,The Silurans on one disc and the Matt Smith two part story The Hungry Earth and Cold Blood from 2010. I've not seen much of Matt Smith's Doctor but I watched this two parter last night and found it an enjoyable if frantically paced story.

The Davros edition contains the David Tennent 2008 two parter The Stolen Earth/ Journey's End and the all time classic Tom Baker story, Genesis of the Daleks. While Cyberman contains the fan favourite Pat Troughton's Tomb of the Cybermen (a story that at one time was missing from the BBC archives) and the two part David Tennant Rise of the Cybermen and Age of Steel - and in the scene in Age of Steel where all the cyber controlled people are walking through the comples eagle eyed viewers will spot me amongst the horde of cyber controlled humans. Mind you my bit is blink and you'll miss me.


Daleks gives us the WIlliam Hartnell seven part story that first introduced the Daleks on the first disc with Matt Smith's Asylim of the Daleks on the second disc. The Master then contains Jon Pertwee's Terror of the Autons  (this episode introduced the super hot Katy Manning as Jo Grant and David Tennant's final turn as the Doctor in The End of Time. The Sontarans contains Jon Pertwee again in The Time Warrrior and 2008's The Sontaran Stratagem and The Poison Sky.

There are no extras on these discs but that's not a complaint given that the discs are so cheaply priced and contains full adventures featuring multiple doctors. I'll be buying all of these sets. After all at this price there is no reason not to.

Top marks to the BBC for these themed collections.