On November 22nd, 1987, a mysterious thing happened on the shrouded mist covered mass that was called Fang Rock, and it was not the attack on a group of stranded boaters and lighthouse workers by a glowing green Ruton. Rather it was one of most infamous cases of signal hijacking since Captain Midnight had hijacked HBO's signal in 1986.
It began at another station in Chicago WGN channel nine, a superstation that was also available on some cable packages at the time. At about 9:10 P.M., a man wearing a Max Headroom mask (A mask of a science fiction TV show character that had recently been seen in the US on ABC television, and a popular Coca-Cola ad spokesperson.), interrupted sportscaster Dan Roahn, for about forty five seconds during the recap of that days Chicago Bears football game. The engineers at WGN television quickly changed the STL (Studio to Transmitter Link.), thwarting the hijackers attempt to further break into the signal. The Image had no sound at that time, and Roahn quickly apologized for the intrusion, although a bit distracted by the event, and went on with the rest of the newscast.
Almost exactly two hours later, at 11:15 P.M., the PBS station in Chicago, WTTW channel eleven, was also struck by the same signal pirate during the weekly broadcast of Doctor Who, in this case the excellent Tom Baker tale, 'The Horror of Fang Rock'.
WTTW did not have the same luck as channel nine earlier in the evening, its STL link not being able to be switched over as there were no engineers in the offices atop the Sears Tower, where it transmitters are located, and they were unable to switch successfully via remote control.
The small piece of footage goes on for about ninety seconds, with the character in the mask's voice almost inaudible because of signal distortion, he merrily goes about such tasks as whipping a can of Pepsi around (A parody of Max Headroom's sponsorship of Coke.), and doing several other odd things. including putting on a glove that he claims is 'dirty', and wearing an 'adult toy' on his middle finger of his right hand. At the very end of the footage, you can tell the video is prerecorded as the video pauses, for a brief moment. When we next see Max he is bent over, pants down, and an unseen female accomplice in a dress is slapping him on the behind while the person in the mask screams shouts of 'hit me'. Then the man in the mask waves a signal to the suppossed second accomplice, who is operating the camera, and the footage ends.
The audio on the tape was horrible, and the words are hard to make out. it would seem that 'Max' had some kind of grudge at WGN at the time, as he mentions that his break in is better than Chuck Swirsky, another WGN sports reporter at the time, and that he has made a masterpiece all over 'those greatest worlds newspaper nerds', an obvious reference to WGN, whose call letters stand for Worlds Greatest Newspaper, as they also own the Chicago Tribune newspaper.
The other parts of the audio are just as bad, but Max takes the time to parody the Coke commercial ('Catch the wave!), and sing for the viewers at home ('Your love is fading...').
The next morning the FCC was not at all in a joking mood about the antics of the pirates the night before, starting a search of the Chicagoland area for the masked man and his accomplices. The head of engineering at WGN at the time, Robert Strutzel said this incident was not a cheap prank to carry out, as quoted to the Chicago Tribune, saying: "You need a significant amount of [transmitting] power to do that.", while later an engineer for a station in Urbana Illinois said that the kind of transmitter with the power to that sort of signal hijack would cost between four hundred and six hundred thousand dollars.
The video pirates to this day have never been caught, and the city of Chicago, while being partially amused by the signal hijack, also realized its seriousness as well, as stated by Bill Baxman of Des Plaines, Illinois at the time of the incident. "I was watching Doctor Who, when all of a sudden it came on.....I thought it was you know, a little cute at the time, but when you think about it, its not that cute...they could be interrupting something important."
Indeed they could, like Doctor Who.........
Note: O.k., this is not really a Doctor Who article, but after finding the video of this incident at You Tube last month, I just had to write an article about it somewhere, as I think its a great piece of media history linked with a broadcast of our favorite TV show. To see 'Max' for your self, follow this link :
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HPybv_pzK_s
The whole thing is rather funny and a bit scary if your in the right mood, and I hope you've enjoyed this slightly off beat article, a bit of a deviation of the kind of features that will usually be present in this spot.
Children's Programming: Thomas Willam Spychalski
In 1963, when Doctor Who began it original run on television, the creators and the producer knew that the show would be aimed at kids, and as a result we were treated to the ‘educational’ delights of serials like Marco Polo and the Crusade.
By the time you get to the Troughton years, this idea was abandoned by the then current staff for more monsters and alien settings, and barring Black orchid in 1982, this meant the death of the educational pure historical stories.
In 2005, when Doctor Who was brought back by Russell T Davies and his production team, the vision was for the show to gain a family audience, a goal that the show did seem to achieve.
But as I sit here writing this out, I wonder if for series two of the show, which just ended at the start of July, was aimed at even lower age demographic.
I started to wonder as I sat one night watching Love & Monsters opening few minutes with its ‘Scooby Doo’ chase through the corridor full of doors and the strains of E.L.O. music playing while I watched a grown man jumping around his room like a fool.
Then at the end the Doctor commits a woman to an eternity of being stuck in a tile of concrete, a decision I personally feel any past Who producer/writer would have vetoed in a hurry.
Some people have said that this was Davies little look at the world of Doctor Who fandom, with the members of Linda being examples of Doctor Who fan boys, sculpting sculptures and writing stories then presenting them to they’re fellow peers in the group.
If so, fine. So be it. I can laugh at myself any day of the week. But when you create characters so dense that after two of the group members go missing after the mysterious Mr. Kennedy has a nice private chat with them they don’t add two and two together, I think there is something wrong.
Now, before I continue don’t get me wrong. I love Doctor Who in any (Most) forms and would never put the show so down that we can stop having it on television, but it seems that within a year the show had lost its darker overtones for a candy coated, if not enjoyable, treat for kids.
This is not the first time this has happened. After Pertwee’s first season, as Barry Letts settled in, the show was definitely toned down in seriousness and maturity, but it was still a hell of an era.
However the episodes of Love & Monsters and the Idiot’s Lantern make me a bit wary and frightened. Love & Monsters makes me afraid that if Davies is game to try one off the wall idea, what else will he be willing to give a chance?
The Idiot’s Lantern almost reminds me of a Sylvester McCoy episode, but unfortunately of the caliber of Delta and the Bannermen or the Happiness Patrol, not Curse of Fenric or Remembrance of the Daleks.
Also the second series other episodes have given a hint of these trends with Fear Her’s ridiculous Olympic Torch scene (I’ll be waiting to see that torch ceremony in 2012, by the way, and if I don’t see a man in a long brown coat bringing the flame to bare then there will be hell to pay.), and its main plot is aimed at younger children who can relate to the issues of being alone after a family breakup.
School Reunions setting was also aimed at the small kiddy demographic, even going so far as to have every child’s dream, getting they’re school blown up.
None of these things are all that bad. Some of the ideas are even entertaining. I just don’t want to find myself something that really belongs to the under twelve’s then it does to all ages of fandom.
The classic series for most of its reign metered out a balance that made it enjoyable for children and adults without ever really talking down to the younger members of its audience, and on very few occasions ever truly sent itself up so far that the main cast itself was absent from the episode.
I want to see a bit of a return to series one’s tone next spring. I would never want to remove the children’s bits that make it enjoyable for new young fans, as I myself was; I just want them to be able to see the same quality in scripting and realization of an ongoing storyline that I enjoyed at that age from Doctor Who.
Last year was when I heard Doctor Who was coming back; it was a shock to me. I’m an American Doctor Who fan, and news of the series return did not spread like wildfire in the press here as it did in the
The first I heard of it was when my friend had just bought a computer and was letting me help him set it all up. After doing the primary work to get it going, I started to mess around on the web. I typed ‘Doctor Who’ into Google and found the various sites I had left behind two years before, when I grew tired of paying the high costs of being an over seas fan of the books and the audios, especially without any televised pay off in site.
To be sure I never stopped loving Doctor Who; I just stopped being a total fanatic.
What hit me like a brick was that beneath every web site’s main link were various small bits of news proclaiming Doctor Who back and in fantastic style.
Needless to say, my fandom was regenerated and I spent the rest of the day looking at small screenshots of the new series and keeping my friend busy by sending him out again and again to the store for bits and pieces his computer set up didn’t even need so he’d leave me be, melding with and absorbing as much as I could about the return of my childhood hero to the small screen.
Then some time later, I got my chance to see what all the fuss was about. The show was like slipping into an old pair of comfortable trousers. All the pieces were in the right places, the Doctor was from Galifrey and not some half human freak, no gang battles and none of the bad directing and scripts that gave the last of the JNT years so many problems. In short it was perfect.
But then I got to wondering. How did theses story’s so perfectly take a new Doctor and new tone overall to such towering heights? I started to see a little bit of the classic series poking its nose around the corner in every new episode.
Now, mind you I’m a writer and being in such a lofty position of knowledge I knew that there are really only four basic drama plots in the known universe, and over the course of thirteen episodes they would be repeating old ideas seen before in one form or another.
What really amazed me was the fact that the show had borrowed so much from its own past, and you really could not notice unless you were looking for it.
Rose: This was the primer for a new generation into old who. Besides the almost re-shooting of the ‘Spearhead From Space’ Auton dummy sequence, we got a reintroduction into the basic premise of who, from the Doctor introducing himself to Rose, to the proper way to show the difference between the bigger on the inside Tardis,
With Rose running in and running out again, then walking around it in total disbelief.
In short, it did everything correct that the 1996 T.V. movie did wrong.
The End of the World: Here we are first introduced to the Tardis’s abilities to travel in time. We also get a space station, Platform One, in the midst of an attack from natural forces waiting to rip the station to pieces.
This is classic who, and can be seen in The Wheel in Space, among others. It also goes full hilt on the monster front, bringing together an ensemble of aliens not seen since The Dalek’s Master plan.
The Unquiet Dead: First forward, now backward into the past for a bit of old style Doctor Who fun, with a couple of old who clichés. We get the alien life form, the Gelf, that everyone from that time period thinks is a manifestation of the supernatural.
This has been used many times from classics like the Talons of Weing-Chi- ang, to even being a device for the Doctor and friends survival like in The Aztecs.
We also get a historical figure, Charles Dickens, one more in a long line of famous faces that the Doctor can now name drop in the future.
And at the end, we get confirmation that good old Doctor is indeed from Galifrey and the first mention of the time war.
Aliens of London/World War Three: This one really packs in the classic series references.
We start with an almost Peter Davison landing into the wrong time zone while trying to bring Rose back home, and from there we are promptly treated to U.N.I.T., Downing street and all the goodies that made Jon Pertwee’s time as the Doctor such a joy to behold.
With a few minor changes this episode could have easily been run right after any of Pertwee’s episodes in the seventies.
This episode also brings us joyfully back to the art of the cliffhanger.
Dalek: This time, not only do we get a great revamp of Rob Sherman’s excellent Jubilee audio play, but we get elements from the classic Troughton battles with the tin pepper pots like Van Stratton wanting to procure the Daleks secrets for his own use, much like the misguided scientists in The Power of the Daleks, to the now DNA confusion of the Dalek melding with Rose and turning into something quite like the Human factor Daleks in The Evil of the Daleks.
Even the props in this one get into the act of nodding to the classic series with the Revenge Cyber-head peering out of its glass cabinet.
Also the Jagrafess, whose full name sounds like it came out of the Douglas Adams book of alien names and you can almost see the poor toothy purple blob settling down to a nice Pangalactic gargle Blaster.
Father’s Day: This one almost owes as much to The Twilight Zone as classic who, but the story of what can happen when you see the full effects of space/time travel has been shown in abundance before in the series from Inferno to the Edge of Destruction, and in slightly more straight forward forms like Day of the Daleks.
The Empty Child/the Doctor Dances: Here we get a script worthy of Robert Holmes. The terror and horror elements are all in place, and the script is worked to perfection to overtake all previous runs at a similar idea.
Again the classic references are very weak here, but the overall tone and playing out of the story makes the entire two episodes homage to the past.
Boomtown: Again, what this story lacks in more direct ties to the classic series it more than makes up for in the story itself.
Here we see the Doctor having to sit still and deal with the consequences of his actions, how ever right and just they might be.
The plot was a stroke of pure genius and I’m very surprised that many ‘old’ who fans have not latched onto this one as an episode that tells us much more than we knew before about the Doctor as a person, not a omnipotent presence to be reckoned with.
Badwolf/Parting of the ways: The first part of this story takes the T.V. satire elements of Vengeance on Varos and takes them to a higher level of existence. The strangeness of the reality/game show world is brought to life without feeling contrived or cheap.
In the second half we get it all and then some. Daleks flying about like in the old comic strips, a giant emperor Dalek with homicidal thoughts and of course the death and regeneration of one Doctor, leaving us wanting more in a fashion not felt since Tom Baker’s departure at the end of Logopolis .
The elements I found of the classic who series in series one of the new show did little to stop my enjoyment of thirteen terrific episodes of the greatest sci-fi concept ever produced, and the fact that I did not even notice those above until my third or fourth viewing makes the point that they really wove me into the worlds and creatures presented each week, and made me rekindle a love affair with an old friend.
If they had put this on a major network state side with the same level of exposure as the Star Trek series, Doctor W ho would have been a hit on both sides of the
But what did the future have in store? Would the next series keep the same excellent content that made this series such a success, even to an older fan? Short answer no, long answer yes with an added but. You’ll just have to wait until the rest of the world catches up to read the rest.
To be continued……..
Doctor Who: Undeniable Singularity
The doctor has been many things. From cricket to recorders, from jelly babies to Venusian karate the doctors kept our interest throughout the years. But although the doctor changes “every single cell” when he moves on, some things are the same as they’ve ever been.
The doctor displays a great diversity in his personality; One minute being deadly serious and the next throwing out humor in a tense situation. It’s almost as if the doctor uses humor and eccentricity to give himself a lift of confidence in the worst of situations. The doctor can make a snide remark at a threat of world destruction, sometimes leaving his adversaries misjudging him and giving him the upper hand and the element of surprise.
One of the many other facets of the doctor that have stayed true throughout is his intelligence and scientific knowledge. He’s battled autons to zarbis and still defeats every advisary, every time. The doctor’s knowledge can vary from day to day and from form to form. One minute being manipulative and the next straying into what even he himself does not understand.
Our favorite Time lord also has briefs displays of anger, usually after being particularly or repeatedly annoyed, or by very destructive and immoral behavior. The thought of the universe folding in on itself or the destruction of a single rose pedaled flower can make the doctor equally as angry giving his moral stance all the more credence.
The doctors ever present companion also show in his over all persona the desire to never be left out in the cosmos alone. The doctor has on occasion even shown great affection for his friends and some have traveled with him for long stretches of time giving them an irrefutable bond with the doctor. The doctor, who has claimed that he likes to, “slip away quietly,” has also shown a great interest of certain planets, such as Earth , giving rise to a furious desire within the doctor to make those particular planets better and help out in any crisis’s that might arise.
He also, on occasion shows the almost same affection for some of his better enemies, almost seeming happy when they escape, or always leaving a question mark upon thought of his enemies’ demise. That being said, the doctor also has an inhuman detachment that allows also for sacrifice as well compassion.
One of the best qualities about the doctor is also his vulnerability. Any person in pain or in trouble large or small can count on the doctors help. His ability to be sensitive to things such as murder, destruction, or loss in any sense is what makes him such a great hero.
Even his own race turned to him in times of trouble, and so it seems that this trait more than any other, might define the “doctor” in his truest sense, as it seems to be a personal rather than racial trait.
The doctor cannot be summed up as one man. The change in appearance and the shifting of his exterior persona have proved that. The doctor is always heroic, eccentric, and smart. These factors make up the whole of a man trapped in the chaos of time and space, yet leave him more human than most.
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