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Thursday 16 March 2023
Millennium (The Series) Was Barking Mad
Barking Mad
By
Vince Stadon
Millennium Season 2, Episode 2: Beware of the Dog
Sometimes in the dark lonely night, Frank Black calls me. It may be 2am, or it may be 11pm, or it may be as the dawn is breaking. My phone will ring, and I know it is Frank Black, and I know that he is in pain, and I know that he is barking mad.
“Hello?”
“Hey,
it’s Frank.”
That
low rumble of a voice, like far distant thunder.
“It’s
late,” I say.
“It’s
never too late,” says Frank. “Never too
late to start caring.”
He’s
always saying these frustratingly cryptic things that seem designed to passive
aggressively guilt trip me, like a mid-70s John Lennon lyric.
“What
do you want, Frank?”
“I
just want to talk. I just want to make
some sense of it all.”
“Make
some sense of what?”
“The
case I’m working. The Group. People.
The world.”
Jesus,
he’s hard work. “What case, Frank? And be specific - I’m tired of your enigmatic
bullshit.”
“We’re
all tired. The world is tired. Everybody’s tired of it, except maybe the
dogs.”
“Dogs?”
“The
case. Wild dogs attacking people. Packs of dogs.”
“I
thought you did serial killers and stuff?”
“Watts
got me chasing these dogs. There’s
something in this.”
I
hear dogs barking on the phone. “Frank?”
“They’re
at my door. I think they’ve always been
at my door, and I just didn’t realise it.”
“Where
are you, Frank?”
“Nowhere.”
Sigh. What is it with this guy? “You gotta be somewhere, Frank! Are you home with Catherine, your wife, and
Jordan, your daughter?” I think it’s best to spell things out to Frank.
“No, we’re
separated.”
“Oh, sorry.” I’m not surprised.
“Perhaps we were
always separated, and I just didn’t realise it.”
“Yeah,
whatever. So where are you right now?”
“Some crummy hotel
in Bucksnort.”
“Bucksnort?” Who names a place Bucksnort?
“It’s dark, and I
can feel more darkness coming.”
“Maybe you need
some sleep, Frank. Or watch a comedy, or
something. Have you seen Ace Ventura: Pet Detective?”
There’s more
barking on the phone. “The dogs are a
sign. The dogs are avatars of the coming
darkness.”
Frank sounds
worried. His voice is the sound of the
world in pain. Jesus, now he’s got me
doing it.
“Get out of
Ducksnort, Frank. Go home.”
“Bucksnort.”
“Whatever.”
“I can’t go
home. The dogs are out there. The dogs are always out there.”
And suddenly I hear
more dogs. But they’re not coming from
over the phone. They’re outside my
door.
“I hear the dogs,
Frank!”
“I hear them, too.”
“Are we mad,
Frank? Is that what this is - a kind of
shared delusion?”
“It’s just the
world. It’s just the darkness at the end
of the world.”
I think about
this. The rain, the dark, the
blood. Frank sees it. Frank always sees it, and tries to do
something about it. I’ve misjudged
him. We need Frank. The world needs Frank Black.
“I’m sorry, Frank,”
I say. But there’s no reply. I can only hear the dogs barking down the
phone and outside my door.
“Frank? Frank, are you there?”
But Frank is gone
and I am alone and the night is dark and lonely.
Captain Kirk Gets Laid at Woodstock
Star Trek:
Metamorphosis
Loved Up!
by Vince Stadon
First published in Outside In Boldly Goes
I'd like to think that Kirk was at Woodstock.
Not William Shatner (though I'd hope he was
there too), but Star Trek's Captain James T Kirk, somehow right there in
the blissed-out gathering of flower children, with the sun on his face and his
phaser on stun, waiting for The Jefferson Airplane. And I like to think that he would be there,
at Woodstock, on a mission to tell the young people all about love in the 23rd
Century. And also, to watch Love, the band. Kirk would be at Woodstock in the guise of a
Love Guru, and he would speak eloquently (if eccentrically, with odd pauses) of
love flourishing in wild and beautiful forms out there in space, the final
frontier. And with the events of Metamorphosis
fresh in his heart, Kirk would perhaps use as an example the touching ménage à
trois between Zefram Cochrane, Federation Commissioner Nancy Hedford, and the
mysterious alien entity known as The Companion.
For theirs' is a love story well worth telling, and it is a tale that
only takes fifty minutes, including ad breaks.
As dusk
falls, and Jerry Garcia moves into the final hour of his guitar solo, Kirk
would light a small camp fire with his phaser, and he would sit near the
flickering flames, and the hippies would gather round him, sharing food and
drink and chemically-induced grins. Kirk
would make eye contact with each of them in turn, and then he would begin,
raising his voice to drown out the bum notes in Jerry Garcia's epic guitar solo
drifting down from the far-away main stage.
In the
telling of this love story, Kirk would concentrate on the three lovers,
omitting entirely the peripheral players (Spock, Bones, Scott, etc), and
judiciously editing out his own blunders of command (there are many because Kirk
is impulsive and aggressive; when faced with an amorphous alien blob of
frightening power – a frequent occurrence in his line of work – his instinctive
reaction is to shoot at it... which proves to never, ever, be a smart
decision). He would begin with beautiful
Federation Commissioner Nancy Hedford, for all good love stories (or at least
those suitable for prime-time television in the 60's) begin with a beautiful
woman. Nancy, a passenger aboard the
shuttle craft Galileo, is headed for Epsillon Canaris III
(coincidentally, the working title of a Grateful Dead song) on a diplomatic
mission to broker a peace accord between two warring factions. But much more importantly for the purposes of
the love story, Nancy is beautiful. A
little distant and career-focussed, perhaps, but undeniably beautiful, with
very lovely hair. Alas, Nancy's crucial
mission is put on hold because she's fallen ill with Sakuro's disease
(coincidentally, another working title of a Grateful Dead song), and Kirk is
piloting the Galileo back to the USS Enterprise, where she can
receive medical treatment and touch up her hair. But an amorphous alien blob of frightening
power drags the shuttle off course and pulls it down to an unidentified planet
of primary coloured rocks.
Living
there on this unidentified planet of primary coloured rocks is the tall and
handsome Zefram Cochrane, a man seemingly devoid of any personality
whatsoever. Because he is such a blank
state, Kirk muses, as he prods the fire with a stick, Zefram perhaps represents
every man: every square-jawed hero in every story ever told – or at least those who graced the narratives
on prime-time television in the 60's.
Yes, rather than being a disastrous combination of poor scripting and
wretched acting, Zefram Cochrane is in fact an inspired artistic choice: his
very lack of definition stands as a powerful statement on masculinity. (Kirk's brilliant anagnorisis has the hippies
nodding in admiration, though those hippies closest to the fire wish that Kirk
would stop showering them in burning embers, a few at the back have no idea
what 'anagnorisis' means because they dropped out of college, and at least one
of them suspects that Kirk is using the word 'anagnorisis' incorrectly.)
Also on the
unidentified planet of primary coloured rocks, continues Kirk, is an amorphous
alien blob of frightening power. The
very same amorphous alien blob of frightening power that dragged Galileo
off course and dumped it on the unidentified planet of primary coloured
rocks. This thing has been Cochrane's
only companion for decades, and because he has about as much imagination as a
primary coloured rock, he has named it Companion. Companion has brought the crew of Galileo
to the unidentified planet of primary coloured rocks because it has an
empathetic bond with Cochrane, and senses that he is lonely. He is a man with needs, after all.
Oddly,
Cochrane barely looks at the beautiful Nancy, even though her condition is
worsening and she has awesome hair (though, admittedly, her hair needs a good
wash and a brush after she's spent so much time lying down, expecting to die)
for his attention is fully on Companion, who soon speaks with a seductive
female voice. Companion has been keeping
Cochrane alive and virile, providing all he needs to survive, but now he
hungers for a woman, and it seems Nancy just isn't for him because she isn't an
amorphous alien blob of frightening power.
(Finally, Cochrane demonstrates some personality: he's incredibly choosy
when it comes to dating.)
The solution,
of course, is for Companion to merge with Nancy, curing her of her illness and
restoring her hair, and providing Cochrane with someone to love. The merging of Nancy and Companion into
Cochrane's One True Love is a love metamorphosis, two souls becoming one,
unified in unconditional devotion to a man with zero charisma. This is, says Kirk, as he stands and looks up
at the stars, a very beautiful thing.
Love in the 23rd Century is wild and strange and enduring;
for it is a time when women with beautiful hair, and amorphous alien blobs of
frightening power can work together to stop a man from being lonely in his
bed. Men, announces Kirk, you need not
fear: the future is going to take care of you.
The hippies
applaud and Jerry Garcia finally ends his guitar solo, and Kirk walks away,
into the beguiling night. He has spoken
of love, and now he's off to find some, because he too has needs and he isn't
choosy. It's a beautiful thing.
Sizzling Hot Coincidences
Sizzling Hot Coincidences
By Vince Stadon
Night Stalker: Episode 4: Burning Man
First published in Inside Out Trusts No One
Editor Stacey Smith
Every word of what follows is true. Well, sorta/kinda.
Burning Man, the fourth episode of Night Stalker, is the single most astonishing thing I’ve ever seen. It is not just the fourth episode of a rather dreary short-lived US television show - it is, for me at least, a mind-blowing, life-altering experience. Because everything that happens in Burning Man happened to me. Only sexier. And with better special effects.
Let me explain. And bear in mind, please, that my hands are trembling as I write this, and that Scully - the sleepy old ginger cat flopped out on my lap - is snoring so loudly that my brain is rattling in my skull. I’m not in good shape.
When I say that everything in Burning Man happened to me, I should clarify that I don’t mean absolutely every single thing. For instance, seventeen minutes into the episode, a wealthy and happy man climbs out of his luxury swimming pool, kisses his swimwear model girlfriend, and then eats Mexican takeaway food. At eighteen and a half minutes, in an abrupt turn of events, the man is burning to death in his swimming pool, and it’s highly doubtful that he’s still happy. Clearly this has never happened to me because I’ve never been happy, and I don’t eat Mexican food. Not that I don’t like Mexican cuisine - on the contrary, I find it delicious; it’s more that my doctor has advised me against noshing down spicy foodstuffs because it raises my blood pressure and makes me grumpy. But I digress.
Let me lay out the key facts.
Burning Man: A dogged reporter investigates a series of murders. My Life: When I was thirteen, I contributed to the Lockleaze Gazette - Lockleaze Comprehensive School’s hard-hitting quarterly journal. I wasn’t a reporter, I was a cartoonist (my cruel yet accurate caricature of the headmaster as Mussolini was the hot topic of many a school dinner), and though I didn’t technically investigate a series of murders I’ve never lost a game of Cluedo (it’s pretty much always Mrs White, in the study, with the candlestick: trust me on this). And I’ve never been described as dogged, but I did have a dog… named Bernie. Burning Man, Bernie the mastiff. Coincidence?
The victims are burned to death. My Star Wars action figures - including the rare Han Solo variant with the small head - were melted into a gooey pool of stinky plastic by a vindictive school bully named Ash for reasons he never disclosed. Coincidence?
The victims were sent tiny red wax figurines. Two days ago, I awoke at noon to a hammering on my door - an insistent courier wanted me to sign for a mysterious Amazon Prime parcel. I scribbled a fake name (Carl Bernstein - I’m cycling through famous reporters, and last week it was Clark Kent), and was puzzled and unnerved to discover that the box contained several packets of coloured wax crayons! How strange, I thought. How unsettling. Was this some kind of message? A warning? From whom? Then I remembered that my wife had ordered them as a present for our niece. Her name? Blaze. Coincidence?
Kolchak refuses to rule out supernatural forces. I daily place the blame for all the things that annoy me on terrifying uncanny manifestations. Netflix doesn’t have the film I want to see? Gremlins at work. Can’t find my good pair of socks? Malevolent Poltergeists have thrown them into the gates of Hell. Salad again for lunch? My wife hates me.
Kolchak seeks help from a retired FBI Agent. A week ago, I asked a random Welsh stranger for directions, and he kindly supplied them… along with reams of information about himself (which frankly I didn’t have time to listen to, but I was being polite, and there was something haunting about his eyes), including the fact that he used to be a temp cleaner at the BFI (British Film Institute) before he retired with a dodgy knee. FBI, BFI. Don’t tell me this is all just coincidence.
There are other examples. In Burning Man, Kolchak has a habit of saying something moodily pretentious, and then leaving the room. I used to do that, until someone threatened to punch me in the face if I didn’t cut it out. Burning Man is forty-two minutes long: precisely the time it takes me to take all my anti-anxiety medication. Night Stalker co-stars a charismatic actress named Gabrielle Union-Wade, who was in Bad Boys II - a film I watched by mistake last year. Kolchak’s editor is named Vincenzo - I am named Vince, and my wife calls me Vincenzo in moments of high passion (coincidentally, her ex-boyfriend is named Vincenzo).
I could go on (I have several file cases filled with documentary evidence and unopened divorce papers), but I think I’ve done more than enough to convince you all. And judging from the ferocity of the bites on my leg, my cat is clearly very hungry. I will, though, leave you all with one final thing. My wife has left me for a man named Carl, and they are planning on attending a summer festival… called Burning Man.
Vince Stadon lives anxiously in England… coincidentally the very same tiny island that Kolchak actor Stuart Townsend comes from. What are the chances of that?
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