Time After Time

When Steve Jackson and Ian Livingstone devised the first Fighting Fantasy gamebook, The Warlock of Firetop Mountain, in 1982, they came up with three basic statistics the player would have to keep track of, known in the first draft as COMBAT FACTOR, STRENGTH FACTOR and LUCK FACTOR, later renamed in rewrites as the catchier SKILL, STAMINA and LUCK (SKILL and LUCK being calculated by 1d6 + 6, and STAMINA by 2d6 + 12). Over four decades and more than seventy books later, that basic system has more or less remained the same, but many authors have wanted to add something new to it. The first book in the series to have a fully-fledged fourth statistic you had to keep track of was Jackson's House of Hell, which introduced Fear Points: the 1d6 + 6 value you rolled up at the start of the adventure represented the maximum number of Fear Points you could accrue before being frightened to death. Many other books with unique statistics followed: the Japanese-themed Sword of the Samurai requires the player to keep track of their character's HONOUR score, with certain actions being forbidden if your HONOUR score is too low, and the character committing seppuku should it ever fall to 0, whilst the Lovecraft-influenced Beneath Nightmare Castle features a WILLPOWER score, which represents the player's ability to keep hold of their sanity. But by far the most common unique stat was a way of keeping track of time: the adventure of the day was on a time limit for some reason, and the Time statistic measured how much, uh, time you had left. And different writers, telling different stories, would implement this idea very differently.

How differently, then?

Comic Cuts

In the Mr. Bean episode "Hair by Mr. Bean of London", initially released exclusively on VHS in November 1995, whilst Mr. Bean is at the barber's, he picks up a copy of the Dandy and reads it while he's waiting.

You know what's coming. Which issue of the Dandy exactly?

"The Government Urges the Court to Allow Mr. Goodman to Continue!"

The final production draft of the script for the sixty-third and final episode of Better Call Saul, "Saul Gone", is available to read here, one of ten standout scripts that year submitted by their writers for the Emmys published on Deadline. There are a number of small tweaks and differences between the script and what ultimately ended up on screen. The opening flashback to "Bad Choice Road" opens a bit sooner, with dialogue from Kim over the phone that isn't in the broadcast version. There's a small addition to Gene's attempt to escape Omaha where he has an altercation with a homeowner, which was filmed and can be seen on the deleted scenes on the DVD. When Saul hires Bill Oakley as his advisory counsel, in the script we don't hear the start of their conversation, we only see Oakley's reaction. When the plane arrives in Albuquerque there was originally meant to be a shot of the remains of Jimmy's Suzuki Esteem in the desert, providing a link back to the "Bad Choice Road" flashback (a remnant of this idea still appears in the trailer for the episode). Various other odd lines and moments are different. There are other little touches that seem to have been thought of later on -- if you compare the establishing shots of desert scenery in the pre-titles sequence with those in the pilot of Breaking Bad you'll see how similarly they're framed, building on the final episodes' theme of things coming full-circle.

But perhaps the most important change -- at least to me -- is during the climactic scene where Saul Goodman confesses all his crimes on the stand:

Top Dad Homer

On 19 November 1999, it is announced that Tony Blair is to be a father again. Amongst the coverage of this on BBC News is this piece, which links it to recent comments from Charlie Lewis, a professor of psychology at Lancaster University, on how Homer Simpson is one of the best examples of modern fatherhood. One quote leapt out at me: "He has recently started going to parenting classes, so at least Homer is trying to be a good parent in his old age." Which recent event, precisely, did Professor Lewis have in mind when he made these comments?

Whilst the BBC News piece doesn't state the origin of the comments, a quick Google of "charlie lewis lancaster university homer simpson" brings up this Guardian piece, indicating they were made the previous day at the first national conference on fatherhood. At this time, the most recent episode was "Hello Gutter, Hello Fadder", which had aired in the US four days earlier, on 14 November. And that episode does indeed have a plot where Homer tries to bond with Maggie, and in its final minutes he goes to a daddy-daughter swimming class with her. This episode would not air in the UK until the following month, but it's the only recent episode that seems to fit the bill. Even if Professor Lewis had been watching at BBC Two pace (and it seems more likely he would have looked up the most recent episodes for any developments he could cite), they were showing seasons five and six at the time, and there's nothing there that would seem to be an example unless you really stretch the definition.

Every Thursday I'm in Love

In October 1986, the fifth annual Smash Hits yearbook was published. A slight departure from the sort of thing this blog usually covers, you might think.

But on page 49 there's a photo of The Cure's Robert Smith, as part of a feature entitled Books, Batteries and the Beano. Now things might fall into place. That particular feature has been scanned in here, so you don't have to suffer with my low-quality photography for a change, but amongst Robert's possessions is an issue of the Beano:

We worked out which issue of the Beezer is in One Foot in the Algarve. We worked out which issue of the Beano is in The Comic Relief Revue Book. Can we work out which issue of the Beano this is?