Coda

This post marks the end of a quite remarkable period of almost seven months where I managed to keep this very stupid blog updated on a weekly basis; I figured I'd leave more in-depth analysis for the end-of-year roundup, but just wanted to note that golden age is now over, especially since this post coinciding with two weeks' holiday and the release of Kingdom Rush 5 means it may be a little while before you hear from me again.

But I think I kept a very high standard, and whether you are just discovering the site for the first time or think you might have missed something, please do go back and see what I've written so far this year. (Whilst I promised just one paragraph ago to go into more detail at the end of the year, I will point you in the direction of the trilogy of articles from the start of the year on the Fighting Fantasy gamebooks The Warlock of Firetop Mountain, House of Hell and Caverns of the Snow Witch and their alternative versions published in Warlock magazine, which are quite possibly my favourite things I've ever written.)

I'm sure you'll find something that's worth your time.

Timeframes II

A short while ago, I looked through some old issues of the Dandy I found in a charity shop, and highlighted some things of interest in them. As you may be able to tell from the above image, I'm now back with another selection of DC Thomson comics I found just last week; these range from around 1990 to 1992, and there's Dandys, Beanos and even some issues of Beezer and Topper.

First up, please brace yourself for quite possibly the ultimate example of a story where someone thought of the title first...

We Can't Put This in the Radio Times

In October 1990, six months after its US debut, David Lynch's seminal mystery series Twin Peaks debuts on the BBC. The show is given no small amount of fanfare: the film discussion series Moving Pictures profiles Lynch's work on Saturday 20th, accompanied by a broadcast of his 1970 short film The Grandmother, and on Monday 22nd the hopefully self-explanatory series Behind the Screen previews the show. And at 9pm on Tuesday 23rd October, 1990, Twin Peaks makes its much-anticipated British debut on BBC Two. (For reference for any non-British readers, BBC One is the "mainstream" channel, whilst BBC Two is the "highbrow" one, and had successes with US imports from The Twilight Zone to The Simpsons.)

The synopses for the episodes in the UK's premier TV listings magazine, the Radio Times, would normally be submitted by the production team at this time (with the writers of comedy shows often taking the opportunity to come up with humorous or misleading ones). It seems unlikely but not impossible that was the case here, but someone was definitely writing up bespoke listings (perhaps someone at the BBC, or someone working for the magazine itself), which we can read courtesy of the BBC Genome Project:

#1.1 "Pilot" aka "Northwest Passage"

Original US airing 08/04/90

Original BBC airing 23/10/90

Radio Times synopsis: The feature-length opening episode of David Lynch and Mark Frost's acclaimed television series. An offbeat murder-mystery drama about a small town where anyone would want to be.

Starring Kyle MacLachlan, Michael Ontkean
"She's dead. Wrapped in plastic." The body of Laura Palmer, a beautiful teenage girl, is found by the shoreline in the small lumber town of Twin Peaks, shattering the tranquillity and revealing a host of dark and twisted secrets involving drugs, illicit love, Norwegian property developers, Douglas firs and cherry pie.

Crystal Book Persuasion

Name a gameshow from circa the late 80s to early 90s which you'd guess had a large number of tie-in puzzle/game books published. You might well say Knightmare first in answer to that unwieldy question, and you'd be absolutely right. But I'd be willing to bet that The Crystal Maze would be in your top two.

The very first such book, simply entitled The Crystal Maze, was published in 1990, the same year as the first series, and a pretty early example of a tie-in book for a Channel 4 show. Internet listings say it was released the same day the very first episode actually aired, which seemed like a mistake to me at first, but Iain Weaver recalls it being advertised after the broadcast of Series 1 episodes (quite possibly including episode 1). In any case, the above is the original cover, clearly recognising the marketability of Richard O'Brien; it was later reprinted with a photographic cover depicting the Crystal Dome.