015 Speculative Fiction – Old
Beginning, once again, with a decidedly seasonal flavor: I hope Nev Fountain sued the pants off the
makers of Arthur Christmas, because Son of Santa from 1999 shares an awful
lot in common with that movie. Santa’s
son Robin (the somewhat-cast-against-type James Fleet) has an MBA and has come
to the North Pole at his father’s (Ron Moody) invitation. Robin, of course, wants to ruin Christmas by
making it all year round, to increase profit margins or something like
that. Miss Holly Berry (Lynda
Bellingham), Santa’s PA, has other ideas.
There’s a very funny appearance from the Easter Bunny (Dave Lamb) and
his chick (Ronni Ancona), and the Elves (involved in industrial action) are
quite funny too. There were some good
gags which set the live audience roaring with laughter. It was directed by Maria Esposito.
Lost Horizon from
1981 was a beautifully produced adaptation of the very famous and influential
novel about the mythical kingdom of Shangri-La by James Hilton, adapted here by
Barry Campbell. I heard the first part
several years ago on Radio 4 Extra, but it was only on this second re-run that I
was able to hear parts two and three.
The first episode is, in my opinion, the best, a griping yarn in which
several Westerners are kidnapped from British India and whisked away to
Tibet. While the next two episodes were
intriguing, they never really lived up to that rip-roaring first episode. I didn’t realize until the end of the second
episode that Derek Jacobi was playing the main character, the mysterious Hugh
Conway, as he didn’t sound like the typical (perhaps older) Jacobi I’m used to.
Once Conway learns the strange truth
about the remote lamasery of Shangri-La, he is quite unperturbed. He likes whiling away his hours with books
and the music of the beautiful, young-seeming Manchu Chinese woman, Lo-tsen
(Pin-sten Lin), who arrived at Shangri-La fifty years previously. Conway’s fellow passengers are also inclined
to stay—one being an American ex-con on the run and the only other female
character, the evangelist Miss Brinklow (Carol Marsh), wanting to save
souls—except young British officer Mallinson.
Both Mallinson and Conway are in love with Lo-tsen, who wants to escape
Shangri-La, even at the cost of her life.
It’s a strange and haunting tale which has had immense influence on pop
culture. It was directed by Graham Gall
and co-starred Alan Wheatley, Andrew Branch, Alan Tilden, John Livesey, Alaric
Conden, Gerard Green, John Bull, and Crawford Logan.
And two Doctor Who stories
from Big Finish featuring Tom Baker as the Fourth Doctor and the
ever-delightful Louise Jameson as his companion Leela of the Sevateem from 2015. The first is “Renaissance Man” by Justin Richards. Part of what made this drama quite delightful
was that it was witty and funny, perfectly capturing the Fourth Doctor and
Leela’s characters and relationship. The
story also seemed very Doctor Who.
The Doctor takes Leela to the Moravanian Museum, a sort of living history
museum, but things are very wrong when they get there. Directed by Ken Jenkins, it starred Ian
McNeice as the villainous Harcourt, Gareth Armstrong as his lackey Jephson, and
also starred Anthony Howell, Daisy Ashford, Laura Molyneux, and John Dorney.
John Dorney also authored “Wrath of the Iceni,” directed by Ken Bentley and produced by David
Richardson. I quite enjoyed this story and found myself asking why no one had
thought of this before (even at the time—why was a story like this not done on
television?). Pairing Leela with
Boudicca (Ella Kenyon) seems very natural, and it was interesting how Leela
slowly came to realize that, while she shared many things in common with the
warrior-queen, she could not ultimately support Boudicca’s slaughter of old and
infirm, retired Roman soldiers, despite her sympathy with the fact that
Boudicca had been flogged and her daughters raped by Roman soldiers (I found it
interesting that the Doctor couldn’t bear to say “rape”). The Iceni were here represented with Welsh
accents. I liked how the story didn’t
let the Doctor off the hook; Leela repeatedly asked why, in every other case,
she and the Doctor helped the rebels while in this case, he seemed to be on the
side of the Romans. I hadn’t made the
connection at the time with “The Aztecs,”
but I suppose it makes sense. The minor
characters were reasonably interesting, Bragnar (Nia Roberts), the cook who
ultimately survives, having been blatantly turned off by the attentions of
Boudicca’s right-hand man, Caedmon. It
also starred Michael Rowse and Daniel Hawksworth.
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