They Live In Your TV

Right, let me get one thing absolutely straight from the start today.  I love Oliver Postgate and everything about him.  There, I said it.  The man was  - and is - a legend.  His work inspired a generation, and he did it all in a shed with a camera made of Meccano.

For those of you unlucky enough not to get the Postgate therapy as a child, Oliver was one half of Smallfilms, a production company which made animated children's programmes mainly for the BBC.  Throughout the 60s, 70s and early 80s, Smallfilms made some of the most memorable shows EVER.  This is the team that gave us Ivor the Engine, which is kind of like Samuel Beckett but nice and with dragons.  Noggin the Nog was Lord of the Rings with more cake involved.  Clangers was a NASA favourite and featured a fantastically huge amount of heavily disguised swearing.  And naturally, there was Bagpuss.  If you don't know Bagpuss - no, I can't even begin to describe it.  Except to say that it's a slightly sepia-toned gateway to a past where Pebble Mill at One was exciting and the spinning BBC globe was the sign that all was well with the world.  Bagpuss and Ivor are my Proustian delights, which is appropriate, seeing as how there was a character in Bagpuss called Madeline.  She's the only sentient ragdoll that I'm not scared off.  She's ace, in fact, as are all the other characters. 

"What's going on?"  whimpers my audience.  "He's not Ghost Transmissions at all.  This is some unicorn loving impostor.  No-one's tried to show their arse or anything.  There hasn't even been a character with no face.  I don't like it and I want my money back."

Well, firstly, you never paid to get in anyway.  You put a window through round the back and climbed in, first having chewed up an old ticket to make it look like a new one.  Secondly, stop whining.  See, Madeline wasn't scary.  But Oliver knew a thing or two about spooking his audience. 

Totally unrepresentative of a holistic wiccan lifestyle

There were clues early on.  One black and white stop-motion epic - Pogles Wood - featured a distinctly unnerving witch, with a habit of screaming a lot.  She scared the daylights out of the BBC who insisted on removing the character from future series*.  That seemed to be the last scary Smallfilm; however...

Oliver was famous for creating worlds.  This was how he viewed it; they were places in his imagination with their own geography and rules.  He just went there (mentally, unless there's a REALLY cool story we don't know here) and wrote down whatever was going on.  In the 1980s, however, he discovered that his ability to create worlds had grown a little thin; he describes this in his awesome autobiography, Seeing Things, suggesting that his muse gave him twelve complete worlds and that was his lot.  So, when he started adapting other people's worlds instead...well, it wasn't quite the same.

Rumer Godden was an author with quite a bibliography, and tucked away in that was a children's book called The Dolls' House.  There, in that one sentence, I've got half my audience back shuddering again already, haven't I?  The BBC commissioned Smallfilms to adapt this for the late afternoon/early evening slot.  Rumer has it - nah, got to stop that one, couldn't resist - that the author was initially frosty, but soon warmed to the Smallfilms style. 

The Dolls' House.  Clue is in the title.  Dolls are involved.  Five of them.  Yes, you're outnumbered.  Actually, they are quite nice in a creepy way; four of them live in a box, dreaming of a happier life when they might have a house to live in.  They get one.  They are happy and excited, they are gentle, naive creatures.  Tottie, Birdie, Mr Plantagenet and Apple.  Stop motion they may be, but this is still a Smallfilms production and things are vaguely comfortable...sort of.  It feels a bit uneasy, to be honest.

Yeah, I bet it does.  Cause this is when Marchpane turns up.  Jesus fucking Christ.

You can add your own caption.  I'm not staying on this bit a minute longer.  NB, they've got Tottie's name wrong.  She won't like that AT ALL.

Marchpane is a posh doll with a voice like a young Princess Margaret and an attitude that would make Machiavelli feel like he wanted a nice cup of tea with his Granny.  Marchpane don't like sharing the dolls' house.  Marchpane wants rid of the others.  In the same way that the Reverend Harry Powell in Night of the Hunter wants rid of those kids.  In fact, I think it best if you consider Marchpane to be the Reverend Powell of Childrens' BBC. 

Here then, for your education, is an episode.  Watch and consider.  Or don't.

You know how these things go.  She's going to connive.  She's going to set traps and whatnot.  She's going to be the classic kids' TV villain.  And they'll win out.  Good will triumph.  Yeah, it does.  Except that...well...

She kills one of the other dolls.  Actually, that's not quite accurate.

She burns one of them alive.

Right to fucking death there on camera at four o'clock in the afternoon on BBC1, just around home time from school.  And it's the really nice, trusting, positive one, Birdie.  At which point did the BBC think You know what we need?  A kids' version of The Wicker Man.  Aimed at nine year olds.  Belting plan, Jeremy old boy.


Oh, don't worry.  Evil will not triumph here.  No, not at all.  See, Marchpane, it turns out, is so nice and so antique and Princess Margarety that her owners decide she can't be played with and seal her up in a dark box.  Dolls, by the way, are always sentient, but powerless.  People can choose, but dolls can only be chosen runs the script, making me wonder if Ayn Rand was involved somewhere.  So, if you consider for a moment: after having immolated a saintly mother-figure, Marchpane gets effectively buried alive.  Eternally aware.  Sealed in a box.  For the rest of time.  The end.  Happy fucking viewing, kiddies. Instant Karma and all that, but no-one smart enough to think it through is going to enjoy their tea after that.

Smallfilms wound up operations not long after; I think they have one more series to their name.  And as I said at the start, I will never, ever defame the life and work of Oliver Postgate; the man was a genius in more than one field, lived a life of adventure and strangeness and had the best bedtime story voice in the entire universe, more so even than the Ashtar Command.  But I think I'll stick to the worlds he created himself.  There were dragons in Oliver's own worlds, you see.  They lived in the chestnut barrel.  I much prefer that.

Idris.  AWESOME.

*But not from the Pogles books, where she gets all metafictional.  She gets turned into a wood and plaster model, with glass eyes, which is exactly what she was in real life.  I may have read too much Grant Morrison, but there are all kinds of spooky overtones to that.

The day the downs stood still

Following that brief Ken Dodd interlude (note to my readers who didn't grow up in the UK; never, ever ask about Ken Dodd) I think we should continue our meanderings amongst the signal pirates.  Our previous excursion apparently scared the living daylights out of quite a few of you, so let's tone it down a touch this time.  Max only wanted to tell you about his dirty glove; our next guest, in complete contrast, is polite, civilised and the very model of courtesy.  Oh, and he's implying that he'll kill you all and burn your planet unless you do as he says.

Pirate Material: This is Radio Free Vrillon

 Our story takes place in two locations, one geographical, one temporal.  Spacially, we are going to be in Hampshire.  Chronologically, the 1970s.  I spent seven years in the 1970s and one day in Hamphire.  It would be needlessly offensive to a whole county if I finished this joke. 

Ah, the 1970s, my spiritual home, were it not for the racism, economic decline, baseline technology and lack of Ghost Box Records or PJ Harvey.  But let's not dwell on the downside; the 1970s were dependable (in my cheating memory, at least).  Tea time in that decade for me; Dad comes home from work with a briefcase (bearing a NALGO 'Stop the Cuts' bloody dagger sticker).  Meal is eaten at the table, like proper folk.  Just in time to go and watch the news (Calendar was the local show in Yorkshire, as any fule kno).  Safe, everyday, normality.

Usually.

It's November 1977.  Almost ten years to the day before the Max incident traumatises Chicago.   The population of a major bit of the south coast sits down, tired from a long day of sailing or something and has its tea in front of the ITN early evening bulletin.  You will be able to hear a bit of it soon, deadly dull beige news about the international situation, terrifying important incidents that have been made to sound beige so they can be safely read on a beige studio set without causing dangerous levels of excitement. 

However, round about this point, it slowly began to dawn on the viewing public that Andrew Gardner seemed to have had a bit of an image change.  He was calling himself Vrillon of the Ashtar Galactic Command.  Ey-up, thought the audience.  No, hang on a minute, they were in Hampshire.  What did they think in Hampshire?  I say, one doesn't get this with Richard Baker.  Something like that.*

Klaatu Nikto Bakerada, Gort.  And now, Michael Fish live from the Krell Machine.

Gardner's voice had been faded out and replaced with something else entirely.  Vrillon was reading the news now and it wasn't great for the human race.  Frankly, we were getting a bollocking from space.  He controlled the horizontal, the vertical - well, actually, he just controlled the soundtrack, but that was enough to make you drop your Findus Crispy Pancake (lame, lazy retro reference number 2352). 

Go and have a listen to Vrillon.  Go on.

Well, there you go.  That's us told.  He talks about manifesting in peace and harmony and whatnot, but notice, only the people who pay attention will get to ascend to spiritual wonderland.  The rest of us will presumably fry.  Isn't that the rapture or something, but with aliens and that?  Dunno.  Anyway, the news came back on and everything went back to normal, save for a few unfortunate parents of nervy children who had a lot of prising down off the ceiling to deal with.

Anyway, the IBA called hoax on the whole thing, which begs the question, what else were they going to say, exactly?  This is exactly why I'm no longer allowed to write press releases for anything at all.

OK, so, in a rational world, we know it probably wasn't aliens.  Thing is, precious little else about this case is clear or known; it's not even certain that the above recording is the real one and not a mock-up.  Its existence would imply someone at the TV station recording it (i.e being aware it was about to start a few seconds in advance), which is a bit suspicious, pointing no fingers of blame, like. 

The source of the rogue signal, despite what a lot of (even) dodgier sites have to tell you, was the Hannington transmitter.  Here's a look at a view of the local scenery:

Spoooooooooky wintry place.

Now, is it me, or does that look spooky as hell?  Surely, they filmed half the Ghost Stories For Christmas around there.  What I find a little creepy is that someone sneaked out, miles and miles into the countryside on a dark November evening, got close enough to the tower to jam the audio link and ran the tape of Vrillon.  Imagine them, hidden in the eerie winter night, watching patiently, delivering their spaced up message, like Joe Meek returned for revenge.  I like to think that someone was working in that transmitter station, that they had the feeling they were being watched right up until the Ashtar took command.

Now bring me Fred Dineage.

So, beasts, there you have it.  The voice of the aeons, addressing you from Southern Television.  Like Max, a mystery on a November night that's never been solved.  No-one has ever come forward to admit the truth.  Vrillon has remained silent ever since; have Ashtar Command abandoned us to our fate?

Perhaps there's more to Southern TV than meets the eye.  I'll leave you with this; the last few seconds of broadcast before the station closed down forever, four years after Vrillon's impassioned plea.  It's up to you to decide if they were trying to tell us something.

Lights in ours skies, see.





* I know little of your Hampshire ways, but I bet someone's going to tell me all about them very, very soon.

Lightning Round

Three quick scares from the dark places of the inside, Tegan:

I think 'fucking hell' should cover it.

 

Happy Christmas, love from Jim Jones

 

 

 

 

 

A video nasty font, a pair of disembodied eyeballs, Harold Meaker with a pair of shears; if the least scary thing is Mr Fucking Claypole, you're in big trouble.

Not quite our usual product, but decently wrong, I'm sure you'll agree.  To cleanse the mind's eye of this horror, allow me to make good use of Gareth Hunt:

Warning: do not think of the phrase 'gender politics'

I've made a terrible mistake, Leela. I've locked it in here...with us!

Good evening, or indeed good morning, or goodnight fellow beasts, wherever you may be.  It's evening for me, and the sky is all dark and September stormy.  I'm watching Sapphire and Steel; under these circumstances, I think a nicely unsettling discussion is called for.

I've talked to you about some of the horrid childhood nightmares and a few that probably creeped adults out as well.  Scary as they might have been, they were all part of the system, created by TV production companies, broadcast as advertised, credited, filed away and, if they were especially good, promptly burnt to make sure no-one could ever enjoy them again.

Isn't it more unsettling to encounter something that's not sanctioned?  Something that doesn't belong?  Something that's effectively broken in to your little broadcasting noosphere*?  I think so, but then I'm made up of 70% broadcast media these days, with precious little organic content remaining.  So let's take a look at some unoriginal pirate material (phone rings: 2004 wants its joke back).  Let's examine the world of the Signal Pirate.

It's quite tricky, breaking into a TV transmission.  Funnily enough, broadcasting authorities don't seem to want to explain how this is done in detail, but the short and vague version is that if you can get a fairly powerful transmitter of your own and fix it up near a less powerful relay transmitter, you should be able to merge your own signal in and freak the living shit out of anyone watching.  Right, that's enough science.  It's time to watch Max Headroom get spanked on Doctor Who.


Pirate Material Part One: Twenty Minutes Into The Future

It's November 22nd, 1987.  This is an auspicious date; the anniversary of Kennedy's assassination.  A day before the 24th anniversary of Doctor Who.  And a Discordian Day of Celebration, as I recall.  Any, none or all of these may have some bearing on what happened in Chicago that night.

It started on the evening news.  They suddenly cut from the Chicago Bears into...a lot of buzzing/humming noises, an image of a sheet of revolving metal and...well, a man in a Max Headroom mask, reeling about oddly.

For those unlucky enough to have missed out on Max, he was Matt Frewer in a full latex head makeup usually, presenting videos on late night TV.  The concept was that he was a computer generated VJ in a sharp suit and if you can think of anything more 80s than that, please keep well away from my house.

What's less well remembered ('less' he says!) is that Max began life in a Blade Runner- esque Channel 4 TV show and short lived follow up series.  Set in a dystopian near future, Max's original human version had adventures involving dodgy TV channels, artificial intelligence and, my favourite, killer adverts.  It was like Videodrome made by the Comic Strip Presents.  But the series had an ongoing theme of signal pirates and TV broadcasting rebellion, so I'm guessing either someone had paid close attention or the fancy dress shop had sold all its William Shatner masks to John Carpenter.

 We were simple folk, with none of your modern ways.

Normal service abruptly resumed, leaving the most flustered sports anchor in history to try and carry on regardless.  But more was to come, near midnight and the Doctor Who anniversary.  As usual, the station was screening Tom Baker, as so they jolly well should.  Horror of Fang Rock, to be precise.  The one with the killer jellyfish thing and the only example of pornography in the whole original series.  Go on, look for it.  I dare you.  It's there.*2

Suddenly, Our Tom changes and not in the good "the moment has been prepared for" way.  Max was back, and this time he was talking.  And what he said was...not good.  And for the life of me, I can't work out why.  Here's a few quotes that really, really disturb me:

"My brother is wearing the other one!"

"This one is...dirty"

"Your love is fading!"

"They're coming to get me!"

At which point, someone started spanking his bare ass with fly swatter.  And this is the point at which it became a bit creepier; on repeat viewing, it seems very like whoever doing the spanking is a child.  And that shifts the focus from a bit of Discordian prankster-ness to something a bit darker and nastier.  In all honesty, I'm suddenly finding it a bit difficult to try and be funny about this; maybe I'm over-reacting, after all, in all probability it's either a grown adult or, chances are, it was someone's sibling wearily helping out with a 'wacky' jape. 

EDIT: The jury is out on whether that's a kid or not.  Some more lazy research suggests that the mystery female speaks at one point, but it's hard to tell.  Lots of commentators seem to be of the opinion that it's an adult with the flyswat, but the whole thing is still nasty as hell.  My apologies to Max if I'm wrong here or just getting creeped out unecessarily.  By a madman in a rubber mask showing his arse.

But it still has the overwhelming sense of the unheimlich, the idea of wrongness, of things being not as they should be.  Something is WRONG with this clip but, apart from the above, I find it very difficult to phrase exactly what.

What's even more unsettling is that in the intervening twenty-odd years, no-one has ever been caught, investigated or prosecuted for this.  No-one has claimed responsibility.  Not a word, not a rumour.  Just one dark late night, and then 'Max' was gone for good.

I think, on reflection, I'd rather deal with the Spirit of Dark and Lonely Water.

Here's the linkage.



*Noosphere.  Like, a load of ideas and cultural concepts circling each other, yeah?  It's totally a real thing.  Don't look it up.

*2 Alright, alright.  Rueben, the undead lighthouse keeper has mucky postcards in his room.  The Doctor looks at them for ages.