Welcome to the Fold, Mr. Hadley

Ah, I get to repeat myself.
Earlier this year, unfortunately with some lag time on my part, I made arrangements for fellow-blogger Mitchell from Our Word to see this year's season of Doctor Who. He and his wife finished off the episodes and I saw an opportunity to push something different their way.

For a number of years I've noted that a short-run sci-fi series might just hit the spot for them... Firefly, perhaps you've heard of it.

As luck would have it, an additional boxed set found its way on to my shelves. (The wife misplaced our first set, and after five months she decided to replace it... and within six weeks she found the original set.) I handed off the extra disks to Mitchell and wished him and his wife an enjoyable 10.5 hours of viewing.

So far, they have muscled their way through "Train Job", "Bushwhacked", and they might have just seen "Shindig"... which I enjoyed greatly.

Hard to get into 13 episodes of a modern cult favorite science-fiction series around Christmas... I believe they have some annual viewing they like to do, as do many folks this time of year. That said, I assured them that they were under no obligation to keep the disks let alone watch them all. If they enjoy them, the disks are certainly theirs to keep.

Of course, much like waiting to see their reaction for this year's key episodes of Doctor Who, I'm quite eager to hear how the series goes down for them. I cannot wait to hear their response to, "I got stupid. The money was too good." (Of course, if Mitchell reads that then the odds are in his favor that he's going to make a fairly accurate prediction.)

If they get through the series the D&B and I might make them a nice meal and have them over to watch the movie that came out.

Only 35 Actors at the BBC

Something I haven't thought about in a few years... and James Lileks brought it to my attention today in The Bleat.

Lileks commented on a movie with Jack Webb called "The D.I."...

God bless Jack: Virginia Gregg has a role in the film. She played every single female on the Dragnet radio show and 57% of the women on the TV show. I swear: the more you listen to old time radio, the more you become convinced that the entire medium employed 14 actors, tops.

For years a friend of mine held a similar theory regarding the BBC. The Vid Master (a handle he used in the production of a newsletter) half-jokingly claimed that at any given time the BBC only employs 35 actors... and the evidence for this is watching any number of series from the BBC. Perhaps we should more accurately lsay that British Televison only employs 35 actors, since there is Channel Four, ITV, and who knows what else.

Just take a peek at the degrees of separation between "The Prisoner" and "Doctor Who"... I don't think there is a one-link connection, but Hell you can connect both with "Good Neighbors" (or, as the Brits call it, "The Good Life"). Leo McKern and Peter Boyles and Pennelope Keith alone connect a number of series and actors together. The guest appearances on "The Avengers" and "Good Neighbors" connect so many dots, and the sheer longevity of "Doctor Who" link more than a handful of shows with the legion of stalwarts who have popped into that series.

Of course, there's "Blake's Seven" and "Yes, Minister" and even "Jeeves and Wooster" (especially when coupled with "Black Adder").

In fact, I think I can link Kenneth Branagh to "Doctor Who".
He appeared in "Thompson" with his one-time-wife Emma Thompson. She appeared as a guest on "The Young Ones" with Hugh Laurie (star of "House M.D.") and Stephen Fry (among others). Hugh and Fry easily link to "Black Adder" starring Rowan Atkinson. Atkinson starred in a spoof of "Doctor Who" as the Doctor. (You might not have thought Atkinson would be suitable as the Doctor, even in a parody... however, he was letter perfect, staying on the right side of cliche.)

However, if you include film, Branagh get's to "Doctor Who" even easier... via Sir Derek Jacobi.