FICTION & REALITY 2.0
Well, ten years after I joined the Internet, nine years after I created my first crude web-page, it's time for a blog. I resisted for a long time, barely able to think of anything to put on a web-page every month or two, but, when I considered all the remarks I've posted on message boards and the like, some of which I consider halfway interesting, I decided this would be a good place to gather them.
"I" am Michael D. Winkle, author of several published short stories and articles. There's my high school picture to the left, taken when I had a few more strands of hair. If I'm feeling exceptionally cruel, I may post a more recent photo, but I don't want to frighten people off yet.
Anyway, my published works include "Typo" in Cthulhu's Heirs (edited by Thomas Stratman), "Wolfhead" in Tales of the Witch World 3 (edited by Andre Norton), and "Toon-Boy" in Going Postal (edited by Gerard Houarner). Naturally, I'd like the "several" to become "many", and I'd like to add novels to the stories and articles. After several tense and very dry years, the writing machine is puttering away again at last, and my wishes may finally come true!
In the meantime, here's one of those scattered posts I mentioned, this concerning my favorite single television episodes. No, not favorite TV series -- single episodes, if I could remember them. There may be some spoilers here, so read at your own risk:
FAVORITE TV EPISODES
The Twilight Zone: "The Monsters are Due on Maple Street" -- They wouldn't let Rod Serling write scripts attacking bigotry, racism, and other issues on "normal" programs, but once he disguised them as fantasy and SF, he slipped them by the network bigwigs. A UFO is seen over Maple Street, USA, and all the power goes out -- except for a few choice people. Are they spies for the invaders? Paranoia mounts, erupting into mob violence.
Jonny Quest: "Terror Island" -- Hey! A killer crab the size of an M1 tank! A freaky, squealing giant spider! Roger "Race" Bannon demonstrates that he could have beaten North Vietnam single-handed! An Asian mad scientist who gets wiped out by Godzilla's ugly cousin! And JADE! What else do you need?!
The Avengers: "The Positive-Negative Man" -- THE AVENGERS began as a take-off on the spy-craze of the '60s, but I think TPNM is one of the best science fiction episodes ever made. It took a concept that's been bandied about since the 1930s (projected power -- electricity reaching homes, cars, airplanes, etc. from towers, just like radio waves) and took it in a totally new direction. The Positive-Negative Man himself, silent and shiny-gray, accompanied by ominous generator hums and electric crackling, capable of knocking people through brick walls with a touch of his finger, is one of the small screen's most memorable "monsters". Then there are John Steed and Emma Peel at their best, exchanging witty lines of dialog.
The Prisoner: "Hammer Into Anvil" -- When the newest Number 2 tortures a woman to the point of suicide, Number 6 shifts his campaign from trying to escape to destroying Number 2. He flashes Morse code out to the empty sea, writes gobblety-gook messages in code, and speaks spy-type "messages" into the ears of Village personnel, all in full view of the hidden cameras. The paranoid Number 2 eventually comes to believe Number 6 was sent to spy on him, and that the Village staff are helping 6! It's interesting to think that The Prisoner (so-called) could outsmart the whole Village if he was fighting for someone else (or their memory); had he put this much effort into his escapes, he would been back in London after a week. The only thing missing from "Hammer Into Anvil" is Rover, the balloon thingy, but, hey, you can't have everything!
Star Trek: "Balance of Terror" -- Sure, it was a WW II submarine movie translated to outer space, but "Balance" is probably the best "battle among the stars" episode ever. After a hundred years of uneasy peace, the Romulans (never before seen by humans) are trying to sneak across the Neutral Zone using their latest invention, the cloaking device. Only the Enterprise is available to stop them before the situation escalates into a galactic war. Rather than just phaser-ing off wildly in all directions, the captains and officers on both sides try to outthink their opponents, sometimes succeeding, sometimes not. And no wonder that one guy is suspicious of Spock -- the Romulan commander looks just like his father!
Monty Python: "Full Frontal Nudity" -- This episode features the Colonel, the stuffy military officer who hates all things silly. It contains the infamous "Parrot Sketch," as well as "Hell's Grannies," and the hymn that essentially became the show's theme song ("England's Mountains Green"). The only slow part is some bit with hermits living on a mountainside. Otherwise it is the quintessential Python show. Except that it's too silly.
Kolchak: the Night Stalker: "The Ripper" -- Robert Bloch's most famous short story was "Yours Truly, Jack the Ripper," in which we learn that the infamous London killer has become immortal by making blood sacrifices to "the dark gods." In later years Bloch complained that other writers, movies, and TV shows were stealing his concept of an immortal Jack. But the Ripper has become "immortal" on his own, a dark apotheosis like Vlad the Impaler forever with us as Dracula. While Bloch's Ripper was a chameleon who hid among us, Kolchak's Saucy Jack is an over-the-top super-villain who parades around in front of God and the world in Victorian finery and wades through armies of cops sent to stop him. He's as arrogant in his own way as the pun-slinging Freddy Krueger, yet he doesn't receive a word of dialogue. "The Ripper" has the most amazing cops vs. monster fights of the series -- outdoing the two TV movies as well, and possibly outdoing any other hand-to-hand battles I've ever seen on the small screen. At the end there's the oddest hero-confronting-villain bit of all time -- Kolchak hiding in the Ripper's closet, a scene terrifying and hilarious at the same time.
Connections: "The Trigger Effect" -- James Burke's show started off with a bang, using the 1965 New England power blackout to show how dependent we have become on technology. And he piles it on: If the power went out permanently, what would you do? Flee the city? Do you have enough gas? Can you beat the streaming millions? If you reach the country, could you find shelter? Food? If you staked out land, doesn't someone probably own it already? If farmhouses are the only shelter, will you take one by force? Burke goes on and on about what a delicate mechanism our modern society is. Really makes you think.
Sherlock Holmes: "A Scandal in Bohemia" -- The first episode of the Jeremy Brett series. Brett made people forget Basil Rathbone. At last Dr. Watson is shown to be fairly intelligent and capable. And in Irene Adler, we are introduced to "the Woman", a "villain" who stalemates Holmes and comes as close to stealing his heart as any female. (And in various Holmes pastiches, she does, but that's another story.)
Unsolved Mysteries: That one where the old couple go on a Sunday drive in the country and see a mysterious van wherever they go -- and its driver, who tosses out a blood-covered sheet. We find out he killed his wife, and the update shows him with his new wife, watching his own segment on Unsolved Mysteries! He flees, gets chased by the cops, runs a roadblock, and, after a pitched gun battle, he shoots himself. A Hitchcockian beginning, a nasty villain, a sequel that folds the show itself into the plot, a police chase and gunfight as good as any cop show, and eye-for-an-eye closure to what had been a -- well -- an unsolved mystery!
Batman: the Animated Series: "Heart of Ice" -- This, the third episode of B:TAS to be aired, introduced Victor Fries, aka Mr. Freeze, formerly a very minor villain, and made of him an epic, tragic figure. Freeze, who looks like something out of an old issue of AMAZING STORIES, is cold, calculating, and terrifying when out for revenge on the man who put his wife in a coma. However, he is driven by his love for his wife, and in future appearances he goes to any length to cure her. One might make parallels between Bruce Wayne and the Joker, but I think Fries, with his tragic origin story, is an even closer "shadow" of Batman.
The X-Files: "Jose Chung's 'From Outer Space'" -- Just the teaser to this one made me think I was in for one of the great audio/visual experiences of my life, and I was right: A young couple driving down a country road is abducted by Grays -- who are themselves attacked by a monstrous Cyclopean creature from a second spaceship! This episode was like the whole series rolled into 46 minutes -- conspiracies, hoaxes, abductions, Men-in-Black, a shaggy monster, an alien autopsy, all seen from the point of view of a writer, Jose Chung (Charles Nelson Riley), who has the uneviable job of trying to make sense of it all. There's even a cameo by The Amazing Yappi (from "Clyde Bruckman's Final Repose"). And, like the UFO buff in "Jose Chung . . .", I often find myself shouting, "You can't hide the truth forever! Roswell! Roswell!"
